No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans block gun reforms after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

Brian discusses the most recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas and what Republicans are pinning the blame on. Brian interviews the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Ohio, Tim Ryan, about what Congress is doing in the wake of these shootings, his response to his opponent JD Vance for blaming everything OTHER THAN guns, and whether he can reverse Ohio’s rightward trend in the upcoming election. And The Washington Post’s Philip Bump joins to discuss Dinesh D’Souza’s disastrous film that purports to prove the election was stolen while presenting zero evidence whatsoever.Support Tim Ryan: timforoh.comDonate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the latest shooting in Texas and what Republicans are pinning the blame on. I interview the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, Tim Ryan, about what Congress is doing in the wake of these shootings, his response to his opponent, J.D. Vance for blaming everything but guns, and whether he can reverse Ohio's right-word trend in the upcoming election. And I'm joined by the Washington Post's Philip Bump to discuss Dinesh D'Suse's disastrous film that purports to prove the election stolen while presenting no evidence whatsoever. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. By now you know that 19 students and two teachers were killed in a school shooting at Rob Elementary School in Uvaldi, Texas. It was the 213th shooting this year, the 27th to take place at a school. I wouldn't even know where to begin in terms of what it's like for those families.

Like, I'd imagine that everyone in this country has thought about this happening with their own kids in their own towns. I've thought about it with my brother's kids. I thought about it. with my two family members who are teachers. This can't be normal. And I think that what we're seeing now in government is the fundamental difference between the two sides

where one side is okay with this being the new normal and the other side isn't. And I know that if they could respond, they'd say, how dare you? But here's the thing. If you're fighting to maintain the status quo by doing nothing and the status quo is mass shootings on a daily basis,

If you're blocking every single legislative fix, then you are okay with what's happening. Simple as that. If you don't want to change it, then you want to keep it. Republicans have given every excuse under the sun, the same bullshit excuses that we've heard for years. Mental illness, video games, godlessness,

the absence of the nuclear family. Too many doors, that's the new one. Ted Cruz comes out saying that we shouldn't have more than one door. Have you seen a school? You want one entrance? Do these people think that kids are learning in one-room schoolhouses? They say we need to harden the schools. Harden the schools.

My grandma's a teacher. You're going to give her a gun and expect her to shoot some kid wearing body armor holding an AR-15? She's afraid of cats. Like, are you out of your minds? It is one bullshit excuse after the next, all the while, never naming the thousand-pound elephant in the room.

The guns. It is the guns. We don't have a monopoly on mental health issues in the U.S. We don't have a monopoly on video games or godlessness or non-nuclear, families or doors, but we do have monopoly on guns. We've got the most guns in the world, almost half the guns in the planet right here for just 5% of the world's population. We've got more guns than people. It is the guns. And every time a Republican pretends that it's not the only thing that sets us apart from every other country on the planet, they're doing their part to

protect the very thing that is responsible for all this bloodshed. We need to do something about the guns. And for anyone who says that we couldn't, if we wanted to do, remember, Republicans passed don't say gay laws immediately when they felt that that was a threat. Republicans passed anti-critical race theory laws immediately when they felt that that was a threat. They passed anti-trans laws immediately when they felt that they were a threat. They passed book bans immediately when they felt they were a threat. Greg Abbott held three special legislative sessions in a row to pass a voter suppression bill. Republicans act immediately when they think something poses a threat, meaning that if they

wanted to fix these shootings, they would. They are choosing not to, making the conscious decision not to. We need to do something. Here's some options. Raise the age of gun sales to 21. Pass the Universal Background Checks Act, H.R. 8. Close the Charleston loophole that allows a gun sale to automatically go through in three days, even if there's no background check. Pass a federal red flag law.

Regulate guns like cars. Every gun gets a title. You pass a written test, practical test. You get liability insurance, inspections, renewals. That's all acceptable for cars, but not guns? And look, I know that this stuff is crushing. I don't know how you see all of this and not feel hopeless and despairing. But please do not give up.

Don't throw your hands up because, like everything else, giving up puts all the power in the hands of those people who are blocking these reforms in the first place. Don't reward their obstruction with more power. Please, I beg of you, if nothing else animates you, Well, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably animated by a lot of this stuff. But we all have friends and family members who couldn't care less about politics. I know I do.

There's even doing what I do. It's not going to have any impact. So make sure that those people know that what happens in November will directly and immediately impact our gun laws. If they're not moved by the regular political stuff by inflation or gas prices or women's reproductive rights or any of that, they are moved by this. I promise you, they are moved by this. You can't not be. This won't be the last shooting, just like it wasn't after Buffalo, after El Paso, after Dayton or Las Vegas or Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sutherland Springs,

Sandy Hook, Parkland, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, Thousand Oaks, Pittsburgh, Santa Fe. But I hope it's the last straw for a lot of people. If not the people whose job it is to fix it, then at least the people who have the power to vote them out of office. Next up is my interview with Tim Ryan. Now we've got the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, Tim Ryan. Thanks for coming back on. Great to be with you. So I think we start with what happened in Texas this past week.

I think a lot of us see these shootings, see the darkest points of humanity, and our overwhelming reaction is just hopelessness and despair because we believe that nothing's going to happen. Nothing changes. Nothing has ever changed. So what's the feeling like in Congress? Does anything feel different? Or are we just fools if we really think that Republicans are going to change their tunes after the hundreds and hundreds of other shootings that didn't move them? Yeah, I mean, I just heartbroken about the whole thing.

I think if you haven't shed a few tears over the last few days, you know, you're not a human being to watch these parents and kids and everybody just awful, awful. And, you know, I'd love to say, look, I think we're going to wake up. I think the Republicans in the Senate are going to wake up and they're going to pass the the bills we sent them months and months ago, but I just don't think that's going to happen. And the best thing we can do is be honest with ourselves and recognize that, you know, we need a, we need a couple more senators who support basic common sense, making sure violent people don't get a hold of these weapons. You know, it's got to start in the Senate and it's going to start with the elections in November. Can you give a rundown on which of those bills that you just

that you just alluded to, which of those common sense gun safety bills have passed the House right now and are pending, languishing in the Senate? Yeah, I mean, the one is the universal background check. I mean, this kid goes and buys weapons once he turns 18. He could have, you could have held territory in a war zone for six hours with the kind of weaponry that he had. Yeah. So universal background checks, you know, closing the gun show loophole, which means you can sell a gun to you know, whoever, and there's no, absolutely no background check at all. The Charleston loophole, which allows, you know, if you don't get an answer within three days, you can just get the gun. You know, so those are the three basic ones that we've sent to the

Senate and, you know, just not getting, you know, it's where great ideas go to die in the United States Senate. You know, that brings us to your race. You're obviously running for Senate. We're going to get into that race in a moment, but how has this moment between the shootings in Buffalo and Texas and, you know, every other one before that. How have these shootings influenced your stance on the filibuster and the brokenness of that body? I just, it's just reaffirmed my positions and given, you know, I think more short in my own mind

of why we need to do these things. And the government should be in helping people. And here we have, whether it's Buffalo, whether it's, you know, what happened down in, you know, down in the most recent incident in Texas. Is there something that we can do? There's no magic wand that we're gonna save everything, but when you look at these bills that are in the Senate,

voting reform, some form of criminal justice reform, some form of basic background checks and people who could potentially be violent and get these guns, they're all in the Senate and we could pass them. We just need a couple more senators who are willing to reform the filibuster. Now, your opponent, J.D. Vance,

he came out with a statement on the shootings, basically saying, and let's not allow a mass shooting to push us to make any drastic decisions. He blamed the GOP villain of the day, which is Doors, because apparently we need one entrance into every school now to turn every building into a prison. He blamed drug addiction. He blamed fatherlessness. He blamed a lack of religion.

Everything except the guns. What's your response to that? Yeah. We've got a lot of issues in the country. But, you know, there are mental health issues all over the world, all over the world. countries that have as many issues with mental health as we do here in the United States. And the issue really is those people can't get their hands on weapons. And there are a lot of people who can get their hands on weapons who have nothing to do with mental illness at all. So it's a

distraction, I think, in a lot of ways. And, you know, again, I think it lays out for voters in Ohio. Do you want someone who's going to be clear-eyed as to what the problems are and work with across the aisle, try to work with people to try to solve those problems, or do you want someone who will take a position that he thinks is going to benefit him politically and that he could raise money off of? I mean, it's clear. So can you give us a snapshot of that race as it stands right now? Any polling, just how the race is going overall? Yeah, it's very, very close. You know, we're neck and neck at this point. And I think that we've got a really good shot because it's going to come down to who's more Ohio. And J.D. Vance is a carpetbagger from California. I mean,

you picture someone in Ohio in Youngstown or down the Ohio River or Toledo, right? This guy gets a $15 million check stroke to himself from a billionaire from Silicon Valley. Now, who's he going to work for in the United States Senate? Or Tim Ryan from the Youngstown area who's been fighting for working people for 20 years, you know, and loves Ohio and has been here my whole life fighting the fight. So I think we're going to be in good shape. And, you know, anybody wants to help. It's Timphrowh.com. They can come on over and put a few bucks for us in the tank. You know, to that exact point, J.D. Vance, I think, has followed this Republican playbook of being one thing, which is a Yale-educated millionaire venture capitalist who worked in Silicon Valley

while presenting himself as something completely different, basically someone who hates Yale-educated millionaire, venture capitalist who worked in Silicon Valley. You know, it's this phoniness that pervades his entire persona. That's not to say that it doesn't work, though. But do you think the people of Ohio recognize this? No, I think they recognize that. I think they're on to him.

I mean, you know, he got $15 million from Peter Thiel. He got an endorsement from the former president, and he couldn't even get a third of the Republican primary vote. I mean, I think that tells you all you need to know. A very moderate Republican who was against Trump got 22, 23 percent of the vote. I think he's repugnant to independent voters and the more they find out about him. We're going to win this race. We're going to win this race because he can't be trusted. And I think everybody knows that now, whether you're a Republican, independent or Democrat, because they just spent $60 million in the Republican primary. And a lot of that money was calling J.D. Vanceafony for flip-flopping on his position. on Donald Trump, so they know they can't trust them because he's a fraud. Just say anything he used to say to get elected. Yeah. You know, the lack of action in the aftermath of these shootings really does illustrate

the extremism of the Republican Party right now, that you can have bills like HRA, as you mentioned, that has the support of 90% of Americans and yet 0% of elected Republican officials. And it's not just gun legislation. Republicans are pushing abortion bans that are opposed by 70% of Americans. they're opposing bills on child care, on letting the government negotiate lower drug prices, voting rights bills, all of which are overwhelmingly popular in this country. How would J.D. Vance factor into that extremism if he was elected? He'd be all in. I mean, he already is. I think, you know, here's the deal. He's an extremist

because he knows that's what he has to be right now in order to get power. And then he wants to take that power and punish people. Want to punish women. Want to punish business. that don't agree with them and have maybe a different political culture within that business. So so much for the free market, so much for limited government. Yeah. You know, everyone's free in America unless you're a woman and you have a complicated circumstance you need to deal with. Then J.D. Vance wants to be the guy to tell you what to do.

It's free markets for business and we need to lead businesses alone unless they have some kind of opinion about, you know, LGBTQ or something else like Disney does. And then J.D. Vance wants to make that call. He wants to be in the room with dealing with a pregnancy. I mean, come on. That's what they want. And so he's willing to take these extreme positions because it's going to get empowered. But the guy can't be trusted.

And I think everybody already knows that. So he would be all in. And it's not, I don't even like calling him Republicans anymore, honestly, because these guys aren't Republicans. They're extremists. The Republicans I know who are supporting my campaign, you know, maybe they want to argue about tax rates, you know. They don't want to, they don't want the government coming in and doing some.

some of these things. Right, right. Now, you know, Ohio has been trending red for years. How can you reverse that trend? Show up. I think one of the biggest problems Democrats have had two, two main things. They've taken their eye off the ball on the economics and the real struggles of people across the state. And I think this is not, you know, unique to Ohio, but gotten off the economic message, which was the backbone for Democrats for a long, long time. And we don't show up. and you go to these areas. And so we've been to all 88 counties with this campaign already, been a lot of time in rural Ohio talking to voters. And so really focusing on the economics, focusing on infrastructure, focusing on pensions, focusing on economic security, tax cuts for working

families, not tax cuts for billionaires, those kind of things, infrastructure, broadband, how do we plug these communities into the global economy? That to me is really important, but you got to show up and get that message out and we're doing it. And I think that's why we're going to win. I think that's such an important point that you brought up that like so often from the J.D. Vances of the world, it's all just culture war bullshit. Whereas, you know, what you focus on is stuff that's going to have practical real world effects on people's lives. I mean, just recently we saw that Intel is opening a factory in Ohio too. What, you know, since you've represented your district, like, what can you talk about just some of what you've brought in and, you know,

some of the tangible impacts that you've brought for your constituents. Yeah, we, you know, we've been able to, in old Rust Belt towns that are, you know, re-emerging with technology, so I've gotten money for energy incubators where we're literally starting companies in this energy incubator that are buying old industrial properties and converting them over for these new tech, more tech battery storage companies. We've got a whole thing called Voltage Valley up by where I'm from, where Foxconn came in, bought an old auto factory. They're going to make electric trucks in one side. They're going to make electric vehicles in the other side. Across the streets of General Motors battery

plant, that's there, 1,100 union jobs. So all about the future. And then our downtowns brought a ton of money back for downtown redevelopment, quality of life. We want to keep young people in Ohio. You've got to have jobs, but you also got to have quality of life. And then the Intel project, which is the mother load of all projects, it's going to be $100 billion. average wage is $135,000 a year. This is the kind of advanced manufacturing. I've been pushing for, voting for, and supporting, and it's finally coming home to Roost here in Ohio.

Yeah, hell of a lot better than the war on Christmas, but to each his own. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing. I mean, you summed it up. Like, that's the thing, man. Like, you want to go down that road? We can fight.

Oh, my God, can we find things to fight about. Yeah. But how about we find the things we agree on and get the work on them? Let's finish off with this. what's been the most memorable moment from the campaign trail? Like, has there been anyone you've met or spoken with that's really stuck with you, that's really, you know, kind of encapsulated, like, why you're running this campaign? Yeah, you know, I just meet these people.

They're so inspiring. You know, it could be Ethel Gutenberg down in Cincinnati. You know, she lost the son who got sick after 9-11 was a police officer. And then she lost a granddaughter at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. a few years back. And, you know, I mean, to me, I think, like, I'd pull the covers over my head. I'd never show up in the world again. And she's out there campaigning for common sense, you know, gun safety.

She's out there campaigning for health care. I just met a guy who lost his daughter down in Pike County. A good guy, Wayne, who's down there and his daughter got sick because of some cancer happening in that county from an old uranium enrichment plant. And what do he do? He ran for school board. promised his daughter before she died, do something to make sure kids are safe.

And they just, they put the gas in my tank and just keep me fired up to, you know, keep going on these really important issues. How can we help? Timforohat's.com. You know, we got to build the war chest up,

got to raise 50-some million dollars. Like I said, you know, JD got billionaires that'll stroke them checks from 15 million. Our contributions, 97% are under $100. So whatever you can do to send us five or ten bucks, that'd be huge. And if you're in Ohio, we'd love to get you knocking on some doors for us.

Great. I'll put that link in the show notes of this episode, too. Tim Ryan, keep kicking ass. And thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Anytime. Okay, now we have the national correspondent for the Washington Post. Philip Bump, thanks for coming back on.

You bet. So all this time, when it comes to the 2020 election, apparently the Democrats have fooled what, the Supreme Court, secretaries of state, 60 judges, but apparently not Dinesh D'Souza. The brilliance of Dinesh D'Souza was apparently no match. So you watched his new film, 2000 Mules, that got a screening at Muralago. First off, since I am positive that a number of people listening have no clue what 2,000 mules or Dinesh D'Souza are.

Could you give a quick explanation of who he is and what his film sought to do? Sure. Dinesh D'Souza is a conservative commentator. He's been around for quite some time. He worked in a Republican in President's White House of Oregon, and he's been around for a while. He was probably most infamous in American politics prior to 2020 or so for having been caught up in a strong political contributions scheme, pled guilty, end up getting pardoned by Donald Trump for that. He has since, and over the course of the Trump era, created a bunch of films which purport to, articulate his sort of worldview. They're, you know, sort of reconsiderations of history and how

Democrats are the real racist because of, you know, post-sival warrior and yada, yada, yada. He's done a lot of those sorts of things. But now he has seized upon this thing in this film called 2000 mules. And so essentially what it does is it takes data from a group called true the vote and purports to show using cell phone geolocation data that a number of people, thousands of And 2000 plus had gone to multiple drop boxes and multiple nonprofit organizations of the course of the, you know, the weeks prior to the 2020 election, which, of course, can only be attributed to the idea that there was this massive scheme to collect and submit ballots. Now, every single part of my articulation of that is not true. And there's no evidence for it. And there are a lot of question marks and asterisks that apply, you know, even to the organization.

And so that's the bonus conversation. We'll get into it. But just I don't want to leave the, I don't want to spend two seconds where the listeners think that maybe there's any of the living with this because there isn't. Yes. Okay. So let's talk about exactly that. What was the purported evidence that the film's central premise relied on?

Like what did DeSuzza think that his smoking gun and all of this was? Well, it's funny because I talked to DeSuzza and he actually in that conversation copped to the fact that he doesn't really have a smoking gun. He has smoke. He doesn't really even have, you know, any sort of thing that would produce smoke. I mean, it's just he admitted that this is just sort of a story that he was telling that, you know, it's up to law enforcement to prove, which, you know, obviously is a cop-out.

But the idea is this. The idea is that the truth of vote got all this data. They purchased from some sort of middleman. You know, when you use an app on your phone and it's tracking your location, that information is aggregating anonymized and sold to marketers. So the marketers now, oh, look, look at all these people. They end up walking down Main Street in, you know, Topeka. you know, maybe we should buy, you know, put a billboard there or whatever the hell it is.

I mean, there's reasons for this. And, you know, it's commercially available. So they bought this data. They purported to do this analysis of the data in order to show where they are, you know, where people are going. They say that this is stemmed by a whistleblower who said, hey, I worked for this organization. I got paid $10 per ballot to turn these things in. The Susan himself never spoke to the whistleblower. The whistleblower is not presented in the film. And as far as I can remember, is I even mentioned in the film, perhaps he is. But either way, he does not play a significant role instead the focuses on this geo-location data.

But really, the focus is on video shots of videotaped, video surveillance, really, of these drop boxes, primarily in Georgia. You know, when the county puts in a drop box, they put a video camera there and make sure no one screwing with it, right? And so they obtained through public record's request, apparently, you know, hours and hours and hours of footage of these drop boxes, which they then, in the movie, purport to connect to these mules. They show people going up to the Dropbox doing various things, and they say these in the mules, but there's no actual evidence in the movie presented for these people who are at the Dropboxes hadn't gone to any other Dropbox at all. There's literally no shot in the movie of one person going to two different Dropboxes, much less on two different days.

And there's not actually any evidence shown that the people who are depicted at Dropboxes were actually geotracked to get there. That's just a claim that sort of vaguely made. by this guy Greg Phillips from true the vote. And it's really important, again, to contextualize this by understanding that Greg Phillips is a guy who in the weeks after the 2016 election, even before states had finished counting ballots, claimed that he had evidence that millions of people voted illegally in 2016, which is something that Donald Trump very quickly seized on and ran with his evidence of this ramp and fraud. Phillips never produced any evidence for it whatsoever.

He claimed to have that data through truth of vote, but he never actually presented it. So this is a guy who has made totally unverified claims in the pastile rampant fraud, who is now the only source of Dinesh D'Souza's claims in this movie about these purported mules. But, I mean, that seems like a massive fatal flaw in the premise of this movie is that if you have mules going from drop box to drop box, dropping off all of these ballots, and you don't have a shred of evidence that any of these purported mules went to more than one drop box or dropped anything more than one ballot off, what's the difference between these so-called Mules and just a guy like me who went to the Dropbox and dropped his ballot off.

Yeah, I mean, there is no evidence shown in the movie to make that differentiation at all. I mean, there is, for example, in my conversation, as soon as I focused on this one snippet they have where a guy, this is what's shown. A guy is on his bike, and it's nighttime, you don't know when. He rides up on his bike, he gets off his bike, he digs into his backpack, pulls out a ballot, puts it in the drop box, then puts his bike up next to the drop box, steps back and takes a picture of it. That's what's shown. Now, the way that is described by this guy, Great Phillips and through the vote is that this is one of these mules that had gone to a bunch of

drop boxes, although that's never proven, that he reaches, he's looking around in his backpack to pull out a bunch of ballots, and though it's pretty clearly only one ballot that he pulls out, that he's taking a picture because he gets paid only if he shows a picture of himself, you know, putting the ballot into drop box. But, you know, in the film, he actually takes a picture after the ballot's already in there. So that's after, that there is no evidence presented for this idea that they only get paid if they take a picture. I pressed to Suez on that, and he said that that's, you know, that that was his understanding from truth about. There's no actual evidence for that. And, you know, in my conversation with Suez as well, he sort of

expressed this bafflement. Like, why would someone take a picture of the Dropbox if you weren't going to pay? And the answer, of course, is any rational human being who's had an eye open since 2016 understands his social media. People take pictures of themselves voting all the time. I literally have a photo on my, on my Instagram of me doing exactly that, of me putting my ballot in a Dropbox. I don't think I'm the only one. Not only that. I went back to the Instagram. I figured out which library of this Dropbox is at. And I went to their Instagram, you know, how you can search for location on Instagram. And I saw a bunch of people who had taken pictures themselves depositing ballots at the Dropbox. I mean, you just like, you know,

this is, this is super, super, if you're not operating inside the bubble, but dementia, Susil isn't, it's really obvious. But that's the level of evidence that's presented. And the only time they actually try and present this evidence of someone going to multiple drop boxes, they show this map, which they say shows, you know, we're going to 20 odd drop boxes and a bunch of nonprofit organizations on one day in Atlanta. And they show this map and everyone was in Oz over and so on and forth. That's the only time in which this geolocation data is actually shown. But then I went back and checked where the dropboxes actually were in Atlanta and they don't line up. And Greg Phillips admitted the map was fake. So the only

evidence of geolocation they even show in the movie, Greg Phillips has admitted it's fake. And, you know, you can take that for what it's worth. And just beyond that, I mean, wasn't the map that was described as Gwinnett County, not even Gwinnett County? Well, yeah, there were other maps that are shown. So, you know, part of this is there's like these sort of dramatized, you know, here's a shadowy figure dropping off of some balance on a Dropbox. And so part of this was like, you know, they have this sort of like fake Hollywood-esque control room where it's very dark. And you have all these young hacker-looking dews here sitting in computers. And, you know, like.

But he's and yeah. Exactly. Yeah, right. You know, and the computer screens, like lots of blinking boxes pop up. And so there's this one shot of a map and then a cluster of red dots, which is supposed to show this geolocation data. And then a zoomed-in video box, which is, you know, obviously a video of one of the dropboxes because they show the same, literally the same shot at other points in the movie of a drop box in the Atlanta area. But the map itself, the under in that thing, is actually a map Moscow, which apparently is a stock image used by Adobe. So someone just, you know, constructed this visual of, you know, which is fine.

Like you can do Hollywood-esque things. I think it's funny that it's Moscow, you know, I really do think it's far more significant that the map that they showed, which they tried to show was a geolocated mule. That one was actually fake because that was not supposed to be just dramatized. So you've got, you know, flawed cell phone data tracking on a route with dropboxes that are incorrectly placed on a map that purports to be Georgia, but it's actually Moscow. Other than that, pretty damning though, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, there's the movie's sort of broken out into three parts.

And so the first part is, you know, trying to claim, showing these video snippets and claiming these are mules. And isn't this suspicious what's happening? You know, and you really only see two or three people depositing more than one ballot. The state of Georgia went back and actually talked to one of those people and was like, yeah, they were supposing ballots for my family, which is totally illegal. And Georgia was, like, totally satisfied with that and moved on past it. you know, then there's another chunk of the movie, which is trying to, you know, whip up a sort of broader sense of like, oh, here's how this whole system works. And, you know, here's how they collect ballots and all these various things that is, you know,

just basically trying to explain. I mean, because if you just stop and think about it, where are these nonprofits getting all these ballots from? Like that doesn't, like, there's been no evidence to show that people were collecting ballots in the first place, much less dropping them off. And so he has to come up with some sort of theory about how that works. And then the third part is he sits down to the panel of conservative commentators, all of whom work for the company that helped to produce the film. And they're all like, hmm, I'm skeptical that the election was frigged. And they didn't, and they didn't, Susan shows of the evidence.

And they all, you know, people like said gorg, I forgot say, you know, has never acted in good faith in his life. So, yeah, I mean, so there's no part of the film. And, you know, honestly, I came into being like, okay, let's see what you got. Like, you know, I was skeptical. I didn't think he's going to have anything. He had way less than I expected, which I was sort of surprised by. Well, no, these claims were brought to both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, they were given all of this data. What came of that? So my understanding is there may still be something, the Secretary of State's office may still be poking around on it. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation sort of rejected it out of hand and said this data doesn't actually show anything that's sufficiently suspicious to warrant investigation. There was an analysis that was done by an elections board.

And I'm a little unclear on sort of the hierarchy of, you know, to them their court and so forth. But they consider this too and they dismissed it out of hand. I mean, there's just no one who is in any position of authority has stepped up and said, hey, this actually, this actually smells funny because, you know, from an objective standpoint, the evidence isn't there? Well, in a way, isn't it better for DeSuz's claims, you know, that they're not investigated? Because isn't it not? I mean, it's not actually about the facts.

It's about just giving oxygen to a bullshit narrative. And so the less authoritative attention that gets, you know, the less that somebody can, that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation can say, like, no, this is all complete bullshit. The less of that there is, the more that these lies can fester me. That's the whole point of the big lie. Yeah, I mean, that's true, but it doesn't matter. I mean, if they came out and said, I mean, Georgia came out and said this guy dropped up all these ballots, you know, pretty clearly they, you know, wasn't the kid.

And they just wave it away. Oh, you know, they don't want to say it's real. How do they know? And yeah, you know, I think the thing that's most telling, the biggest giveaway that this is just a hustle to try and capitalize on the huge market demand for proof that Donald Trump won the election 2020 is there's a part in the movie where he cobbles together, you know, assuming these mules did what they were purported to do. And assuming for some reason, all these votes were illegal, which they wouldn't be anyway, as Brad Raffensberg or Brad Raffinsberg, the secretary of state of Georgia. And even true, the book themselves has said that there's no sign these are actually illegal votes that shouldn't count. But if you assume they were, and you assumed, you know, this particular scale of activity, then, you know, in a number of swing states, Donald Trump actually would won.

Hooray, you know, that's really ridiculous. And there's a scene, you know, someone filmed this in Moralago, and everyone was very, oh, ooing and eyeing of that particular thing. But all that's dependent on this one bit of data. So let's say, let's say, truth of votes acting good way. Let's say they do really good data analysis. Let's say that their geo-fencing is not way too loose to actually be able to identify if someone went to a drop box. Let's say they actually have the goods. Someone went to a drop box.

These people went to these drop boxes this number of times, right? So D'Souza takes that and says, here's the average number of, you know, here's the number of mules in the state. Here's the average of drop box visits they made. So you multiply those together. And then, you know, on average they dropped off five ballots, ergo you get, you know, X tens of thousands of ballots. Well, if you assume all that's true, the question then becomes, where do you get that average of five ballots per? Like, even if you have this video evidence, you can't tell from the video evidence how many ballots are being dropped off. And in the videos they show in the the film. It's pretty clearly only one of the time for most of these occasions. Where does that come

from? How could you possibly know that? And I asked to sue that. And he's like, well, they have ways. They can zoom in on the video, which is just total bullshit. Like, you know, you just, you can't like, he's doing like, you know, CSI, CBS TV show like enhanced bullshit. Which just simply isn't how it works. But that was his answer. And the reason. And so, and he said, but you have to, you have to come up with this estimate of how many balance dropped off. And I said, well, why do you have to do that? It's like, well, you just do. And the answer, of course, the reason that he has to come up with this estimate for how many average ballots are dropped off is because his entire goal is to prove that Donald Trump won the election. I'm doing here at

reports, which people listening can't see. You know, that's his goal. His goal is to be able to be able to present something to the public be like, ha ha, I finally have the proof that Donald Trump really won, so it paid me $30 you can see my film to explain it. But it all breaks down. As soon as you realize, well, there's no possible way he can know there's an average five ballots that were dropped off. And as soon as you say that, that all of his numbers are wrong, all of his math is wrong, He doesn't prove the case at all, even assuming that his case about the geolocation is accurate, which there's no risk to assume. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing was just reverse engineered to prove a predetermined point that he's trying to make that was completely baseless.

Let's finish with this. How is engaging with someone like Dinesh D'Souza been for you online? I mean, I usually, I mean, he's replied to a couple of my tweets. I don't go anywhere near it because it's such a cesspool. And that's even amid the broader context of what Twitter is. just the D'S's stuff is such accessible. So you've been pretty, you know, directly associating with him. What's that been like?

I mean, look, I've been doing this a long time. And I feel like I have muted a decent percentage of the people who are going to be obnoxious idiots in my replies. And so my guess is I probably don't see a pretty large chunk of vitriol that is, that comes at me. But it's pretty remarkable that. So take someone like Dan Bond. who has never impressed me as a particularly bright guy, which is my very charitable way of saying

that. But all DeSouza has to do is say, hey, here's my very technical, hard to understand evidence, and here is why I think I won this debate with this schmuck in the Washington Post, right? Van Bongino's chewing that up with a big old spoon. Like, you know, he needs nothing more than that. He needs nothing more than be told, hey, some guy who's on my side says he has evidence. and some guy who's on my side says he he beat the mainstream media done and done we're taking you know this is a big victory for team us right and so you know so you get a lot of people who are who have that level of who apply the same level of scrutiny as Dan Bonjino who pop up to be like ah Dinesha you really got him good and it's just like look man you know honestly it's pathetic

I mean you just sort of have to feel bad it's like you're you're getting hustled man Like, I know you think that I'm that somehow this is massively lucrative for me doing my day job to point out the truth. Yeah. You know, yeah, I mean, yeah, I get a salary for it. But the Nesh D'Souza is walking to the bank carrying sacks full of money by hustling you guys who are too, absolutely too credulous. And it's just, it's, it's embarrassing for anyone who stands up for, you know. And it's, you know, this is how cons work. Con artists convince people that they're their ally and then people give money.

And that's what to apply. Yeah. And that seems to be a recurring theme these days on the right. Philip, where can we hear more from you or see more from you? Wherever you want, my friend. And there's you can Twitter, P-Bump, The Washington Post. I have a newsletter about data visualization, which is obviously helpful in this context called How to Read This Chart.

And I have a book coming out next year. So stay tuned for that. Awesome. We'll leave it there. Philip, thank you again for taking the time. I appreciate it. You bet. Thanks, man.

Thanks again to Philip. I hope everyone stays safe. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.