Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: We felt like we had won, and when we got
Speaker 2: there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
Speaker 2: we thought that there was a effort in place to
Speaker 2: steal the election. Using the word stealing the election is
Speaker 2: just political hyperbole, and I don't usually use that, but
Speaker 2: I definitely felt that emotion.
Speaker 1: Hey, Fiasco listeners, this is Leon Apok. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening to Bush v.
Speaker 2: Gore.
Speaker 1: Now that you've heard the whole show, we wanted to
Speaker 1: share with you some bonus material related to the two
Speaker 1: thousand election that we collected during our reporting process. We
Speaker 1: talked to around sixty people for the series, and though
Speaker 1: we included bits and pieces of most of those interviews
Speaker 1: in the episodes you've heard, there were a bunch of
Speaker 1: conversations where after we thought to ourselves, man, people should
Speaker 1: really hear more of this than we're able to include.
Speaker 1: So in the spirit of using every part of the buffalo,
Speaker 1: we are bringing you six additional episodes in which you
Speaker 1: will hear my conversations with some of the most interesting
Speaker 1: people we spoke to. Today bringing you an interview I
Speaker 1: conducted with a Bush campaign staffer named Brian Noys. Noise
Speaker 1: served as a regional political director on the Bush campaign
Speaker 1: in two thousand. We were eager to talk to him
Speaker 1: because we wanted to talk to as many people from
Speaker 1: the Bush side as we could. But we became even
Speaker 1: more interested when we learned about something he had been
Speaker 1: working on, an oral history project about the Bush Camp's
Speaker 1: experience of the Florida recount. As someone who had talked
Speaker 1: to dozens of people to try to piece together what
Speaker 1: happened during that process and why, I was immediately excited
Speaker 1: to compare notes with someone who had been doing something similar.
Speaker 1: When we spoke, Noise told me about his experience working
Speaker 1: on the oral history project and what it was like
Speaker 1: for him and his colleagues back in two thousand when
Speaker 1: they were working on the ground in Florida. Noise started
Speaker 1: out by telling me where the idea for a Bush
Speaker 1: Team oral history came from.
Speaker 2: We were coming up to the twentieth anniversary, and I
Speaker 2: actually have an older daughter who is in college, and
Speaker 2: one of her friends asked about me being involved in politics,
Speaker 2: and I went back through all my old boxes that
Speaker 2: were very unorganized. It just kind of shoved in the
Speaker 2: garage and came across a lot of information from the
Speaker 2: election in two thousand and realized I had some memorabilia,
Speaker 2: and that started me reminiscing with friends, and we decided
Speaker 2: that instead of just telling each other these stories forever,
Speaker 2: we should probably record a few of them for my
Speaker 2: daughter and people like her friends who wanted to get
Speaker 2: kind of a first hand account of a historical event.
Speaker 1: And so how long ago they just start working on it.
Speaker 2: I think the idea germinated for a while, but we
Speaker 2: really took it on in earnest at the end of
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. So we started, you know, identifying who we
Speaker 2: would want to be on, what kind of technical issues
Speaker 2: we would have to get over to record, the kind
Speaker 2: of things. But we we really kind of an interesting
Speaker 2: point for you is we are not recording Carl Rove
Speaker 2: or Karen Hughes or Joe albar Ben Ginsberg. We're trying
Speaker 2: to get the individuals that haven't been captured in all
Speaker 2: the historical reviews in the past. There may be some crossover,
Speaker 2: but our real goal is to get, you know, people
Speaker 2: that are from Florida, the local representatives, as well as
Speaker 2: kind of a group of colleagues that were either Bush
Speaker 2: campaign or the volunteers professional volunteers that were part of it.
Speaker 1: It's funny, it's so great to hear you. I mean
Speaker 1: to describe it that way, because you know, that's really
Speaker 1: the purpose of our show, too, is to try to
Speaker 1: find people who haven't those barely been canonized as part
Speaker 1: of the you know, people who get top billing in
Speaker 1: a in a movie like Recount or something.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, let's view them as complementary projects exactly, all right,
Speaker 2: because we made a conscious decision to not do both
Speaker 2: sides and just literally focus on the Bush Cheney staff
Speaker 2: volunteers in Florida folks, and large part because after the election,
Speaker 2: a lot of us just didn't tell the stories on
Speaker 2: the record. And so I actually have interviewed somebody who
Speaker 2: has since passed, and so we're realizing our own mortality
Speaker 2: and the number of years that have passed since this.
Speaker 2: And then if we're going to capture this for posterity,
Speaker 2: we need to do it in a way that you know,
Speaker 2: is respectful of the Bush legacy that we all worked for,
Speaker 2: but is personal enough that is interesting. And you know,
Speaker 2: otherwise people like me and a lot of the people
Speaker 2: they're involved in here wouldn't be in a historical record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's great, what are you gonna do with that?
Speaker 1: I mean, are you gonna just really you sell the
Speaker 1: interviews or what's like the end product.
Speaker 2: So we're really looking at probably three different products. One
Speaker 2: a book or some contemporary story or condensed narraty above
Speaker 2: it that we would hopefully release next year sometime, not
Speaker 2: a profit making thing, just to have it as a record,
Speaker 2: an oral history of all these and finding a presidential
Speaker 2: center or a museum that's interested in housing this, some
Speaker 2: reunions to kind of gather everybody twentieth adversary you do
Speaker 2: that type of thing, and hopefully have that in multiple
Speaker 2: cities so that we would be able to maximize the
Speaker 2: people that can come together.
Speaker 1: And you've heard all the stories, No, not all of.
Speaker 2: Them, not all of them. There were probably a couple
Speaker 2: that people didn't want recorded.
Speaker 1: There's one thing I've noticed, I wonder if you've if
Speaker 1: you've had this experience at all, there's been like a
Speaker 1: surprising number of competing theories of the case, Like what
Speaker 1: was the decisive thing that you know, led to the
Speaker 1: outcome that we had, And so everyone has like a
Speaker 1: moment in their mind where they think it, you know,
Speaker 1: decisively turned. Have you had that experience at all hearing
Speaker 1: that from people.
Speaker 2: You know, what's funny is the majority of people I'm
Speaker 2: talking to are not attorneys, and so our experience, my
Speaker 2: experience in theirs was I had that gut feeling that
Speaker 2: we were going to win and that all was lost
Speaker 2: probably fifteen times during the thirty six days. So looking
Speaker 2: back at it now, it's kind of, you know, not
Speaker 2: the same perspective that I had at the time is
Speaker 2: to when it was really truly over. And that is
Speaker 2: one of the questions that I ask is you know,
Speaker 2: when was it that you felt like it was over?
Speaker 2: And the majority of people that I talked to didn't
Speaker 2: release until the Supreme Court made his decision. There wasn't
Speaker 2: that moment after the first seventy two hours where you
Speaker 2: didn't feel like another shoe was going to drop, that
Speaker 2: another court case would help you or hurt you. And
Speaker 2: whenever you felt good, you just weren't allowing yourself to
Speaker 2: celebrate and feel like you had hit a conclusion because
Speaker 2: you know, you just never knew when you know, another
Speaker 2: level of court or another level official was going to
Speaker 2: review this and change the rules. And this is not
Speaker 2: the project. This is kind of my personal recollection. You know,
Speaker 2: when we were in the counting room in Palm Beach,
Speaker 2: the Emergency Operations Center, when we had moved to the
Speaker 2: bigger platform and we're doing all the precincts. Particularly in
Speaker 2: the first few days, there were so many moments where
Speaker 2: we thought they were getting an advantage, then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden they thought we were getting an advantage, and
Speaker 2: just never knew, you know, whether one counting station was
Speaker 2: going too fast and putting too many core votes out there,
Speaker 2: or whether you had, you know, things going into your
Speaker 2: advantage and it would just go minute by minute.
Speaker 1: Well, it was like the lowest moment for you when
Speaker 1: you when you remember thinking that like you really were
Speaker 1: going to lose, or that the chances were, you know,
Speaker 1: as high as they felt at any at any other point.
Speaker 2: Probably the two biggest points for me were when the
Speaker 2: Palm Beach County canvassing Board went from the one percent
Speaker 2: test to the full manual recount, because we knew it
Speaker 2: was a county that Gore had covered very well and
Speaker 2: there was a higher presented chance that he might make
Speaker 2: gains that would overturn us. The second time was when
Speaker 2: the Florida Supreme Court stepped in on right before Catherine
Speaker 2: Harris was going to certify, and they basically prevented her
Speaker 2: from certifying. And so those were probably the two worst
Speaker 2: moments for me, because when loser draw, you accept it.
Speaker 2: When it's over, right, it's over, we move on to
Speaker 2: the next campaign. Well, this was never over. This was
Speaker 2: always in perpetually a state of anxiety as to when
Speaker 2: would it be over. And that's just kind of counterintuitive
Speaker 2: to a political operative.
Speaker 1: Why that's specifically counter intuitive to a political operative.
Speaker 2: Because you want an end date, So election day, when
Speaker 2: loser draw, it's over. And then each one of these
Speaker 2: decisions that would extend the election was just kind of
Speaker 2: new territory for me. It didn't compute. What do you mean,
Speaker 2: the campaign's continuing this efforts continuing the election was X
Speaker 2: number of days ago. You know, I was already away
Speaker 2: from my family for six months, and every day was
Speaker 2: just more excruciating that I wasn't with my wife and
Speaker 2: young child. And you know, again, sometimes when you're that exhausted,
Speaker 2: you'll take a loss just because you want it to
Speaker 2: be over.
Speaker 1: I can imagine before we get any further, I wanted
Speaker 1: just to make sure that I understand your job correctly.
Speaker 1: You served as the regional political director from all the
Speaker 1: states that touched the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Is that right correct? And you had Florida correct? How
Speaker 1: much of your like brain space did Florida take up
Speaker 1: during the campaign leading up to the election.
Speaker 2: It was fifty percent for most of the time, and
Speaker 2: then going into the last month it was ninety percent.
Speaker 1: Was there a time when when it felt to the
Speaker 1: Bush campaign like Florida was in the bag.
Speaker 2: No, we always thought it was competitive.
Speaker 1: You always thought they had a chance there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we always thought it was competitive. I mean the
Speaker 2: number is too big. I mean there's you look at Florida,
Speaker 2: this very diverse. We had advantages and they had advantages.
Speaker 2: You know, Jeb Bush is the name and the governor,
Speaker 2: and everybody pays attention to that. But you know, you
Speaker 2: had you know, law and Childs had just been the
Speaker 2: governor before him, and you had Democratic US senators. You
Speaker 2: had a balance of huge voter bases in the southeast
Speaker 2: that counterweighted the entire rest of the state. So we
Speaker 2: knew we needed to have turnout in order to be successful.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to hear you say that, because I think
Speaker 1: the Jeb Bush thing. It was what made them, the Democrats,
Speaker 1: or at least the Gore folks in Tallahassee, pretty pretty pessimistic.
Speaker 1: They felt like they gave the Bush campaign an advantage
Speaker 1: that they would were unlikely to overcome.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, think about it, Florida has had Democratic
Speaker 2: leaders on the state wide level too, and so they
Speaker 2: had just as many major donors, just as many volunteers
Speaker 2: historically that were available to them. They had, you know,
Speaker 2: Bob Butterworth, the Attorney General, was a you know, the
Speaker 2: top ranking Democrat I think on the state level. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of counterbalances to it. I mean the
Speaker 2: other thing too is from a practical level, Jeb was
Speaker 2: on the state canvassing board, but other than that, he
Speaker 2: had no authority over how the elections were managed at
Speaker 2: the local level.
Speaker 1: And so why I think I think the people I
Speaker 1: talked to were saying more that it was an advantaged
Speaker 1: during the campaign because, for instance, because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people in Florida who were would be reluctant
Speaker 1: to say donate to Gore because they didn't want, you know,
Speaker 1: to be out of favor with with the governor.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there are some people in that category certainly,
Speaker 2: but there were also equal people that would want to
Speaker 2: be in favor with the incoming president and they would
Speaker 2: be working to get their favor with the Senator Gore.
Speaker 2: And so it again, the state was not clearly a
Speaker 2: red or blue state at the time. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of counterbalance.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there was any sense on your end
Speaker 1: on the Bush side that, like after the convention specifically,
Speaker 1: they seemed to really focus on Florida and really it
Speaker 1: seemed to be in good position there, like post Lieberman's nomination, right,
Speaker 1: which obviously helped there. And then you know, I've been
Speaker 1: talking to folks about how after Jeb Bush's Action education
Speaker 1: policy there was a really really huge surge in African
Speaker 1: American voter registration.
Speaker 2: I would concur with that, And I think technology and
Speaker 2: the way that you had information was just differ for
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, and so a lot of what you
Speaker 2: had was word of mouth and anecdotal and polling. So
Speaker 2: polling was a king at the time, but you could
Speaker 2: measure with a lot of that with any definitive level,
Speaker 2: and really not until we changed it in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four and then Obama changed it to another ratchet.
Speaker 2: It to another level. You really couldn't tell your intensity.
Speaker 2: So we gazed our intensity by the absentee ballot program,
Speaker 2: and we had a very extensive absentee ballot program with
Speaker 2: a large turnout, and we thought we were doing extremely well.
Speaker 2: And our Miami Dade kind of on the ground organizer,
Speaker 2: Cuban Fella, did tell me now in retrospect, you know,
Speaker 2: nineteen years later, that he did not anticipate the large
Speaker 2: numbers of African Americans and the turnout to match hours
Speaker 2: because he was so focused on it, and because Eleon
Speaker 2: Gonzales situation was so intense and there was so much
Speaker 2: of a fervor, they thought that, you know, our intensity
Speaker 2: couldn't be matched. And then on election day they did
Speaker 2: match it, and I mean it turned out to be
Speaker 2: neck and neck all the way up and down. So
Speaker 2: I think he was probably a little surprised, only because
Speaker 2: he was so focused on our side and he knew
Speaker 2: we had an intensity. It wasn't that he underestimated. I
Speaker 2: just don't think he was even aware of it.
Speaker 1: It's really satisfied to talk to you about this, and
Speaker 1: it's like, this is exactly the feeling we've been trying
Speaker 1: to conjure in the in the show, just that like
Speaker 1: there's so many little things that could be determinative.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, when there's I mean, when there's five
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty seven votes out of six million casts,
Speaker 2: you know, I probably can't even fathom all the different
Speaker 2: things that really could have affected it. From a state
Speaker 2: the size and is geographically diverse in two time zones
Speaker 2: as Florida, who knows what could have happened. That's why
Speaker 2: when we argue about the early call in the Central
Speaker 2: time zone, how many votes does that affect? How many
Speaker 2: people turned around, didn't go to the polling stations in
Speaker 2: the Panhandle or left or whatever because they felt like
Speaker 2: it was a lost cause.
Speaker 1: I've seen some Republicans say there was like ten thousand votes,
Speaker 1: which strikes me as a little bit.
Speaker 2: It was a billion. You No, I can't quantify it.
Speaker 1: So just let's let's le's boom zoom forward a little
Speaker 1: bit to the actual recount period. What was your understanding
Speaker 1: of what the Democrats were doing? Like did you think
Speaker 1: they were trying to steal the election? Did it that
Speaker 1: what it felt like or how did you conceive of
Speaker 1: like what they were up to?
Speaker 2: We felt like we had won and when we got
Speaker 2: there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
Speaker 2: we thought that they were an effort in place to
Speaker 2: steal the election. And I say that with the political
Speaker 2: hyperbole that it is I personally the way I would
Speaker 2: describe it just day to day, I would say that,
Speaker 2: you know, we thought we had the lead, and they
Speaker 2: were taking efforts to you know, to change the rules
Speaker 2: that they would They were trying every way they could
Speaker 2: to win, which is what you do. But you know,
Speaker 2: using the word stealing the election is just political hyperbole,
Speaker 2: and I don't usually use that, but I definitely felt
Speaker 2: that emotion at the time. I mean, the rules were
Speaker 2: the rules the day of election, and every time that
Speaker 2: there was a standard that was changed or a court
Speaker 2: decision that reset certain parameters, we felt like they were
Speaker 2: changing the rules after the election.
Speaker 1: What rules.
Speaker 2: So the butterfly ballot from the first twenty four hours
Speaker 2: and so on had become a political they were they
Speaker 2: were a political controversy. Rather so the the idea that
Speaker 2: you know, the election was not held in an appropriate
Speaker 2: fashion just didn't we We didn't agree with that that
Speaker 2: the butterfly ballot had been agreed to by the canvassing board.
Speaker 2: You know that in a county that was largely controlled
Speaker 2: by local Democrats, a canvassing board that was you know,
Speaker 2: one elected official and two Democrats, and so we felt
Speaker 2: that there was no inherent Jeb Bush you know, fixed
Speaker 2: to change, you know Palm Beach. That actually was the reverse,
Speaker 2: is that the county officials were the ones that had
Speaker 2: determined the voting methods, and so if there was a
Speaker 2: disadvantage to Gore, it was probably a mistake, not an
Speaker 2: intentional issue.
Speaker 1: I know this sounds cheesy, but I'm curious just if
Speaker 1: you could describe from sort of what it felt like
Speaker 1: to be on the receiving end of what you perceived
Speaker 1: to be an attempt to do something really unfair.
Speaker 2: You know, Leon, to some degree, there wasn't a whole
Speaker 2: lot of feeling. You were just plowing through your day
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what a task you had accomplish.
Speaker 2: You know, what was the situation, How many people did
Speaker 2: you have to get in the room, you know, that
Speaker 2: level of basic logistics. There wasn't a whole lot of feeling.
Speaker 2: And then you know, you're working twenty hour days and
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, there wasn't much time
Speaker 2: for feeling because you were just basically falling exhausted into
Speaker 2: a hotel room. I mean it was chaos for me
Speaker 2: personally too, because I had packed for three days. I
Speaker 2: went to one hotel and I changed in the first
Speaker 2: three days, I changed three different hotels because they weren't
Speaker 2: booking them for thirty six days. The logistics people, or
Speaker 2: even when I would just go sometimes to find an
Speaker 2: open hotel, they were like, say, how long are you
Speaker 2: gonna stay? And I would have to guess, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, maybe a week this time, and that
Speaker 2: you had to restart. I got kicked out of one
Speaker 2: hotel one time in Palm Beach because of a girl
Speaker 2: softball tournament had come in and they would only book
Speaker 2: me up to like Saturday, And I said, but I
Speaker 2: have to stay through Sunday and they said, well tough.
Speaker 1: Well, I know a lot of people got displaced in
Speaker 1: Tallahassee because of the Florida State game. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: had to because I guess you will rent those hotel
Speaker 1: rooms like a year in advance.
Speaker 2: Football is important.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one thing I'm interested in was this idea
Speaker 1: that the approach that the Bush side or the Republican
Speaker 1: side took during the recount process during those thirty six
Speaker 1: days was sort of a new thing for them. You know.
Speaker 1: Before the mid nineties, sure, Democrats were the ones who
Speaker 1: were sort of better at you know, on the ground
Speaker 1: activism or whatever, and that this election kind of changed
Speaker 1: that a little bit.
Speaker 2: From my perspective, in the nineties, we were looking at
Speaker 2: a historical perspective where Republicans had not had complete control
Speaker 2: of Congress, meeting both House and Senate for probably four decades,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until ninety four when that was my
Speaker 2: first real election in Georgia. Were working around new gamers
Speaker 2: and those folks when we took control of Congress, and
Speaker 2: that was historic because it had been decades since that
Speaker 2: change had happened. And part of the political structure was
Speaker 2: Republicans had this, you know persona of being you know,
Speaker 2: presidential white, you know, more wealthy, economically oriented, and Democrats
Speaker 2: were viewed as more bootstrap union, you know, working on
Speaker 2: the ground kind of people. And Republican campaigns during that
Speaker 2: period were learning how to go knock on doors and
Speaker 2: do more of that type of stuff. But we really
Speaker 2: depended institutionally on direct mail and phone calls and television ads.
Speaker 2: Well newt in that quote revolution started that change, but
Speaker 2: it didn't really come to fruition until after the two
Speaker 2: thousand election because that was that kind of wake up
Speaker 2: call that institutionally, the RNC and the political organizations outside
Speaker 2: of you know where like New York or Ohio, or
Speaker 2: those political organizations that existed forever in new places like Georgia,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party hadn't really existed, so we didn't have
Speaker 2: the same kind of level grassroots. So in that two
Speaker 2: thousand election, we had the opinion that if we got
Speaker 2: into a scrap on the ground that we were going
Speaker 2: to get out numbered, that they were just going to
Speaker 2: institutionally have a better ground game than we did. And
Speaker 2: so we countered.
Speaker 1: That, say you what does ground game mean? During the
Speaker 1: recount though, like the campaign's over, like what do you
Speaker 1: what's what's there to do?
Speaker 2: Well, we had to learn so some of that was
Speaker 2: just an unknown, but we made the assumption that they
Speaker 2: were going to be better organized by filling those roles
Speaker 2: once we found them out. And so as we started
Speaker 2: learning what those roles were, we we filled volunteers in
Speaker 2: from every direction. So there's been a lot of historical
Speaker 2: view of the people who flew in from out of
Speaker 2: the state, but those were only a small subjection of
Speaker 2: the total people that were volunteers. I can tell you
Speaker 2: for a fact, on the ground, particularly those first few
Speaker 2: days before planes could start flying in with other folks,
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the volunteers we had doing counting at
Speaker 2: the Emergency Operation Center were local Florida people. And then
Speaker 2: over time it probably evened out to a little bit
Speaker 2: more fifty to fifty. And as a counting process was
Speaker 2: going along for more than a week or so, we
Speaker 2: would see we had a little bit of a system
Speaker 2: that would get worked out.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the partisan the deservers.
Speaker 2: Yes, but we didn't have one of those political organizations
Speaker 2: built at that level in Florida. We had an educations
Speaker 2: for Bush chair in every county. We had a veteran
Speaker 2: for Bush chair in every county. We had those law
Speaker 2: enforcement you know, for Bush organization in every county. But
Speaker 2: that was like a few people. We needed like literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of people to show up, and we threw everything
Speaker 2: we could at it, and we did feel like that
Speaker 2: the Democrats would have the advantage, but it didn't end
Speaker 2: up being that way. I look back at it now,
Speaker 2: and I feel like we at least countered and then
Speaker 2: even to some points we actually outdid the Gore effort
Speaker 2: on that kind of local, grassroots bootstrap kind of a campaign.
Speaker 1: All right, And I want to ask you one last
Speaker 1: question here. I haven't really no particularly strong instinct one
Speaker 1: way or the other as to whether you know Bus
Speaker 1: should have won or Gore should have won, or whether
Speaker 1: it was I just I sincerely just don't know and
Speaker 1: haven't known. But I've noticed myself sort of gravitating towards
Speaker 1: the Gore perspective, and as I'm writing the show, and
Speaker 1: I've been wondering why. And it's not because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not because I wanted Gore to win.
Speaker 1: It's because I think that it's because he lost, and
Speaker 1: because he was the one trying to reduce the margin
Speaker 1: and while Bush was just defending his margin, that there's
Speaker 1: sort of more inherently more interesting or inherently more dramatic story.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious if you've in reading the books you
Speaker 1: know that have been written about this, and watching Recount
Speaker 1: and other other documentaries that have been made about this,
Speaker 1: do you feel like the Gore perspective is favored and
Speaker 1: do you think that the reaction that I'm having is
Speaker 1: in any way sort of related to it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it makes makes perfect sense that it would
Speaker 2: be more dramatic and be more intriguing because quote, what
Speaker 2: don't what don't we know or what could have changed
Speaker 2: to have changed the outcome? And you know, I'm pretty
Speaker 2: confident that we vetted it about as thoroughly as you
Speaker 2: possibly could. And the question is still it was really, really,
Speaker 2: really close, and Bush barely narrowed him out, but he
Speaker 2: did in fact narrow him out at every point in time,
Speaker 2: so there was a lot of counterbalance. But on election
Speaker 2: day we had the win, and all the way through
Speaker 2: through Catherine Harris certifying and all the legal cases, the
Speaker 2: count never changed to favor Gore. So I have every
Speaker 2: confidence that we won by the narrowest of margins. But
Speaker 2: it's not as much fun to say, Okay, it's over.
Speaker 2: You know, you're looking at this because people do still
Speaker 2: have a question in their mind. So if you're intellectually curious,
Speaker 2: you could continue to just say, well, what if what
Speaker 2: if that had changed? Or what if this had changed?
Speaker 2: And you're exactly right, but what if it is done?
Speaker 2: When the election is over?
Speaker 1: Brian, this is such a pleasure, a truly unique interviewer,
Speaker 1: to be able to talk to someone who's who's seen
Speaker 1: it from from both inside and outside. The way you're
Speaker 1: doing with this oral history.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you I was I was not sure
Speaker 2: if I wanted to do this. I listened to your
Speaker 2: Clinton Lewinsky podcast burn and was very impressed. I thought
Speaker 2: you did a great job. Thank you so much, and
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it, and I hope you do as good
Speaker 2: a job with.
Speaker 1: This me too. Thanks again. I look forward to someday
Speaker 1: hoping to hear those interviews.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, all right, Thanks bye.
Speaker 1: Fiasco. Bush v. Gore is produced by Prologue Projects and
Speaker 1: distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Mattewan,
Speaker 1: kaplan Ulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me Leon Nafok. We
Speaker 1: had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, See you next week.