Remembering There's A Terrible Election Going On

This show was originally supposed to be about the election, so we should probably talk about the election.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of My Heart
Radio Get Everything. So don't don't welcome to the Worst

(00:22):
Year Ever, except for everything's better now and everybody is happy,
and we solved all of our problems. Um, and that's
the end of the whole series. My mom My mom
My mom incorrectly called our show best Year Ever when
I was on the phone with her yesterday and I
started laughing. She didn't realize what she said, and then
I think about that. Yeah, that's what we did. We

(00:43):
fixed it, So that's what it is. Yeah, I mean,
if everything is the absolute worst and then we fix it,
then it's no longer the worst, it's the best. It's
the best year ever. A right, everyone, we're done, go home.
Well you're already home, but yeah, I gotta day there
because of them. You can't leave you here. We might

(01:04):
as well talk for an hour, and some of you
are probably on the verge of homelessness now due to
the economic collapse. Should we talk about Joe Biden? Let's
talk about the election at the very least. Okay, I
didn't anything about Joe Biden. I feel like it's been
forever since we've talked about politics, because politics has been

(01:29):
hard to care about. It is. It's so weird. I mean, well,
you you were taking a much needed break last week
and we chatted with Dave Kim from California's district and
that was a taste of it. But you know, there's
something hopeful in in Dave Kim, the Dave Kim conversation. Um,
whereas you know, everything about the election in general feels

(01:53):
very bleak. Um, but it's time. It's important. It's what
we originally set show, right, Um. Yeah, and uh as
much as um, it seems like the current president is
really um, a disaster that everybody hates, and that his

(02:14):
opponent is um, you know, Hyden and Coast and doing well.
Try that. Yeah, I don't think he wants to announce
that he's doing Um. That's definitely like the plan, but
I don't think it's it's a it's good to say,
by the way, I'm like keeping I'm keeping a low profile. Yeah,

(02:37):
he's Biden his time still stuck on that one. When
we were brainstorming what to talk about, we considered doing
an episode that's deep dives and all the vice presidential candidates,
but we weren't sure when that information was going to
come out when he was going to pick if it
would make this Um, you know out day did immediately. Uh.

(03:02):
So instead we've broken it up into a few different components. Uh, Robert,
you wanted to talk about conventions. I love conventions. I
would love to learn about what you learned about conventions
when this all started, this podcast, and also politics. The
thing I was most excited about, Katie and Cody, the

(03:24):
thing that I had dreams about. I would wake up
at nights in a cold sweat, overcome with glee over
was taking all to the r n C in the DNC.
Because if you've never been to a political convention, they're terrible.
They're just the worst things people do is political conventions.

(03:44):
There's something so much less depressing about watching war crimes
committed in real time than than attending a political convention,
because at least the war crimes involve a degree of
physical risk on behalf of the people committing crimes against humanity,
whereas political conventions are crimes against humanity that people get

(04:05):
paid eight hundred and fifty dollars an hour to commit. Um.
And it's just it's they're just terrible. Um. And we
were going to go we're gonna watch the protests, and
we were going to drink terrible mixed drinks with names
that were puns based on members of the Republican Party. Um,
and we were, we were, we were going to have

(04:25):
just a really bad time. We're gonna watch Ted Cruz
give a speech in person. I don't know if you've
ever seen Ted Cruz give a speech in person, but
you can see the nictitating membrane on his eyeballs um,
and the way that the fake skin that he has
stretches over the carapace underneath it, the non Euclidean angles

(04:47):
of the geometry of his thorax. Oh my god, it was.
It was going to be such bacteria, just like dripping
out of his mouth every once in a while, the
way lays his eggs and Chris Christie's nose, all of
the things you get at a at a political convention.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I was looking
forward to that. It was. I saw you guys in person. Uh.

(05:11):
Robert was in town for Alive. Behind the bastard show,
Billy Way Davis and the primary vector by which the
coronavirus spread in last episode, I remember I have nightmared
about all of your dirty hands that I shook that night,
but I love you very much. I sprained each in
one of your hands with hand sanitized. Every other had

(05:31):
had homemade hand sanitizer there but under one. I remember.
Remember it was so you were on the ball. Yeah,
very relevant, It is relevant. I remember when you were
in town though, Robert. Even at that point we had
the President's speech on at the office and you were

(05:54):
still talking about, Oh, I think it'll be even more
fun to go with coronavirus and see what they're doing
at the conventions. It would have been, It would have
been amazing. Ah, And we would have been, Yeah, you
want to drop, you want to drop like the horror
show into the middle of a plague, right like That's
that's how you heighten it even more. It would have
been incredible, and we would have been drunk just the

(06:15):
whole time, just outrageously wasted, watching a bunch of Republicans
lick each other's eyeballs and refused to wear masks and
cough in the middle of crowded elevators. And it would
have been wonderful, and at least one of us would
have died of lung failure. Um. But unfortunately that's not
going to happen. That future was stolen from us, um

(06:37):
because the president has announced that they're not really going
to have a convention anymore. And the whole official right, yeah,
this is official. This is official. And it was quite
a process of getting him to be like, all right,
I guess I won't have thousands of people, most of
whom are over age sixty, crowd into an auditorium in
the middle of a pandemic um in Florida, uh, which

(07:01):
is famously known as the no hospital beds state. UM.
And I feel bummed about that. So what happened, and
this is fun. The whole story is very fun. Um.
So there like like like two months ago, um, the
Democratic Party announced that, you know, because of the pandemic

(07:21):
that was killing tens of thousands of people, they were
not going to be doing an in person convention. Correction,
hundreds of thousands of people. Continue, Oh yeah, but only
a hundred and fifty thousand Americans And I don't care
about other people. Okay, yeah, okay, a hundred and fifty

(07:42):
thou human beings. And then however many foreigners. So now, um, yeah,
the Democrats we're gonna go do it the DNC in Milwaukee. Uh,
and that was gonna be terrible, um, but now it's
not really going to happen. Um. So they cut back
on on everything in basically like you have to kind
of legally just because of the way that like political

(08:04):
parties operate as legal entities, you have to have some
sort of convention. But the Democrats basically said, we're cutting
back to just the minimum number of people necessary to
like you know, there's a bunch of like ship that
has to happen, right, Like there's like people have to
be like formal nominations have to be made, there have
to be like the kind of formal votes that all
of the ship that's happened, and the the primaries up

(08:26):
to this point was was kind of preparing everyone for
um and you have to like make you know, the
candidates got to give a speech all that sort of stuff,
so platform all. Yeah. So they're basically just doing the
formal stuff that they legally have to do with the
minimum number of people necessary in a massive hotel that's
being completely like like very carefully curated and managed to

(08:50):
ensure minimum risk of the spread of the act of
the virus. Um, which seems broadly responsible, right, And it'll
also it will be useful in terms of number one,
they're kind of risking the minimal number of people, and
number two, it will kind of give us an idea
of like can you do anything in person in the
coronavirus era like this without it being a horrendous rate

(09:13):
like risk to human life? Like is it possible to
even handle minimal stuff? Have you seen numbers of what
that actually would look like. I think it's only like
a couple of hundred people between, like yeah, between the
actual and not all of those are like the people
who actually need to be in the room at the
same time, right. Um, I think it's like a hundred

(09:33):
and fifties something people who are going to have to
like be in a very large auditorium in any given time. Um.
Most of what's going to be done is going to
be curated content from like different satellite locations that will
be uh streaming over the internet. Um. So it's basically
the Democratic Convention is going to be one enormous zoom call.
And if you've been on any zoom calls, or if

(09:56):
you've heard a friend talk about zoom calls off handedly,
you know that's going to be terrible, Like the Democratic
Convention is going to be deeply unpleasant. Um, all of
the all of the speeches are going to feel completely
soulless and avoid of human connection, because that's how it
feels whenever politicians who are trained to work rooms have
to give speeches over the computer. I can't wait to

(10:19):
see some like terrible jokes that do not land because
nobody's even there to like laugh. Oh god, it's going
to be amazing, like like canned stuff, right, like a
laugh track or applause track. Yeah, like if we're really
good frozen frames of people where the it's buffering. Guiden's

(10:44):
making some grotesque face. I'm excited for Joe Biden, someone
talking to him off camera in the middle of speech,
of the speech and him asking them what repeatedly um,
while just just silence screams at all of us from
the empty room around him. That's going to be the
part I like, we'll we'll all feel safe and good

(11:06):
about progress we're making, and yeah, it won't feel like
the country is literally dying and we're all living through
the opening scenes of a horror movie. What I love
about the Democratic Convention is that it won't make a
perfect fifteen seconds to cut in the middle of all
of the rioting and the initial news stories about the
spread of the pandemic um. That looks exactly like the

(11:29):
opening to the Second Planet of the Apes movie After Civilization.
Um yeah, and I do think that like the opening
of the Second Planet of the Apes movie. Uh, the
Democratic Convention is going to end with a single broadcasting
tower in Brazil sending out the last message of the
human race into the cold, uncaring stars, empty of all

(11:52):
intelligent life. That's something to look forward to. It's gonna
get an underground bunker with a nuke too, right, Yeah, yeah,
and we'll be worshiping the new That's going to be
the good part. That's when things get better. Yeah, when
we paint a nuclear missile gold and worship it. I'm
very much looking forward to that. Cody hashtag it gets better.
It does get better. It does get better if we're
talking about the original Planet of the Ape series and

(12:14):
not the remake, because they did not have a whimsical
nuclear cult who live underground. Yeah, because we don't know
how to make movies anymore. No, we don't. We failed,
but we digress. Yeah, we do. So that's what the
Democrats did, right, is look at the real world and
go all right, well, the only thing we can think
to do is something not creative and deeply disappointing, but

(12:37):
at least we won't endanger huge numbers of human lives
by doing it. Or the Republicans said, fuck that. Um,
if there's one thing we love, it's endangering huge numbers
of human lives, You fucking cowards. Yeah. Yeah, So that's

(12:57):
what they've been doing. And it was initially supposed to
be in sharp North Carolina. UM. And this was kind
of like a weird call because Charlotte, the mayor of
Charlotte is a Democrat. Um. It's a it's a democratic city. Um.
In North Carolina was a swing state in it did
go for Trump. Um, but it's pretty damn close. Um.
And Charlotte as at this point, is like a pretty

(13:20):
solidly democratic city. UM. So it was kind of like
a weird move for President Trump to be like, I'm
gonna do my convention in Charlotte. UM. And you can
see like there's a there's a level of kind of
like tactical thinking to it, right where you know it's
a North Carolina is going to be one of the
states that Trump is is worried about. So holding the
convention there you hope you get a big bump from it, um,

(13:41):
and it kind of like helps you deal with one
of the problem areas in your electoral map. So in
a normal election, I think Charlotte kind of makes sense
as a as a target. Um. But when the pandemic hit,
it started to become a problem for the president because
the mayor of Charlotte. UM. Again, like it's one of
those things where like there was a lot of debate

(14:01):
within like the city Council of Charlotte, UM, in the
local government because they all hate Trump. Um. But also, uh,
they are desperate for money. Um. Especially since the pandemic
started a hit, they got even more desperate for money.
And the convention was gonna mean like two hundred million
dollars in revenue. Uh, and the city couldn't really afford
to turn that down. Um. The National Ada Fisher, a

(14:24):
National Committee woman for the state GOP and North Carolina,
told The New York Times quote, there are a lot
of liberal establishment people here who just don't like the
Republican Party. People didn't want it to happen just because
the Republicans were involved, but Charlotte can't stand to lose
two hundred million in revenue right now. And that was
sort of them. That was sort of like why it happened,
or why it was on its way to happening. And
then as the coronavirus got worse and worse and worse, um,

(14:48):
the mayor started being like, we're going to have to
like actually lock this ship down. Um. And so they
you know, we tried to work with the president um
and kind of said like, hey, we you can still
do the convention here, but we're going to have to
socially distance. So we'll have to like basically have half
as many people as normal in the arena um and

(15:09):
everyone's going to have to wear masks. And that made
President Trump furious. Uh. The thing that he particularly hated
was the idea that he would be giving his speech
in front of a half empty arena um, because he
wanted to do it into a massive, packed crowd of
excited fans, and he didn't want them to have masks
on because that doesn't look as exciting. Um. And again,
all that has ever mattered to him is looking good.

(15:33):
So his concern was that, yeah, it might not look
like a full house. Um. Yeah, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. So, uh,
I'm gonna read from a quote from a New York
Times coverage on on kind of the conflicts between Um Cooper,
the mayor of Charlotte, and President Trump. Quote um. On

(15:58):
a phone call with Mr Cooper on Made twenty nine,
Mr Trump said he would not deliver a speech in
front of a half empty arena, and he wanted a
quick answer on whether the state would accommodate him. According
to two people familiar with the call, Mr Trump asked
Mr Cooper what he should do. The governor said, or sorry,
governor not mayor. The governor said that they should work
to find a way to scale the convention back, one
of the people said. As the call wrapped up, the
President reminded Mr Cooper of the ways in which the

(16:19):
federal government had come to North Carolina's assistance during the
peak of the coronavirus outbreak. I think we've done a
good job, Mr Trump said, testing ventilators. We got you
a lot, and that's okay. We've been good to you,
Mr Trump added. According to one of the people familiar
with the call, who spoke anonymously to discuss private negotiations.
We give you the National Guard. We gave you a lot,
he said to Mr Cooper, You and I get along good.
You've been nice to us about it, which I just

(16:40):
I I love the constant, like the fact that he
can't not be a mafia guy, right, you are protection
Like this governor's being very reasonable and it's just being like,
I want to endanger the minimum number of people in
your convention and the presidents, like I sent the National
Garden when you guys were having a disaster over this pandemic.

(17:02):
Why won't you let me endanger more people? I got
you ventilators, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did the
thing that everyone expects him to do, like the thing
he should be doing, not the not the National Guard,
the ventilators. Yeah, sorry for referring to Roy Cooper as

(17:25):
the is. The is the mayor, he's the governor. I'm
cracked out as hell. Still um working on it. Uh
my notes are a little chaotic, but yeah, so that
that's the that's the gist of what happened in Charlotte,
right is um. You know, they he had a conflict
with this governor and kind of halfway through it about
a month or so ago, as it became clear that
um the that Charlotte wasn't going to kind of back down,

(17:48):
or that North Carolina wasn't way to back down on
basic health measures, Trump began threatening to move the convention
um and his his his number one pick was Jacksonville, Florida.
There were a couple of reasons for this. One of
them Florida is also a swing state right now, right like,
it's very competitive between Biden and Trump there at the moment.
Another reason is that Jacksonville was a pretty reasonable drive

(18:10):
from Charlotte. It's not hard to get from one to
the other. Um. And another reason is that the president,
you know, is a is a monster who loves endangering people.
And if there's anything Florida likes, it's also endangering large
numbers of people. And so yeah, do Santis even today
was like hug, hug people. He's recommending people go out

(18:33):
and hug to make themselves feel better. And if you're
a fan of Governor to Santis of Florida, I recommend
that you hug your family members who are also fans
of Governor to Santa. We might as well go for
it now, I guess, especially if you have coronavirus. Yes,
you're the ones. Why not fuck it? Go comfort yourself
with your life. Yeah, if you're well, if you're feeling sick, yeah,

(18:55):
go feel Go comfort yourself, but get your tongue in
their ears, suffer loan, as my son would say, lick
their eyeballs. Yeah, you know, the best way to register
each other to vote is to lick each other's eyeballs.
I've often said that in the Constitution, that is, the
Constitution is mostly about how to spread plagues to each other, um,

(19:19):
in order to set methods of eyeball looking, and the
Constitution is spot on, go ahead, propert. So this was
kind of a financial disaster for the Republican Party number one.
Most of the money they'd already spent, all of the
money that they raised to do the convention in Charlotte,
and they couldn't really get it back right um. And

(19:39):
they also wear out additional money because the government of
Charlotte spent a bunch of money to prep for the convention,
and the federal government owed them it back right like,
because it was kind of fucking Charlotte over um. Charlotte
had to be compensated for the money that they'd spent prepping,
and all of the money that the Republican Party had
put into things like you know, booking hotels and security,

(20:00):
most of that was nonrefundable. So all of these donations,
you know, every year, or not every year, but every
time that there's a big election convention, the parties solicit
huge numbers of donations from their richest members, and there's
like a bunch of benefits that you get, obviously is
a politico from from throwing money into something like a convention,
including access to the candidate um. But all of these

(20:22):
you know, a number of these people throw money into
Charlotte because you know, planning for that and fundraising for
that started ahead of the Corona B virus epidemic um
and then the epidemic hit and that money was blown
and they were trying to raise money for Jacksonville, and
all of these rich people who were Republican Party backers
were not willing to throw more money in and part

(20:44):
because they didn't want to risk their own lives going
to a convention um. So it became increasingly clear over
like the course of June, that this was not going
to be, no matter what Trump said, a real convention
um that nobody except for the the most dangerously unhinged
people wanted to show up at all um, and that

(21:07):
there would be no money for it. And in fact,
law enforcement in Jacksonville began warning the government that they
did not have the ability to actually make a convention safe.
They couldn't provide security, they didn't have the funding for it,
they didn't have the manpower for it. They were completely
overwhelmed by what, over the course of the month grew
into and out of control epidemic, and they could not

(21:28):
guarantee the president's safety or anyone else's safety. Um. So
it just kept being awesome. Yeah. Yeah, and you know,
the secret services down manpower because of all the people
who got sick. Um part during the last couple of
rallies the president did. Um, everything's really good, is the
point I'm making, well thought out to you, Katie, what

(21:52):
are you at? You know what can guarantee your security
in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, hands coronavirus coronavirus, cans
of coronavirus. So please buy your own canned coronavirus now together.

(22:23):
Oh my god, we're back back jes wow. Yes, So, um,
you know basically what seems to have happened, and again,
The New York Times has been kind of the the
the outlet that has most heavily covered the convention drama
within the Republican Party. Basically, what happened is that internally,

(22:45):
all of Trump's advisors, at least the vast majority of
Trump's advisors, who most of whom have a certain base
level of competence that includes not wanting to die of
the plague Um, repeatedly tried to push him that to
not do a convention, that that that doing one, and
even in Jacksonville was a horrible idea. They tried to
get him excited about like online town halls and convince

(23:08):
him that he could reach tens of thousands of people,
you know, in individual towns and regions without making them
leave their houses. Um, but publicly they would have to
go and talk about what a good idea it was
to hold a convention and how well the convention was
going to go. Um, because we're just a fundamentally broken
society these days. Now. One of the things that made

(23:30):
Trump UM and his his officials kind of hesitant to
cancel the convention was the fact that they are continuing
to push the reopening of schools. Um. And so there
were a lot of like folks who were kind of
on the pro convention side of things, who are like, well,
if we're going to reopen schools and we cancel the convention,
how do we justify that? Um? And uh, yeah, that

(23:52):
that's cool. So do you justify that? Well, they kind
of seem to have landed on the fact that most
of the Trump supporters at the conventions would have been
over fifty um and so they were in danger. But
clearly teachers are all young, um, and student and young
and little kids never get hurt by diseases, so schools
must be reopened. Um. And I hate to say this

(24:15):
because like I can't. It's a sign of how weird
the year has been that I'm not in favor of
spreading the plague to children, but I just don't think
it's a good idea in this in this current economic environment. Wow,
bold pivot. Mhm. I'm now anti infecting children with the plague.
That's how bad things have gotten. So are are you

(24:38):
pro he's a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that
QUE would like the children to return to schools mhm,
because they are the actual plague let's get them all
together and killing you know what, riggers? You immune to
being molested by a cabal of Democrats. Coronavirus, that's exactly right,

(25:03):
a ventilator. UM, I don't. Yeah, it's not great. So
uh yeah, things continued to degenerate. UM. At one point
the plan was to have They started like coming up
with alternate plans for how to do a partly in
person convention, And they were trying to minimize the risk

(25:24):
two people. But the plan they came up with just
would have risked people in multiple cities. So they had
this idea to open the convention with a convention in
with like a single night convention in Houston that would
be opened by Melania Trump UM, and then they would
have on the second night, a single night convention in
Indiana that would be opened by Vice President Mike Pence.

(25:47):
And then on the third night, President Trump would make
a speech in Jacksonville. So like they came up with,
what we do instead of a three night convention in
one state, what if we do three one night conventions. Yeah?
You spread it out like that, spread it out, You
just spread you spread it out that way. Uh, there's
more of it. Yeah, there's an amazing line in the

(26:09):
New York Times article about this quote. Proponents of that
plans had a roving convention could have been spun as
a powerful message about the country reopening everywhere, with the
bonus of avoiding a single, large, crowded gathering for full
full days in one city, and just amazing, Like, I
it's astonishing sound logic. I don't I can't believe how

(26:30):
dumb it all is. Um, but yeah, it and it
does seem like so obviously, eventually, like a week or
so ago, the President was like, all right, well we're
not gonna We're not gonna do it now. Now the
Republicans are planning to do basically the same thing as
the Democrats, right, President Trump's going to give They're going
to have like a minimal sort of thing. They're they're
gonna start. They're gonna have one night in Jacksonville, where
there's again literally like a hundred or two hundred people

(26:51):
who do kind of the legally necessary voting ship, and
then Trump's going to give a speech in Jacksonville. No
press are going to be allowed, almost no people are
going to be allowed. There's not going to be crowded
rooms of fans or anything. Um, and then it'll be over, um,
and we will continue to barely care about the election
as uh we fist fight police in the streets and

(27:15):
prepared to set up sniper traps for the landlords coming
to evict us. Um, it's gonna be a fun August
in September. What Jesus? Yeah, it really is almost energy speech.
I don't think it's really great. He's gonna that's gonna
be like a toss up between which one is more

(27:37):
painful to watch him or Biden's Like, they're gonna be like,
you can't feed if you can't feed off the energy
of a crowd. No, No, And that's what's great. And
I just based on the interview he recently gave to
that um was the Australian Journal. Yeah. My my assumption
is that his his acceptance speech is just going to

(27:57):
be ninety a spirited ninety minute defense of Gillen Maxwell. Um.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah, he's working on it now. He's
trying to get as much you know, just he he
pulls out a power point line by line, he's going
through like the charging documents. Here's why I wish her
well and then just keep wishing her well, it's going

(28:18):
to be a nightmare. It'll be a fascinating nightmare. Yeah.
Um so everything it's just gonna keep being bad. Um
and uh yeah, but there's not going to be a convention,
and that's a bummer. That's a real bummer. I was
looking forward to taking you all. I was we were

(28:39):
starting to talk about inviting my my, my young photojournalist
friend Garrison, um before it became clear that, uh, there
wouldn't be a convention. I was really looking forward to
endangering the life of a teenager as well as the
lives of my co hosts by going to Florida. Well,
a teenager is dancing dangerously close to being a child,

(29:00):
so well, we already established that they all deserve to
die from this. Back to school or back to the
you know, the convention or the other. Speaking of everything
being good, I wanted to talk a little bit about
mail in voting, you know, that sexy topic that's on
the front of everybody's minds. Um so do you guys,

(29:23):
do you remember when the president suggested that the election
be delayed and definitely yeah, remember that forever ago, but
it was days ago. Uh yeah, No, he did that
because of you know, the pandemic, even though, as we've
already mentioned, um, you know, kids would have to go

(29:46):
back to school. But no, we have to delay the
election anyway. After a lot of pressure from everybody, including
Republican leaders, Um, he's sort of abandoned that, uh and
pivoted to a new demand suggest question, that the election
be called on November three, even if millions of ballots

(30:06):
remain uncounted. This seems like something that couldn't possibly spark
massive violence nationwide. No, not possibly. He wouldn't want that.
That's not from him. I've got this quote. I've been
watching elections and they say the projected winner or the
winner of the election. I don't want to see that
take place in a week after number or after November three,

(30:28):
or a month or frankly, with litigation and with everything
else that can happen years. But let's be real here.
Millions of ballots will be uncounted on November. On November three.
There's many reasons for that, but one big one is
what is happening with the postal service? Right now? This
is where I talk a little bit about the postal service. Um,

(30:51):
so what is happening with the postal service? It's not good. Uh.
I'm sure everybody is all aware of Trump's attacks on
the personal, on the postal service, his repeated claims that
they can't be trusted to deliver ballots. Uh. This is
all come at a time when the post Office was

(31:12):
already under extreme financial distress. Over the past ten years,
post offices have been closed. While they've been closed across
the country. UM. Rural mail delivery is stretched thin. Thousands
of post office workers positions have been a limit of
been cut. Uh. And this is of course, has been
exacerbated by the pandemic. UM. Yeah, thousands of postal workers

(31:36):
have taken emergency leave to quarantine after contracting the virus
or when they had to care for their children. Uh.
And these absences have led to a lot of delays
in mail delivery, especially in a lot of swing states
like Ohio and Michigan. The outgoing Postmaster General recently warned
that without immediate intervention, they could run out of funds

(32:00):
within the year. I mean, they would have shut down,
which is just something so unfathomable. Of course, Trump's attacks
didn't start with the election on the post Office. That's
just let's be real, that's the latest tactic he's using
to so doubts in the whole process. But he's been
railing against the Post Office for years, primarily because of

(32:22):
their relationship with Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Um, they get
a discounted shipping contract uh from the Post Office. Um.
But that's all kind of you know, general information about
what's happening. But now let's talk about Louis to Joy. Uh,
who's the Trump donor with no experience who has become

(32:46):
the new Postmaster general. This little excerpt from the Washington Post. Joy,
a North Carolina logistics executive who donated more than two
million dollars to GOP political committees over the past four years,
approved changes that took effect July that the agency said
were aimed at cutting costs for the debt laden mail service.

(33:08):
That they said, Uh. They included prohibiting overtime, bay, shutting
down sorting machines early, and requiring letter carriers to leave
mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late
delivery on routes. The new policies have resulted in at
least a two day to delay and scattered parts of
the country even for express mail, according to multiple postal

(33:28):
workers and union leaders. Letter carriers are manually sorting more mail,
adding to the delivery time. Bins of mail ready for
delivery are sitting in post offices because of scheduling and
route changes, and without the ability to work overtime. Workers
say the log jam is worsening without an end in
sight end quote. Um, that's just a brief. It is

(33:50):
terrifying and it poses very very real concerns on how
long it will take for people to receive their ballots,
if they even will receive their ballots, and then after that,
how long it will take for ballots to be sent back,
if they will even be received when they are sent back.
Because you know what we need an election is uncertainty

(34:12):
about whether or not our ballots are going to get counted. Um.
I believe that there are only there are sixteen states
that require mail in ballots to just be postmarked on
election day, but there are thirty four states that will
not accept mail in ballots after election day. Uh. And

(34:33):
to make it even more confusing, each state has their
own rules and time frames. For example, Alaska will accept
a ballot for up to ten days post race if
it's postmarked on or before the election day, but in Kansas,
voters only have like three days or something like that
post election. It's just all incredibly frustrating. We might not

(34:56):
have an election. You know what I love is that
Oregon a state so profoundly dysfunctional, uh that our police
officers tear gassed us more than a hundred times in
the space of five weeks, UH for yelling at them
from the streets. UM. And we have had the largest

(35:19):
budget shortfall of any state in the country over the
coronavirus UM, and we're still attempting to reopen bars and
restaurants like a a historically dysfunctional state that no one
lives in, that hates funding their own schools. Um Is
has been able to for many years now run elections

(35:40):
completely through the mail UM, despite the fact that politics
here has always been a complete fucking disaster. Um Oregon
manages to do it, but it's impossible for the rest
of the country. Clearly no other state could handle such
a task. What's been so frustrating about this is to
see this conversation. It's just talking in circles about it

(36:03):
for so long, about this issue when every day, but
honestly for years now, and the problem is I spoke
about this uncertainty. Okay, this this postal service stuff, the
way the pandemic has affected the question of how the

(36:24):
election will be run, all of that is new. But this,
this issue of mail in voting is not new, and
it's something we've all known. UH. We need to start
getting organized with a long time ago in order for
people to understand how it works, to have confidence and
how it works. And at this point it's just I

(36:47):
don't see how we pull it off. I don't I
don't see how this is anything but a debacle, especially
with the President demanding that UM results be announced the
night of of UH and and all of these delays
that we're seeing. UM. We're all aware that Trump has
been raging against mail and voting for a long time

(37:09):
now it terrifies him. The prospect of getting more voters
and making it easier for people to vote could potentially
be catastrophic for the Republican Party, except not really, because
they can stand to benefit from as well, with all
their rural voters, with their old white racist voters who

(37:29):
are susceptible to viruses. You know, in theory, it could
be a boon for the GOP and those regions with
those demographics. Um, I was interesting. Earlier today, Trump tweeted
this out. Whether you call it vote by mail or
absentee voting in Florida, the election system is safe and secure,
tried and true. Florida's voting system has been cleaned up.

(37:51):
We defeated Democrats, sucrats attempts change. So in Florida, I
encourage all to request a ballot and vote by mail
hashtag maga uh um. So it benefits him there, clearly.
I mean, that's just fun that he's using the like
Florida figured it out, but you know, around for two

(38:13):
thousand when Florida didn't really work out. But that's too
long ago. He doesn't remember that. I know. It's all.
It's all just really it's terrifying. Um, yeah, it's but
I mean because I mean, no matter what happens, no
one is going to be satisfied with the results of

(38:35):
the election. That doubt has been planted in every single
person about no matter what the result is. Yeah, Like, honestly,
either President Trump is willing to take power and no
one on the left stops him, or the Democratic Party

(38:56):
is willing to take back power and no one on
the right. Why it's up really having the CAHNI is
to stop them. Um, one of those two things will happen,
and nobody will believe in the validity of the election,
not even most of the people who get their way
in the end. See you, we don't think that this
is going to be a big uniting event. I think

(39:19):
this is the I think we're at the start of
a death spiral that's more or less unstoppable. At this point,
we've been spiraling for a while now, yeah, yeah, yeah, speeds.
We we've been sick for a while. Um, like a
coral reef. But there's a certain point in like the

(39:42):
death of a coral reef, where the reef itself is
still alive, but the damage is so extensive that it's
annihilation is inevitable. And I think that's the point that
we're at. Well. I also want to point out that
you know, Katie is serious once she throws out honey one,

(40:03):
one other thing I'm serious about before we take an
ad break, is I guess the takeaway the call to
action I want to impart with you guys about this conversation,
and that's to send your ballots in immediately. Do not
sit on it. Send it in, especially if you live
in a state that is uh not honoring ballots that

(40:27):
come in after election day, So please check up your
state's rules and please be responsible about it and tell
all your friends. If there's one thing I would love
to see from our listeners, it is uh their own
work at getting this issue out. Send in your ballots immediately.

(40:48):
And yeah, I was just joking about the country being
doomed by the way. Everything's going to be okay, Please
please send send in the please bust. It'll be fine,
and please enjoy these ads we're bringing to you right now,
and please stick around for after the ads when we're
back to talk more about this nightmare together everything we're back.

(41:24):
I was just thinking about how I really have deep,
um and profound faith in democracy and the fundamental courage
indecency of the American people, and things are going to
be great. That's what I was thinking about. I don't
believe you, ye ask honey, So let's keep going for us.

(41:53):
It's like we're He's clutching his face in horror. Cody
was given the task. I'm so sorry talking about some
of the Trump's latest bullshit and his inherent authoritarian Yeah,
the authoritarian stuff, and um, this is gonna be a chaotic,

(42:14):
little hodgepodge of just frustration. Because the thing is, I
mean both of you had shades of this in your
and what we're talking about, it's impossible to not touch
on it every day. And I think what we're really
pointing to when we talk about this now is obviously
the you know, the secret police and the election pushing

(42:37):
and stuff. One thing I will say is that I
think a lot of people are starting to use the
word fascist more to refer to the president specifically. A
little bit you see it sprinkled in um. Not really
a lot of political figures using the word, not really
a lot of like actual journalists in the like mainstream
media like using that word. They've been very afraid to

(42:58):
use the word. But like you can find find an
article from two days ago that is just called like,
Trump's tactics are right out of the authoritarian playbook, And
you can find an article from three and a half
years ago called Trump's tactics are right out of the
authoritarian playbook. And it's starting to just feel oppressively useless. Uh,

(43:24):
just like every step of the way where we are,
and again, like four years ago, people talking about we're
like a boiling frog, like they pushed the line a
little bit, uh, and every little bit you get used
to and then we're here or whatever, And I just
get this overwhelming sense of that, especially now in just

(43:45):
like in looking and how people talk about him, because
it really hasn't changed much. It's gotten a bit louder.
But whenever even his election quote and his tweets about
pushing that election back, you know, the reaction would be
this is extremely dangerous or he didn't really mean it
is just something he says, He's not really going to
do anything, or like he actually can't do that, which

(44:08):
is one could say a bit naive. One could say that,
One could maybe say that because even like since the beginning,
tweeting things like I have the support of the police,
the support of the military, the support of the bikers
for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don't
play it tough until they go to a certain point,
and then it would be very bad, very bad, and

(44:30):
like people kind of freaked out. But then also people
were like, well, he's not like what he is is
this a tweet? But then you have him uh sending
in the fence to uh beat the ship out of
Roberts and like, and all these protesters were friends. We
get a long, we got a thing going on. I

(44:50):
tweeted this today. You're reminding me of it, uh, because
it was just today. I just was thinking back on
everybody in six uh the day after the election, saying
how bad can it be? He can't do that much?
Calm down? How bad can it be? They said? Anyway? Sorry,

(45:16):
continued Well, I mean yeah, so like that's how bad
can it be? And it can be uh global pandemic
and uh sending in the FEDS to cities to clean
up the crime because he's the law and order president, right,
and it's just sort of like, uh, he's cashing all
these checks right that we all that we all saw
him right since the beginning. He does all the things

(45:38):
that authoritarians talk about. At least he's always talked about
all the leaders who have you know, Well, now he's
president for life. Maybe we should do that like all
these sort of like little praisings of authoritarians now and
throughout history. UM, and his coach to everything is in

(46:03):
conflict with reality. UM. And that has always been something
that has been like a touchstone of like fascist movements
literally Mussolini said that the to create a fascist national myth,
it is not necessary for it to be a reality. Um,
it's all based on this fake spiritual myth making um

(46:23):
and getting people like working people up into a frenzy. Um,
and uh, saying these sort of like trial balloon phrases
and like talking about he's talking about the violence, I
got the tough people. He's not going to do anything.
He talks about those things and then he doesn't. Necessarily
it's not about crossing the line, right, Um, it's about
nudging the line a little farther, You move it a

(46:47):
little bit, and then so now the resistance is a
little bit closer to where the line used to be.
They've crossed the old line, but you don't see them
crossing the line because the line is actually moved. And
it's just been sort of slow slog of him doing
all these things and saying all these things, and um,
I don't know, we're in the middle of this crisis.

(47:09):
And one thing I think that can be said about
um also like fascist movements and regimes in general, aside
from the fact that they don't like start at the end,
which I see a lot of people say, like, well,
you can call him a fascist. Therefore he's not well, okay,
that's not how time works. UM. So he's done like

(47:30):
you do all these things. But one thing you can
say is that if there's a major crisis, it's either
really good or really bad for them. Right. Um. This
in our our leaders like gross incompetence and very obvious ignorance.

(47:50):
Even in the Axios interview that Robert mentioned earlier, we
see this sort of floundering and struggle because they can't
actually deal with a crisis. They can manufacture them, they
can take advantage of them, but they can't actually deal
with them. Um. And so we're sort of in this
spot where this like what is happening now could be
them crumbling because that's how they have to deal with things. Um.

(48:16):
Or it could mean that they're going to keep sending
in um you know, the law and order folks, because
they've conditioned so many people to see any single protesters
like you're the Antifa. You're like even you have calmness
who are like quote liberals who were like demonizing Antifa
and being like we shouldn't defend antifa just to like
fight the fascist, Like, well, what are you doing? Like

(48:38):
when you're you're helping them, You're helping this narrative. I'm
gonna read this just a brief passage from Herbert packs
book about this kind of thing. Fascist violence was neither
random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well calculated set of
coded messages that communist violence was rising, that the democratic
state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the

(48:59):
fascist were tough enough, tough enough to save the nation
from anti national terrorists. An essential step in the fascist
march to acceptance and power with to persuade law and order,
conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist
violence as a harsh necessity in the face of left provocation.
It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared

(49:21):
fascist violence against themselves because they were reassured that it
was reserved for national enemies and terrorists who deserved it.
So to bring it back to the election a little bit,
I mean we see that rhetoric of course already in
playing his tweets and everything, But in the campaign videos,
the campaign videos that I've seen from Donald Trump are

(49:45):
Joe Biden wants no more police. Yeah, he's a Joe
Biden is a secret Antifa, right, and yeah, you know,
and yeah, he's been showing up in block here in
Portland Chuck to Malatov to fed the other night. Changes
my view of him entirely. But then also you get him, uh,

(50:05):
him making statements about Portland, um, and he's referring to
how we need to we need to lock up the
aggregators and the anarchists. Uh. And that is just like
straight up just like it's just it's just this again.
It's the same old playbook, um, only Joe Biden saying it. Instead.
You can't like a sign like it's an it's a

(50:29):
political ideology. He's saying we should lock up the anarchist.
That's like saying we'll lock up all the libertarians, or
we'll lock up all the like whatever it is. Um.
And that is a bonkers thing to say. Sorry, Katy,
go ahead, No, yeah, I mean it just seems like
that is the main thing that he is going to
be hammering for the next few months. And it's easy

(50:51):
for other people to get like swept up into it, right,
Like Joe Biden didn't need to say we need to
lock up all the anarchists or prosecute the anarchists, but
it's this sort of actic of framing everything like this
where even the opposition will play into it. And it's
all this confusions. I mean, it even stems back to
when this protest movement began, you know, people conflating and

(51:15):
also not giving due justice to what um a rioter is.
You know, like, well let's break down that term, let's
see what this is. But that's too much for so
many people. And there's just you know, they can see
images of violence and um and fear. And then there's
people that might be on the fence but really don't

(51:35):
like the way this is playing out, are afraid of
the chaos. Um gotta bring order to the chaos. And
you know who, you know who can do it. You
know who can bring order the chaos? The lawn order guy,
the current president who is residing over all the chaos,
the one who wishes the pimp. Well, I I mean

(51:55):
not to bring up Q and on, but here I go.
I I've just seen there's everything is just chaos. There
is information abounding from all sides. People are afraid in
a myriad of different ways. Here's here's the reality of
the situation, unfortunately, which is that everything's already Everything has

(52:19):
always been chaos for most of the people on this plant.
Everything was chaos for the people in Beau Paul, India,
you know, who got fourteen of thousands or so of
whom were choked to death almost immediately when that chemical
plant went up. Um, everything was chaos for the Maya
people in Guatemala, two thousand plus of whom were murdered
in tens of thousands more of whom were tortured by

(52:41):
the right wing death squads trained by a mix of
c I, a UH and border patrol agents. Everything was chaos,
has been chaos for you know, the kids in Yemen, Um,
the kids in Pakistan who have you know, went and
testified in front of our Congress that they're now terrified
at the site of blue Skies because it means that
drones can come for them and their family. Is We've
had in this country a wall protecting us from the chaos,

(53:05):
built of money, money, and guns, and that wall has
crumbled in on itself and now we just have a
pile of guns and rotting dollar bills. Um, And we're
no longer can trick ourselves into believing that we're safe.
And that's the yeah, and then yeah, and then the

(53:26):
people that have power are manipulating that and using that
to their advantage. Yeah, it's awesome. It's just cool. It's
very cool. Um, we're all fans of folks. I just
bring that up to say, like, even people, and I've
mentioned this on even more news I think last week,
but people that I wouldn't necessarily consider progressive but not

(53:51):
a fan of the president, I've seen sharing que and
on adjacent you know, conspiracy theories saying you can't trust
any media neither side, and that is a demoralizing um
state for us to be in a few months away
from the election. But I will say, my my dear

(54:14):
friend told me the other day that she had a
dream that Biden one. So that's one less thing I
have to worry about. So I share that with you guys.
You any comfort. My friend dreamt that Biden won, so
we don't need to worry about it. That's excellent. That
means I love her. I'm not making fun of her.

(54:35):
She said it tongue in cheek. I think she believed it.
But that's like, yeah, it's just the even the qut
on stuff you're bringing up in like all the this
adjacent stuff that's part I mean, that's obviously part of it,
and that's gonna there's a reckoning there that we have
not experienced yet that we I don't even want to
open up the Q and On worms right now really,
but like I don't need but but the current situation now,

(54:59):
aside from all the chaos and all the sort of
the veil dropping of what people sort of saw as like, no,
we're safe, We're America, it's fine. Um, aside from all that,
this pandemic it's forcing people to stay inside and um
not really interact with people on as much of a
human level as they used to. And a lot of
that means that they're gonna be online more. And when

(55:21):
you're online more, your brain rots and it's bad for you,
and you believe things you shouldn't and it just it
gets worse and worse. And then you're gonna start sharing
q and On memes because you get you get sucked
down into that little rabbit hole and you're like, oh no,
now I'm buried alive in the rabbit hole. And uh,
the pandemic situation is really exacerbated. I think a lot

(55:43):
of the Q and stuff specifically because it is congregated,
everybody in one in one, just like maddening space where
everything is it's like you gotta grab onto something, you gotta.
I don't know it's it's it's exponentially exploding right now. Yeah,
you know what I love ending podcasts now, I don't

(56:07):
love ending podcasts. I love Cherry Dr Pepper. I do.
I do love Cherry Dr Pepper. You know what I love?
I love right now? UM, watching the videos coming in
from Beirut the day we filmed this is the day
of a horrific explosion that seems to have been the
result of an improperly stored confiscated ammonium nitrate fireworks and somebody, well,

(56:31):
just what's It's probably the largest non nuclear explosion maybe
in world history. UM. It just unbelievable devastation. The videos
coming out of Bay like now look like the end
of the damn world. UM, and looking at it and
knowing number one that this is the not even the beginning,

(56:52):
because Beirut has been dealing with um an economic collapse,
food shortages, UM. The fact that this port was like
a major port for a lot of the grain that
fed a significant chunk of the Middle East, so that
the the food shortages are going to get even worse,
not just in Lebanon, but all over the rest of
the region as a result of this UM. A lot

(57:14):
of the damage because the economic collapse is never going
to be repaired, so huge chunks of the city. People
are going to be going without windows and without you know,
UM power, UM, even more than they already have. Then,
a lot of folks I talked to in Beyroute, we're
already dealing with twenty two hours a day without electricity
before this. UM just just a complete nightmarish collapse. And

(57:35):
it's terrible, and it also it's like a trailer for
what's going to be happening all over more often as
the systems around the world, the security systems that individual
nations put in place, UM and kind of international trade
systems and and sort of the basic protections people tried
to to to set in place continue to fray in

(57:56):
the face of of global chaos. I'm reminded in what
happened in Lebanon an explosion back and I think two
thirteen in the town of West Texas UM which I
was there the very next day. That was that massive
ammonium night trade explosion in that little Texas town that
like almost wiped it off the face of the damn
map UM. And it's the it's it's it's always at

(58:19):
the end of the day, like right now, there's a
conspiracy theory spreading like Israel has bombed Lebanon, and it's
not like the fundamentally kind of the thing that we're
probably going to find out what they root is more
or less what we found out with with West and
the explosion there, which is that a mix of improper
storage UM, a complete like gutting of any sort of

(58:41):
regulation or attempts at like UM actually providing uh security
and protection for things like this by the government UM
in order to like cut costs. Like all of these
things that happened as a state starts to fail UM
are what resulted in this calamity and what will result
in future calamities. And there will be explosions UM like

(59:02):
this in other places and the suffering will continue to
spread UM because at the end of the day, we
made a decision as a society to UM suck all
of the money out globally from anything that wasn't creating
more money. UH. And it's good, I mean in so
many different capacity things are going to continue to be destabilized. UM.

(59:27):
And this is an effect like again going back to
how good bad could he be? You know, when he
was elect in And I've mentioned this before on shows,
having a conversation with an old friend who was a
Trump supporter, UM and him being like, yeah, because he
works in construction wanting deregulation, saying, you know, all this

(59:48):
stuff wanting and I understand that zoning laws can be
tricky and dumb on a municipal level, you know, like locally,
but regulations in general are there for a reason, as
you're just mentioning with Beirut's and and regulations and UM
watch dog groups that attempt to like a lot of

(01:00:11):
the reason why ship has gotten to be such a
problem in Beirut is that you have all these like
this is like like like people in Beirut have been
protesting and like livid over corruption in in their local
and national government for a long time, and like the
other calamity calamities have been occurring for a while as
a result of this corruption and incompetence. There were massive

(01:00:31):
wildfires not all that long ago that were horribly exacerbated
by the fact that like money that was supposed to
go towards allowing the state to fight these wildfires and
train people. Was lining the epockets of corrupt officials. Um
and and we're just seeing this cycle accelerate all over
the world basically everywhere. Um and whenever people try to

(01:00:55):
stop it. And you have things like the Panama Papers
right where like some brave crusading journalists will reveal a
chunk of the massive worldwide graft network. Um that that
keeps making everything worse. They killed them with a firebomb
in their car, um And everybody moves on. And uh,
conservatives convince everyone that it's much more reasonable to be

(01:01:15):
angry at the fact that a single kid on a
college campus lit Stephen Crowder's book on fire some stupid
ship like that or whatever, like dumb bullshit. Um, it's
all terrible and I hate it, some unhelpful everything. The President,
speaking of everything we just talked about, just shared that
that fun little gift where it says trump trump then

(01:01:38):
Trump then and and jokes about how he's gonna be
the president forever, because that's what good presidents do. My
favorite thing about presidents is when they viscerally hate more
than half the country and try to make that half
of the country mad every every second of the day.
But he's a nice guy. He is a nice guy.

(01:02:01):
He wishes that child. Need to think about, you know,
at the end of the day, not the people of Lebanon, Um,
not all of the people suffering in our own country,
Not the folks staring houselessness in the face. Uh, not
the hundreds of thousands of refugees around the world still

(01:02:22):
in camps from conflicts from Syria to Malaysia. But we
really need to think about and dedicate our our sympathy
towards is that child rapist. Thank you, Gillen Baxwell for
your sacrifices. I believe I remember you in a past
episode saying that you refuse to learn how to pronounce
her name. Yeah, but Katie, like every figure anyone ever trusted,

(01:02:46):
I was always a liar. Um that one hurt, that
one really did some damn to me. A good place
for us to wrap staying your goddamn giz Lane, y'all. Yea,

(01:03:09):
I will never not pronounce it Jis Lane. I'm sorry. Look,
if you want to make the world better, find a
child predator near you and express solidarity with them. And
then when you're asked about a civil rights hero ten
minutes later be like, I don't know that guy, what
are you talking about? And then move on. Yeah, Daniel, Daniel,
please edit this in the funniest way possible to me

(01:03:32):
saying this, keep it all, keep it yeah. This is
the end of the episode. You can follow Katie on
Twitter and Instagram at Katie Stole. You can follow Cody
on Twitter and Instagram and dr Mr Cody. You can
follow Robert on Twitter. I right, okay. You can follow
this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at Worst Your Pod.
We have a merch store. It's got stuff in it.

(01:03:55):
That's all the things and you should wash your hands.
Were face man's We can't have. Everything is so dull,
everything's so dumb, and it's not again. Um I tried. Daniel.
Worst Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i

(01:04:16):
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.