0:01

You're listening to Comedy Central. Lying

0:06

it's as American as apple pie or

0:09

getting in a fist fight over a chicken sandwich.

0:12

And it's especially American now

0:14

that the President's is a ninja level

0:16

liah. Donald Trump lies

0:18

so often that even his biggest lies

0:21

can get lost in the free This

0:24

is these American lies.

0:32

Have you ever told a lie? Let's

0:34

admit it. We all have. Just

0:36

this morning, I was talking to the doorman and my

0:38

co op and he said, Michael, do you know

0:40

my name? And I said, of course, I know your

0:42

name. Don't be silly. In reality,

0:45

I have no idea what my doorman's name is.

0:47

I think it's something Italian like Credenza

0:50

or Gabba gool. So I lied

0:52

to him. Today's show is

0:54

about lies. People lie about

0:56

all sorts of things. They lie about their

0:58

age, they lie about their way, they lie

1:00

about their whereabouts the night their neighbor's charcoal

1:03

grill went missing. But some people lie

1:05

more often than others. One of

1:07

those people is the President,

1:10

and we're gonna look at one of his biggest whoppers.

1:13

The three to five million people voted

1:15

illegally in the two thousand sixteen

1:17

election. From w TDS

1:20

in New York. I'm Michael Costa

1:22

and Credenza. If you're listening, I

1:25

apologize for not knowing your name, buddy. You're

1:27

listening to The Daily Show presents These

1:30

American Lies. Part

1:37

one? What's three to five

1:40

million illegal voters? Among friends?

1:42

I'm here with producer Desi Lyric Desi.

1:44

It's been a while. I saw you on Saturday.

1:47

You crashed your car into my mailbox. So

1:49

you're here to talk about the voter fraud lie?

1:52

Right? The lie this week is that three

1:54

to five million people voted illegally in

1:56

the election. Wait, what

1:59

do people know about at this No,

2:02

it's a lie. Cost overrun

2:05

these American lies. Yeah yeah,

2:07

sure, Okay, so the voter fraud

2:10

lie is still important today. Republicans

2:12

use fears of voter fraud to restrict voting.

2:15

We've seen it in swing states like Georgia,

2:17

Virginia, and Wisconsin, where two hundred

2:19

thousand people were recently purged from the

2:21

voter rolls by a circuit judge. And to

2:23

understand this lie, you really have to know about

2:25

this guy, Donald Trump. Donald

2:28

Trump has lived a pretty incredible life. He's

2:30

been a real estate developer, a mail order

2:32

stake salesman, a two time Emmy loser,

2:35

and in twos sixteen he became the president

2:38

of the United States. It is now official

2:40

Donald Trump has won the electoral College. Now,

2:42

most people would be happy to win the presidency,

2:45

but for Trump, winning wasn't enough. Donald

2:47

Trump won with three hundred and

2:49

six electoral votes, even

2:52

though Hillary Clinton got nearly two

2:54

and a half million more popular

2:56

votes. See. Trump won the electoral

2:58

college, but he lost the popular vote.

3:01

So it's like he won the lottery, but only because

3:03

he stole the winning ticket from a seven eleven

3:05

cashier. No, not

3:08

at all. Tell me more about

3:10

that. Trump won the election even

3:12

though he got almost three million

3:15

fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. And you gotta

3:17

understand Donald Trump has a fragile

3:19

ego. At his Comedy Central roast

3:21

in two thousand eleven, he told the comedians

3:23

who were roasting him, there was one thing they

3:25

couldn't make fun of. Do you know what? That was

3:28

his enormous ass, his wealth. He's

3:31

got thin skin, especially when it comes to having

3:33

less than others. So rather than admit

3:35

he won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Trump

3:38

did what came natural to him. He

3:41

told members of Congress that maybe three

3:43

to five million people

3:46

voted illegally in the most recent

3:48

presidential election. It's a claim the president

3:50

repeated during his first official White House

3:52

meeting with congressional leaders, telling

3:54

them he lost the popular vote to Hillary

3:57

Clinton only because millions

3:59

of illegal aulets were cast, the same

4:01

claim he made on Twitter after his win,

4:04

saying I won the popular vote

4:06

if you deduct the millions of people who voted

4:08

illegally. I won the popular

4:11

vote if you deduct the millions of people

4:13

who voted illegally. It's

4:15

a stunning claim, right. It's kind of like

4:17

saying I wanted scrabble, but only because I

4:19

kicked my opponent in the crotch. And I can

4:21

do the rest of the story myself. If you just want to take off,

4:23

great, I'm gonna go. Mike wave a taco. Every

4:26

lie starts somewhere, and this American

4:28

lie was born in one of the birthplaces of

4:30

American democracy, Massachusetts.

4:39

Well, I got a number I

4:41

don't like. The state

4:45

flower is a Duncan Donuts coffee bean, and

4:47

the state song is an Irish guy puking outside

4:49

of baseball stadium. And now

4:52

this state has another claim to fame. A professor

4:54

whose work inadvertently ignited the

4:56

voter fraud controversy. Brian

4:59

shafter when the academics behind the

5:01

study told CNN Trump is misinterpreting

5:03

the study, calling Trump's claims absurd

5:05

and not even plausible. I'm

5:11

Brian Schaffner. This is Brian Schaffner.

5:13

I'm a professor of political science at Toughs University.

5:16

He's a professor of political science at Toughs

5:18

University. Why are

5:20

you repeating everything I say? Schaffner is

5:22

a smart guy, even if he doesn't know how podcasts

5:24

work. I'm a principal investigator

5:27

for the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which

5:29

is a data set that has caused all these problems.

5:32

Every election year, Schaffner's group surveys

5:34

Internet users about their political views. The

5:36

survey doesn't specifically ask about voter

5:39

fraud, and yet there's a question included

5:41

in the survey that's not really meant to look for noncitizens,

5:44

but there's response Opts in the response can

5:46

select that would identify them as non citizens,

5:49

and that essentially led to this big controversy.

5:51

There were over thirty responds to the

5:53

survey in two thousand eight, and among that group,

5:55

they're a little over three hundred who identified themselves

5:58

as non citizens when they responded to this those

6:02

supposed non citizens claimed avoted. So

6:04

we've got this Internet survey taken in two thousand

6:06

eight. Now flash forward from two thousand eights

6:08

that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois

6:11

will be the next president of the United

6:13

States. He defeat to two thousand fourteen

6:16

year old Jeremy Meechs, also known as

6:18

the hot felon, because that's when

6:20

this data set evolves from a curiosity

6:22

to a flaming political hot potato.

6:35

This episode of These American Lies

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is brought to you by warby Snarker. Do

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now that guy has finished infinite jest,

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worry snarker, don't leave your

7:13

brown stone without it. Hi,

7:17

everyone, we're back with part two. A

7:19

rough lie, and I just wanted to say

7:21

for anyone listening at home, the next

7:23

part of our podcast contains severe profanity

7:26

and extreme graphic descriptions of

7:28

sex X what. No, it doesn't.

7:31

If you're listening with your children, you better turn it off

7:33

unless you want those kids to grow up fast.

7:35

Okay, just ignore him. Okay.

7:38

So it's two thousand fourteen. Jesse Richmond,

7:40

a researcher at Old Dominion University

7:42

or o d U, comes across the survey.

7:45

Richmond takes the responses to that final

7:47

question about being a citizen and extrapolates

7:50

that anywhere between thirty eight thousand and

7:52

two point eight million non citizens

7:54

voted in two thousand eight. There's only one

7:57

problem with Jesse Richmond's conclusion. Jesse

7:59

rich and has been dead for fifty

8:02

years. Uh No. Here's

8:05

Brian Shaffner revisiting his two thousand

8:07

eight survey that became the basis for Richmond's

8:09

work. We did a study where we actually

8:11

recontacted the people who had claimed to be non

8:13

citizens, and a lot of them when we asked

8:16

the same question again, changed their answer,

8:18

and among the people who actually claimed to be non citizens

8:21

both times we asked, none of them were

8:23

voters. None of them. Brian

8:25

Shaffner had renounced his own findings,

8:28

but by this time it's too late. Right

8:30

wing media members are using the O d

8:32

U survey to claim that voter fraud is an

8:34

enormous problem, even though it's based

8:36

on one studies interpretation of a flawed

8:39

data set. So I guess des

8:41

just one question remains right,

8:44

How did this lie get to Trump? Oh?

8:46

I was going to ask, is fifteen minutes in the microwave

8:48

too long for a single taco? But that's

8:50

good to your Your questions, good one. So

8:53

it turns out Trump may have been turned

8:55

onto voter fraud in his natural Habitat

9:00

a golf course. Five days

9:02

after Trump's inauguration, he hosted

9:04

dinner for Republicans and Democrats. He

9:06

tells his guests that he would have won the popular vote

9:08

if it hadn't been for the three to five million illegal

9:11

votes. So, according to The New York

9:13

Times, a Democrat at the dinner asked

9:15

Trump, where are you getting this information?

9:18

And Trump cites a guy named Bernard Longer.

9:20

Oh I loved him and dos boot.

9:23

Bernard Longer as a German professional golfer.

9:25

He won the Masters twice. You

9:29

smile after a miss, but

9:32

you can if you're Bernard Longer and

9:34

my Master's champion of nineteen. He's

9:37

now sixty years old. So apparently

9:39

Trump went golfing with Longer sometime between

9:42

Election Day sixteen and this dinner

9:44

on January seventeen,

9:47

and on the golf course, Longer told Trump about

9:49

his experience. On election Day in Florida,

9:51

Longer went to vote and he was told that he wasn't

9:54

eligible too, because he's

9:56

been dead for fifty years,

9:59

because he's German and not

10:01

a US citizen. But Longer looked at other

10:03

voters in line, who he said, looked as if they

10:05

should not be allowed to vote because

10:07

they've been dead for fifty

10:10

No one's been dead for fifty years. No one.

10:12

Boris Karloff has been dead for

10:14

fifty years. He died February second, nineteen

10:17

complications from pneumonia. Boris

10:19

Karloff has been dead for so Trump's got

10:21

this idea in his head from Longer. People

10:23

are illegally voting because this German golfer

10:26

told him so, and he's upset that he didn't

10:28

win more votes than Hillary. So instead

10:30

of investigating this claim, instead of checking

10:32

with any election officials,

10:34

he just starts saying in public millions

10:37

of illegal votes. That is something

10:39

that is extremely fundamental to our functioning

10:42

democracy, affair and free election. You

10:44

say you're going to launch an investigation. What

10:47

you have presented so far has been debunked.

10:50

It's been called false. Look at the report.

10:53

I called the author of the Pew report last night and

10:55

he told me that they found no evidence.

10:59

He said, no, then why

11:01

did he write the report?

11:04

That Pew report He was mentioning, he was probably

11:06

confusing it with the study from Old Dominion,

11:08

which leap frogged off the survey from Brian Shaffner,

11:11

which remember, has been debunked, which

11:13

remember doesn't really matter because

11:15

now this lie has been

11:17

supercharged. He

11:26

continues to make this assertion that there

11:28

were somewhere between three and five million

11:31

voters that voted illegally in

11:33

the last election. If he's got his spokespeople

11:35

lying citing the survey. As

11:37

I said, I think the president has believed that for a while,

11:40

based on studies, information he has

11:44

about voters about wire

11:46

tapping, his repeated lies about

11:48

those issues. He doesn't, he doesn't

11:50

think he's lying about those issues, and you know it, and

11:53

of course his friends at Fox News repeat the life

11:55

back to him. President Trump continues

11:57

to claim that anywhere from three to i'd

12:00

really and undocumented immigrants across the

12:02

country voted, costing him

12:04

the popular vote. A lot of people think

12:06

and remember about the President's comment about three to

12:09

five million votes he illegal in this country. All

12:11

this because of something that happened on the internet

12:13

in two thousand eight. That's like a scandal

12:16

breaking today because the President thought a Chuck

12:18

Norris fact was real. Deesse, I just

12:20

want to break in here and warn our listeners. The

12:22

next section of the podcast contains several

12:24

slurs about the Irish and audio

12:26

taken from a hardcore pornographic film

12:29

from Japan. What script are you reading

12:31

from? Anyway? Donald

12:33

Trump doesn't just let this lie go. Oh

12:36

No. In May two thousand seventeen, he

12:38

does this. Donald Trump just signed an

12:40

executive order creating a Commission on Election

12:42

Integrity to investigate alleged voter

12:44

fraud. Vice President Mike Pennce and Kansas

12:46

Secretary of State Chris Kobak will chair it.

12:49

That's right. This lie created jobs.

12:52

Real people kissed their kids goodbye in

12:54

the morning and went to work in service of

12:56

this line. That's crazy,

12:58

though, people were kissing

13:00

their kids. But it turns out this

13:03

commission was a mistake because after

13:05

a year of work, the commission disbands.

13:07

They couldn't find any evidence of widespread

13:10

voter fraud. He formed a commission

13:12

to investigate his lie. That's

13:14

like lying to your friend about how much you weigh and

13:16

then insisting on stepping onto a scale.

13:19

Actually that, oh yeah, no, that

13:21

is a good metaphor, and then you step off the scale,

13:23

kick the guy in the crotch, steals wall.

13:26

Nope, you lost it again. Trump's

13:28

Department of Justice was also investigating

13:31

and was able to find just nineteen illegal

13:33

voters in North Carolina, so three

13:36

to five million illegal votes in the election.

13:39

That's just a lie, A

13:42

lie with humble beginnings that worked

13:44

its way from an Internet survey to

13:46

a Virginia university, to a right

13:48

wing website, to a German golfer

13:51

to the President of the United States.

13:55

Dasylidic as a producer at these American

13:57

lies. She recently unfriended me on Facebook.

14:00

No hard feelings dazy. I'm Michael

14:02

Costa. We'll be back next week with more

14:04

FIBs, falsehoods, and fabrications

14:06

on the Daily Show Presents These

14:11

American Lies. This

14:37

has been a Comedy Central podcast