Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - BONUS: Wait Wait DNC Dispatch #1

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Your friends at Wait Wait head over to the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago to cover whatever's left over after the real reporters take care of the actual news.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I'm Ian Chilag. I'm a producer on the show. Hi, I'm Emma Choi. I'm also a producer on the show. And I am Hi, I'm Emma Choi. I'm also a producer on the show. And I am Peter Sagala, who is usually not trusted to produce anything. True. Ian Chilag. Emma and I are from out of town. We all arrived here barely in time for the day one gavel drop. There were a number of travel snafus. I'm gonna bring up some tape

here. This is Emma talking to the person next to her on her flight from Boston. What's going on? Well, we're on the plane and we've already had a few delays when we were leaving Boston, but now we were just told that we cannot land because there are politicians coming into the city for the DNC. So we're just circling around like Michigan, it looks like. But yeah, he said basically that we can't do anything about it and we're stuck up here. Am I, can you tell us what, how did you on the plane become aware of the situation that that's why you were, were circling?

Because the pilot came onto the intercom thing and I was expecting him to be like, we're landing now in Chicago. But he said, so the DNC is this week, folks, and just want to let you know that we're holding because there are some politicians planes in the area who are corrupting the airspace. So we'll be holding for about 20, 30 minutes. And the whole plane went, oh boy. Is that the technical term for it, corrupting the airspace? I will never forget that phrase.

That's what he said and I've never heard that phrase before. You know, I'm going to look up here. Corrupting the airspace. The next time we go through turbulence, I want the pilot to say, sorry, we had some corrupt airspace. So I'm Googling if this is an air traffic control term. It's not. Okay.

Okay. Damn it. You guys just got jiggy with it. It just went crazy. That's so funny. So we finally, we've made it here. We're so excited. We go over to the United Center and we get to the line. That was amazing.

It was the longest line I think I've ever been in. It's a really long line. It's a very long line. And it's one of those long lines where we can at least be grateful. 13 minutes 55 seconds or more. 13 minutes and 55 seconds. Wow. But it's important to note that as long as the line is, people behind us will be waiting

even longer. We're not even, we haven't made a lot of progress. How long have we been in this line? 26 minutes. 26 minutes 10 seconds. We have moved and we can see up ahead where the line... What if the line... What if we get to the end of the line and it's just the back of the line?

That can't be it. 32 minutes. 32 minutes. So the first straightaway took us 32 minutes. It's a beeper time. It's become a thing, by the way. Many, many reporters from the convention started by talking about the line, the daily. It was a crazy line because we didn't know where it ended. I mean, so we heard some people were saying that the line was long because

there was a protest blocking one of the other entrances. So everybody was sent to one place and that was the problem. It just seemed kind of disorganized. They were kind of rushed for this DNC. You know, they changed out the candidate a month ago. I read that the platform, the Democratic Party platform, which they released on Sunday night, it mentioned a second term for President Biden 19 times. Oh, fighting replace, It's not that hard. Gosh. That's proofreading, ladies and gentlemen.

Damn. It's so important, especially in contemporary American politics. It also predicted Australia would dominate the women's breakdancing competition at the end of the day. And that's true. These are easy mistakes to fix. I understand. It's just looking at the odds going in, you know.

I mean, she was a professor of break dancing. It turns out this is that the other story coming out of the big night, the first night is how long it went. It went so long, as it turns out, I had this strangely relevant conversation earlier in the day. There's a guy named Jeff Nussbaum. Jeff is a long-term political speechwriter who had worked for Democratic politicians for every convention from 2000 through the last one, which of course was a virtual convention. I asked him about preparing the speakers and I found out, and this isn't a surprise when you think about it, the VIPs, the big names, like Hillary Clinton or President Biden on the first night, they get to do whatever they want. It's the mid-level

politicians. And the biggest problem with them is keeping them to time. And he told me about like how much of a struggle that is. That's where you run into folks who will say, this isn't me or I'm not doing this or I can't do this and then you find yourself in a position where you beg and then you plead and then you escalate and then you bribe and then you threaten and the bribe is you can have one more minute and the threat is okay do what you want you're to do it at 5 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. Oh. So I know I would never have imagined that there was like negotiation down to the last

minute. Yeah. And apparently, some people resist. He told me this story about how I think it was in 2006 when he was working that convention, Al Sharpton went through the whole process, and he gets up on live TV at the convention and he pulls out a completely different speech from his pocket. Just like totally cool. Like now I'm here, you can't stop me. And I noticed last night, Sean Fain was reading from a piece of paper. Did he do the same thing? Yeah. I thought he was, I read that as just like,

man of the people, I'm not using a teleprompter, I'm using my note cards. Yeah, but we can see the teleprompter too. And he was, I mean, he said everything on the teleprompter. I was really, and Emma, you were probably annoyed by me because when we were watching Hillary Clinton's speech, where we were sitting, like you said, we could see the teleprompter,

and you could see the little edits Hillary Clinton was making in the speech. Emma Cieslik-Siehapen Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jared Slauson And they were tiny things. Like, so there had been this thing a few minutes before where we heard about Kamala Harris's mother and someone had said, you know, I wish she was here to see what's happening. And in Hillary Clinton's speech, which was, you know, I wish she was here to see what's happening. And in Hillary Clinton's speech, which was, you know, we could see on the teleprompter, there was a line that she had written earlier or her speechwriter had written earlier about wishing her mother could see her now. You could see that line and she changed it to,

I wish my mother could see me now and I wish Kamala Harris's mother could see me now. I'm paraphrasing. But like she just, she's sort of like, okay, I have a little callback that just happened five minutes ago. And me as somebody who writes things that you, Peter, read sometimes, and writes my own things. It was really, I really loved seeing those little edits. And I was elbowing Emma every time, did you see? She says they instead of them. And I was so excited about it. But that's the thing I learned the most last evening too is the difference between a politician and a really great speaker.

Because there's some people like AOC, Hillary, like electrified the cloud. And like I was like, it was like, how many people were in that room? Like tens of thousands of people. Yeah. It was incredible. And then my favorite woman of the night was a book report lady with the huge, first of all, to bind a copy of anything is to glorify it a little bit. She didn't have to bind it that nicely.

This was a giant bound copy of Project 2025. It's the kind of book that Gandalf would open and blow dust off to find the Lord of the Ring. ["The Lord of the Rings Theme"] My other favorite part of the night was, I think, more fun than the candidates and the people on stage were the people at the convention that were so freaking weird and awesome and specific. Like, we met so many cool people. Ian, I mean, for example, we were just walking

through the hallway finding our way in, and Ian, you found this guy who was who was quite dressed up Hey, what's your name? Hey, my name is Angelo. And where you from Angelo? I'm one of the delegates from Northern Mariana Islands Okay, and can you tell me about this outfit? I'm dressed like where's Waldo because Why should every conference should have a Waldo in the audience? Am I right? Basically, we're at DemCon, right? I mean, it's like I go to conference, like I'm sitting in big conference rooms, it's like celebrities are walking around,

I'm taking selfies with people. It's like a comic book conference, but for politics. He was from the Northern Mariana Islands, and the newest US territory, but like he flew such a long time to be here, that's crazy. And he had more costumes planned for the rest of the week. Yeah. Yeah. He said this was like the least, least exciting of his outfit. You should try to find him every night. Where are the Northern

Mariana Islands on the floor? He said he had a coconut tree costume for tonight. Yeah. Really? Yeah. That's what he said. Oh, I missed that. Yeah. Yeah. I was so, so excited. This is such a good idea because if you're there and you're a delegate, your friends are at home watching on C-SPAN or whatever to try and see you. And you're like, you know what? I'm going to dress as Waldo. I was on a group chat with my family. And I was like, I just talked to this guy who's dressed as Waldo. And my wife, Emily, five minutes later,

screams to the group text, I saw it when I saw it, and he answered the question of where he was. I think that's so exciting. People's fashion choices, it's so interesting. There's different people, people chose business, like people weren't wearing suits, people chose comfort, like we were wearing sneakers,

and then there are people there to be looked at, wearing like heels, wearing like tights tight Tight stuff. How is that? That was an amazing person We saw just me rocking in who had that perfect Kellyanne Conway costume Yeah, we did see our first celebrity sighting was Kellyanne Conway. That was her. Oh that She was being escorted I don't know she was walking out with a coterie of people. And it occurred to me later, was she being escorted out? No.

I don't know. I think it was her producers. I think she was there for something. Yeah, she was chatting amicably with the person next door so she wasn't complaining. And it is true that all the, I thought this was kind of cool, that the big networks all have what I guess are normally luxury boxes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where people pay big money to sit and watch concerts or sporting events and they all have their, you know,

their logos out. And so they're like Fox News is twice as big as everybody else. NPR has a standing desk. Yes. NPR has what they call an Apple box. It's just a small wooden box that you can sit on. They were swapping back and forth. No, NPR is up in the radio area. Apparently another thing the press is complaining about in addition to the lines are the poor facilities. And they're saying the RNC did this better. Let me say, but I... Because we should wrap up and get back in there. Right. The facilities, I think Emma found the best part of the Democratic National Convention. Do you want to talk about the pub that you found? Oh, my God.

So, you know, it's in the United Center where the Bulls play basketball. And so there are, you know, there are all these little areas and concession stands. Excuse me. Hi. Is this a bar only for mayors? Yes. It's called the Mayor's Pub. I love mayors.

It's only for mayors. There's a thing called the Democratic Mayors Association. There is a bouncer. There's a bouncer. There's two bouncers. Who'd you have to see if you were a mayor? If you were a mayor, yeah. Do you have to have like a sash and top hat like on a Paw Patrol?

We couldn't get in, none of us being mayors. Yeah. This is the most exclusive club in America. It's not just who you know in there. You have to be elected by general election to get into this pub. I love the idea that tonight, after his speech, former president Barack Obama will need a beer, will head up to the mayor's pub and then will say,

sorry sir. Sorry sir. Have you ever been or will be a mayor? I was a community organizer. I'm sorry, this is the mayor's pub. I was president, sorry you overshot it. You have to just get it exactly right. The mayor's pub, it's pretty cool.

I want to get in so bad. Well, presumably the mayors can bring a plus one, right? It's for mayors and their guests, so my one goal for this convention is find a mayor, become their friend, and get into the mayor's pub. They'll be there all week. Let's make that our goal. So we're going to head back into the convention and try to get into the mayor's pub.

We have a couple more days of this. Another question I want to answer, how do you prove you're a mayor? You get a special ID, that's like a golden ID. Yeah, a badge. Do mayors get a badge? You have like the key to the city that you hold onto before you present it to people? That's collateral.

Yeah. Oh my God. All right, well these are questions we're gonna answer. We're so excited to spend a little more time at the DNC meeting these dignitaries and weirdos that make our country great. I'm gonna call that a sign off. I would just go far as to say is they make our country.

Okay. Okay, thank you all. Thanks for sitting through this. Peter, Emma, Godspeed. USA, USA. On the TED Radio Hour, legendary soccer player Abbie Wambach remembers exactly what was going on in her mind at a crucial moment during the 2011 World Cup. As soon as the ball came off of her foot, I knew that that ball was coming to my head. The only thing in my mind was don't screw this up. How to apply sports psychology to everyday life on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.