The Bugle - Voters hide ballots in locked boxes

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

WHAT IN A YEAR OF 2020s JUST HAPPENED!?! Andy, Nish and Nato try to make sense of one of an election that is incomprehensible, even by modern standards.We have a sister show, The Last Post, which you can hear here. Follow us on YouTube or Insta and see parts of this episode with actual video.The Bugle is hosted this week by:Andy ZaltzmanNish KumarNato GreenAnd produced by Chris Skinner LISTEN TO RICHIE FIRTH: TRAVEL HACKER. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to a real thing that's going to happen. TheBuglePodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello and welcome to the Bugle US election result special 2020. And here is our instant Bugle reaction at 12pm Eastern time, 5pm UK time, on Wednesday 4th of November 2020. Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah!

Gah! Gah! Gah! And hopefully that sums up pretty much everything that has happened over the last 24 hours. Ah, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, ye starting to regret. Not using that magic lamp I bought from a curious antique shop to ask for something a bit more useful than a spare pair of elbows, they just clatter up the fridge, a bacon sandwich, I was hungry after putting the elbows in the fridge, and the power to turn shoes into watermelons in novelty wears off after about 15 or 20 pairs. A bearing in mind that I summoned that genie in May 2016, well, apologies to the entire world. Joining me to jab around in the still twitching yet somehow already rotten entrails of the 2020 American presidential election that's a triter.

Harus precise what it all means to pick the bones from the rancid half-tune twice regurgitated sardine of despair that was election night, firstly. Joining us from where it's all kind of happening. The USA in specifically San Francisco, it's NATO Green. Hello NATO. Hello Andy, hello Bueblers. It's really been, it's a hard time to be an American right now. We're really, really in grieving and we just can't stop thinking about the demise of Quibi. Um. Zing, well, take that. Oh, other guests.

From the 51st state of the USA, bending approval of our application to join the club, we basically fucking founded in the spiritual home of existential confusion. Lockdown London, it's the man who brings American media organizations crashing to the ground with him amongst the rebel, it's Nish Kumar. Hello, Andy. Hello, bugleers.

And you know what? Etto, Nate. Etto dancing on the grave of Quibi. They all they did, they were a lot like Martin Luther King. They had a dream. Only instead of racial equality, their dream was to force people to pay quite a bit of money for short form content.

LAUGHTER Very much on the same continuum as you, Richard. Very much, I'll just say. Very much, I'll just say. But both tragically cut short, like circumstances out of their control. In one case, circumstances out of his control. And in the case of Quibi, circumstances, they were very much in their control. Wasn't one of the major backers of Quibi, Republican tech billionaire Meg Whitman, who ran for

governor of California several years ago and lost. I actually, here's a fun fact about Meg Whitman, when she was running for governor because, you know, I'm a protesti kind of guy, we brought a thousand nurses to protest in front of her mansion, which leads me to a very important NATO green lesson about social change that I want you all to take with you tonight, which is that it is not difficult to overwhelm small town police departments. Uh,

you. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, in fact, several sections, a section on whatever you are planning to do for the rest of the week, a section on everything else in the world right now, and a guide on how to be an election pollster. Step one, guess what you think will happen. Step two, factor in a minimum pigsty contingency. That's probably it'll go shitter than you think contingency. The last tea didn't make it into the acronym but in accuracy is all part of the world these days. Step 3, factor in another 5% nest contingency, no, even shittlier than that. Step 4, shut up and don't tell anyone your findings, they're probably wrong and step 5,

take up knitting. So those sections in the bin, we are recording on Wednesday the 4th of November the first day of the rest of time as it seems so many days are these days. The day after America attempted to elect its chosen old man to guide its national bob sled through the mountainous seas of the next four years. And yes this is the 4th of November so zero years and one day since yesterday when a record number of numbers were numbered. And on this day in 1783, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony No. 36, was performed for the first time. 36 by coincidence is the percentage votes needed in 36 counties chosen from 36

of the possible counties across the USA and 36 different states that would need to rise or fall by 36% or more or less across 36% of the national vote for more than 36% of pandas to agree what it actually meant. Top story this week, well, there is only one place to start. As we record, the outcome is still not entirely clear. If you are Donald Trump's mouth, you have one. The rest of the University of Simpsons to suggest that Joe Biden is on course for a narrow, painful victory as we record. NATO, talk us through your range of emotions and what you've been going through over the last 12, 18 hours. Oh, Andy, well, so look at my face. This is what America's face looks like right now. For the podcast listening audience, I have not... That's most of this show to the show. Yeah.

Everyone, but the four of us here right now, everyone in America looks like this right now. I look like a dog shit that had a shit and then was rolled in shit, if you know what I mean. I actually, I may not be able to get through this episode because I may have to go run and have stress-related diarrhea. How stressed am I?

This is, I am so anxious that last night I had a stress dream about pulling an all-nighter writing jokes for the bugle with beta or rock We were in his office in the Congress building and I was trying to write the jokes and he was skateboarding around me And I was going to hang with him So focus back, so And And it's like it's just and like everyone has been trying to remind you to go vote

and to get out the vote like every app, every celebrity, every news program, every website. I got a notification reminding me to vote from a phone app that lets you order an in-home massage. And so, and it was sort of like, well, you can't have Swedish-style social democracy, but would you like a Swedish massage to ease the tension? So, and now it's like, it seems close, and I mean, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be close. I mean, like, that's the most upsetting part, is that it's even close at all. It's like a significant section of the electorate looked at all of the carnage and death

and suffering and stupidity and goes, you know, what's not to like? Nish, I know you're you're up late following it following it here. It's a man We're basically I think everyone yeah all buglers you're listening to this show and you've stuck stayed listening to this show over the years You've probably been through an emotional cement mix over the last day or few days or weeks, months or four years or since 1776 when America started to go irretrievably in the wrong direction as a nation. How was it for you, Nish, election night? Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here broadcasting in the perineum between the ball snack of the vote and the anus of the official announcement of the result. So it's a real honor to be right

in the American elections gouge. And it was, listen, as election nights go, for me, I was watching it at home drinking wine, which is a marked improvement on the 2019 British election, the evening of which I had a screaming rower with Boris Johnson's father about whether women in burkas should be able to become fighter pilots. So from that perspective, from that perspective, it was a huge upgrade, absolutely enormous

upgrade from my perspective. But it was a tense, I mean, it's hard to boil down one's emotions at a time like this. I have no idea how NATO is even heroic to me that he's even upright and speaking currently. From an outsider's perspective, what I will say is this. I'll say this for the guy who murdered everybody. He did very well considering he murdered everybody. That is, this is a real,

there's a real interesting, surprising piece of information. And right now, not content with sort of murdering everybody. He's now, you know, insisting that the count be stopped, just as it looks like, you know, Joe Biden is on his way to winning Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan, which are kind of three big states that he needs to get over the 270 line at the moment. And Trump is in the process of declaring those mail-in ballots completely null and voidies said that he's going to go to the Supreme Court. Interestingly, just as a side note from the election. Early this morning, the US Embassy in the Coat Du Bois,

issued a statement, a firm statement to the government of the Coat Du Bois about the election that's happening in that country, calling on the government to show a commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law, and urging all parties, groups, and individuals to engage in inclusive dialogue. Now I've got to say, given what is currently happening right now in America,

that is like someone telling you off for farting in a lift as liquid shit dribbles out of the bottom of their trousers. It is an astonishing state of play that's gone by gone. And the questions that have to be asked now is, first of all, who the **** is ****ing one? That's gone to be the first question. And once we establish, if as it looks like it's going to be, Joe Biden, the first question that has to be asked is, what Donald Trump has increased the number of voters that voted for it? In four years of his presidency, four years of anarchy, chaos, tax breaks handed out to his golf pals, and then culminating in a catastrophic mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in, you know, it looks like it's

going to result in at least a quarter of a million Americans dying. And what's astonishing about some of the New York Times exit polls, the statistics make for sort of semi-naurzyating reading. White women in America, according to the New York Times exit polls, have voted 55% have voted four Trump versus 43% to Joe Biden. Say what you will about white women in America, and over half of them will still vote for you to be present. It's quite an astonishing result. Josh Hawley, who's a senator from Missouri, a Republican senator, has claimed that the Republican Party is the party of the working class now. Again, worth digging into some of these exit polls because for households earning under

50,000, Biden actually has carried most of their support, 57% of the voters who declared for the New York Times exit poll who have households that earn under 50K, 50% of them voted for Biden, 56% of households between $50,000 and $99,999, they also declared for Biden. And the key demographic that came out for Donald Trump, a household that earned over $100,000 a year. Now, that is a very generous interpretation of the party of the working class. But then I guess, is it ever possible to know ourselves? I read an interview a couple of months ago with Joseph Fritzel, for reasons that I don't wish to go into now. Joseph Fritzel, for those of you who might not remember, was an Austrian man who built a dungeon where he trapped his daughter and sexually abused her and

far the children with her. Joseph Rittsall a few years ago was interviewed by a journalist and Rittsall said this, I am not the monster that I am portrayed as in the media. So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's impossible to really know ourselves. I'm not comparing the Republican Party to Joseph Ritzel, but I'm just putting that out there. I was following the odds overnight, the bookmakers odds which began with Trump as a matter of sort of two to one outsideer, he then became a sort of hot favorite seven to two on at one stage at which point I think I drank half a bottle of Marsala wine in five minutes, which is unbelievable, I don't generally drink a lot.

That seemed to do the trick, then the, the Biden Cup match. Were you were you attempting to cook a tiramisu? I was not, no, only the tiramisu of my churning stomach. And then the Biden come back, I was not, no, only the tiramisu of my churning stomach. And then the Biden comeback, and it's a kind of weird thing, isn't it, following an election like that, because it feels like a comeback. It's not that any strategic decisions have been made, it's just different forms of counting.

And it's like this whole issue with the Trump speech, and I mean, it followed Joe Biden's speech to a load of people sitting in cars, which is I think would have gone down as one of the weirdest election night speeches ever And as he spoke fairly uninspirational in a categorical Biden way to the half-hearted honking of horns followed by Donald Trump delivering what I believe is one of the low points of the last, I don't know, two and a half thousand years of democracy since those crazy ancient Greeks thought, hey, we've got an idea of how to run things better and found themselves in under a minute surrounded by businessmen smoking cigars lobbyists and

privately own news outlets with varying glints in their eyes. And he said that the Democrats were trying to steal the election. He also tweeted votes cannot be cast off of the polls. Capital P O L E S are closed. And that does sound like a message that might have come direct from Moscow. And it was one of the most, it was kind of genuinely chilling standing in front of the array of flags and a moment of pure unadulterated demagogic propaganda. And I think of all the things we expected to happen on this election night, right up there for me, would have been someone at some point on the TV coverage saying that the founding fathers were spinning in their graves. And this duly happened after the speech by Trump, I was

watching the CNN coverage, only it didn't say they were spinning in their graves. He said they would be rolling in their graves, which suggests that even the founding fathers have been ground down by four years of Trump and no longer have the energy to spin in there. It can just roll over in resignation and just tuck up into our pleas. Make, kind of hit the snooze alarm buttons and I'll make it stop. I can't spin and I'm dizzy.

I am so dizzy after the last four years. One of the problems that has happened to American politics is how people use stats. And we have this guy Nate Silver, who's like analyzes polling data and also sports data. So imagine Andy Zoltzman with the stats with worse hair and no puns. I think you've insulted both me and Mike Silver there. But he's sort of relentlessly smug and self assured. I'm talking about Nate and not Andy at this point. In his prognostications, but he formulates everything in terms of probability so that he's never wrong.

He said, well, I said there was a 10% chance of that and lo and behold, we predicted it. But because of all this, there's been all this available polling data, what it meant is that as the returns were coming in, like everyone in the country was, you know, doing this bizarre, like forensic analysis, the people would say, you know, people who had never been to Wisconsin at all,

were like, well, based on the trend line of the early returns from Shaboykin County, Wisconsin, and knowing that they have 11 black people in that county and they haven't counted the votes yet from that precinct, we can reasonably predict that if this trend line continues, at some point, we're still f***ing. So it was like, people, what are you doing? This is not helpful.

And it feels like the end of democracy. Like I was, I mean, you were talking about the code de voie. And I was a kid in the Reagan era. And there was a claim that America was a democracy in a beacon to the world against totalitarianism. And it was bullshit at the time, but we pretended. And by we, I mean white people. And like if you asked refugees from war-torn countries

why they sought political asylum in the United States, they were coming here for the separation of powers. They wanted to not be mass murdered for political reasons, and they got here and found a land of freedom and opportunity where they would only be mass murdered due to lax gun laws and inadequate mental health services. And that's freedom. I also really admire and am extremely frustrated by the American commitment to ballot secrecy, which I think means that it's, I think it might be, they might be unable to ask you at an exit poll how

you vote it, right? I think that there's something that they're constitutionally forbidden from doing that. Whereas with Britain, we have an exit poll where basically people just stand outside and say who did you vote for for and the exit polls in the last few elections have been pretty Accurate but it does make for some very compelling television on CNN when you see people going a lot of the exit polls are showing the people really prefer chocolate ice cream People are were really into the first season of Westworld But felt it dropped away badly from the second season. And you're like, that is very interesting. It's a fuck all used to me every in the morning.

When I'm trying to work out, if a quasi-fascist game show host has continued access to the biggest military arsenal in human history. But it did make for a kind of gripping, I mean, it was churning through the possible scenarios. It was like following a test match, a five-day cricket match, with all the arcane rules,

the confusing numbers. But the difference being that the prospect of defeat would entail having to watch your least favorite player, the opposition captain, vaunt his cheating victory on the news every day for the next four years, change the rules of all future games and cast a pool of dark and so forth the entire play. So I mean it's sort of like a test match but a bit different in terms of the implications really. Andy can I ask you because I know nothing at all about cricket. So is cricket like the

American electoral system and that the main way to win is by cheating. Well, no, I don't think it's the main way to win, but it has been proven to be a way to win. So, yeah, it's not. The, um, I was following the vote counts that are still open, place up Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and the issue of the, um, the votes, the postal votes and the absentee votes being counted this sort of late stage and it taking possibly days, which is, which the Republicans have now been complaining about, that's one of Trump's things, well, we can't count these votes now because I'm winning, essentially with his argument. But it was essentially Republican legislators in those states that prevented the election officials from counting ballots early as they were in other states.

So NATO, why would they do other than being in league with BLZBub, obviously, which is a pretty persuasive reason as well. Why would they do that? Well, because they're assholes and... Tell me, yeah. And, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound, like once youholes and, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Like once you've decided that you're, I mean, I think there's a lot, there is, I think this is something important to understand about the relationship between people's ideology and their partisan preference, which is that, you know, voters and are not, like, they're not rational optimizers. It's not like people tally up their views and say, this is the policy, I support all of Donald Trump's

non-existent policies. And so I support Donald Trump. That it's sort of like I'm a Republican, and therefore I support whatever the Republican party says. So if Donald Trump was struck by lightning and then tomorrow morning declared for socialism, every Republican would then declare for socialism. And because that's how political identity works, the latest is that so historically, you keep

counting ballots that were postmarked by election day, that's the rule. So those are all the valid ballots cast. And so you have to keep counting all the ballots that were postmarked by election day. However, there was this whole thing about the Postal Service trying to suppress the vote. And so now there's a hearing today because the post office forgot to deliver the ballots.

And so there's potentially, let me see here, a f*** ton, I think is the temporal part of outstanding ballots that were not delivered. I'm looking at a chart now by the Postal Service. So that's frightening. There were a couple of outside of the presidential election. There were a couple of, I guess, positive news stories coming out of other races. Corey Bush was elected to Missouri's first congressional district, which is the first black congresswoman in the history of Missouri. And she also played a big part in the Ferguson

black lives matter protests. America has also elected its first trans-state senator. So there are some positive stories. However, there are also some even worse stories than Donald Trump's success, particularly. I mean, particularly given we now have our first QAnon supporting Congressperson. So, Mark, you've got a representative. Mark, democracy has to represent the people, Mish. And these QAnon conspiracy theorists

have been too long without representation. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's Marjorie Taylor Greed as one of the seats in the house and she is a supporter of the conspiracy theory queued on. A conspiracy theory suggests that there is a cabal of powerful pedophiles that are running America. Not the cabal of powerful pedophiles that we all know about, not them. And see a different one. Not the ones who went to a place that locals literally referred to as P. Dow Island, not them, amazingly.

They're not the ones that Kewanon is interested in. And the thing that I am fascinated by is what does Marjorie Taylor Green do once she gets to Congress and discovers that there are no people. I mean, the thing is, we used to politicians not delivering on their promises, but those things tend to be, I'm going to cut your taxes and increase public spending. Not, I'm going to fight and destroy a cabal of powerful pedophiles. Also, somebody who has got into politics to fight and destroy

a powerful cabal of pedophiles is going to be very bored when most of their duties involve having to vote on an appropriations bill for agriculture subsidy. But I think maybe though, Nish, you're looking at this the wrong way. What it suggests is that plenty of Americans want there to be a cabal of sataness and pedophiles covertly running the world. And actually, would that not be more reassuring? At least there would be a discernible philosophy behind what they're trying to do, a worship of Satan. There was definitely some good news in the election. There was actually quite a bit of good

news in the election. In addition to what Nish mentioned, we legalize weed in several states. We defeated an abortion ban in Colorado. We decriminalized other drugs in the state of Oregon. We expanded voting rights for formerly incarcerated people in California. There's a whole bunch of other good news that happened. The other detail that I just wanted to share with you, it may have escaped your attention gentlemen across the pond. But the state of North Dakota just elected a dead guy. I saw this. This was a... It's the logical step from the presidential election, essentially.

A Republican David Andall just got elected to the North Dakota State House of Representatives who had died in October because you might think that voters didn't know that he was dead, but I think it was probably a resounding mandate for his policy platform of being dead. Well, again, you know, this time for change, NATO, we've tried alive politicians and he's not been working very well for us. So you know, when you need to, when things are not succeeding, you need to have the courage to vote for change. I'm going to say, I want to know, Herman Cain, Herman Cain,

ran for president in the wrong year. in the wrong year. I want to know if you have anything any thoughts about the fact that Trump had a rally in Arizona with Nigel Farage? Well, you know, I don't like to compare national political cancers against each other and I don't know what's's necessary for it to come from different systems. But yeah, I mean, it's hard to talk about Nigel Farage, I think, for people of mine in issues, political persuasions. My favourite Nigel Farage moment came at a test match at lords, cricket match at lords in 2016. So shortly after the Brexit vote, England were playing Pakistan. And in the Pakistan team was a player called Muhammad Amir who just come back from a five-year ban

for match fixing, for cheating, for which he'd been jailed and banned from international ban from all cricket for five years. And he was playing his first game since this cheating scandal. And there was a lot of talk about how the crowd would react to this this cheat returning to the game as it was. There was some mild booing and otherwise people thought, well he's got a stiff punishment, he was only a young lad at the time and gave him a reasonable reaction. A Nigel Farage walked down the stairs at the side of the Mount Stand at Lord that afternoon and got resoundingly booed by the entire crowd. So that was my favourite Farage moment. We were prepared to forgive a proven criminal cheat, played cricket, but Farage got exactly what he deserved

at verbally. Just a touch on all the things that you would have thought would lead to a heavy defeat for Trump. Including threatening not to respect the result of the election, and to be fair, and for once a politician who was as good as his word, and came out claiming this was a fraud rather than just basic vote counting. And it clearly scored well with voters. I guess it is quite an attractive as a proposition. Support me if our team wins we win, if our team loses, we can pretend we won. So there's no outright lose situation. It's quite a good sales technique. Miss managing the pandemic obviously worked pretty well for him and as the prospect of defeat grows for Trump, he might possibly be

wondering did he mismanage it enough I mean approaching a quarter of a million deaths was impressive given the head start and the resources at America's disposal but could you know 500,000 even a million deaths have made him look like even more of a that is clearly the main pillar of his strange electability. I don't know. I mean, I don't know who knows how this is going to play out. I have maintained from the beginning of his presidency that the thing that I cannot visualize is the thing that has to happen in order for him to not be president in this election, which is he has to say I can see the presidency to Joe Biden.

He has to do that weird thing, where he has to call Joe Biden. Then he has to do the weird, you know, what the Nixon walk, as I believe it's officially known, where he has to stand in front of the helicopter and wave the peace sign in the air or whatever he chooses to do. I just can't visualize him going through the mechanics

of that process that it would require for him to... I've maintained from the beginning that this does not end with him getting in the helicopter. This ends with him going full-king-cong, with whichever one of the Milanese is closest to hand in his driving beast, stood on top of the White House as a phalanx of Wright Brothers biplanes flies along 16, toward 16, under Pennsylvania, Avenue. I just, I don't think this can't, why would this end? Normally, given how it began and middleed. The fantasy that kept me going through the day, yesterday, not that one, and not the other one, was very similar to what Nish was saying about Nigel Farage, which is just visualizing the video of Trump realizing

that he was going to lose. And wanting a live stream of wherever he was at that moment of him shouting at people and people rushing to bring him you know ground beef tostadas and and hamburgers cooked well done To it for him to ease his pains him throwing his phone across the room and then rushing to pick it up Him realizing that what what has indeed happened today, which is that Twitter has blocked most of his tweets

for spreading disinformation. I'm never happened to grow a Cleveland to be for. So, I mean, we still don't know exactly what's gonna happen. The one thing we can rule out is any satisfactory outcome because those are completely off the table. A convincing Biden win would have been a satisfactory, a repudiation of the repudiate repolitics of country that have defined the Trumpal Stiltskin years, a humiliating Trump defeat.

So this political curriculum and with him defined as a lose. That's been a nurturingly sweet pipe dream that we can now conside to history. A convincing Trump victory, that would have at least meant that we could accept that humanity, democracy and America have basically failed as social experiments if I may exaggerate very slightly and just get on with watching sport or TikTok videos of terrapin, dancing to Beethoven for the rest of our lives. But this sort of hinterland of disputed results, you know, Biden wins.

We've got the spectra of a provocatively embedded putressantly aggrieved Trump hanging over the transition period and indeed, you know, the next four years until whatever Ackelite or Sion of his fetted loin seeks the right to try and become the next Trump president. It's hard to be optimistic now, even if it does look like the worst, worst case scenario might not happen now.

You know, where we are now, I, so as you all know, as regular listeners to the view will know, I am in the middle of things, I am on the front lines, I'm involved. I did my share of get out the vote activities, I did a bunch of phone banking and text banking to turn out the vote. One highlight, by the way, I was doing text banking and someone replied to me, suck my dick. And then I replied to them, I'm sorry, that's not on the ballot, but you can write it in, me sucking your dick.

And see how that goes. Because that's what democracy is. Well, it's about compromise, isn't it? But this scenario of the early returns looking good for Trump and then Trump declaring victory before all the votes were counted, that there is a word for it, which is coup d'état, or as we say in Spanish, gulpe desstado, which literally translates as punching the state, which is how it feels right now. And so there were a lot of people on the American left, like thousands of thousands who've been preparing

for this moment, unions that have been talking about having a general strike to shut down the country in the event that Trump tries to refuse to count every vote or refuse to concede defeat and recognize the results. And I have to say, as I wish that it was a more resounding repudiation, but the scenario of Trump losing and then mass protest having to force him to office is pretty fucking exciting to me.

I am, we've seen it happen all over the world in Chile, Thailand, Iraq, you know, there's all these countries where they're right now in Poland, where millions of people take to the streets and they are able to drive an illegitimate and unpopular regime from power. And the key detail, the key thing that you have to remember to win these moments tactically is it's not just about mobilizing and protesting, but it's about specifically not going home. And at a man-of-my-age, that's difficult because I have reached the age where I have to pee more regularly.

And so at some point I have to figure out how to find a Lou. But you know, and this is what you need to do is, when you set up your overthrow the government Facebook event, usually like you'll have a Facebook event where it's like the rally goes from noon to two, and then we're gonna go get a burrito, and then go home and watch Netflix. But if you wanna overthrow the government,

you need to have no end time. So, you know, that it needs to be the rally starts at noon on Thursday and then continues until Trump is purplocking in handcuffs directly into Guantanamo. And that's the fucking plan right now. And, you glurs, I want you to know that you have a part to play. There is a, you have a historic destiny that only you can deliver in this moment, which is we are, we are, as we speak, people like me are all over the United States figuring out ways to have strategic disruption, what they call nonviolent resistance, civil resistance, targeted noncooperation to shut

down key choke points in the economy, to force an economic crisis so that Trump leaves. And Trump has a golf course in Scotland. And if Andy, and Nish, and Mark, and Tiff, and the other members of the UK based what you might call the bugle, the expanded cinematic universe, went to Scotland, occupied the Trump golf course in Scotland for a live tape mask on, socially distant, live taping, bugle episode to shut down the Trump golf course and do a pun run until the regime falls, I think that could do the trick. Well, I'm up for that, certainly.

It would be my honor to express solidarity for our siblings in America by taking a dump in a sand trap. And I'm not saying that because that's something I thought about doing before, and this is a convenient excuse for it now. Trump, one of the tweets he put out was that, how is his lead in these states that are counting a lot of postal votes had magically disappeared.

Very much like your fingers magically appear when you're teaching your infant child to fucking count. I mean, it's just like misunderstanding between magic and basic procedure, which I imagine must have made for some disappointing children's parties in the Trump family Well, it's disappointing children. Ta-da! The rabbit has magically disappeared. Well, no, it's magically disappeared into the mouth of that dog. It's a really fascinating exercise in watching someone who's never had to struggle for anything in their entire life, be confronted with the reality of what happens when you lose something.

Like it's almost as if Trump can't psychologically conceive of a situation in which things have gone badly for him. Largely because like the only things that have ever gone badly for him have ended up going extremely well for him His like bankruptcy was just a creative piece of accounting You know, so he's never really experienced the tang of failure and like normally all that results in is an adult having a tantrum But when that adult commands the most well-funded military world It gets slightly spicier

I think as I reflect on last night, it might be realized the number of things that I fundamentally do not understand. These include America. Americans, the people, I mean, do I want to understand them? I'm not the American political system. How Americans use the people, I mean, do I want to understand them? I'm not talking about the American political system. How Americans use the American political system. Humans in general, how the f*** did we make it as far as a species?

Christianity, I don't fully understand, certainly the Mike Pence version of Christianity, I don't know, in that Trump speech that he gave last night, I don't know if Pence was there thinking, what would Jesus do? And so maybe fair enough, because Jesus, Jesus of course did famously pretend not to be dead Even though all the evidence Suggested that he was definitely dead. He then delayed the results for days never admitted being dead

And it led to an ending squabbles going on for generations about whether or not he did in fact die So in fact that does kind of sit quite well with the the Trump Pence way of reacting to this Election optimism. I don't understand optimism Because that seems to me the path to guaranteed disappointment and I could code myself in an assumption, and this is more so after the last few years of democracy, we haven't gone particularly well for people on my various teams.

So even now, if you Trump's what, and how we've come into seven to two, while we've been recording, yes, I'm not counting those chickens. I'm looking at those chickens and saying, what are you to see for f***ing planning? The third millennium, I don't understand that, especially given the second millennium, that appears that we've not entirely learned any lessons from that. I don't understand logic, sense, statistics and Florida. Absolutely no f***ing idea. FloraDit is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt. I'm attempting to understand Florida could finally drive you off the edge, Andy.

Right. Yeah, I think it's probably best that I'll leave that for another year. So let's just quickly look ahead to what's going to unfold over the next few days. This is another one of those bugles that might be totally obsolete by the time anyone listens to it. I guess what the things that we know definitely won't happen,

it's easy to rule these things out, is everyone will relax, Trump will shut up, America will reach out in American parlance and also in American parlance, heal. The Republicans will remember what the f*** they're supposed to be, or everyone will sit down calm at the end of all this and think what lessons can we all learn from that. That will not. None of those will happen. Where are we going to be in a week's time, NATO, do you think? General strike bro. You think that every week. Well here in London we're going into a four week lockdown which I'm sure you're very excited about. Very excited about the lockdown. Very excited

about lockdown too. It was a very exciting announcement. I didn't think that when they trained newsreaders, one of the most essential pieces of training a newsreader could receive in 2020 was fill in for time while the government shits itself because the lockdown announcement was delayed by a couple of hours at the last minute. And then Boris Johnson came out and said things

that were incredibly serious and dull whilst looking like an absolute cartoon. Like the whole, the announcement was like watching Fuzzy Bear give a Ted talk about hospital administration. And you know, we're having a second lockdown to perfect our test and tray system, which I don't even know what that is. Like our test and tray set is the least successful app of this year. And I say that to someone who did a show on Quibi. That's about the bad thing, so. Well, lockdown three is happening in Washington DC

with Trump barricading himself into the White House with an 8,000-foot fence. Well, King Kong. I mean, that was... He's criticized a lot for being very short term. It's not really thinking much beyond the next news cycle, but this 8,000 foot fence, later, I mean, it keeps people out, it keeps him in. It's both an attacking and defensive maneuver.

It's gonna be quite hard to extract him, is it before we try to release him back into the wild? Yeah, so like here, as an uncommmetic plug the group that I'm following is called choose democracy and and if American-based bugleers should contact choose democracy to get trained about how to non-violently overthrow the government which is what we're about. In the scale of grand historical tasks overthrowing the government is not that hard. I mean, it's hard, but it's not like me losing another ten pounds is hard. So...

Nish, Nish, thank you very much for joining me on that. Certainly at about 2am UK time I thought was going to be I'll probably the most gloomy bugle in history and there have been quite a lot over our 13 years where it's been hard to see the sunlight So well we will see Exactly the level of darkness that is enveloping America In next week's show. Until then, Bugleers, goodbye. We'll be back next week with a full show

and some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers. We've slightly overrun this week, so we'll hold them back. They've been enough lies this week already. I don't know. It's not a good time to add to that. If you want to join the Bugle Volunteer subscription scheme, go to the BuglePodcast.com and click the donate button to make a regular or one-off donation to keep the show free flourishing and independent until next time. Goodbye! you