 Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock. It's December the 9th, 2020. I'm Tim Appichell, your host, and this is Rediscovering America. The title of this show is, You'll Be So Sick and Tired of Winning. Everyone remembers the year of 2015 before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Often was heard on his campaign trail that we'll be winning so much, and you'll be so sick and tired of winning. Well, what does winning really look like these days? Let's fast forward. Just to hit on a couple points about what winning might look like, which isn't winning. We have food lines for almost every state in the country. Many of them are bumper-to-bumper with cars for those that can afford a car. Many of them are people standing in line in the midst of a COVID pandemic, standing in line for hours for a bag of food. Unemployment, another topic of winning. National statistics are unemployment right now is about 6.7%. Here in Hawaii, as of September, the number is 15.1%. I don't know if that looks like winning to me. It doesn't. The grim statistic is, as of today, we have 287,550 deaths from COVID nationwide. Dr. Renfield from the CDC projects that we may be at 450,000 deaths before we hit February. Farmers, they're not selling their food, their crops. The market in China has been dismantled. They're getting government subsidies. I know farmers. They'd rather be growing their crops and selling their crops. I don't think they think we're winning. There's over 540 children that were separated from their parents at the border, the Mexican U.S. border. I don't think they feel like we're winning. They don't know where their parents are, and their parents don't know where they're at. Other points of winning is we've disengaged from climate change. We've made issues worse in Iran, North Korea, and China. Donald Trump. Is Donald Trump winning? By definition, he can't win because he lost the election. I assure you he's winning. And how is he winning? Well, Donald Trump has set up a little pack, a little political action campaign called Saving America. In all this time, in the last five weeks of him crying the blues about how he lost and how the election was stolen from him, and there's fraud everywhere from all of four states. In the meantime, Donald Trump has raised $250 million. Not bad for being a loser. Not bad for claiming the election was taken and stolen from him. Not bad at all. And this is all because Roger Stone stopped the steel advertisement of how you can help Donald Trump win back the election. The disclosure that's in very small print is that if the donation is less than $5,000, that money goes right to Donald Trump. He gets 75% of it, and the RNC gets a portion of it, and it goes to pay down campaign debt. So how much more money does he get to raise between now and the end of the year? Well, count on another 150 million. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guests this morning. We have Winston Welch, Cynthia Leeson-Claire, and Stephanie Dalton. Good morning, everyone. Hello. Hey, Winston. Hi. Is America winning? How's it feel? I mean, do you think we're feeling like we're all winners after Donald Trump's prognostic campaign promises to us? It's 2 plus 2 equaling 5. What does the party tell us? The party says that we're winning, then we're winning. I think that even though you can see something different with your own eyes here, everybody go back and read 1984. Just because someone says that something's true doesn't mean that it is. Find out the information for yourself. But casual observation says we're locked down in our homes. We're facing mass death, death reverse. As she said, this is not just the biggest public health threat the nation has ever faced. This is the biggest threat it's ever faced, which is an amazing statement to say. And even if she's sort of putting this in a category of civil war slash World War II levels, she's right. This has affected all of us so dramatically economically, socially, politically. We have a president who is effectively AWOL right now. I'm not sure who's running the country. It's hard to grasp the totality of the situation where we're at right now. However, there is hope on the horizon. We're down to 42 days now or something until Biden's taken over. There's already the cabinet that's being developed. We're seeing that government is going to come back and spring into shape and be reasonable and competent and decent. And I think that we're going to be seeing that here more and more as we're seeing Donald Trump just did. I don't know if you saw the ceremony where he was giving away the Medal of Freedom, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he just walked away from the podium as a child was on the floor behind him having a tantrum. I'm not sure Dan Gable deserved that. I thought that was appalling for him. And you saw his expression was like, what's going on? This should be like my day. I'm getting a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I think it's just sort of, it was emblematic and indicative of what we can expect for the next couple of months. Winston, does this come to an end on December the 14th when the electoral college comes together and votes? No. I think there was a good article in the Atlantic called Trump's Most Malicious Legacy and it's that the outgoing president leaves behind a tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional political culture. And when you have 50, 60, 70% of the people thinking that the election was not fair, when in fact you have Democratic and Republican governors, judges, some appointed by Donald Trump saying this was absolutely fair, Georgia counts three times and Biden has won three times. How many times do we need to do this? These are fake lawsuits, I guess. Let's look at another statistic. Let's look at another statistic. There's been over 38 legal actions filed in various courts of the four states, the swing states. Some of them are from the Supreme Court, have rendered their decisions. We're at zero and 38. Now, if you're a Republican donor to Donald Trump and his Stop the Steel campaign, at what point do you kind of let reality sink in and say, gee, 38 cases in court have been decided against Stop the Steel activity here? At what point do you say my money is being used for something other than trying to reverse this vote? Well, it's a great question and I think that each person who did support Donald Trump for whatever reason needs to come to an understanding that they're being duped at this point. Their money is being taken to afford, like you talked about that $250 million fund or whatever it's going to be. That's a cash cow. This is a donation scheme. But beyond that, we're going to have to have a reconciling here. And I was appalled yesterday when the Republican Party of Arizona asked if you were ready to die for Donald Trump. Yeah, let's bring that up real quick because I found that jaw dropping as well. And here's what the Arizona GOP, her name is Kelly Ward. She's the director of the GOP for Arizona. And they retweeted something from Ali Alexander. And what he said was, willing to give up my life for this fight. And within the retweet from the Arizona GOP, they said, he is, are you? Question mark. I mean, this is, I don't think this is a subtle call to violence. It's a blatant overt call to violence. But now they're denying that, of course. They're saying, oh, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't that. And I mean, when does this stop? Well, and that's what I said is that from all that we can see, this is going to outlast Donald Trump. The thing is, as this Republican Party finds some more voices inside of it, and they start to break away and splinter, it may become more dangerous than it is now under this absolute control that he has over it. So you'll find people and groups that are going to be given voices that are going to be much scarier than what we've been seeing is, would be my prediction. However, I think then the other people, like you said, when do they realize that it happens? It's just going to happen naturally. When the volume gets turned down and we're getting to the work of fixing the country, rebuilding it and making it healthy again, and all the things that we need to do, the volume is going to turn down on Donald Trump. He's still going to be out there banging his drum as loud as he can, but already the volume is being turned down on him by his own party, if nothing else. Okay. Thank you, Winston. Stephanie, do you agree with what Winston just said about the volume being turned down? And Jay Fidel's previous comments about the fact that he'll no longer have the bully pulpit, and therefore his followers will peel off. Do you think that's going to be the case here in the next six months? Yes, I certainly think those are contributory factors to having him turned down. The most important one is to pay no attention, as Mary Trump and other previous Republican senators have said. There needs to be no attention paid. We need to get on with some ignoring of this right now. Yes, they're willing to die because they already are dying, they're going to maskless, rally shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart with all these other people, which is absolutely undeniably suicidal. So they're already dying, and I think that is clear. So what has to happen is what should have happened during the 2016 campaign, which is take the camera off of him and stop recording the inanity. Enough, we're done, we're done. And also we've got to save our strength for everything that's coming in the next 45 days, because there will be things coming and the nation will be, we face the government with whether there's going to be prosecutions, whether they're even going to be put to state, what to do about all of this miscreants. How best to handle that is going to be a huge issue for Biden and folks going forward, because it could also be an ignore. Just drop it. Okay, Stephanie, let me ask you this. Does it help turning down the volume when the Supreme Court, and this particular opinion was from Judge Alito, it was a nine to zero vote. So that means even the three judges that Donald Trump appointed agreed that the lawsuit for Pennsylvania to overturn the election results failed miserably. They didn't even write an opinion. At the end of a 10 word sentence, it was, the last word was denied. They didn't even want to bother to spend the energy to address it because it was frivolous in nature. And they, they didn't, unfortunately, they didn't say it was frivolous. But does that help turn down the volume? Tim, that's really a terrific point. And it instills confidence in all of us that we have got the brainpower up there at the Supreme Court that we thought we had judgment at the legal level, if not in the amount of beer that's drunk or the amount of hurrah that's going on or religious craziness. I shouldn't say craziness, but service, you know, devotional limits without any limits on devotional. I'm just saying that, yes, they can think it through and they just showed us that they can. So I thank you, Scotis, 100%. And yes, that's on the way. And that's it. The substantive stuff, that's what we want to see on these shows. Tell us about this, you know, the people who are who are in power and are able to turn the volume down by being substantive and making these correct decisions. And the only other thing I was concerned to say something about was, as he goes forward, that we also not be so sensationalized by the things that he's doing. Why is anything a surprise? Why is absolutely anything a surprise? He's got all kinds of other things that he's going to do beyond the terrible things that already are being done. And so he's going to tear the place up and we're ready for it and we'll deal with it after the fact. So we got to be adults. Great points. Thank you, Stephanie. Very good points. Hey, Cynthia, this seems to be, this process seems to be protracted, particularly all the legal contests because they keep filing lawsuits. Let's go to the gentleman in Texas. I believe he's the Attorney General and his name is Ken Paxton. And Ken Paxton is filed yet another Supreme Court challenge. And his argument is that the five states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania, their process of calculating the votes was improper. Now, he's in Texas. So I don't know why a Texas Attorney General, who is the top cop for that state, thinks that he can favor some kind of influence over the four states and how they select a president. But these challenges seem to continue the process. Any thoughts about this? I actually have a lot of thoughts about this. First of all, just looking at who Ken Paxton is, under investigation, for fraud, abuse of office, securities fraud, all sorts of things. Then we've got seven of his aides that work in his office coming out against him, saying that there's all kinds of egregious conduct going on. That was in the form of a written letter, by the way. Right. To me, this is more like he's looking for a pardon from Trump, so he's trying to kill a lot. And that's kind of the way it comes across to me. There's a couple of things, though, that what he's trying to claim in the case is that these four states, somehow, because they changed their ability to allow mail-in voting, has negatively reflected on his own state's ability, which I don't see how I could possibly hold up. But there's another thing that I want to point out about this that shows the ridiculousness of this case. Dominion voting machines, the subject of endless pages of allegations and affidavits in plaintiff's submission, this is Ken Paxton's submission, are not used in the relevant counties. The complaint alleges egregious conduct involving these machines in eight Wisconsin counties, but materials sourced from the WEC website and included in the plaintiff's own exhibits, his own exhibits, show the Dominion machines are used in only two of those counties, and those two counties, Ozaki and Washington, are both places where President Trump won. Well, I'm glad you read that. That in combination with Chris Krebs, who was the cybersecurity director for Homeland, he has said explicitly that the Dominion voting machines tallied up perfectly with the backup ballots, perfectly. Right. And that was Georgia. And so Georgia has now finished his third recount coming to the same conclusion for the third time. You know, I talked, like I've said in the past, I talked to people that are Republicans that are sort of bought into all of this cult of personality stuff. And I am shocked to see that when when Scotus put, you know, denied this last claim about Pennsylvania to stop the certification, they think, well, but that's okay because they're going to pick up the one from Texas about the multiple states' rights. And somehow, Texas is trying to claim that these four states have infringed on Texas state rights. I just, I can't see how. Well, I think you, I think you hit it the nail on the head perfectly. And that is, this is not about a legal challenge. This is about getting some airtime till Donald Trump can notice that he's fighting the fight as as as ridiculous as this is. He's fighting the fight in hopes that he'll get a pardon in the future over this federal indictment. The FBI has been looking into this. He's been under indictment for five years. In fact, the first time he was actually penalized for real estate, real estate fraud for about a thousand dollars. Well, we're looking at something a lot more serious with his indictment. And I think he's fishing for a pardon. I agree. I totally, that's what it is. Because otherwise, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. You cannot claim that states that are as far away from you as you can get almost are somehow infringing on your state's rights because you didn't want to go forward with mail-in ballots and they did, somehow, that's not constitutional. I really, I'm gonna ask you a quick question that I asked Winston and that is, does this all come to an end as far as the Donald Trump ignoring the victory for Joe Biden? Does this come to an end on December 14th? No. And it doesn't come to an end on January 20th either. It's not going to come to an end for a very long time. He has made it clear with this whole entire process that he is going to undermine the Republicans ability to trust this election. And that is going to go forward for a long time, I'm afraid. I think it's going to very much undermine our election process in many ways. There's already lots of talk about how this is going to increase voter suppression and voter disenfranchement, you know, infringement and stuff. And so I'm, I'm very worried about that. Plus, we've got the worry of this guy in Arizona, this lady in Arizona, this one saying, yeah, I'm willing to give your life for this. It's insane that people are wanting to do that. And Trump has called for his army to, you know, get out their guns. We've got secretaries of states that have armed protesters in their front yards that will not leave. And they're not just saying standing there with signs saying we don't agree. They're threatening them. You change your vote or your family won't be safe. Now that's where I draw the line. Why aren't the police making this go away? This is threatening behavior. These are protests. And to call them protests is the same thing as calling the violence in the Black Lives Matter protests. Those weren't protests either. The protests were the peaceful protesters. The ones that Trump cleared out with tear gas so he could go get his little photo off with the Bible in front of him. Okay, you've raised some very good points and I appreciate it because it needs to be said. And I thank you for that. Switching gears, Winston, we have 287,000 Americans that have perished due to COVID. It was really a delightful thing to see on news that the elderly lady, I think she was 92 years old, received the first vaccine shot and that left my hopes. I felt a lot better about things knowing that the vaccine is on the way. Did the Trump administration blow it by saying no to Pfizer back in the summertime about ordering an extra, almost a million extra doses? Because it's a two shot process, the million doses that we are now booked for or have scheduled for, it's really only 500,000 people because you have a two shot process. Did we miss the vote on this? We missed the vote the whole time. I mean, just from the beginning calling it a Chinese virus, a fake virus, a Democratic plot to get them out, don't wear a mask. Having these rallies, messages that this is a political statement, if you're wearing a mask, it means that you don't support Donald Trump. And on and on and on. It's astounding to see the horror of just denying basic reality in this. That's a legacy that we're going to have to unpack after all is said and done. For right now, we're just in for a world of pain. Having Deborah Birx come out with her mask on, I think it was CBS Space The Nation or it was NBC Morning Show on Sunday. But that's showing where we're at. We're getting and having, I think Anthony Fauci took the position inside of the Biden administration to continue on. These are hopeful signs. These are people that are dealing with reality as best as they can under their current constraints. You just had the CDC release its own, not requirement, but suggestion that you wear a mask when you're indoors across the nation. This is insane. You think about what a basic concept that is and the CDC is just coming out with that now. There's obviously been political pressure that has been brought to bear on the entire government about this. And we just need to really clean house. When we were talking earlier about the points that Cynthia was bringing up and Stephanie, we will never be rid of the contamination of this administration, but there are glimmers of hope coming out. When you have the Georgia Lieutenant Governor, Jeff Duncan, he said that it disgusts me about Trump's attacks on the Republican governor and the Secretary of State. You have another representative, Kinzinger, who says we've lost our moral authority as a party as Republicans. And those are brave statements to make right now. So you're seeing these olden days Republicans that we used to know coming back and trying to grasp these back here. Well, they still have Mitch McConnell. That's why it's so important that the Democrats take back the Senate with Kamala Harris as the deciding vote and sadly that it's so close like that. I don't know what's going to happen there, but as far as COVID goes, we're still going to be basically rudderless and without an engine as well. And for the next six weeks that we're going to get a few bits of advice from Deborah Birx and the CDC, but basically you're on your own. Wash your hands. Stay inside. Let me ask you something because you mentioned some of the old-time Republican party members, Kinzinger, people that were moderate. Well, I don't think Kinzinger was ever a moderate, but I mentioned December 14th and I guess I keep bringing this up, hoping that things will change after the electoral college is voted and decided who the next president is. Are reluctant Republicans in the Senate, the House, are they going to then come out after that? That is done. You think they've finally grow a backbone, a spine and stand in their own two hind legs to finally admit that Joe Biden will be the next president? It won't be, it'll be, their spine will be made out of jelly for most of them and I don't expect anything to say. They just want, they want it to go away more than anybody else because this is a very inconvenient truth that it's obvious what's going on here. They're just trying to hide and say that it doesn't exist. They're waiting until the Donald leaves. Let's see what happens after that. They also don't want to blow their chances when you look down in Georgia. If this is not a real election then why should you come out and vote for the Republican candidates for the two Senate slots? They're having to do a pretty delicate dance right here because they either have to say the elections are valid and you should go out and vote or, but you're getting both. They're saying it was invalid for the president but valid for all the other elections. You can't have it both ways and that's exactly what they're doing. But they can and they are. And they are and when you just, you tell the lie enough but I think if the Democrats were so clever why did they lose across the board in so many elections and why didn't we gain back the Senate and this was a you know clear blue tide away but it wasn't and so it wasn't very clever if that was the grand plot that they were missing. So I think gradually I hope that some sensibility will come in and we have to be able to welcome back normal sane people who just had a little bit too much orange Kool-Aid to drink for whatever reason and just say okay let's kind of try and forget about this as best as possible and go about the task of rebuilding the nation together. All right we're almost out of time. Thank you Winston. Stephanie we're out of time but your prediction for the next week? I just wanted to say that it's going to be harder and harder even if we win the Senate. If we don't win the Senate it's really going to be hard but I just want to shout out for Joe Biden because he's doing what needs to be done. He's not trying a top-down thing aside from the 100-day mask I guess but he's modeling unity and he's setting up a situation where the people are going to be involved in you know people wearing masks just for example like here in Hawaii if you walk around without a mask on people give you stink eye and you get all kinds of peer pressure. We need that across the whole nation and only way we're going to get that is with somebody like Joe Biden who can do these things that way and is starting to reach across the island and pull on the things that he's famous for doing himself in the Senate. All right that's going to do it. Okay thank you very much. Cynthia just a few words your predictions for next week? More of the same and I'm hoping that it's more of the same with the Supreme Court refusing to give license to this kind of craziness and supports our democracy if we can hope that and then we can mostly just hope that like Stephanie said people need to wear masks. People need to be aware that I mean 3,000 people a day are dying. Dead alone. That's more than we lost in 9-11 that's more than we lost you know in so many it's just every day yeah we wouldn't be go swoop but every single. I think we're just desensitized to the numbers and thank God some of the newscasts are talking about the individuals who have perished due to COVID and it humanizes it again and it brings us back to the fact that these aren't statistics these are real lives so thank you for mentioning that as well. Thank you very much Cynthia I appreciate it. Winston last word prediction for the next week or so? Oh it's I think we're like Cynthia said more of the same. Take care of yourselves take care of your family if you get an invitation to go anywhere to do anything with anyone decline it and don't extend it and that goes for the next two to three months you can order everything online. Oh wise wise words Winston I want to thank everybody I want to thank you Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Lies and Claire thank you for joining us on Rediscovering America. I'm Tim Apachele your host we'll see you next Wednesday 11 o'clock aloha.