These American Lies

I said, of course, I know your name. Don't be silly. In reality, I have no idea what my doorman's name is. I think it's something Italian like Credenza or Gabba gool. So I lied to him. Today's show is about lies. People lie about all sorts of things. They lie about their age, they lie about their way, they lie about their whereabouts the night their neighbor's charcoal grill went missing. But some people lie more often than others. One of those people is the President, and we're gonna look at

one of his biggest whoppers. The three to five million people voted illegally in the two thousand sixteen election. From w TDS in New York. I'm Michael Costa and Credenza. If you're listening, I apologize for not knowing your name, buddy. You're listening to The Daily Show presents These American Lies. Part one? What's three to five million illegal voters? Among friends? I'm here with producer Desi Lyric Desi. It's been a while. I saw you on Saturday. You crashed your car into

my mailbox. So you're here to talk about the voter fraud lie? Right? The lie this week is that three to five million people voted illegally in the election. Wait, what do people know about at this No, it's a lie. Cost overrun these American lies. Yeah yeah, sure, Okay, so the voter fraud lie is still important today. Republicans use

fears of voter fraud to restrict voting. We've seen it in swing states like Georgia, Virginia, and Wisconsin, where two hundred thousand people were recently purged from the voter rolls by a circuit judge. And to understand this lie, you really have to know about this guy, Donald Trump. Donald Trump has lived a pretty incredible life. He's been a real estate developer, a mail order stake salesman, a two time Emmy loser, and in twos sixteen he became the

president of the United States. It is now official Donald Trump has won the electoral College. Now, most people would be happy to win the presidency, but for Trump, winning wasn't enough. Donald Trump won with three hundred and six electoral votes, even though Hillary Clinton got nearly two and a half million more popular votes. See. Trump won the electoral college, but he lost the popular vote. So it's like he won the lottery, but only because he stole

the winning ticket from a seven eleven cashier. No, not at all. Tell me more about that. Trump won the election even though he got almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. And you gotta understand Donald Trump has a fragile ego. At his Comedy Central roast in two thousand eleven, he told the comedians who were roasting him, there was one thing they couldn't make fun of. Do you know what? That was his enormous ass, his wealth. He's got thin skin, especially when it comes to having

less than others. So rather than admit he won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Trump did what came natural to him. He told members of Congress that maybe three to five million people voted illegally in the most recent presidential election.

It's a claim the president repeated during his first official White House meeting with congressional leaders, telling them he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton only because millions of illegal aulets were cast, the same claim he made on Twitter after his win, saying I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. It's a stunning claim, right.

It's kind of like saying I wanted scrabble, but only because I kicked my opponent in the crotch. And I can do the rest of the story myself. If you just want to take off, great, I'm gonna go. Mike wave a taco. Every lie starts somewhere, and this American lie was born in one of the birthplaces of American democracy, Massachusetts. Well, I got a number I don't like. The state flower is a Duncan Donuts coffee bean, and the state song is an Irish guy puking outside of baseball stadium. And

now this state has another claim to fame. A professor whose work inadvertently ignited the voter fraud controversy. Brian shafter when the academics behind the study told CNN Trump is misinterpreting the study, calling Trump's claims absurd and not even plausible. I'm Brian Schaffner. This is Brian Schaffner. I'm a professor of political science at Toughs University. He's a professor of political science at Toughs University. Why are you repeating everything

I say? Schaffner is a smart guy, even if he doesn't know how podcasts work. I'm a principal investigator for the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which is a data set that has caused all these problems. Every election year, Schaffner's

group surveys Internet users about their political views. The survey doesn't specifically ask about voter fraud, and yet there's a question included in the survey that's not really meant to look for noncitizens, but there's response Opts in the response can select that would identify them as non citizens, and

that essentially led to this big controversy. There were over thirty responds to the survey in two thousand eight, and among that group, they're a little over three hundred who identified themselves as non citizens when they responded to this those supposed non citizens claimed avoted. So we've got this Internet survey taken in two thousand eight. Now flash forward from two thousand eights that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois

will be the next president of the United States. He defeat to two thousand fourteen year old Jeremy Meechs, also known as the hot felon, because that's when this data set evolves from a curiosity to a flaming political hot potato. This episode of These American Lies is brought to you by warby Snarker. Do you find it difficult to come up with the perfect quip when you're bantering with your friends, try warby Snarker. We send you four snappy witticisms that

you can try out at home. Only keep the ones you find clever and incisive. Whether you're at a dinner party where everyone supports Elizabeth Warren or you're discussing the new Tonaha, see coats are reticle exclusively with white people. We've got the perfect rejoinder with warby Snarker. We guarantee your friends will say, damn, now that guy has finished infinite jest, worry snarker, don't leave your brown stone without it. Hi, everyone,

we're back with part two. A rough lie, and I just wanted to say for anyone listening at home, the next part of our podcast contains severe profanity and extreme graphic descriptions of sex X what. No, it doesn't. If you're listening with your children, you better turn it off unless you want those kids to grow up fast. Okay, just ignore him. Okay. So it's two thousand fourteen. Jesse Richmond, a researcher at Old Dominion University or o d U,

comes across the survey. Richmond takes the responses to that final question about being a citizen and extrapolates that anywhere between thirty eight thousand and two point eight million non citizens voted in two thousand eight. There's only one problem with Jesse Richmond's conclusion. Jesse rich and has been dead for fifty years. Uh No. Here's Brian Shaffner revisiting his two thousand eight survey that became the basis for Richmond's work.

We did a study where we actually recontacted the people who had claimed to be non citizens, and a lot of them when we asked the same question again, changed their answer, and among the people who actually claimed to be non citizens both times we asked, none of them were voters. None of them. Brian Shaffner had renounced his

own findings, but by this time it's too late. Right wing media members are using the O d U survey to claim that voter fraud is an enormous problem, even though it's based on one studies interpretation of a flawed data set. So I guess des just one question remains right, How did this lie get to Trump? Oh? I was going to ask, is fifteen minutes in the microwave too long for a single taco? But that's good to your

Your questions, good one. So it turns out Trump may have been turned onto voter fraud in his natural Habitat a golf course. Five days after Trump's inauguration, he hosted dinner for Republicans and Democrats. He tells his guests that he would have won the popular vote if it hadn't been for the three to five million illegal votes. So, according to The New York Times, a Democrat at the dinner asked Trump, where are you getting this information? And

Trump cites a guy named Bernard Longer. Oh I loved him and dos boot. Bernard Longer as a German professional golfer. He won the Masters twice. You smile after a miss, but you can if you're Bernard Longer and my Master's champion of nineteen. He's now sixty years old. So apparently Trump went golfing with Longer sometime between Election Day sixteen and this dinner on January seventeen, and on the golf course,

Longer told Trump about his experience. On election Day in Florida, Longer went to vote and he was told that he wasn't eligible too, because he's been dead for fifty years, because he's German and not a US citizen. But Longer looked at other voters in line, who he said, looked as if they should not be allowed to vote because they've been dead for fifty No one's been dead for fifty years. No one. Boris Karloff has been dead for

fifty years. He died February second, nineteen complications from pneumonia. Boris Karloff has been dead for so Trump's got this idea in his head from Longer. People are illegally voting because this German golfer told him so, and he's upset that he didn't win more votes than Hillary. So instead of investigating this claim, instead of checking with any election officials, he just starts saying in public millions of illegal votes.

That is something that is extremely fundamental to our functioning democracy, affair and free election. You say you're going to launch an investigation. What you have presented so far has been debunked. It's been called false. Look at the report. I called the author of the Pew report last night and he told me that they found no evidence. He said, no,

then why did he write the report? That Pew report He was mentioning, he was probably confusing it with the study from Old Dominion, which leap frogged off the survey from Brian Shaffner, which remember, has been debunked, which remember doesn't really matter because now this lie has been supercharged. He continues to make this assertion that there were somewhere between three and five million voters that voted illegally in the last election. If he's got his spokespeople lying citing

the survey. As I said, I think the president has believed that for a while, based on studies, information he has about voters about wire tapping, his repeated lies about those issues. He doesn't, he doesn't think he's lying about those issues, and you know it, and of course his friends at Fox News repeat the life back to him. President Trump continues to claim that anywhere from three to i'd really and undocumented immigrants across the country voted, costing

him the popular vote. A lot of people think and remember about the President's comment about three to five million votes he illegal in this country. All this because of something that happened on the internet in two thousand eight. That's like a scandal breaking today because the President thought a Chuck Norris fact was real. Deesse, I just want

to break in here and warn our listeners. The next section of the podcast contains several slurs about the Irish and audio taken from a hardcore pornographic film from Japan. What script are you reading from? Anyway? Donald Trump doesn't just let this lie go. Oh No. In May two thousand seventeen, he does this. Donald Trump just signed an executive order creating a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate alleged voter fraud. Vice President Mike Pennce and Kansas Secretary

of State Chris Kobak will chair it. That's right. This lie created jobs. Real people kissed their kids goodbye in the morning and went to work in service of this line. That's crazy, though, people were kissing their kids. But it turns out this commission was a mistake because after a year of work, the commission disbands. They couldn't find any evidence of widespread voter fraud. He formed a commission to

investigate his lie. That's like lying to your friend about how much you weigh and then insisting on stepping onto a scale. Actually that, oh yeah, no, that is a good metaphor, and then you step off the scale, kick the guy in the crotch, steals wall. Nope, you lost it again. Trump's Department of Justice was also investigating and was able to find just nineteen illegal voters in North Carolina, so three to five million illegal votes in the election.

That's just a lie, A lie with humble beginnings that worked its way from an Internet survey to a Virginia university, to a right wing website, to a German golfer to the President of the United States. Dasylidic as a producer at these American lies. She recently unfriended me on Facebook. No hard feelings dazy. I'm Michael Costa. We'll be back next week with more FIBs, falsehoods, and fabrications on the Daily Show Presents These American Lies. This has been a Comedy Central podcast