-You have been here all weekend.
-Mm-hmm. How can you tell?
-No, I mean -- You're working on this.
This is a big deal tomorrow night.
-Yeah, I know.
-You had the live show last night.
You have your show tonight.
So thank you for taking the time to do our show as well.
And then, tomorrow night, starting at 6:00 p.m.
-Rolling on into days of coverage, yeah.
We're not planning -- I mean, I'm planning on it being light
by the time I get off the air tomorrow night.
-Really? -Yeah.
-You think it's gonna go that late?
-Well, I mean, it's not a presidential race,
so it's not like there's one thing
we're all waiting to happen.
We're waiting to see what the cumulative result
is over the course of the night.
And it may well be that we don't know the answer to that
until all of the super swing-y, tight races
on the West Coast get decided.
And so -- I mean, California polls
don't even close until 11:00 p.m. Eastern.
California likes to take approximately one month
to count its votes. [ Laughter ]
I am not kidding. They take a month.
-You're serious? -Yeah.
And so, I just -- I mean, I know
we're starting at 6:00 p.m. Eastern tomorrow,
but I'm just like -- I got a backpack with jerky.
[ Laughter ]
Contact lenses, and, like, a washcloth or two.
-You need to have jerky there, absolutely.
Yeah, keep you awake. -Yeah.
-Are you good at improvising and filling all that time?
-No, no, no.
-How are you gonna talk for a month?
-Exactly.
-I'm excited to watch you guys.
It's you and Brian.
-Yeah, so that's the magic --
that's the magic ingredient there, is Brian Williams
because he can -- I mean, when I do my show,
I write like 9,000 words and then I say them all
to the camera and then the show is over.
But on election night there's no script,
there's no writing anything.
There's nothing in the teleprompter.
There's no cue cards. There's nothing.
We're just there for a month,
absorbing information live and trying to make sense of it.
And there's nobody better than that than Brian.
There's nobody worse at that than me.
-Oh, no, please.
-Then you also have Steve Kornacki.
You can just throw to him and go,
"Dude, point at some poll number on the boards"
and stuff like that.
He's a genius, by the way.
-He is amazing.
And the great thing about him is
that as other people get confused
and overwhelmed and tired,
he gets stronger and bigger and more energetic.
Like the more baroque and impenetrable the data,
the faster his brain works, to the point where, like,
any technology he's supposed to be using, he just breaks it.
Like, "My math and my mind is faster
than the thing I can do on the board."
-Yeah, really.
-Every year they make him a new board and he breaks it
because he's faster than the board.
-He is faster than the computer, yeah.
-He's amazing.
And so I do feel like I work with the best people
in the country at doing this.
And I just try to, you know, follow along.
-Well, I got to say you're one of the hardest working people
I've ever met.
And when you come here, you're always --
no entourage, you're by yourself.
You usually bring a laptop with you, and you're typing --
-And a highlighter. -And a highlighter.
Up to when you do the show.
-Yeah, I'm a slow worker. So I have to work all the time.
-No, you're great. That's why you're number one, pal.
-Oh, thanks.
-What do we have to expect?
What's the thing with the House and the Senate?
What are we hearing?
What's the rumors?
-Ever since 2016, nobody believes any polls anymore.
[ Laughter ] Right?
So, like, you talk to somebody, and they're like,
"Well, within the margin of error,
the standard deviation says..."
And you're like, "Shut up, I can't hear it.
I know you're lying to me.
I don't even want to know what the answer is."
So it's hard to say.
Emotionally it's hard to say
because you don't want to believe anything.
I mean, the polls in 2016 were really wrong.
But I think the common wisdom right now is that the Democrats
might at one point have hoped to take the Senate.
But that would be kind of a miracle at this point.
They really want to take the House,
and maybe that's possible.
There's a whole bunch of governor's races
where it's weird.
Like South Dakota and Iowa and Kansas
might get Democratic governors.
Doo-woop! [ Laughter ]
That's a weird thing.
-Got the doo-woop on that one. Sure.
-So there's -- that's why I say it's gonna be like --
it's gonna be a fun night.
There's no one result we're all waiting for.
But if either the House or the Senate goes to the Democrats,
that is going to change the next two years a lot.
That's gonna change the Trump presidency in a way
that you will notice in your life.
And so, figuring out whether or not Democrats get some control
in Washington of just one or both houses of Congress,
that is gonna be a super consequential thing
and almost to a degree that can't be overstated.
-Wow. -Yeah.
-Has the -- With the President going to all these rallies,
how is that affecting...
Is that gonna make any change?
-We'll know more after tomorrow night.
But I think what we've seen happen is that,
because he likes to make every race about Trump --
he likes to make everything about himself.
Over the course of this election season,
which has been very exciting --
35 million people have voted already.
Young people are turning out and voting. People are very excited.
-That's fantastic. -There's a lot of interest.
I mean, in some states, they've already had more people
early vote than the total number of people that voted,
including on election day, in 2014,
the last election like this.
So there's lots of excitement. [ Applause ]
-Don't stop. Really go vote tomorrow.
Let's break records.
-It's gonna -- It's a lot.
And that's exciting no matter who you're rooting for.
It's just cool to see Americans engaged in our own government.
When Trump goes and makes everything about himself though,
I think it has resulted in
there not really being any Republican stars.
Like, in this election season,
there's all these Democrats who've become really famous.
Like Beto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams
and Andrew Gillum and all these people.
On the Republican side, every time Trump shows up he's like,
"Vote for Trump! Also, these guys are fine. Vote for Trump!"
And so you don't know who any of the Republicans are
who are running, because he wants make every race
the Democrat versus Trump.
And so, that maybe will work for him, but it has got to be,
I don't know, a little sad for the Republicans who invite him.
-Yeah. -You know?
-What do you think of -- I think the young vote coming out,
I got to say, I felt something when March for Our Lives --
-Yeah. You went, didn't you? Didn't you go?
-I did, yeah.
I went and I brought my kids
just to see what these Parkland --
These students are just so powerful and so smart and cool.
And I just felt something.
And I said, "Something is gonna change."
I just know it. And they haven't stopped.
They said, "We're not gonna stop.
We're gonna go and we're gonna get young people to vote."
And they kept doing it and kept talking about it.
And I'm like, "Go, go, go." And they didn't stop.
-Yeah.
And they're not only determined, they're -- forgive me --
they're badasses.
Like, they really -- nobody is intimidating them.
And people are attacking them all over the place.
And they just take it and move on and they do not relent.
And they're so freaking impressive.
-Yeah, I agree.
-And we are starting to see --
I said 35 million people early voted.
Within that, some of the data shows that among the people
who are voting a lot more than they used to
in elections like this are younger people.
And one of the things that will be really interesting
to watch tomorrow is that a lot of high schools
all over the country and I think colleges too,
people are going to do a walkout to vote
where, in the middle of the school day,
people are gonna walk out en masse.
So, for a high school, all the 18-year-olds are gonna go vote
and they're gonna do it in solidarity
with them all cheering each other on.
You know, inspiring each other to stay in line
if you got a long line to wait for.
Being there together
and making it a really culturally important thing.
We saw so many kids walk out against gun violence.
If we see kids walk out and go vote too, to me,
that's gonna feel like the next link in that chain.
It just feels really powerful.
-It's just powerful.
That's what's so great about our country.
You have that right.
You can go vote, vote for whoever you like.
You have that right. Go do it.
-Yeah. People gave up a lot to get you that right.
And even if you don't feel it for yourself, do it for them.
-Yeah. I agree.
[ Applause ]
It's gonna be a big day tomorrow.
-I know. And night. And month.
-And night and month.
How, um -- Can I talk to you about your podcast?
-Oh, yeah, thanks.
-Because how do you even have time to do this?
-I don't have time. I don't have time to do it.
-You have this podcast.
So you have a podcast called "Bag Man."
-Yeah. -And it comes at you --
You released it, I think, it was last -- this past Tuesday.
Number one on Apple podcast, iTunes.
-Yeah, nice. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Not too bad. -I know.
-Just hitting home runs.
Tell everyone what "Bag Man" is if you listen to this podcast.
-So, you know Watergate.
And now we've got a president who, you know --
it's funny, we're going into this election,
his campaign chairman, his deputy campaign chairman,
his national security adviser, his personal lawyer,
are all awaiting sentencing on felony charges.
He is the subject of a special counsel of office investigation
where there have been more than 100 felony charges already.
So everybody is like, "Wow, Watergate is the history."
Actually no, "Bag Man" is the history.
Right in the middle of Watergate, Spiro Agnew,
who was Nixon's vice president,
got forced out of office for being a corrupt -- mm.
[ Laughter ]
Like, he was a freaking active criminal in the White House.
He was extorting people.
He was taking envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars
in cash in his vice presidential office.
He was a freaking crook.
He was a shakedown artist.
And it's been totally lost to history
because it happened in the middle of Watergate.
But it's actually a totally close parallel
to a lot of what we're seeing right now,
especially because he was really --
like, he really hated the media.
He was really controversial.
He liked to attack minorities
and sort of threaten violence with his politics.
And he really went after the Justice Department
when they were investigating him.
And it's just kind of lost
because it happened at the same time as Watergate.
I'm obsessed with this story,
and so I made this podcast, and people are into it.
-Guys, check out "Bag Man" if you like podcasts.
And we'll be watching you tonight and tomorrow, all night.
And for the next month.
Crash on our couch, if you want to.