"Hydrosonic Missiles" - 10/29/2020

After a midterm, the #1 quick news podcast is back! In our return, I talk about the fiasco Trump left behind in Omaha, some decisions by the Supreme Court about voting (VOTE EARLY), Tucker Carlson's completely made-up claims about criminal mastermind/ANTIFA General Hunter Biden, Miles Taylor being revealed as "Anonymous", and more!

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Mostly-correct transcript:

Well hey there everyone; my apologies for the unscheduled change of plans yesterday. It’s that time of the year again for us college students: time for midterms. So I’m not exaggerating, the bulk of my day yesterday from 10am to 10pm was this programming midterm, and that obviously took much longer than I anticipated. Luckily, there wasn’t too much happening in terms of huge world events, and the news dump didn’t happen until this morning, so we’ve got a busy show ahead, but we didn’t miss too much yesterday. But first, I should mention I’ll have a bit of an explanation at the end for you in case you’ve been listening to the show and hearing some weird advertisements, and I apologize for that as well. But hey, let’s get caught up! 

OMAHA

So, on Monday night, Donald Trump held a rally in Omaha, Nebraska after bringing his petri dish through my neck of the woods, which we’ll get to in a second. But, as it turns out, that Omaha event and its aftermath became a pretty good metaphor the whole Trump presidency, especially his handling of the coronavirus. So for this rally, they decided to hold it at a remote location that didn’t have enough parking, so their idea was to send people to other parking lots about 3 miles away and then have busses running to bring them to the rally location. Well, because this is Nebraska, so it was only a two-lane road that went between the two locations, and the security of everything always causes congestion anyway, so these busses were not making the rounds very quickly after the event. On a night when it was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, waiting for hours to get back to their cars, and having a significant number of elderly supporters in attendance, I’m sure you can see how this was a problem. And the best part: Trump booked out of there right away, of course, and it was reported that Air Force One was wheels up and leaving Nebraska at about 9:30pm. The event site was not fully cleared out until 12:30am. In the end, medics had to treat 30 people, and 7 were hospitalized. So, of course, Trump came in for a short event, spread his virus to his supporters, got out of dodge quickly, and left the mess up to local officials. If that isn’t symbolic, I don’t know what is. To sum it up even better, here’s Mayor Pete on Fox News...

SUPREME COURT

There have been a few developments in the US Supreme Court the past couple of days, so let’s take a look at that. In a couple of big decisions for democracy, the Court decided not to hear an appeal by Pennsylvania Republicans that were challenging their state’s decision to accept ballots up to 3 days after the election, even if there’s no legible postmark. Then, the Court ruled in favor of the North Carolina rule to accept ballots up to 9 days after election day, as long as they’re postmarked by election day. Obviously, considering that they made that decision not to allow Wisconsin to accept ballots received after the deadline, you could say I was a little bit miffed that on the very next day, TWO cases went that way. But overall, good for democracy. 

However, I would still say to make sure it gets there by election day, if at all possible. At this point, I would hand-deliver it if that’s a possibility for you, just so you don’t leave anything to chance, but also because of these two small notes. First, in Pennsylvania, state officials notified the Supreme Court that the state has told country boards to “securely segregate” ballots received after election day, in case of future legal action. Second, Trump campaign filed a suit against the secretary of state in Minnesota, trying to force him to segregate ballots as well. I don’t know about you, but that sounds suspicious as hell to me. I hate hate hate that language about “in case of future legal action”. We were lucky in these cases that Amy Coney Barrett sat out these rulings, which is maybe the first principled thing she’s done in her life, but I don’t know if she’ll do the same if Republicans try to sue to stop these ballots from being counted if it’s clear that Trump is losing on election night, so make sure your ballot is there by election day, just as a rule of thumb. 

Another thing I want to stress about voting before election day is that if we all get our votes in before then, there’s a real chance that the margin of votes will be too large for Trump to overcome with election day turnout. For example, in Michigan, a recent poll found that of voters who were voting early in person or by mail, 75% were voting for Biden, while 21% were voting for Trump. For people who were planning on voting on election day, like 58% said they were voting for Trump, and 31ish percent said they were voting for Biden. If you just look at those numbers, you realize that Trump cannot make up that difference. A 75-25 split is incredible, and just based on the amount of voters left in Michigan, they wouldn’t be enough to give Trump the lead. So, if this is the case everywhere, we can all have an election night that keeps our blood pressure within reasonable levels, and not like it would be if this is a nail-biter. 

TUCKER

Hey, let’s take a timeout from regular news for some comedic relief. Take a listen to this clip of Tucker Carlson from last night and see if you also see some problems with this…

I mean, wow, his writer really outdid themselves with that one. I mean, he went to all of the trouble of adding in fake times to when his documents were “stolen”, and this is a podcast so you can’t see me, but I’m making the biggest air quotes of my life around the word “stolen”. Why do I know this is all a sham? Because it’s 2020, not 1950! You’re telling me that Tucker’s producer couldn’t have sent them in an email? Or that they sent the original documents through the mail, without making any copies? I mean, for the love of god, even if you didn’t want to use email, how long have fax machines been around? What a joke. 

And by the way, Tucker’s not that dumb, and Fox lawyers aren’t that dumb, so they know that if they show fake documents about a former Vice President and presidential candidate, they’re going to get sued. It’s much better for themselves and their viewers if they just make up this story about documents getting stolen, and not just any documents, documents about the evil criminal mastermind and commander of the Antifa army, Hunter Biden, that definitely would have sunk Joe Biden’s campaign and gave Trump a landslide victory. Give me a BREAK, people. This is such a crock of BS. 

ANONYMOUS

Well, even though I spent all day yesterday programming for a midterm, I still had a better day than Miles Taylor. I’ve mentioned Miles before; he’s the former chief of staff for the Secretary of Homeland Security who has since come out and strongly opposed Donald Trump in a helpful way, at least I think. Well, he revealed yesterday that he was the “senior Trump administration official” who wrote that op-ed in the New York Times who was only known as “Anonymous” (and I had forgotten that Anonymous had also written a book). For a refresher, that op-ed talked about how this official was part of a “resistance” inside the Trump administration that consisted of people acting as the adults in the room; he basically said that they were actively trying to prevent Trump from doing the craziest stuff that he wanted to. This reveal got everyone talking, and it wasn’t long before he started taking fire from both sides after the announcement. 

He said he wrote it anonymously because he wanted to force Trump to respond specifically to the allegations he made in the op-ed and book, instead of doing what Trump always does, which is attack the person who is talking badly about him. Miles is certainly right about that, Trump does that all the time, but he also attacks the media for using anonymous sources and says it’s just fake news, so it wasn’t going to work great either way. At the same time, there’s been discussion about whether the New York Times was right to call him a “senior Trump administration official” since he was just a chief of staff to a cabinet secretary. That said, he was in all of the important meetings, especially the ones about border policy and child separation, and chief of staff is actually an important position, so I think it’s probably okay, but considering that people were thinking it was James Mattis or John Kelly, I can see why people feel cheated. Usually, when someone says something anonymously in this public of a fashion, it means their name is bigger than the title of anonymous, and in this case, this mystery actually made the story more important than it would have been if it was written by some guy named Miles Taylor. 

So that was the criticism from both the left and the right, and then Trump’s crowd piled on even more by saying that this was treason and that he should be arrested immediately, which is just ridiculous. Overall, as someone who still defends his old boss Kirstjen Nielsen and kind of defends the child separation policy, it’s hard to feel to badly for him. That said, I do believe the fact that he’s spoken out publicly is admirable and came with a lot of risk for him and his family, and it has helped create permission for Republicans to vote for Biden, I think I’ll take a page out of Nelson Mandela’s playbook and skip tearing this guy to pieces; we have bigger fish to fry right now. 

TRUMP CLIPS

Let’s circle back to that Trump campaign stop here in Wisconsin. We’ll start with Trump reminding us about Canada’s national anthem…

I just don’t understand how anyone can watch this stuff and think “wow, this guy is really the smartest guy in the room. He’s such a good businessman.” Like I’ve said before, he’s like that one family member at Thanksgiving that you have to watch what you say when you’re around them. Literally one phrase set him off: national anthem. And god knows how he got onto O’Canada in the first place. But that one phrase completely distracted him from his original point, which was NAFTA and trade deals, and probably how he made the best deals. He’s the definition of scatterbrained. 

For this next one, if you follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, he’s the guy who tweets video clips of everything that’s important politics-wise (he works for the media company Vox), then you’ll know that he has this personal pet peeve when it comes to Trump…

It’s easy to miss, but Trump always talks about “hydrosonic” missiles at his rallies these days. Literally like every one, and that might sound normal, until you realize that hydrosonic missiles don’t exist. They’re hypersonic missiles; hydrosonic is a type of toothbrush, but of course the stable genius president can’t tell the two apart. And he wants us to believe Joe Biden is the senile one. And speaking of senile…

Vanquish the vaccine? No, I think we want to make the vaccine and vanquish the virus. If you listen to that again, you can tell he realizes he really messed up, because he tries to cover it up by saying “All of it. We’ll get rid of all of this and go back to normal”. Okay, gramps. Well, he also made another appeal to all you “suburban women” out there; I bet you’re glad you’re Donald Trump’s favorite voting group. Trump wants you to know that he really wants your vote…

Is that like, a threat? But hey, if he can’t threaten you into voting for him, then maybe this will change your mind…

I’m sure that’s what strong-willed, successful women want to be told: it’s all about your husbands getting back to work. But hey, if he still doesn’t have your vote, I’m sure the way he introduced Senator Martha McSally of Arizona yesterday at his rally will really win you over…

And that’s how he talks to someone who sold her soul and supports Trump endlessly. The truth is, this is just like Joe Biden said the other day, Trump has this 1950s view of the suburbs, and he believes women should be doing all the stereotypical cooking and cleaning. Remember how he kept using “suburban housewives” for a while? I mean, come on. 

But if you’re not sold yet on how dumb Trump is, let’s end this segment with another example of how he always, always, always projects his own insecurities onto other people, take a listen to this claim that he’s the pro-science candidate…

KUSHNER

Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who had some outrage towards Jared Kushner’s comments from the other day. President Obama was campaigning in Florida on Monday, and he had this to say about Kushner’s comments about Black Americans...

END

Well, I think that’s where I’ll cut us off for today. Again, thanks for your understanding about yesterday’s unscheduled cancellation and all of that, but it got me thinking: I know the show is called Quick News Daily, but would you guys prefer to have the show like 2-3 times a week instead? The weekly recap show is almost always the most popular and downloaded episode, so I’m just thinking, maybe when the news is more “boring” the election, you might want it every other day or something like that. To let me know, I created this survey, so here’s your chance to really influence the show! Also, I wanted to mention that I joined an advertising platform that automatically inserts ads based on your location, your audience size, that sort of thing, so if you’re like me and got an ad about opening up schools at all costs and “Democrats want to shut us down” and all that, I definitely apologize. I went back on the platform and immediately turned off all of the ads from the government and politics category. On the one hand, I would love for that group to waste their money advertising to you guys, who obviously don’t believe that nonsense, but on the other hand, I didn’t want it to seem like I was endorsing that, so here we are. Anyways, stay safe, make that plan to vote, there’s only a few days left until the election, so push through to the end, and I’ll see you right back here tomorrow.