 I'm Tim Apachele, host for Trump Week. Here we are at a new day, a new time. And the title of this show is A Turning Point for Trump Week. Over two years ago, Trump Week was created. The show was created to analyze, to discuss Trump's words, tweets, his actions, his policies, and the impact of Donald Trump and his administration on our country, our society, and our democracy. So where have we been for the last two years? Well, frankly, we've talked for two years every week about the machinations of this administration and Donald Trump. And to just briefly summarize some of the topics we covered are the following. We discussed the immigration zero tolerance policy at the border, the corporate tax cuts, executive orders, the Russian influence on this government and the election of 2016, multiple staff appointments, multiple staff cuts, blatant racist comments, a nod and wink to white supremacist groups, turning our backs on our military partners, the Kurds, holding support from our allies in Europe, love letters to Kim Jong-un, loyal support to Putin, the Mueller report, the impeachment, the failure to contain the COVID virus, the election campaign, and where we are today, a refusal from Donald Trump to concede the election to Joe Biden. Trump's time is over. He served until January 19th, 2021. He has sucked out enough oxygen out of the room and over 74 million living rooms, he has successfully designed and implemented his plan to divide our nation. Trump's time is over. The name and nature of Trump week is over and personally I'm grateful for that, but I'm more thankful and happy to announce the new show, Rediscovering America. I'd like to go to our guests for this new show, Rediscovering America. I'd like to thank everyone for their participation on Trump week and I hope you're happy that I'm happy that we won't have to discuss Trump week much longer. So without further delay, welcome Jay Fidel, welcome Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Lee Sinclair, and Winston Welch. Welcome everyone, welcome to the new show. Great. Thank you, Tim. Hey Jay, I'm gonna go to you with our first question. Donald Trump refuses to concede this election. I'm sure he has many plans. He's already kind of, we've already heard some news stories about maybe the possibility of him running for the 2024 election. By definition that means that he won't be serving as president, so therefore by definition, he already knows that he's lost this election and he just doesn't want to admit it. So Jay, what kind of mouthpiece, what kind of loudspeaker will Donald Trump have after January 20th, 2021? You know, actually I think that goes in two steps. The first step is everybody getting used to the idea that he lost, because right now he has a lot of support among his base and they marched in Waikiki and they're sending me a lot of email and they're making public statements hither and yon about how the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But you know, the fact is the power is shedding off him. He's losing power, he's a loser. And people are getting used to that and more and more people are coming on board and affirming his election, hither and yon all over the world actually. And I think as that happens, we go to step two. Step two is when people get used to the idea, when the country gets used to the idea that we have to move on and he's no longer the president. The problem is the transition between step one and step two. Step one has the possibility of violence, that is the possibility of recalcitrance by government officials such as the woman who runs the transition team in Washington. You've heard about that. And step two of course has the possibility that in the period between now and January 20th at noon, at the time Biden takes over as president and sworn in, Trump will do sabotage things. And that's the part that concerns me greatly. And I'm concerned that his termination to Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense is intended at least in part for sabotage purposes in terms of surrounding the White House and refusing to leave. That's the part that worries me, but I think it's a step one, step two. And in the end, he will have to give it up. In the end, we do have a new president and we have new initiatives and hopefully Biden will be in a position, especially with those two seats in Georgia, to implement those initiatives. So other than Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, if you're a member of the GOP Senate or the GOP House of Representatives or a governor, what are your thoughts? What thoughts are going through your head right now about Donald Trump's refusal to acknowledge the title of President-elect for Joe Biden? And where and when do you chime in? I'd be tossed about it. You know, the one thing is I need to stay connected with the Republican Party, but the other thing is I realize, I must realize the Republican Party is changing just as, you know, the country is changing and it's not gonna be in the same form in the future, maybe soon. And so I'd better get off, I'd better get out of the boat here before it's too late for me. These guys won, I think that was a fluke and we can talk about it. But at the end of the day, I can't stay with the sinking ship. So at some point, all these guys, however totally Republican they may have been, have really got to make some decision to protect themselves because Trump will not be able to protect them soon enough. He will not have the power to protect them and they'd better jump ship. At the last second, obviously. Okay, thank you, Jay. Appreciate your comments. Hey, Winston, what do you think about 70 million Americans voting for Donald Trump? And what do you think that says about where we are as a nation? Where Joe Biden, I think now got 74, 75 million. So it is a very close tight race. But what does that say about us and where we're at? Well, it says that we have a lot of work to do in this nation and we have a lot of work to bring people back together. And I think once Donald Trump is intriguing everyone with toxic, narcissistic, sociopathic behavior and the curtain is actually pulled back as people are allowed to wake up. I mean, one of the saddest things I think is that this man has allowed families, friends, co-workers, neighbors to be divided in ways that never has happened in this nation's history before. And if you ask people, why do they support Donald Trump? They're very hard pressed to give specific reasons what he's done, he's a great president. He's, I support him because his policies are great. But naming those policies is very hard. He has a grip on the mind of 70 million people and we have to acknowledge that. And we have to work with it. We have to deal with it. Joe Biden was incredibly presidential when we saw him on Saturday saying, if you voted for me, I will work as hard or harder for you that if you didn't vote for me, I will work harder for you than the people that did vote for me. And so he was saying, I am the president of America. I will be the president for all Americans. That's the message we never got in the last four years. We were specifically divided and pitted against one another unnecessarily. Just it's a tragedy is what's happened. And so now we need to look across the street, look across the office cubicles, look across our families and say, you know what folks, this has not been worth it. The personal, the national, the international trauma and tragedy that we've had over these years, we need to move on. This man will still not even accept defeat in the face of defeat. I think what, when you asked Jay about, what would you do if you're a Republican? You know, these folks have been, as I said last week, they've been in a prison of their own. The cells are open now. They're just afraid to come out for fear that someone around the corner has got, that Trump's right around the corner with a baseball bat. The reality is, is once he's out and you have the lawsuits starting in New York and all the other things when he's stripped of Twitter immunity, as it were, we're going to be seeing a lot of revelations whether people believe them or not. It really doesn't matter. I think what we need to focus on is the repair of America. Find out the root causes of a lot of these grievances. They're economic at the heart of a lot of them. I don't think most of his supporters are racist. I don't think they're sexist. I don't think they're homophobic. I think that they have just found a man who gave voice to their grievances, whatever they are, it's an anomaly. Before the show, Jay kind of brought up a nice sports analogy and that is, when you see people jumping up and down in the stadium seats or in their living room chair, they really can't tell you why they support one team over another. Perhaps a family member in the past was their favorite team but their passion and dedication to that team is as much as any kind of religion or a belief system. It's amazing the energy and passion that goes into a sports team's support. Yes, and if you've been supporting the 49ers versus the Redskins or whatever it is team you support, that's, it's a religious zeal. And people just have to realize, okay, let's not become enemies over our sports team of matters that are of real concern. And I have a lot of people on the other side saying, how can you be friends with people that voted for the Donald? He's so terrible and blah, blah, blah. And I said, they're not terrible people. These are our neighbors, they're our friends, they're our family members. We have to work with them gently because we are all Americans together as Donald Trump said, it's time to overcome partisanship and go back to patriotism. As far as the, this idea of this vote fraud, are you seriously telling me that when you have a Republican and a Democrat and an independent and somebody from Argentina and the Czech Republic and the media live streaming every vote being counted, that there's some sort of mass fraud that there wouldn't be a huge amount of people. I've always said, if you've got a legal beef, file it in court and let them go through. It's insane. It's time to move on, like you said, we still have a very dangerous period here, 70 days. As far as the FBI director being fired, he was already on the list, along with the CIA director and anybody else who had insufficient loyalty to Donald Trump. But I was very heartened to hear that Donald Trump said he's considering the 2024 run, which means he's gonna concede and whatever he has to do to do that, that's- All righty. Thank you very much Winston for your comments. Hey Cynthia, there's news reports that Melania Trump and Jared Kushner have been trying to talk Donald Trump off the ledge and motivate him to come out and concede the election. Number one, I don't know, do you think those reports are accurate? And number two, if they are accurate, will it have an impact on the Donald? I don't think anything has an impact on Donald Trump except Donald Trump. And maybe popularism, you know, he's gotta be popular. But you know, we've heard a lot of different things that are exactly opposite about that. In the beginning, we heard that Jared and Melania were trying to talk him off the ledge and talk him into conceding. And then all we hear anywhere else, well, I watched Fox News for a little while and all it says on Fox News is that Jared is encouraging him to go forward with the lawsuits. So which one do you believe? You know, I don't know. I know I have a really good quote from Dan Rather about all this whole time here. And I think it's important to sort of hear what this very wise man has to say. Says, although there are potentially dangerous gays ahead, I remain optimistic. I don't think that the worst fears of violence or stopping a boat count will be realized. I believe our institutions will hold. And I say that with fingers crossed. Well, Dan Rather has been a steady voice for the last four years. And I'm pleased to hear that quote from him. And I think he's right. I think those are great words. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so it goes on though. Can I finish? Is that okay? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were done. Oh, well, I was just adding my cross fingers, you know, punctuation there. The question that does loom is what's next. Why did so many support Trump with all that he has done? I don't think there's a single answer to that question. At the same time, one can also ask, why did so many vote to reject an incumbent president? That has proven a difficult bar in American history. There are many answers to that question as well. Now that's the end. Okay, thank you very much for sharing that. Again, I think those are great words. Stephanie, when does Donald Trump concede? When does he finally give it up? Well, number one answer I have for that is that he is not going to. And unless there's some statute somewhere that says he will, he is not gonna do that. He will not concede. And that's a, it's a gesture, it's a, it's courtesy, it's a norm, he's not gonna do it. You know, about a month ago, you introduced the concept, I've never heard of it before called frog walking. Does he get frog walked out of the White House? Well, that's what they did as civil servants. I've had colleagues have that happen to them, not me one, I shouldn't say plural. They literally come in and say, we're gonna take you by the arm. You can take your wallet or whatever you can reach. And then we'll make arrangements with you to come back in at a supervised time where you can clean out your debt. And then they're on each side of you and they walk you out very inconspicuously, but lots of people could see it, you know, people can see it. So that's called a frog, frog walk because they usually go pretty fast. And, you know, if you're a girl in great big stilettos, you know, your little feet are gonna be, and men can have that happen to them. So anyway, it's, it's out of slapstick from, you know, Laurel and already. I mean, so, but it does, I mean, I couldn't believe it either. It wasn't until I was in federal service that I understood that, oh my God, this can happen. What is your prediction? What is your prediction? How all this unfolds between now and inauguration day for Joe Biden? How do you think this unfolds? I think we have a lot of court cases to go through. I don't think he's gonna stop until he gets his girl, Ms. Kitty, to take a look at his issues. It's not gonna stop. He's gonna push all the way up there. So whatever is laid down in the law is, you know, and if the Supreme, and the Supreme Court will do what they can do as they are. Okay, for clarification purposes for our audience, Ms. Kitty is Amy Cohen Barrett, I assume. Yes, she is because she's like Ms. Kitty with Marshall Dillon, you know. Okay. So I mean, we can have this Western thing. This is what has got me so confused about our nation's population, our citizens. You know, democracy does require some complex, higher level thinking. This is not like it was being a king. And for instance, I'm reading the Plantagenets. You can go right down there. It's a study in leadership. And you got total chaos and war and killing all that with some of these men who could not lead. They didn't know, they did not have the skills that others of those monarchs had who were outstanding and are revered and gave England its status that it has. So there's some stuff going on here that's at a very low level. We've got to work really hard to get up above and get up above and say, no, it's not just a strong man. Like they said to me in Iraq, okay? Even other women, because, oh God, it's such a mess. Oh, we need a really strong man. And I would say, wait a minute, stop. We just did the strong man. That's why I'm here. Oh, yeah. So I mean, this is the thing we need to understand that there's some basic elemental tendencies that humans have. And democracy is about not doing that. Yeah. All right, good points made. Thank you very much, Stephanie. Hey Jay, we're not done yet. We still have states that have to officially come up with a vote population and then certainly the process of certification a couple of weeks later. But we certainly have a question mark about the United States Senate. And this weekend, Chuck Schumer, I think, came out and kind of overstated the case that those two Senate seats up in Georgia that will be voted on in January, he seemed a little bit optimistic that that could go the democratic's swing way. What are your thoughts about that? Well, January 5th is a runoff for both of them. They're both probably gonna have runoffs. I don't think it's settled for both of them, but it's likely. And in the one case, Warnock, I think his name is, he stands a pretty good chance at winning because he actually did substantially well than the Republican candidate. And there's a lot of mail out there now. A lot of people are gonna be advocating to give money to both of those democratic candidates. And really the question is, A, whether they will, because if we give a lot of money, we all of us give a lot of money. And if Biden, for example, campaigns for the democratic candidates or Harris campaigns or who knows Barack Obama campaigns, that stands them in better stead. So with a good effort and with good financial support, they won or both might win. Of course, there is the question of how hard is the base and how much money can Trump raise? He's trying to raise $60 million for his legal fight. Query, is anybody gonna give him money now that he's been defraught? So it's hard to say how much money is gonna flow into Georgia for these races. And it's also hard to say whether the money will do the trick. There are many commentators that say, you can't change the base, it's firm. Anyway, the other thing is that we have to understand the implications. And as we have often discussed, the query to the people in the country, the people in Georgia understand the implications. If both of them win, then the Democrats control the Senate. And if they control the Senate, McConnell is out, out, out, out, out. Did I say out, out? You didn't say out. Okay, and then that means that they can't stop Biden's initiatives simply by the process that McConnell has used over the past four years. That would be such a revelation. If only one of them wins, then it's 50-50 in the Senate. And that means you need a tiebreaker if they tie. And that would be a Kamala Harris. She would be the tiebreaker and go through that. You know, right now Joe Biden is playing the role of Ben Hur, trying to keep the moderate side of the Democrat Party together with the more liberal progressive side. It's not an easy task to bring both sides of that to the center of the table. Is there any advantage that if the Senate were to remain GOP, is there any advantage to say, hey, if we want to get any legislation done, we're going to have to moderate our positions of our legislation, proposed legislation? And does that? That's what will happen. If he wants to get anything done, he'll have to moderate positions. I mean, aside from the possibility of executive orders, which may not be legal on everything, he'll have to get legislation passed for so many things. And he may or may not be able to do that. He'll have to negotiate. He'll have to say, look, you get one, I get one, or you get two and I get one. And the result will be, he'll be stymied on a lot of issues. If they play hardball, they'll be stymied on everything. So this is really critical, what happens in Georgia. The other thing that's critical is these lawsuits. You know, we're going to have lawsuits. We're probably filing them today. Jared Kushner or not. And the problem is it takes time to go through the courts. And I don't have an easy handle on this. If you have all these litigation pending from half a dozen states or more on voting rights, and it's all pipeline to the Supreme Court, how are they going to dispose of these cases in time? You know, I have this Woody Allen absurd picture in my mind of what happens at noon on January 20th. Let's say it's pending in the Supreme Court. Let's say they haven't decided it. And Chief Justice Roberts gets up there and he asked Biden to take the oath of office for president. What, is that absurd? Is that absurd? He has a room where the Biden is president. Yeah, it's very prescriptive. The Constitution is black and white about transition date and it is the 21st of January. So that happens regardless. Anyways. Hope so. Yeah, okay. Thank you, Jay. For instance, there's a lot of talk about the House of Representatives and whether Nancy Pelosi should retain her position as Speaker of the House. Do you think that's beneficial? I mean, she does a great job of getting rounding everybody up for votes and holding the line from all the Democrats in the House. She does an excellent job on consensus building and or maybe it's just a heavy hand on the table. How do you feel about Nancy Pelosi and the future of the next four years? Oh, hard question. You know, she, I think she was a moral voice that we needed these last four years that was critical standing up to Donald Trump and just calling it like it was. I think she's been an excellent speaker at the House personally, but that's up to the members themselves to decide, you know, the challenge for Joe Biden is right now, he needs to call up Alexandria Octavia-Cortez and any other on the progressives and just say, just cool your jets for a little bit. You know, you're gonna get your places in the administration where they fit and will dole them out the way they do, but you do not need to be squawking now and inflaming people right now when, like I said, we need baking soda poured on this nation just to calm people down. You know, obviously there'll be a recount in Georgia just because the election is so close. You know, it looks like 99% have reported and Biden's leading by about 10,000 votes. North Carolina, it looks like a Trump will win and he's in that state and he's got ahead by quite a bit. Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes and that's at 98%. So Arizona also looks pretty tight, 20,000 votes separating them, but that's 98% of the votes coming in. So, you know, the media's called this, Canada's called it, Saudi Arabia's called it, Israel's called it. These folks know where their bread is buttered. The nation has understood Donald Trump is no longer the president. I think he understands that on some level. He hates to be called a loser. So this is hard for him. And as Joe Biden said, he's lost us race twice. He knows what it feels like and it's hard, but he's saying, we're not enemies. I'm not your enemy. I am your future president. I wanna work with you. So the faster that he can get on assembling a cabinet that's going to be palatable to people throwing in some sane decent Republicans in there, that's the best thing that he can do right now. And he needs to appeal to people. He needs to work on COVID, on the economy, on social, racial issues, everything that's been grist for the milk for Donald Trump to say these issues don't need to exist anymore if we work together and we raise all of us together. And I think that's what we're gonna see these next four years. I hope that happens. I think that it will. And I'm hopeful, so. I'm Nancy. I'm not worried about Nancy. I think Mitch McConnell needs to go out and hopefully- I think 74 million Americans would agree what you just said, so. Well, Georgia, like I said, pour money into the Democrats there so that they can have a chance at getting some legislation passed. But they need to do it with this understanding that the nation is very divided right now and it needs to be right down the middle, like in the olden days, like it used to be in this country, so that we can get as many people on board as possible. Alrighty, thank you, Winston. Cynthia, firstly, our time is starting to run pretty close here. Hey, Cynthia, the polls are wrong. They were wrong again as they were in 2016. Tough question for you here. What mechanics need to take place to either improve the polls or dismiss them entirely? I myself dismissed them entirely already. So I didn't really listen to them at all because they were so wrong in 2016. They're wrong on and off all the time. It's like, who did they call to get the information from? How did they collect it? I've never really trusted the polls anyway. And for people to trust them like as if they were verbatim what's really happening, I think it's just wrong. And I think polls should be presented in that way. Now, I'd like to speak to Georgia a little bit here. You guys know, I've been talking about Georgia for months, months and months. I've been talking about Georgia and this one voter machine, Voting Equipment Company called Dominion. Dominion is a company that has supplied all of the voting equipment for Georgia. Dominion has been linked to Russian oligarchs closely tied to Putin. So when we look at Georgia and this runoff, when we look at Georgia and the close race that it was, could it possibly have not even really been that close? No, the only reason it looks that close is because things were changed. So I'm really concerned about that because- Does the Dominion voting machines are the paperless or paper ballot? Georgia has no paper ballot going. They are not paper ballots. They have what's called a paper printout and everything it may say what you did and how you voted and then all of it's put onto a bar code at the bottom. And most people can't read bar codes. So you have no idea if the bar code actually matches what you said. So if there is a recount, then it's just the printout that's reviewed and nothing else. Yeah. Not the individual voters tally a ballot. That's why I'm really worried about Georgia. And I think the runoff should be done with paper, hand marked paper ballots only. All right, we're almost out of time and I want to get to Stephanie. Thank you very much, Cynthia. Points well made, appreciate it. Stephanie, you get the last word. Where do we go from here? Well, one of the things in respect of what Cynthia said and Dan rather, first of all, I mean, I wanted to say that our institutions have not held. And I heard that all the time when I was in DC years ago from the cab drivers and immigrants, oh, but the US institutions are so strong. Well, I don't see that that worked, okay? We're out of the FBI now. We got the, if we don't even know if the military, we've discussed this. Will the military take his orders? And we're even down to a question about whether the Defense Department is strong enough in the face of the onslaught of this kind of a scoundrel. So in that respect, briefly, I think that Cynthia's point about the polls comes under, this is subsumed by the whole institution thing. Polls are an institution in this country. That has to be redone. They are quote, not working. So we've got to look at that science and the pollsters need to step up and commit themselves to a more study and a better outcome to show us sometime that these things are reliable or valid versus on and then are they reliable? So I think we've got a ways to go on that. Tim, before you close, I'd like to just add an optimistic note. You know, back after 9-11, France, who kind of is close to America's, somehow we were in the revolution together, if you will. They said, if you recall, we are all Americans. This is after 9-11, and that was very touching. But most recently, the mayor of Paris said, welcome back, America. Nice. Well, viva la France. All right. That's it. We're out of time. I want to thank you, Jay Fiedel, Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Lees and Claire Winston Welch. Thank you for the inaugural send off on Rediscovering America. I'm Tim Apachella, your host. Aloha, everyone.