 It's Thursday. It's Think Tech. It's 11 o'clock block. I'm Jay Fiedel and we're talking about Trumpville. What's next? Oops, Coronaville. What's next? And the topic of the day is will we do any better on COVID if Trump stays in office with Tim Appichella, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton and Cynthia Lee Sinclair as opposed to all the other Cynthia Sinclairs in the world. Okay. Welcome to the show, you guys. So my question to you is the title question, Tim, will we do any better on COVID if Trump stays in office? My answer is a resounding no. And the reason I say that is because if you look at the last two to three months, Donald Trump and his administration, Scott Atlas, they haven't really done a whole lot of anything. In fact, of anything, they've increased the COVID cases and increased COVID deaths by having these outdoor rallies, indoor rallies with hundreds, thousands of Donald Trump's followers, elbow to elbow, cheek to cheek, without any mass. And we know that the virus is highly transmittable in the air, not just droplet form, but aerosol form. So has he done anything? Yes, he's made it worse. And I think his approach, whether he announced it or not, I think he has adopted Scott Atlas's philosophy about herd immunity. And he's just trying to get to the point where we could finally issue a vaccine and do nothing about it. So the answer is we are going to do worse. Okay. What do you think about this, Cynthia? I mean, he said he gives himself an A plus. He said he saved somewhere between two and two and a half million lives. And he's made all kinds of grand steps in progress in terms of dealing with it and 30 or 40 million people in the country accept that completely. What about you? No, I don't accept it. And Dr. Fauci was being interviewed this morning in regards to this vaccine that's supposed to come out, this wonderful vaccine that isn't even close to getting the 98% rating that it's supposed to get from any of the companies that are making them. And Dr. Fauci says we're not supposed to approve it. The CDC and the FDA are not supposed to approve it until it has a 98% success rate. Well, none of them do. And now Trump is talking about getting rid of that so he can just override what they say and make it be approved, whether it is actually safe or not. And that scares me because of all the people that do believe what he says. And they're at risk of taking a medicine that is brand new, never been used. And it could be deadly. It could be as deadly as the flu. We don't know. We're talking about a sole proprietorship government. I remember when he did the trade war and imposed tariffs. That was all him. That was not the Department of Commerce. It wasn't the State Department. It was just him woke up one morning. Most recently he woke up one morning and approved the deal for the sale of TikTok, which I think he has ulterior motivations for, even after saying that it was a security risk. And bingo, one morning he approved it all by himself as a sole proprietor. So, Stephanie, what do you think? Is he right about this? And will he continue to do the same kind of thing if he stays in power? Maybe he'll see the light. What do you think? There's a real big principle in the social sciences and that is the best predictor of future behavior is past behave. And that is reliable. And so nothing is going to change. Absolutely nothing. It will get worse. It could get worse, but it's definitely basically not going to change. Remember, there's no reason to expect it. That hasn't changed. She's just continued on the same trajectory. And so there's no reason to expect that there would be a difference. Well, if he does his herd immunity thing, and if the vaccine is either ineffective or delayed in the deploy, because some people won't take it, won't have the desired effect on the population, things could get a lot worse, I think, beyond where he is now with 200,000. And then you question the CDC because the CDC is no longer its own man or woman. So those numbers real. I think we'll have a lot of line going forward about that. Well, remember that President Ford did the same thing about the swine flu. I think anyway, he did it and there was a disaster and there were some losses and he rushed it and it had to be done. So we already have done this one time. So are we going to do that again? So I want to admit to you an ulterior motive in making the title, will we do any better on COVID if Trump stays in office? Because what I really want to do is get to the second part of that is, will Trump stay in office? And I would like to refer to an article that I mentioned in Tim's show yesterday on Trump Week. And it's the article in the Atlantic, which is entitled the election that could break America. A tagline is if the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him? That's the article by Barton Gilman. And in fact, I think his name is Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg, the same fellow who wrote the article about what Trump, the names that Trump calls the military a couple weeks ago. He's the editor of the Atlantic. And he wrote a little piece saying, you know, I was going to hold this till October. But I think it's so important we have it now. And so this article, which I mentioned, is being talked all over town and a couple of references to it on a network TV. So I want to read one paragraph to you guys and ask you to react. And he's trying to give us, Gilman is trying to give us some advice here. What can we do? Because there's so many provisions, flaws, if you will, in the constitution that let Trump drive a truck through it and pervert the result that we really have to consider what to do. So here it is. I'll read it fast. If you're a voter, think about voting in person. More than half a million postal votes were rejected already in this year's primaries, even without Trump trying to suppress them. If you're at relatively low risk for COVID, volunteer to work at the polls. If you know people who are open to reason, spread word that it is normal for the results to keep changing after election night. If you manage news coverage, maybe like we do, anticipate extra constitutional measures and position reporters and crews to respond to them, we can and should do that. If you are an election administrator, plan for contingencies, surprises you've never had to imagine before. If you're a mayor, consider how to deploy your police to ward off interlopers with bad intent. If you're a law enforcement officer, protect the freedom to vote. If you're a legislator, choose not to participate in chicanery. If you're a judge on the bench in a battleground state, refresh your acquaintance with election case law. If you have a place in the military chain of command, remember your duty to turn aside unlawful orders. If you're a civil servant, know that your country needs you more than ever to do the right thing when you're asked to do otherwise. Winston, your reaction, please. Well, it's a sobering article and we've seen other things like this, but not as well laid out as the 37 pages of this article. It's important that people sit down with it and actually read it because it shows we've been relying on norms for in all of our lifetimes. We can't remember anybody that violated the norms like this, but there are absolutely so many places this could go wrong and it's already being preplanned as this article has shown. There are things that we can do. We're not powerless in this. Number one is that we have people go and vote in person. I think Uber and Lyft are going to take people to the polls if they want to free. See if your neighbors need a ride. Make sure that people are actually voting. Even if they think their vote doesn't matter, it very well may matter. A lot of organizations have information. I think that they're going to start rolling out with and pounding people with from the New York Times, the Common Cause, the American Bar Association, the Brennan Center. There's a lot of organizations out there protect the vote. Just Google it. How do I protect the election? How do I protect the vote? We are not powerless. We shouldn't think we're powerless just because this man says he's going to stay in office and not leave, violate the Constitution, ignore that, not commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This hopefully, even people that are suburban supporters should say, wait a minute here. If the majority of people, although they didn't last time, but let's just say if he loses the election according to the way that our laws work right now, flat out loses, like say Hillary Clinton did last time, even though she won the popular vote, but she lost the election. Okay, we understand it's not simple, but if he loses, will they understand that it's our very basic nation at stake here? It's not about what he believes in or that he's against this or for that. It's that our very underpinnings of a nation are at stake, and we have to go back in after, hopefully, and enough people will show up in the polls, will vote early, will sign their forms if they mail them in so that we can repair these holes that you can drive a truck through in our laws and our Constitution and our voting systems, what were norms before that we actually go up and shore those up so that this cannot happen again, because it will if we don't, assuming that we get past this election, which I think we will. I still have faith in our countrymen that the more egregious the statements are that he comes down the pike and says this, that said, I was just reading an article last night that said 40% of Americans are basically authoritarian or mostly authoritarian in their outlook so that this type of thing for Donald Trump is absolutely appealing to them. And so we just need to recognize that they are not our end. It can be done. We can admit this challenge. Tim, do you believe it can be done? Perhaps. Before I answer the question, I just want to give a little background to my answer. And that is, remember yesterday Donald Trump said to the question about will you guarantee a peaceful transition? And he said, get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful, there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation. So the first thing I think a citizen can do is demand that to their legislators, their house members and their senators at the state level, number one, will you count the vote? Will you count these ballots and not accept Donald Trump's premise that they're flawed fraud? And will you accept them as a valid count? And then secondly, will you commit to a peaceful transfer of power and not subvert election law and not subvert the intent of the electoral system? And I think that's something that voters can do on a local level so that they don't feel helpless. And I certainly agree that you get to the polls as many as you can versus maybe mail-in ballots now. So I think there is still opportunities for this election to take place without a cataclysmic exchange, if you will. You know, we had a show last week with a phone name Freeman in New Jersey and he belongs to a group that make telephone calls to various voters in various states to try to confirm that they will vote for Biden in his case. And it's national, it's cross-state lines. You think that people in Hawaii can do anything to ensure that the voting rights of the people in say Illinois are being respected? Yeah, I do. I know someone personally in the building I live in, he's written probably 1,500 postcards from Hawaii, just reminding them of the importance of this vote and why they should, if they've never voted before to register or if they are registered, why this one is important for them to get out of their chair and do something about it. So a handwritten postcard, you know, reflecting the beauty of paradise here in Hawaii, sent to someone in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Michigan. You know, you tend to kind of see that come in the mail and you go, this isn't junk mail. This is someone took, you know, at least five to ten minutes to write this postcard. Let me read it. Yeah, valuable. I hope that happens at least to some extent. Stephanie, where are you on this? Are you confident that the United States will continue as a constitutional republic democracy under the Constitution or will it fail for the lack of an honest ballot? Well, first of all, I want to say that it's already been done to a great extent. I think that we're already ready to go over the cliff because the entire executive branch is under the president's control. There's no act. There are no real secretaries. Everybody's acting. The word is out that you have to get with the party line or you're gone. So the entire executive branch is under his control. He is running the entire federal government. That's what that means. So my faith in that changing, if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, nothing that is only going to get worse and more stringent and this people working for the Fed will be just like they do in China. They have to say what they're supposed to say. But one of the things that is amazing to me is that Donald Trump, like Hillary Clinton, doesn't seem maybe for different reasons, but Hillary Clinton never really paid attention to what was out there that some of us were not interested in her candidacy. She never really got informed about that. I don't know that her staff looked at that. Obviously, there were tremendous trends, tremendous waves of people who were very conflicted about that nominee. So I think going back and looking at that is important to do for what the Democratic Party did. I mean, she was anyway. So the other problem is that Donald Trump doesn't realize that such a huge swath of the population doesn't want him. He's not at all aware of that to the same degree as Hillary Clinton. Let me put that to Stephanie. Stephanie, you think that Donald Trump is closer to the heartland, to the way people feel in this country? Does he understand? Does he know how to relate to them better than Biden? What does Biden understand more about how to relate to the voting electorate? Well, I'm responding to that very good question. I respond in terms of the anti-intellectualism that seems to be flowing and that people want the knee jerk. They want the practical response to a problem. Oh, they're rioting in Spokane. Oh, well, then send in the U.S. Army and take care of it. I think it's that anti-complex subterranean work to solve problems. It's kind of like this direct hit. Sort of a caveman approach. What are your thoughts about this? Well, I'll tell you, I think the most dangerous time and the most important time that people focus on is in between when the votes arrive and when the decision has been made. Because that's where the violence will happen. That's where we open up that the opportunity for Trump to take this all over and pervert the results. And you know, we have been screaming from the rooftops about election security. It's too late now. I'm sorry. But I believe, I hope, and I love the idea of the postcards, and I hope like Tim and Winston, but I'm more in the camp with Stephanie that it's too late. The die has been cast. It's like too late. We can try and inform people not to go in the streets so that the only people in the streets are the bad actors because we've got to stay or it's going to be martial law just like that before we can even turn around. Well, if it happened right now in Kentucky. Yes, exactly. After Leeville after this newest Breonna Taylor results, no officers charge except for one for shooting into somebody else's house. Not even addressing the fact that this woman was shot in her own home. And, and, you know, they've done so many false narratives about it too that it's hard to even know the truth. Well, Tim, you know, we were talking before about the continuum, you know, from the time of the Women's March, which is right after the inauguration in 2017 till now, people have gotten tired, or at least they become less confident that the government will actually listen to them. And therefore, some of the, you know, the moves that are suggested by Wellman in the article may not, may not be viable anymore. Query whether people are going to go down to their senator's office and bang on the door and try to persuade that senator to come around, or whether people will go into the street on things other than race, things, you know, about the election and accounting votes, voter rights, if you will, or voter counting, which is even more deadly. What do you think about the view of the population? Have we, have we gone into a kind of zone where people are really damn tired about this? Oh, we're there. We've been there for months and months and months. Apathy is set in. And I think a reason for some of that apathy is to look at their elected leaders, you know, the check and balance of the constitutional system that we have of where the senators would rise up and say, wait a minute, this is clearly against the norm of how we run a government. And but that hasn't happened. The Republican senators have been mute. You know, the only one really trying to figure out what's going on has been the media. And they have been following the shiny objects. So I think, I think the public is tired of following the shiny objects, they're burnt out. And so, yes, they, you know, they're complacent at this point. But I think if they see the democratic electoral system being picked apart, and they may raise up and say, wait a minute, this is a bridge too far. And they, I don't want to see them go take to the streets. I agree with Cynthia. We don't need to play into Donald Trump's hand of creating an environment where martial law could be the order of the day, where that where that dissension needs to take place is in Congress, you know, their right to petition the government of their grievances. So let's, let's go to the media for a minute. You know, my observation watching MSNBC and CNN and others, but not Fox, because I have a rule about Fox. I don't know if I told you about my rule about Fox. I will go and listen to Fox and wait for the first lie. And then I turn it off. And I, and variably within the first 15 seconds, I turn it off because there is a first lie. But let's talk about, let's talk about the media in general. As somebody said, I forget who here, maybe Cynthia, that we always following the shiny objects. And, and the media follows the shiny objects, and they don't really connect the dots, such as we try to do here on Think Tech. And so what, what should we be looking for now in this last month or so? You know, as good viewers, as good analysts, as good reporters, if you will, volunteer journalists, what should we be focusing on? Should we, what, what, what should be our mindset about avoiding being led down a path of shiny objects? That's a great question. The media, you know, by nature's, it's just, it's not been doing the in-depth reporting of the Atlantic Vanity Fair of the New York magazine. These even things like political, which are shorter and easier to digest. But when you're asking someone to sit down and read a 30 page 37 page, whatever, even longer than, you know, three paragraphs, it's hard for people in this day and age they can't focus. They're overwhelmed. They're exhausted. And they are so fatigued with all of this. And they either like the guy or they don't. But, but the article that you're talking about, which you should put a link in under this show to the, to the Atlantic article, really lays out, this is it folks, if you can spend 30 minutes of your life or 15 or 20 or whatever it is that it takes you to get through this article and read it and inform yourselves of the real grave issues here, then do it. And that's what we can do is get out that message that says, Hey, we may have differences of opinion on this or that or these rights or those rights, but none of us are going to have rights here pretty soon. If we don't take back the basic mechanism of how the framework of how we are supposed to be. And as Tim was saying, there's not one Republican has stood up and said, I have some qualms about this when the leader of the country says he would not commit to a peaceful transfer, not one of 50 in the Senate could say that. You know, this is true. McConnell said that he was that he believed we were going to that he said in an affirmative fashion this morning in the hill. I saw this. He said, we will have a peaceful transition of power. That's what he said. Yeah, the voice and more locality and all of the people he leads us and guides us in such a beautiful way. Cynthia, let me go to you for a minute. We don't have much much time left. And that is, you know, so Biden has been making responses. And I've had discussions with Tim about this query. Are these responses adequate? Do they meet Trump at the pass? Or are we being, are we playing the Lord Fauntleroy rules here and are really not not not taking a position that is calculated in the public mind to mean anything? Are the other Democrats being too soft? Well, I think that the press has been way too soft. And I think that Biden does need to get more aggressive in the things that he says. If he's going to make a claim about Trump and one of his deficiencies, then why not have the proof right there with him? You know, we always see these politicians now, we used to see them all the time, but we do now with their little board in the back behind them as they're talking about whatever they're talking about. So I think Biden should get on the board with that and start doing it so that he can show what he's talking about. Here's the proof. You know, I'm not just spouting things against this president. I actually have proof. These are things that he has done. So and that's the offensive that Stephanie's been talking about for so long too. Instead of always being on the defensive. Oh, I'm not, you know, do I look like a socialist that likes rioters? You know, instead of those kind of comments, why not immediately talk about the hate and the division that Trump has been, you know, I don't even, inflaming. I don't even know the word for it because it's, he's the one that's behind all of it. So Stephanie, your name has been mentioned. Do you think that approach will actually work? Yes. And that will, will, will avoid all the nefarious things that Trump and his friends have been doing to the election system. Yes, by offense in doing this Gelman article, and I haven't spent enough time on it, but from what I understand, he lays out the various he that the media needs to out the state he lists identifies that will send electors with new with the agenda of Trump. So he has set up how that whole electoral college can operate to give him give Trump the election that media needs to focus on those states and their processes for getting these electors into into the college to the meeting where they make the final decision. It's a hard question, but let me ask you this. So Trump has been proactive in filing virtually thousands of lawsuits around the country in order to try to muck up the election process. You think the Democrats ought to do the same thing? Who would they sue? What would they say? They're not only meeting Trump's suits and defending them, but making their own suits. You think that would be useful? Yes, you legal guys could do that. Where are our legal guys? We got to bin and we got the yeah, get those guys to work. What are they doing? Yes, action, please. It's action. Not worrying about who believes it, who knows it, who can take blah, blah. No, it's action we got to act. So get the lawyers doing the same damn excuse me the same thing and get those states outed that are going to mess around with the electoral college. Now the most difficult question of all, Tim, we're going to have to close with you. Although I want to ask for keywords after this. So Tim, what's Trump going to do here? How is this going to unfold next week and so forth? He is going to take advantage of that, which has not been addressed. He's going to continue to hammer on the fact that these ballots, these mail out ballots are full of fraud. And he will use that as a continual drum to beat so that he can put in his claim and delay this election. What we haven't done, argumentation 101, if Donald Trump's claim is that this election is rigged and his evidence to support that claim is the mail-in ballots are fraudulent. No one has taken the time to say, no, ballots are not fraudulent and stick on that and stick on it and repeat it and take away his claim and the validity of his claim by proving mail-in ballots are not fraudulent. And it convinced each and every state of secretary in each state that yes, you will count these ballots. And until that's done, Donald Trump will continue his path of delegitimizing the vote process. Yeah, so it sounds like to me from what you're saying that Biden ought to be the countervailing voice here. He's the other fellow in the election. Well, when he gets off a plane and says, what can I say? I mean, that's all he, are you kidding me, Mr. Biden? Are you joking? Is that your response? What can I say? Yeah, he ought to match Trump point for point. He ought to call him on everything, including, you know, eyes, including statements he makes without evidence and so forth. I'm sorry to say this about the candidate that I'm now supporting, but feckless is the only word that comes to my mouth. Okay, well, is that your word for the day, Tim? We're looking for a word for the day to best characterize this discussion to our viewers. So let's try to find another one aside from feckless. What have you got? If you want a word that summarizes how I feel, animosity. Okay, animosity for Tim. Okay, Stephanie, what's your word for the day? Democrats get to work. Do it. Go up and do it. All right. And Cynthia, your word, how do you feel? Terrified. You know, I was thinking of my word a minute ago and it would have been abject fear. So I think you and I, we must be related. Winston, what's your word for the day? Yeah, I'm going to go with reflection or infrospection. Each of us needs to look inside of his or her heart and make the important choices. And you know, for Trump supporters out there, if you like him, he's a rebel, he's a renegade, whatever, you can still go into the booth and not vote for him and tell people that you did. That's what the Lincoln Project says. Yeah, because you're saving the nation. You're saving the nation for yourself, if nothing else. But anyway, so I'm going to say infrospection, look within, be patriotic at a real level for the country that we all purport to love, that we need to keep this country and move it forward in the best way possible for all of us. Thank you, Winston. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Stephanie. And thank you, Tim. A great discussion. See you next time. Take care. Aloha. Stay safe.