After a midterm, the #1 quick news podcast is back! In our return, I talk about the fiasco Trump left behind in Omaha, some decisions by the Supreme Court about voting (VOTE EARLY), Tucker Carlson's completely made-up claims about criminal mastermind/ANTIFA General Hunter Biden, Miles Taylor being revealed as "Anonymous", and more!
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Here's the mostly-correct transcript from our Tuesday show:
INTRO
Today is Tuesday, October 27th, and we are down to one week. One week left until we find out what the people of America view as the right path for the future. Is it a wannabe authoritarian demagogue who surrounds himself with yes men and women, or will it be a lifelong public servant who is willing to sacrifice his peaceful twilight years because he loves this country so much? In my opinion, it’s not a hard choice. Today, we’ll cover part of why the former is struggling so much in the polls, his son-in-law’s disgusting comments, and much more. Before we go too much further, I do want to mention that I got a new microphone. It’s a condenser mic, so it’s supposed to be more sensitive. I’m just warning you in case it’s too sensitive and you get to know my voice a little too well, but we’ll see how editing goes. But let’s get caught up!
WISCONSIN VOTING
Starting today with some voting news, especially for my fellow Wisconsinites, the US Supreme Court voted 5-3, straight down party lines, to agree with the Republicans here in Wisconsin and say that there won’t be any extension for receiving absentee ballots here. Originally, a lower court ruled that ballots that were postmarked by election day and received within 6 days after November 3rd should be counted, meaning that you must have your ballot received by your clerk by the time the polls close on election day. At this point, I feel like Democrats are super charged up to vote, and we don’t trust the mail anymore, so I don’t think it should affect our turnout that much. However, if you do still have your ballot, it may be best to drop it off in person at this point, or pay for faster shipping. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said they ruled this way because they thought this would open the door to micromanagement of elections by federal courts if they upheld the 6-day extension, which sounds plausible on paper, but I really have a hard time believing any decision from Justice Kegstand is made with good intentions. However, like Justice Kagan wrote in the dissenting opinion from the liberal justices, Trump shouldn’t be allowed to purposely delay the mail so that votes are late. Maybe in any other year, or with any other president, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would have a better point, but definitely not with this president.
It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on the coronavirus in America, so here we go. Over the weekend, we passed the insane milestone of having over 70,000 cases diagnosed in one day, which is more than most countries have had total, and more importantly, as we get to winter, we’re dealing with this more poorly than we did back in spring. I hope none of our listeners are from El-Paso right now, or if you are, I hope you’re being safe, because it sounds like a morgue right now. I think they said the positivity rate, meaning the percent of tests that are positive, is around 20-25 percent, which is sky high, especially when you realize they have a population of 680,000 people. They also saw a 200% increase in hospitalizations for COVID in less than a month, and they’re now turning their convention center into a field hospital.
In terms of treatments, the antibody drug being developed by Eli Lilly, which is the same one that had its trial paused because of a possible safety issue a couple of weeks ago, decided to end their study with hospitalized patients because it hasn’t proven to be effective with that group of people. What the headlines don’t mention is that they’re still continuing to test how it does with people who are just mildly to moderately ill with COVID, so it’s not a total loss for them yet. It also says that since it was found safe and that that illness wasn’t caused by this or wasn’t serious enough to be an issue, it will help get the drug approved if it can be used for other illnesses even, maybe as a treatment for the regular flu or something. But that’s definitely a scary thought that if you’re sick enough to be hospitalized, there might not be new treatments available to help just yet. Although, that doesn’t mean that traditional techniques like something as simple as laying a patient on their stomach don’t help, it just might be a good amount of time yet before something is widely available, and it’s certainly not going to be available in just a few days like Trump wants us to believe.
To end this segment on a note of dark humor, listen to this fake ad for Trump rallies that I think was created by the Daily Beast. They played it on their podcast The New Abnormal with Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast. It’s sad but true…
I want to get back to what I mentioned in the intro, which is Trump’s bizarre way of trying to attract educated suburban women, and I want to start with a great quote that Joe Biden had during his 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell. Norah started asking Joe what he thought about Trump’s numbers with these “suburban women”, and Joe just chuckled and said that he’s got this 1950s view of what the suburbs are like, and that the suburbs have people of all races living together just fine.
Not only does Trump have an archaic view of what the suburbs are like demographically and what these women want, he also doesn’t seem to make the connection that he treats every woman around him so badly, and that people notice that. I mean, for crying out loud, he gave his own wife the coronavirus! But in terms of his words about women, he seems to almost exclusively describe them as crazy. When he was talking about Nancy Pelosi at his Allentown, Pennsylvania rally yesterday, he said she was as “crazy as a bedbug”, and actually, Trump would know a lot about that because they have real problems with that at his Doral resort in Florida, don’t you Donald? Trump also said “we have a good chance of taking back the House, I tell you, because she’s crazy”. Ladies and gents, there’s been almost no talk about the races in the House this year because nobody thinks that Democrats are going to lose any seats. In fact, the Lincoln Project folks think that they’ll actually pick up between 5-9 more seats. He continued on by saying that Savannah Guthrie was “just terrible” and that “She was coming out of her chair as she was asking -- she was crazed, she was crazed”.
Because Lesley Stahl had the audacity to push back at his lies, Trump called 60 Minutes “crazy 60 Minutes” and said she was “so hostile to me”. Okay, sure. Are you guys seeing the same pattern that I am? It almost sounds like women in positions of power scare him, so he calls them crazy.
To be fair, he also saves a little extra in the tank for minorities, because he purposely mispronounces Kamala Harris’ name at rallies, and he even plays up the mispronunciation. His son-in-law, who is supposed to be the brains of his campaign (which really explains a lot, actually), Jared Kushner, is also not great at messaging with people of color, take a listen to this…
Yeah Jared, it’s their fault for not wanting it enough. Good lord. That’s basically the whitest thing you could ever say, and it’s probably what he actually thinks as someone with money, who made that money off of minorities who had no opportunities for advancement. It just makes you sound so out of touch. What a bunch of genius messengers we have in charge.
I suppose we should talk about the elephant in the room: Judge Amy Coney Barrett was made Justice Amy Coney Barrett last night, proving that Mitch McConnell and the rest of the deplorable Republican senators will work around the clock to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed who wants to take your healthcare away, but somehow, passing a stimulus bill that will provide financial relief to everyday Americans is too hard.
The vote was 52-48; Susan Collins was the only Republican to defect and vote no (bless her heart, she still thinks the voters of Maine consider her a strong independent voice). Even Lisa Murkowski, who said she wouldn’t support nominating someone until after the election, decided that if they were going to nominate someone, screw it, she’s going to vote.
In addition to the case about Obamacare that is due to be heard the week after the election, the day after the election, they’re supposed to start hearing arguments about a case about the LGBTQ community and religious freedom, so I’m sure that the devout Catholic who led a group literally called the handmaids will be super impartial and totally base her decision on the law. That’s another thing: what happened last night should totally destroy any dumb facade she tried to put up about being “impartial”. She agreed to be sworn in on the White House balcony and listen to Trump give a campaign-style speech about it. That seems like a total nonpartisan move to me...not. If you care at all about the Court trying to appear impartial, this should make your blood boil; I know it does that to me. Now, I think it’s probably better that the Court can’t hide behind trying to seem impartial because in reality, they never have been. Presidents have always nominated people to it, so of course it’s political, but citizens have to trust that the law will judge them equally. But again, that’s never been true either, especially for people of color and frankly, anyone who’s not rich and famous, but mostly people of color.
The really sucky thing is that she’s only 48, so she could conceivably sit on the Court for 35ish years. But if you’re somehow someone who is still on the fence about voting because this fight is over and Democrats couldn’t do anything, just remember that Clarence Thomas is 72 years old, and Samuel Alito is 70, so do you really want Trump to be able to nominate 5 justices? That would be unprecedented, and it would wreck this country, no question about it.
Beyond just trying to run out the clock on those guys, as bad as that sounds, I think it’s going to be very tough for Joe Biden to resist the calls to add justices to the Supreme Court, although to his credit, he may come up with something better. He told Norah O’Donnell that he’ll put together a bipartisan group to figure out how the federal court system needs to be reformed, which is a smart answer on multiple levels, but especially for people who want to get back to a time when the parties worked together and are worried about breaking this 9 justice precedent. It was pointed out on Twitter, though, that Republicans justified expanding the Supreme Court to 9 way back when because there were 9 federal circuit courts at the time, and now there are 13, so that would be some pretty good justification for Joe. But first thing’s first: we need to get Joe Biden into the Oval Office.
JONATHAN SWAN
I’d like to go on a little bit of a tangent, if I could, to talk about something that I think people could write a lot about in future history books. Does everybody remember Jonathan Swan’s interview with Donald Trump? It was the one that went something like this…
I think, if Trump goes on to lose (otherwise this is meaningless), that that interview will be looked at as a real turning point, if not in history books, then for sure in journalism classes. That was the first time in about 4 years that anybody figured out how to interview Donald Trump. Swan came prepared, he had the real facts memorized or in front of him, and he stuck with Trump and challenged him when he was so obviously lying. Most reporters that have interviewed Trump do one weak fact check per lie, if we’re lucky, and then they just move down their list of questions like they’re paid by how many questions they ask and not the substance of the interview (I’m looking at you, Chuck Todd).
These American journalists are also obsessed with having access to these people, which I found out is a real thing, and by having access, I mean that if you ask someone tough questions or make them look dumb, they probably won’t want to talk to you again, especially with someone as petty as Trump. I think it really did help that Jonathan Swan was foreign, because he didn’t come in with the American mindset and approach to journalism. To be fair, he does work with Axios, which is American, but he and Medhi Hassan, a British-born journalist who has a new nightly show on Peacock at 7pm ET, are probably the two best interviewers out there right now.
But the reason I say this was so important is because it gave other journalists the formula to interviewing Trump. Thankfully, the media loved it and covered it for several days, so then the next week, Chris Wallace from Fox News did sort of the same thing, and it’s just kind of snowballed from there until we got to Lesley Stahl on Sunday night. And make no mistake about it, all of these interviews have been damaging for Trump. We’ll have to wait and see if that means he loses the election, but there’s no doubt that Jonathan Swan cracked the code. The thing that made me think of all this was this clip of him interviewing Ted Cruz for an upcoming episode on Axios, and I swear this isn’t a promo for them, I’m just really looking forward to him tearing Cruz to shreds. Another tangent for another day is thinking what would have happened if Republicans had rallied around Ted Cruz like Democrats rallied around Joe Biden, and thinking that he probably would have beaten Hillary too now that I know how much anti-Hillary and misogynist thinking there was, which is a weird thought for sure. Anyway, here’s a little preview of what might be coming from that interview...
END
Okay everyone, that’s where I’m going to call it for today. It is just one week until the most crucial day of our lives, so make sure you vote, and that your vote gets counted. If you have an absentee or mail-in. ballot, get that thing in ASAP. If you need help understanding your state’s laws or registering to vote or anything like that, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on social media or at quicknewsdaily@gmail.com. I can either help you right away or point you to the best resources. If you’ve already voted, maybe even consider asking friends and family if they’ve voted, or bringing water to people waiting in line on Tuesday, or something like that.
On a completely different note, shoutout to Sri Lanka and New Zealand. As of yesterday on Apple Podcasts, Quick News Daily was the 6th ranked news podcast, 5th ranked daily news podcast, and 58th overall podcast in Sri Lanka. Over the weekend, we were up to number 75 in the daily news category in New Zealand, so thank you to all of you listening from those countries! I secretly hope prime minister Ardern is one of our New Zealand listeners. Madame prime minister, if you are, you’re always welcome to be a guest on the show.
Anyways, stay safe, make that plan to vote, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
Today, with just 7 days until the biggest election of our lives, we cover an important last-minute voting ruling from the Supreme Court, so listen up Wisconsin voters! I also discuss Trump's repeated attacks on women in power, as well as his and Jared Kushner's racist language towards people of color, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and Jonathan Swan appreciation.
In this episode of the #1 quick news podcast, we have the longest segment of the show thus far as I give the facts on early in-person and mail-in voting numbers so far, including in the crucial state of Florida. I also talk about what the demographic turnout so far means for the race, more endorsements for Joe Biden, more campaigning from President Obama, and the reckless actions of Trump world this past weekend.
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In case I don’t get to it, here’s summary of how Trump’s appearance on 60 Minutes went:
Leslie Stahl did a great job with the toddler-in-chief.
— Beki Knott (@lotsofuss) October 26, 2020
