- [Trevor] Lying.
It's as American as apple pie.
Or getting in a fist fight over a chicken sandwich.
And it's especially American now that the president
is a ninja level liar.
Donald trump lies so often that even his biggest lies
can get lost in the fray.
This is These American Lies.
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- [Michael] Have you ever told a lie?
Let's admit it, we all have.
Just this morning I was talking to the doorman at my co-op
and he said, Michael, do you know my name?
And 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 Gabagool.
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 weight,
they lie about there 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,
that three to five million people
voted illegally in the 2016 election.
From WTDS in New York, I'm Micheal 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.
(upbeat music)
Part one.
What's three to five million illegal voters among friends.
I'm here with producer Desi Lydic.
Desi, it's been a while.
- [Desi] I saw you on Saturday.
You crashed your car into my mailbox.
- [Michael] So, you're here to talk
about the voter fraud lie.
- [Desi] Right.
The lie this week is that three to five million people
voted illegally in the 2016 election.
- [Michael] Wait, what?
Do people know about this?
- [Desi] No, it's a lie.
Costa, we're on these American Lies.
- [Michael] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sure, sure, okay.
- [Desi] 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 200,000 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.
- [Michael] Hm.
- [Desi] Donald has lived a pretty incredible life.
He's been a real estate developer,
a mail order steak salesman, a two time Emmy loser.
And in 2016 he became the president of the United States.
- [Newscaster] It is now official, Donald Trump has won
the Electoral College.
- [Desi] Now, most people would be happy
to win a presidency, but for Trump winning wasn't enough.
- [Newscaster] Donald trump won with 306 electoral votes.
Even though Hillary Clinton got nearly 2 1/2 million
more popular votes.
- [Desi] See, Trump won the electoral college
but he lost the popular vote.
- [Michael] So it's like he won the lottery,
but only because he stole the winning ticket
from a 7-Eleven cashier?
- [Desi] No, not at all.
- [Michael] Tell me more about that.
- [Desi] Trump won the election even though he got almost
three million fewer votes that Hillary Clinton.
And you've got to understand Donald Trump
has a fragile ego.
At his Comedy Central Roast in 2011,
he told the comedians who were roasting him
there was one thing they couldn't make fun of.
Do you know what that was?
- [Michael] His enormous ass.
- [Desi] His wealth.
He's got think 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 lied.
- [Newscaster] He told members of congress
that maybe three to five million people voted illegally
in the most recent presidential election.
- [Newscaster] 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 ballots 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.
- [Desi] I won the popular vote if you deduct
the millions of people who voted illegally.
That's a stunning claim.
- [Michael] Right.
It's kind of like saying, I won at Scrabble,
but only because I kicked my opponent in the crotch.
- [Desi] I can do the rest of the story myself
if you just want to take off.
- [Michael] Oh great, I'm gonna go microwave a taco.
- [Desi] Every lie starts somewhere.
And this American lie was born
in one of the birth places of American democracy.
- [Michael] Long Island?
- [Desi] Massachusets.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] I got a number.
How do you like them apples?
(laughter)
- [Desi] The state flower is a Dunkin Donuts coffee bean,
and the state song is an Irish guy
puking outside a baseball stadium.
And now this state has another claim to fame,
a professor whose work inadvertently
ignited the voter fraud controversy.
- [Newscaster] Brian Schaffner, one of the academics
behind the study told CNN Trump is misinterpreting
the study, calling Trump's claims absurd
and not even plausible.
(phone rings)
- [Brian Schaffner] I'm Brian Schaffner.
- [Desi] This is Brian Schaffner.
- [Brian] I'm a professor of political science
at Tufts university.
- [Desi] He's a professor of political science
at Tufts University.
- [Brian] Why are you repeating everything I say?
- [Desi] Schaffner's a smart guy,
even if he doesn't know how podcasts work.
- [Brian] I'm a principle investigator
for the co-operative congressional external study,
which is the data set that has caused all these problems.
- [Desi] Every election year Schaffner's group
surveys internet users about their political views.
The survey doesn't specifically ask
about voter fraud, and yet.
- [Brian] There's a question included in the survey
that's not really meant to look for non-citizens,
but there's a response option the responders can select
that would identify them as non-citizens.
And that essentially lead to this big controversy.
There were over 30,000 respondents to the survey in 2008,
and among that group there were a little over 300
who identified themselves as non-citizens
when they responded to the survey.
38 of those supposed non-citizens
claimed to have voted.
- [Desi] So we've got this internet survey taken in 2008.
Now flash forward from 2008.
- [Newscaster] Senator Barack Obama of Illinois
will be the next president of the United States.
- [Desi] To 2014.
- [Newscaster] 30 year old Jeremy Meeks,
also known as the hot felon.
- [Desi] Because that's when this data set
evolves from a curiosity to a flaming political hot potato.
(upbeat music)
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Hi everyone, we're back with part two, a rough lie.
I just wanted to say, for anyone listening at home,
the next part of our podcast contains severe profanity
and extreme graphic description of sex acts.
- [Desi] What?
No, it doesn't.
- [Michael] If you're listening with your children
you'd better turn it off unless
you want those kids to grow up fast.
- [Desi] Okay, just ignore him.
Okay, so it's 2014.
Jesse Richman, a researcher at Old Dominion University,
or ODU, comes across this survey.
Richman takes the responses to that final question
about being a citizen and extrapolates
that anywhere between 38,000 and 2.8 million
non-citizens voted in 2008.
There's only one problem with Jesse Richman's conclusion.
- [Michael] Jesse Richman has been dead for 50 years.
- [Desi] Uh, no.
Here's Brian Schaffner revisiting his 2008 survey
that became the basis for Richman's work.
- [Brian] 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.
- [Desi] Brian Schaffner had renounced his own findings,
but by this time it's too late.
Right wing media members are using the ODU survey
to claim that voter fraud is an enormous problem,
even though it's based on one study's interpretation
of a flawed data set.
- [Michael] So I guess, Desi, just one question remains.
- [Desi] Right.
How did this lie get to Trump?
- [Michael] Oh, I was gonna ask,
is 15 minutes in the microwave too long for a single taco?
But that's good too.
Your question's good.
- [Desi] So it turns out Trump may have been turned
on to voter fraud in his natural habitat.
- [Man] Four.
- [Desi] 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 Langer.
- [Michael] Oh, I loved him in Das Boot.
- [Desi] Bernard Langer is a German professional golfer.
He won the Masters twice.
- [Commentator] It is not often you smile after a miss.
But you can if you're Bernard Langer,
and the Masters champion of 1993.
- [Desi] He's now 60 years old.
So apparently Trump went golfing with Langer
some time between election day 2016
and this dinner on January 23rd 2017.
And on the golf course Langer told Trump
about his experience on election day in Florida.
Langer went to vote, and he was told
that he wasn't eligible to.
- [Michael] Because he's been dead for 50 years.
- [Desi] Because he's German, and not a US citizen.
But Langer looked at other voters in line
who he said looked as if they should not be able to vote.
- [Michael] Because they've been dead for 50 years.
- [Desi] No one's been dead for 50 years!
No one.
- [Michael] Boris Karloff has been dead for 50 years.
He died February 2nd, 1969, complications from pneumonia.
Boris Karloff has been dead for 50 years.
- [Desi] So trumps got this idea in his head from Langer.
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 it in public.
- [Interviewer] Millions of illegal votes.
That is something that is extremely fundamental
to our functioning democracy, a fair and free election.
- [Trump] Sure, sure, sure.
- [Interviewer] You say you're going to launch
an investigation into this?
- [Trump] Sure, it's done.
- [Interviewer] What you have presented so far
has been debunked.
It has been called false.
- [Trump] Take a look at the Pew reports.
- [Interviewer] I called the author
of the Pew report last night.
And he told me that they found no evidence.
- [Trump] Really, then why did he write the report?
- [Interviewer] He said no evidence of voter fraud.
- [Trump] Excuse me, then why did he write the report.
- [Desi] 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 Schaffner which, remember,
has been debunked which, remember,
doesn't really matter because now this lie
has been super charged.
- [Man] He continues to make this assertion
that there is somewhere between three and five million
voters that voted illegally in the last election.
- [Desi] He's got his spokes people lying,
citing the survey.
- [Spokesperson] As I said, I think the president
has believed that for a while based
on studies and information he has.
- [Spokeswoman] But you made it about the media.
- [Man] The scandals are about the presidents lies,
about voter fraud.
- [Spokeswoman] Excuse me?
- [Man] About wire tapping.
His repeated lies about those issues.
- [Spokeswoman] He doesn't think he's lying
about those issues, and you know it.
- [Desi] And of course, his friends at Fox News
repeat the lie back to him.
- [Newscaster] President Trump continues to claim
that anywhere form three to five million
undocumented immigrants across the country voted,
costing him the popular vote.
- [Newscaster] A lot of people think,
and remember the president's comment
about three to five million votes illegal in this country.
- [Desi] All this because of something
that happened on the internet in 2008.
That's like a scandal breaking today
because the president thought a Chuck Norris fact was real.
- [Michael] Desi. 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.
- [Desi] What script are you reading from?
Anyway.
Donald trump doesn't just let this lie go, oh no.
In May 2017 he does this.
- [Newscaster] Donald Trump just signed an executive order
creating a commission of election integrity
to investigate alleged voter fraud.
Vice-president Mike Pence, and Kansas Secretary of State
Kris Kobach will chair it.
- [Desi] That's right, this lie created jobs.
Real people kissed their kids goodbye in the morning
and went to work in service of this lie.
- [Michael] That's crazy though.
People are kissing their kids?
- [Desi] 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.
- [Michael] He formed a commission to investigate his lie.
That's like lying to friend about how much you weigh,
and then insisting on stepping onto a scale.
- [Desi] Actually that.
Oh, yeah, no that is a good metaphor.
- [Michael] And then you step off the scale,
kick the guy in the crotch, steal his wallet.
- [Desi] Nope, you lost it again.
Trump's department of justice was also investigating,
and was able to find just 19 illegal voters
in North Carolina.
So three to five million illegal votes in the 2016 election?
That's just a lie.
- [Michael] A lie with humble beginnings,
that worked it's 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.
Desi Lydic is a producer at these American Lies.
She recently unfriended me on Facebook,
no hard feelings Desi.
I'm Michael Costa, we'll be back next week
with more fibs, falsehoods, and fabrications
on the Daily Show presents, These American Lies.
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