No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump’s last-ditch effort to overturn the election results crumbles

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

Trump claims election fraud and tries his hand at overturning the results in the courts, and his "election fraud" disinformation campaign hits a humiliating roadblock -- culminating into an on-air apology by Tucker Carlson. Brian interviews former Obama and National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about Trump's sudden firing of the entire Pentagon leadership and its implications on the election.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/Visit votesaveamerica.com/georgia or votesaveamerica.com/getmitch to do your part for Georgia's Senate runoffs.See 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 Trump's claims of election fraud, how they're holding up in court, and one especially humiliating moment that pretty much sums up the entire post-election landscape for Republicans, and it comes from Tucker Carlson. I also interview former Obama and National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vitor about Trump's sudden firing of the entire Pentagon leadership and whether that might mean he's trying to steal the election. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. We're now at a point where Joe Biden's podcast.

popular vote margin is beyond 5 million votes. The electoral college margin is 306 to 232, which, by the way, is the exact same margin Trump won by in 2016, and also the same margin that Kellyanne Conway herself tweeted, landslide, blowout, historic. But instead of accepting the outcome, Trump's now engaged in a sustained attack against the election results, tweeting excessively about how the results were rigged, dead people are casting ballots, Republican observers weren't present, the voting machines are switching votes. Every day, there is a relentless barrage of misinformation.

Now, let me start with this. Here's what the same people screeching about how Trump can still win this thing said back in 2016. Here's Fox and Friends, Steve Deucy and Brian Kilmead. Brian, they're saying it's rigged, but they have absolutely no evidence that it's rigged. I don't even think we should give him the time of day. Also, he's about to win, and we know it's a matter of time, about to win Michigan officially. So that would put Donald Trump over the top of over 300 electoral votes. It was a blowout. It was a blowout.

I just wondered what these Democrats are doing, trying to convince their electoral representatives not to vote the way the people want it. There are six of them. Now there's these states which have a recount. Here's Tucker Carlson. It's a crisis when the people running your democracy don't believe in democracy. Here's Sean Hannity. They have no actual proof of voter fraud or any wrongdoing.

And both the White House and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have both said zero evidence whatsoever. Here's Judge Janine. We believe in free speech. We believe in accepting winners and not being sore losers. And here's my favorite, Kaylee McInney. You have people out there calling for recounts that are unsubstantiated based on no evidence. You have Jill Stein coming on our network an hour or so ago suggesting that there were hacks or potentially hacks and we won't know until we count the votes. There are people trying to delegitimize the president elect of the United States.

Now let's compare that with Kaylee this go-around. It would look pretty bad if he did not attend the inauguration. It would sound like it looked like sour grapes, wouldn't it? I think the president will attend his own inauguration. He would have to be there, in fact. Throw Mike Pompeo into the mix. Is the State Department currently preparing to engage with the Biden transition team? And if not, at what point does a delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to national security?

There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration. And we can go on, but you get it, right? I just think it's funny how quickly things can change when you don't actually stand for anything, when you're just a barren husk of talking points desperate to cling on to power. So here's the deal if it wasn't already clear. Trump lost. He knows he lost. His administration knows he lost.

His mouthpieces know he lost. Conservative media knows he lost. But he won't admit it. And there are a few reasons for that. The first is money. Every day, Trump's been peppering his supporters with email. and texts soliciting donations for his election defense fund. Only when you read the fine print,

you realize that it's not actually going to his election defense fund because that would be akin to setting it on fire. In actuality, the money that's getting donated is getting split between paying off Trump's campaign debt and going to the RNC. So, like, Trump is broke yet again, and he's praying on his gullible supporters to bail him out by convincing them that it's their donation that's going to save him.

I have said this a thousand times, and I'll say it again, there is no one who Trump and Republicans have more disdain for than their own supporters. They are nothing but untapped wallets to them. That's all. Another reason Trump won't admit it is his ego. Trump has groomed his supporters to believe two things. First, there's nothing worse than a loser. And second, that Joe Biden is the weakest candidate to ever exist on God's Green Earth, right?

According to Trump, Biden's in cognitive decline. he's old, he's weak, he's confused, he doesn't know where he is, and now not only is Trump a loser, but he lost to that guy. He has quite literally become the thing that he hates most in the world. But because he is way too insecure to handle that kind of humiliation, he'd rather just cry foul and pretend the whole thing is rigged. He'd rather convince half the country not to trust our own electoral system. He'd rather undermine faith in the most core tenet of our democracy, our free and fair elections, then acknowledge reality because of his extremely fragile ego.

And then, of course, beyond those two, there's also the issue of, you know, him actually believing that he'll steal the election. And look, on one hand, this is a guy who's got nothing but disdain for the rule of law and our institutions. He has literally gotten himself impeached for extorting a foreign country for dirt on Joe Biden

and then orchestrated a large scale, top-down cover-up to hide his involvement. He's committed campaign finance violations. He'll almost certainly be investigated for tax fraud. And so clearly, he's not going to be deterred by something so insignificant as the will of the American people, the results of a free and fair election. So would he have any qualms about stealing it? Absolutely not. But on the other hand, I think the issue lies with the fact that he's got no avenue to actually do that. And God knows he's tried. The Trump campaign

has been in court all over the country trying to make this happen. As of this recording, the Trump campaign has lost, I believe, 19 lawsuits, 19. And most of them were completely, completely frivolous. But I want to touch on a couple because Trump has basically predicated his entire disinformation campaign on these talking points. He's been claiming that observers from his campaign weren't allowed to watch the ballot counting process. He's tweeted out this claim dozens of times. It's been picked up by right-wing media.

In Philadelphia, the Trump campaign brought this issue to court. The judge, Paul Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, asked the Trump lawyers, quote, are your observers in the counting room? The Trump lawyer responded, there's a non-zero number of people in the room. The judge replied,

I'm asking you, as a member of the bar of this court, are people representing the plaintiffs in the room? To which the Trump lawyers responded, yes. I don't know how you can make it much clearer that what Trump is alleging is pure bullshit than his own attorney's admitting that the entire basis for their claim

that they have no observers in the room is false, right? Like, he'll spout this stuff publicly, but when they have to tell the truth, suddenly it's a different story. Here's another one. I'm sure you've heard the right-wing bubble whaling about Dominion. Dominion is a voting system vendor.

Now, Republicans are claiming that this system had allegedly switched 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden, and that Dominion also deleted 2.7 million Trump votes, including a million Trump votes in Pennsylvania alone. only it turns out that the source for this claim was an anonymous poster on a pro-Trump web forum called The Donald. That was picked up by the Gateway Pundit,

which was picked up by OAN, which was repeated by Trump. That is the problem with a right-wing media feedback loop where literally nothing is vetted. It's just unfettered bullshit that fails all the way to the top. So no, as much as this is the perfect amount of obscure and nefarious for right-wing media, there is no dominion voting conspiracy against Donald Trump. Finally, here's my favorite one, this idea that dead people are voting.

One particular claim was that thousands of people born on January 1, 1900, cast ballots, suggesting that either a bunch of 120-year-olds went to the polls this year or that the names of dead people were being used to cast ballots. But it turns out that when a system is transferred from analog to digital,

the default input for a birthday is, you guessed it, 1100 or January 1st, 1900, which might suggest that a person is 120 years old. It is a clerical error, not evidence of widespread voter fraud. There was a claim from Wayne County, Michigan, that 14,000 dead people voted, only for most of those people, while some might be on the rolls. There was no evidence that any ballots were cast or even received. So again, just a baseless conspiracy theory,

especially considering that Michigan checks ballots against death records, specifically so that any ballots cast by those who've died are not counted. But here's my favorite one, and it's evidence of that exact right-wing feedback loop I was just talking about. So Tucker Carlson, the most watched host on Fox News, went on air and parroted this exact conspiracy, claiming that a World War II veteran named James Blaylock voted in Georgia, even though he passed away in 2006. Here's Tucker's bombshell investigative reporting piece. Mr. Blaylock was a mailman for 33 years until he passed away in.

2006. Fourteen years later, according to state records, he was still mailing things. James Blaylock cast a ballot in last week's election. Only, not so much, because James Blaylock didn't vote, his wife did, using her married name, Mrs. James Blaylock. He's not voted. He didn't vote. It was you. It was me. President of the United States was accusing you of voter fraud, essentially. Oh, I know it. And I knew it wasn't fraud. Is there anything you'd like people to know about your husband?

Because I'm sure he's dearly missed. Best man I have a new. Best one to me. I couldn't have had a better one. Yeah, nothing like accusing the dead husband of a 94-year-old widow of voter fraud on national television. And then Tucker had to go on TV and issue this apology. We've got some good news tonight and an apology.

One of the people who voted in last week's election isn't dead. Now, James Blaylock is still. dead. We told you about him. But it was his wife who voted. She voted as Mrs. James Blaylock. It's old fashioned and we missed it. But let's be real here. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. And the point is that Tucker made this claim in the first place, a claim that these Republicans then repeated ad nauseum in their desperation to prove that voter fraud was real. Here is the simple truth. If there was actually evidence of fraud, the Trump campaign would have brought it to court. Period. That is their venue to prove

any of this. And yet the fact that they can't and haven't even tried is all the proof you need that this is nothing more than a purposeful disinformation campaign. It's meant to get these Trump supporters to empty their wallets, to defend Trump, to reject the legitimacy of Biden's win and ultimately his presidency, but it's all fake. They just can't fathom the reality of a post-Trump world because they've so thoroughly hitched their wagons to his. So my advice here is simple. ignore the noise. Ignore the conspiracy theories and absurd claims and bombshell reporting from OAN and Fox. The American people voted for Joe Biden. The states will certify those results and Joe Biden will take office on January 20th, 2021. And if Trump really wants to stay,

I'm sure there would be a solid 80 million Americans who would happily tune in to watch him get dragged out of the White House by the Secret Service. Next step is my interview with Tommy Vitor, where we'll talk specifically about Trump's firing of the entire Pentagon leadership and whether Trump did it to set the stage to try and steal the election. Okay, so today we have the former spokesman for Obama and the National Security Council and currently host Pod Save America and Pod Save the World. Tommy Vitor, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me.

So I did have Lovadon a few weeks ago, so lucky for you, we've exhausted the whole daylight savings time argument, so we can skip over that today. Good, thank God. I've heard it for four years. So let's jump in. We're looking at a Biden win by over 5 million votes, likely 306 electoral votes. And yet, because we live in hell, you know, this transition time is spent oscillating between temporary bouts of joy and paralyzing fear over what Trump's going to do. So I want to go over some things because the number one question I'm getting now is should we be worried? So in the last few days, there have been major shakeups with Pentagon leadership. Admittedly, this isn't my world. It's not. a lot of our world. But when we see our entire civilian leadership get purged in one fell swoop, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. So elephant in the room, and I don't know how to say this without sounding alarmist, but is there a world in which this is setting the stage for some type of

election theft or coup as far as you can tell? So here's how I'm thinking about it. I think that Donald Trump's, you know, well of bad faith is bottomless. So there is no doubt in my mind that if he could find a way to illegally keep power despite losing the election, he would. It's just, I don't know that there's any path forward for him to actually do so. Like, all the, all the worst case scenarios that people have been talking about and writing about for months about, you know, getting electors in various states to get replaced and, you know, swap them in with his supporters so that they'll actually give him the electoral

votes. Like, the deeper you dig into all those scenarios, the harder. and harder it is to actually pull off, let alone pull off in all these states, or to, like, strike enough votes so that he would actually win. So, you know, it sucks. It's unnerving. We should never have gotten here. But, like, I think people should feel good that Joe Biden will take the presidency. Now, in terms of these goons over at the Pentagon, I mean, yeah, it's very weird to decapitate your Pentagon leadership and install a bunch of people who worked for, like Devin Nunes and who are known for, you know, doing weird things with intelligence products.

Like, it's very strange and no one knows exactly what's going on. The theory that makes the most sense to me is one that suggests they're going to look at all the intel they can find at the NSA or the Department of Defense and try to declassify and push out anything that helps Trump's narrative that the Russian investigation was a hoax. It's just like it's that petty. Right. So basically what that would mean is that he's, he's spending this time, you know, trying to disprove the Mueller probe, which would mean he's basically trying to relitigate 2016 despite having lost in 2020. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. It's wild. Yeah. I mean, it just goes, it just goes to show the extent to which, you know, he's driven by his own ego, that this is what he's doing in his final days of his presidency. Yeah. And it's not like there's anything else going on, right? It's not like 140,000. people got COVID yesterday. I mean, there's a lot of things he should be focused on.

There's a lot of reasons delaying the transition is dangerous. There's national security ones. But then there's just the fact that it's great. Everyone was elated when we heard this news that Pfizer's vaccine is working. I want the Trump and Biden transition teams working hand in gloves to make sure that we all can get that thing distributed as fast as possible, you know? And yet we're just pulling this nonsense. Yeah. Another theory that's come up kind of revolves around this idea of troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, you know, that he's installing these people so that he'll be able to pull troops out. But like, am I so cynical that I can't imagine that Trump is actually just legacy building during this lame duck session? Like, everything he does is transactional. So how does this

help him? Yeah, it's very strange. I mean, he had four years to get all our troops out of Afghanistan. In reality, despite claiming he was ending these wars, he sent more over there a couple of times. And, you know, the security situation is not good. I'm very much in favor of getting all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. It's just that if you have some precipitous withdrawal over the course of a month of like four or five thousand guys, what is that going to do to the people who are counting on them for security? It just feels like a horribly cruel, dangerous thing to do to a country that suffered two decades

of war. Like that said, long term, like I want to see them come. come home as well. Right. So moving over to the race, Trump's obviously refused to concede the race, which should surprise exactly no one. But more broadly, by refusing to allow Biden to start his transition, what impacts does this have both regarding national security and otherwise on the American people? So on the national security side, like there's some simple things like Biden hasn't gotten access to the presidential daily briefing, the PDB, which would just give him a lay of the land about sort of the threats the country faces and then help them prepare for those.

So it's a big deal. Be the first person to read the PDB in about four years. That was my response too. It's like, hey, man, at least somebody's going to read it. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Right? And then the other piece of this, though, is, you know, like in the intelligence side of the house, everything is classified.

Like the CIA budget, the intelligence budgets are all classified. There's all these covert action programs that you have to get briefed up on and you have to decide like if you're going to keep this thing going or not. And so by refusing to give Biden's team access to classified information or facilities, they can't begin that process. They can't start planning. They can't go over to the CIA or the DNI's office and have meetings and get briefed out by those folks. And that's just going to slow everything down. Like a normal transition team, you end up sending over two, three, four people, you call them basically landing teams who just park in these agencies, whether it's the State Department or DOD or the Intel side. And they work

out of there for several months and kind of like help you get briefed up as an incoming transition and plan what you're going to do. And he's just robbing Biden of all that time. Yeah. And does that, does that kind of expose us to any, any risk in the meantime? You know, like I know that there were there were some reports that, you know, Bush hadn't been able to install his, his transition teams prior to, you know, in time, basically? Yeah. I mean, I think in the 9-11 commission report, they noted that Bush didn't really have his full national security team

up at running for six months, which delayed everything they wanted to do. And some people pointed to the recount as being one of the reasons why. I think in the wake of that, there were some reforms that mandated certain deadlines for transition planning and preparation that started like in May, and then September of this past year. And so some of the work has been done, but like, you know, the clock is ticking, you know,

you got to hire like thousands and thousands of people the next few months. And he's, you know, sucking away that time. Yeah. I mean, luckily, you know, if anybody is prepared, I think it's Joe Biden who obviously came from the last administration for sure as vice president and then, and then his new chief of staff Ron and Clayne. So I think we're in good hands, especially given the obstacles that have been, you know, erected.

Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. I mean, like, they'll figure it out. They'll catch up. It's just, it really is irresponsible and shitty. So I'm sorry to drag you into this debate, but I do want to ask what your take is on the whole, what went wrong in the House races, you know, on the rhetoric that was used, the whole AOC versus Connor Lamb. So, so pick aside, Tommy, and alienate half the party. Yeah, right.

Let's fight it out. I mean, here's my take on it. I get the frustration on both sides. That said, like, okay, let's say for a second that AOC didn't support defund the police, right? And Connor Lamb won that argument. There's still going to be a bunch of activists who wanted to fund the police. There's still going to be a bunch of activists who want to abolish ICE. And the Trump campaign was like plucking out random tweets from people and putting them in TV ads, right?

People that were in no way associated with the Biden campaign. Right. People are just going to do that in the next campaign about whatever the controversy. issue is. So I think the debate has to not be about telling someone what to believe or what they can talk about. I don't think AOC can tell Conor Lamb how to run in his district. I don't think Connor Lamb can tell AOC what to believe in or support. It's about winning and finding a way to fight the disinformation and the lies that we all know are going to come. And so I think like I think any after action report on this campaign is going to take some time. We need to see the exit polls once

they're reweighted and they're fixed and they're compared to the actual voter data and any you know sort of snap determinations about what happened are probably just going to be wrong in six months when we see the final like you know actual like precinct level data for about who voted what way um but you know it just feels like a little too much jockeying for me right now to sort like prove that you know i've been right all along you know yeah i mean but to your point though Pete Buttigieg said it best, I think, during the primary season is he basically said they're going to call a socialist regardless of what we do. So we might as well do what's right. And this is the same instance where we can, you know, if we can basically allow the right

to dictate the terms of the conversation and to say like, okay, well, we won't say this. We won't say this. We won't say this. We won't say this. Because it's, we're ultimately going to get vilified on Fox News. But regardless of what we say, even if it means they can pluck out one tweet from one random Twitter account that has six followers, and that's going to be, you know, a half hour segment on Hannity. So at the end of the day, you know, we just have to kind of do what's right. Yeah. I think to do what's right. But I also think like, you know, we can frame things in smart ways and less smart ways, right? Like I agree with a lot of the policies put forward by the Democratic Socialists, the DSA crew. What I would tell them, though, is why take a bunch of

very popular sort of like FDR New Deal policies and then give them a label socialism that we know is going to turn off a bunch of people? Why not just describe what we're going to do for people and how we're going to help them in their lives and not label ourselves socialist or progressive or conservative or moderate, right? And like that that's sort of like some of the branding advice I might give some of these guys. I mean, something we've seen is like, you know, Republicans have terrible policies, but they have a messaging apparatus that's second to none because they obviously have, you know, Fox News, which is accountable to nothing and no one all the way down to, you know, their internet personalities and their politicians and the whole thing is

just kind of, you know, it's easier to message when, uh, when you don't have to worry about the burden of telling the truth, you know. You have Fox News and you can just kind of run wild and say whatever you want. Yeah. Also, you know, most importantly for these races that are coming up, my inclination in, in the Georgia runoff is just to, to kind of let Stacey Abrams and the Georgia folks steer the ship. So I think that's a good segue into these runoffs. So we obviously have these two runoffs coming up in Georgia without the Senate, just to kind of to highlight what's at stake here. Without the Senate, I know what's off the table. And that would be voting rights legislation, climate change legislation, $15 minimum wage, codifying row, expanding the court. What would be on the

table? So if we don't get the Senate, I mean, what will be on the table is, you know, they will have to be a budget passed once a year. And you can see what you can attach to that somehow or work with Pelosi and her team to sort of get things through, attached to sort of must pass funding legislation. But a lot of it will be executive actions. So that can come in the form of executive orders. Some of them are simple. You can say you can reverse the Muslim ban on day one, right? Like you can permanently end family separation.

But then, you know, Joe Biden will be able to use the power of the purchasing power of the executive branch to really incentivize, let's say, the purchase and use of electric vehicles to try to sort of help with climate change. You know, there's a lot of things you can do that way in terms of your budgeting and executive actions that will be powerful and important. But, man, if we can get those two Senate seats, it will be a game changer. Yeah, so let's talk about those Senate seats. So tell us about Vote Save America's adopt a state program for Georgia. Yeah, so listen, like the Senate's 5048 right now in terms of Republicans heading into these

runoffs. If we win both those seats, Vice President Kamala Harris will be able to serve as a tie-breaking vote in her role as president of the Senate. And so they're super tight. Senator David Purdue, Senator Kelly Loughler, they are currently running a bit ahead of John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. They're challengers. But like these runoff elections are often about how motivated your basis. And so what we're trying to do is help folks who don't live in. Georgia, go to vote saveamerica.com slash Georgia. You can sign up and we will email you ways to help out organizers on the ground. Like we just flipped this date for Biden and Harris and we think that we can help finish it out. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, you know, if we ever needed

any indication that we can win in Georgia, just look at the fact that we just won in Georgia. I mean, you know, this presidential election is a testament to the fact that that Georgia can absolutely be a blue state. Yeah, absolutely. And we can organize it for this runoff and then we can organize it again for the long term and just build on the work that Stacey Abrams and all these great groups have been doing. And so, you know, like a piece of this will be like if you have 10 bucks that you can spare. I know it's been a long election. We've been asking people to give money everywhere. If you go to our Votesave America page, we can vote save america.com slash get Mitch. That will allow you to donate 10 bucks and it'll automatically split to the

Warnock and Ossoff campaigns. But then on top of of that, we're going to help folks find volunteer opportunities both directly with the campaigns, but then also outside groups that are doing work on the ground that are just been incredibly impactful. So again, if you're looking to donate, Votesaveamerica.com slash get Mitch, and also if you're looking to adopt a state in Georgia, Votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia. Exactly. Tommy, can you tell us a little bit about what Votesave America was able to accomplish the last time around? Yeah, so look, I'm incredibly proud of the work we did, of the community of our team.

You know, we created this program where you could adopt one of six swing states and get trained to be a digital organizer. And so if you lived in California, you could adopt Arizona and you could make calls, you could text bank, you could do all sorts of things to help them, help them win. And, you know, look, when we designed it, we thought it would be really cool to have like 10,000, 20,000 people sign up. we ended up having 300,000 just like overwhelming and those amazing people i literally just got off a zoom with about a dozen of them um they made like seven or eight million calls uh they sent six or seven million texts i mean like that people you know hundreds of thousands of people used our tool to either get registered or um or or find out if they're registered uh people rate uh the the community raised

$42 million for Senate candidates and other political causes. So it was really impactful stuff. It was just, you know, it was a reminder to me of the power of community and activism and people sort of coming together and realizing that, you know what, like there's more of us than there are of them. And if we do the work together, if we approach it with joy, if we see hope and opportunity out there and not like, you know, be fearful of what Donald Trump can do, we can win. in. And so it was really affirming. It was really exciting. It was just a lot of fun to be a part of.

So if folks are looking for some way to chip in, if they want to meet people, if they want to, you know, feel like you're a part of something bigger, I highly, highly recommend it. That's really well said. Well, Tommy, thank you so much for giving us the time. And, you know, good luck in everything you're doing for these Georgia races and we'll be with you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And thanks to all your listeners for caring about this stuff. again to Tommy Vitor. Again, check out VotSaveamerica.com slash Georgia

and Votesaveamerica.com slash get Mitch to get involved in these upcoming Georgia Senate races. I'll put links in the episode notes. It is all hands on deck. So if you have the time or money, please help out. We've come this far, just a little bit farther. That's it for this episode. 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 in 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.