What A Day - Performance Enhancing Debates

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Tonight is the first of three debates between Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump. The debate will cover six major topics, which include the economy, the pandemic, and the integrity of the election, but notably, not the environment. We discuss what else to expect and how this debate could affect the election. Reports have revealed a strategy that the Trump campaigned allegedly used in 2016 to suppress Black voters by convincing them not to vote. The campaign sorted 3.5 million Black Americans into a category labelled “deterrence,” then targeted them with Facebook videos meant to cause cynicism and disaffection. And in headlines: the global coronavirus death toll passes 1 million, Uber wins back its license to operate in London, and a small village in Romania re-elects their deceased mayor.Show Links:"Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 2016"https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016

it's tuesday september 29th i'm akilah hughes and i'm gideon resnick and this is what a day where we're offering to pay trump's taxes for the year if they are less than or equal to zero dollars actually i want to rescind that i don't want to i don't want to give him zero dollars even can i give him like negative five dollars can he he pay me? I think that's only fair. On today's show, a new investigation into suppression tactics from the 2016 Trump campaign, then some headlines. But first, the latest. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. And why is that so? Because not a single thing he said is accurate.

That was Vice President Joe Biden in the 2012 vice presidential debate against Congressman Paul Ryan, who, of course, was Mitt Romney's VP choice in that election. Eight years later, Biden is set to debate President Trump tonight in the first of three debates that will take place before the election. The first one is in Cleveland, Ohio. And before we get into the topic areas, I want to talk about how this debate, like everything else this year, is going to be kind of weird and different because of COVID. Yeah, we got a pandemic debate preview during the primaries. There was that famous elbow bump between Biden and Sanders in their final debate in March.

And there's some reporting about how tonight's debate is going to have some similar odd COVID vibes. So according to a CNN report, Biden and Trump are not expected to shake hands with each other or the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News. They are also not going to wear masks once they're in and at their podiums, TBD on how they're actually going to walk in. And as for the audience that's there, the people attending a Case Western Reserve University are all going to be tested for COVID-19. The Commission on Presidential Debates estimates that about 60 to 70 people are going to be there instead of a typical audience, which can be in the hundreds. And then on the topics, there are six major ones that were announced to be covered over the 90 minutes. No commercial breaks. So make sure the performance

enhancing drugs that you are taking at home are good and keep you focused. But the topics include the economy, the pandemic, the records of the candidates, the Supreme Court, the quote, integrity of the election and quote, race and violence in our cities. So that last topic got a lot of criticism for obvious reasons, a kind of Trumpian framing of the issue. Yeah, you know, it's not like black Americans are affected by COVID-19 or the economy, just crime. And, you know, I could be wrong, but I doubt that when they mention race that they're going to be talking about white people, since politically speaking,

white people don't have to acknowledge how their race has affected their lives. So, awesome. Yeah, and in addition to all of that, there will undoubtedly be questions about the Trump tax return story and presumably Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination. Yeah, so one of the topics that's missing from this list,

but hopefully will get discussed, is climate change. We've been talking pretty extensively about the devastating wildfires over here on the West Coast, and it's getting bad again this week. Yeah, so we're already in the midst of this historic wildfire season, and there are at least two fires that are raging in Northern California at the moment. Those two alone have prompted thousands to evacuate in the areas around Napa and Sonoma, and among the evacuations was a hospital in Napa County and a senior home in Sonoma County. And the National Weather Service placed the Bay Area under a, quote, red flag warning that extended through last night, warning of drier and windier weather. And so far this year, more than 25 people have died in fires up and down the West Coast,

with more than five million acres burned and millions of people in Washington, California and Oregon experiencing terrible air quality. And the severity is definitely being exacerbated by climate change. In a study cited by the Washington Post and published in August, researchers found that the number of fall days in California with extreme conditions for fires has more than doubled since the 1980s. And fires, of course, are just one small slice of the global impact of a warming planet. It's also an issue Biden can and should discuss tonight. Yeah, I hope he does. But back to the debate.

So both of these candidates have done a ton of debates. We haven't seen them together on stage yet this cycle, though. So what's our sense of how this dynamic is going to go? Is he going to stalk Biden across the stage? What are we expecting here? It's that or a push-up contest or both. This fight. Yeah, you know, a bloody brawl. But I'm sure we're going to get the, you know, mile a minute lying from Trump, which is typical. But I think compared to other debates that Trump's

been in, this is actually the first time in this particular context that he has to defend what he's done and hasn't done. So it's not really a given that he can just insult his way through it. I also think that there have been some indications that Biden is more comfortable in a one-on-one debate setting as opposed to the larger earlier Democratic primary debates where he often stumbled. And for quite a while too, as with the lead up to the DNC, Trump and his allies have tended to downplay Biden's abilities. And so in some senses, the performance bar has been lowered. Again, that isn't the most important thing that we're going to get out of this, but I know that that's what some people are going to be looking for. And also, sometimes we talk about these things as if they're going to impact an election at a later date, but the

election is happening right now. According to data from the U.S. Elections Project, over a million people have already voted in the small share of states that have begun early voting, and over 64 million ballots have been requested so far. So is someone going to watch this tonight and make up their mind after? Sure. But it's hard to say how widespread that is. Right. And there's been some recent polling that suggests it's not a majority of people. Yeah. I mean, it's just one poll. So caveat there. But a Wall Street Journal NBC News poll found that more than 70 percent of people surveyed said that the debates won't matter much to them in terms of making their decision this year. That includes 44% who said that they will not matter at all in making their choice, which is a record high in the past 20

years. And it adds to the evidence that we have so far in polling that this presidential race is relatively stable with Biden maintaining around the same size lead for months, despite all the insane things our country has seen and experienced during Trump's presidency. Also, that there are seemingly fewer undecided voters than last election at this point in the race, with less of a presence of third-party candidates. But looking back, too, it's not really clear that debates determine how voters select their candidates anyway. In 2016, for instance, Pew found that only 10% of voters

said they had made up their minds during or just after the debates. So we'll obviously be following along tonight after our drug tests come back, and you can watch along with Cricket at cricket.com slash debate. But let's shift gears for now to some current major investigations. Yeah. So on yesterday's show, we went long on the damning tax story from The New York Times regarding Donald Trump. Well, we finally have a sense of what Republicans are saying since the scandal was unleashed. Here's a clip.

Wow. Yikes. So as of yesterday, spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and most of the other high-ranking Republican senators had declined to comment entirely. Marco Rubio posted an irrelevant scripture from the Bible on Twitter. Ted Cruz mentioned Hunter Biden on Twitter and then went on a few TV shows to promote his sure to be terrible book. Lindsey Graham's Twitter account offered no further analysis. So you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the GOP is still working out whatever spinny talking points that they're going to have. And my guess is that they won't say anything until after the debate. But let's talk about another investigation today. News 4 in the UK revealed an alleged strategy from the Trump campaign in 2016 to actively suppress Black voters by convincing them not to vote.

It is still developing, but the reporting is in line with what I've seen anecdotally in my own interactions with bots online. Yeah, that's right. So what exactly is going on here? All right. So according to the report, nearly 3.5 million Black Americans were listed as, quote, deterrence or voters that the Trump campaign had hoped would sit out Election Day, that the campaign targeted directly on apps like Facebook with misinformation and memes designed to make them lose interest in voting. One example involves spending $55,000 on Facebook ads targeting Black voters with the now infamous clip of Clinton using the term super predators.

And this isn't to say that she didn't say that, but they were sending it to Black people not to encourage them to vote for Trump, but to get them to not support Clinton. Civil rights groups are calling for Facebook to disclose ads and targeting data to the public. Facebook so far will not say how many or which ads were used at the time. The scope of this, though, is also about as damning as the tax story. Nearly five terabytes of data were leaked, making it one of the biggest leaks in history. It's a massive voter database of 198 million people with their demo data and segmented into categories, one of them being deterrence,

which was disproportionately made up of Black people. According to the report, in Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the deterrence category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population, but were 46% of deterrence. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population, but made up 17% of deterrence. And this is fascinating because while all of this still needs further reporting, and there's not a great way to know just how effective this particular suppression tactic was, the 2016 campaign preceded the first fall in Black voter turnout in 20 years and allowed Donald Trump to take shock victories in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan by crazy thin margins.

Yeah, if it wasn't this suppression tactic, then it was this and all the others combined. Right. Well, the effort is also said to have been, not shockingly at all, devised in part by Cambridge Analytica, the notorious election consultant that had to stop trading last year following those revelations that the company had accessed tens of millions of Facebook profiles without being granted access and used our data to win elections around the world. The Trump campaign called the report fake news, and an aide who handled the data in 2016 said the material went unused by the campaign. So they just have that information for fun. Anyway, we're going to keep an eye on this story, but that's the latest for now.

It's Tuesday WOD Squad, and for today's Temempt Check, we're talking about a recently unearthed piece of music history. It's a mid-90s grunge album called Somebody's Ugly Daughter by the band Chick, which Mariah Carey just revealed she sang background vocals on. Here's a clip so you know what that sounds like. I am locked inside a closet I am living in love with Mariah Carey now. So Giddy, we've heard Mariah Carey's take on alternative rock, but what other pop stars are you hoping have a secret nirvana adjacent side project I would love to hear Ariana Grande have something like this I feel like

the vocals could potentially translate there um not to I would never try to compare the two I think that that would just get me in trouble with basically every fandom that exists. But yeah, I mean, this was great. And I think that it just like opens, it's like hearing like a kind of music for the first time where you're like, oh my God, that person can do that as well. Like that's, it just opens so many possibilities. I would love everybody to try it. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I was reading what Mariah Carey had to say about it and she was, you know, basically just saying that she really admired all of those grunge artists, and especially like the girl bands of the 90s, who felt so free and like, could, you know, just like do the thing and say the things they wanted to say in the music instead of making pop music. So yeah, I feel like Ariana says what she wants to say now, but I'd like to hear it. It would be cool. Yeah, you know, like a little like red jumpsuit apparatus type vibe taking back Sunday type vibe. It's not exactly grunge,

but it's the closest, I guess, we came during our time coming up. But anyway, okay, same question for you, Akilah. What do you want to hear a pop star do with a side project like this? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think, you know, in my mind, Adele or like, would I feel like her voice is also really great. But she also kind of has this like scratchy tonality that could

be really good for like, kind of droning and yelling. So I would be interested. And I also think that she has like the right feelings for grunge music, where like, I think in her pop music, she's very overt about like heartbreak and love. but like here she could be like a little more reserved in her, like, you know, judgment of her relationships and talk about how things matter or don't. I don't know. Also, I, I'll just never get over that band two knots picture. So I think that like her wearing flannel with the band two knots on the cover is a, is a really good look. That needs to be the first concert that I see after the pandemic is her doing that band in that outfit. I think that would that would make it maybe worth it. Yeah, a million percent. Well, just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe, Ariana Grande and Adele, if you're listening,

maybe make a grunge album. And we'll be back with another tip check tomorrow. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Some updates on COVID-19 around the world and at home. The global death toll passed one million yesterday, just 10 months since the first outbreak in Wuhan, China. Health experts say that might also be a severe undercount of the actual number. New hotspots are growing in smaller countries like Israel, whose numbers have been rapidly climbing in recent days. India continues to struggle to contain the outbreak, surpassing six million confirmed cases over the weekend. The U.S. reached seven million reported cases over the weekend as well. In Europe, Britain, France,

and Spain are all experiencing second waves as they reopen businesses and schools for the fall. Republicans continue working around the clock to prevent people from voting by mail in the upcoming election. In Wisconsin, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked an extension for counting mail-in ballots on Sunday. That extension was granted last week by a district judge who sided with the DNC and state Democrats to extend the due date for mail-in ballots by six days, as long as those ballots were postmarked by Election Day. Democrats had cited a potential surge in mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 and postal service delays as reasons for seeking the extension. In Pennsylvania, Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a ruling that extended the deadline to count and receive mail ballots for three days after Election Day.

The state Supreme Court there decided earlier this month that an extension was necessary. A reminder that you can find all the information you need to vote along with deadlines at VoteSaveAmerica.com. Uber won back its license to operate in London yesterday, just under a year after they lost it because regulators found thousands of incidences of unauthorized drivers picking up riders with the app. The judge that ruled to restore Uber's license said the company had overcome its, quote, historical failings and was now, quote,

fit and proper. Not fair that Uber gets this praise because hearing a fancy London judge say these things about me would explode my self-confidence and let me coast to my full potential. Well, London is one of the biggest global markets for Uber, which has often run into trouble with its laid back, devil may care approach to following laws. The company is also fighting to overturn a 2018 British appeal court ruling that says their drivers are entitled to workers' rights like paid vacation and wages above the national minimum. As we know, workers' rights

are one of Uber's longtime pet peeves. Britain's Supreme Court is set to make a decision on that case this year. Fit and proper gov residents, that's just how they said it, residents of a village in Romania re-elected their mayor this weekend despite him having died 10 days earlier from coronavirus. Ian Alleman was a member of Romania's Social Democrat Party and was beloved in his town of 3,000 people. More than 1,000 of those residents

cast their ballot for him on Sunday in a symbolic show of support. It's a really kind gesture, but it also robs Mayor Alamon of the best part about not being alive, which is you don't have to go to work anymore. All the other ghosts get to fly around, knocking pots off shelves, and this man's ghost has to spend his afterlife running meetings for the city council.

Alamon's party lost the most closely watched race in this weekend's elections. The Social Democrat mayor of Romania's capital, Bucharest, was unseated by a candidate from the center-right National Liberal Party. Wow. Well, those are the headlines. Quick correction before we go. So yesterday we said that Les Mis takes place during the French Revolution. A lot of people didn't like that because it actually takes place during the Paris Uprising of 1832.

So thank you all you history buffs who wrote in to tell us. We try to be accurate on the show and I apologize. That's all for today. If you like this show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Let us rest when we leave this mortal plane and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just Mariah Carey's alt-rock lyrics like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And remember that you are

fit and proper. Beautiful. Wow. I tried to do it too. We sounded terrible. I think it works. I think people, people get the vibe. They like the vibe. What a Day is a Crooked Media production. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.