 of 14th, 2021. Welcome to What Now America? My name's Tim Apachele, your host. And today's title is President Biden calls out the big lie. You know, there was a kind of a sitcom back in the 1990s. Maybe some of you have heard of it. It was called Seinfeld. And in one of the episodes, George and Jerry are in their favorite coffee house, the cafe. And on the way out, Jerry's leaving. And George says to him, Jerry, remember. It's not a lie if you believe it. You know, Donald Trump probably didn't watch that episode, but he's been practicing that line all his life. And let's just go down the list that pertains to the big lie. Donald Trump believes the election was stolen from him. No question about it. He believes it. He's not just saying it. He believes it. Donald Trump believes that thousands of votes for Biden were dumped in swing states in the middle of the night on election night. Again, he doesn't just say it. He believes it. Trump believes that the state of Georgia, Mr. Raffenberger, should have found those 11,780 votes to turn the election his way. As he was instructed to do by Donald Trump, very strongly implied that they need to find 11,780 votes. Donald Trump believes the voting machines somehow switched their votes from Trump to Biden. Absolutely believes it. Trump believes that the Supreme Court should have sided with him on his lawsuits. They didn't, but he believes they should have. And he more believes that the three judges he appointed should have paid him the loyalty that he deserved. They didn't, but he believes they should have. Donald Trump believes that Mike Pence owed him enough to stop the Electoral College certification. He believes that was in the depths of his soul. Again, if you believe it, it's not a lie. What did he say in Sarasota, Florida just recently? He said, false claims, if you repeat them over and over again, they'll be believed. And we got to stop the Democrats from doing just that. So Donald Trump really believes the big lie. He believes his lies. And what do you call that? Well, I'm not a psychiatrist and I'm not a psychologist, but I think I've read somewhere in a book of psychology, it's called being delusional. And with that, I go to my guests. Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome Jay Fidel, Cynthia Leeson-Claire and Winston Welch. Welcome to What Now America. Aloha. Morning. Hi, Jim. Jay, going to you. Okay, this has gone on for six months. The big lie is steam rolling, steam balling ahead. We have over 17, 18 states now that have enacted over 28 new laws as a direct result of the big lie. How is the big lie being able to be kept alive and keep rolling forward? How hasn't this not been stopped by the rational Americans that know it's a big lie, but they continue on with it anyway? How is this big lie continue to grow arms and legs and keep crawling forward? Your best thought on that. Wow, you've covered the psychiatric issue around Trump. He's deranged. That's what we'll call them in the most recent book about the last days of the presidency. He's deranged. He's crazy. I think he used that term specifically crazy. But we've known this for a long time. We've been talking about this for a long time. Now, he's not only a demagogue, he's a psychotic. So let's push him aside for a moment and let's instead make our inquiry about why 70 plus million people and all those Republicans in all of those states, believe him and act on it. What is the problem there? And this is actually, believe it or not, a more serious problem. It's one thing that one person, one deranged psychotic can turn history, which he has done. But the other thing is that history itself apparently can be turned and these people can be turned. What is their problem? What is wrong with them? A much more profound question. Then I would say, maybe it's something like Jones and Jonestown and Guyana years ago were at their own risk. They killed themselves because he said so. And the problem also is that you can't run a democracy that way. You can't run a democracy with people who believe lies and who are willing to destroy themselves which they are doing politically in the process. So I think we have to look at that. And I don't know what the answer is. I can only say that it's deep in the species and from time to time the species has killed itself. And that is what's happening with these 70 million people. They are doubling down. They are more aggressive all the time. It's quite remarkable. We predicted on the show that they would slope off and they would find rationality but they haven't done it. And Biden for all that Clyburn has him doing now making impassioned speeches can't seem to stop it. I only add one other thing for consideration here. And that is Macron. Macron announced yesterday that from now on vaccines were going to be the law of France. And if they got mad about it, let them get mad about it. He's already subject to criticism. Somebody called him apartheid in a land of liberty. Equality and liberty back to the French revolution. But Macron is requiring vaccines. And that's getting back to rationality. Why would you kill yourself with Trump by not taking a vaccine and dying in the process? This is a problem, a sociological problem, a psychiatric problem and it goes beyond Trump. It is a problem in the species. Let me throw out an idea here that they don't really believe Donald Trump's big lie. They know he lost the election. Most of the politicians in Congress believe that he lost the election. They said so but it doesn't deter them from moving forward with the big lie. What about as a theory that they're so desperate to be part of the group, the tribe, the Trump tribe, the cultural politics of Trump, that they're so mortally fearful of being thrown outside the tribe of Trump. And that's why they go along with it sheepishly and they're like a true succulent. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And it goes back to a show we're doing tomorrow and what we can learn from ancient Rome and ancient Greece on the demise of democracies in those places. And part of it has to do with you don't want to be ostracized. You don't want to be sent away. That's the worst punishment you can give in those days and people would do bloody anything to stay close to their communities. And I think you have a really good point there. They don't want to be bounced out of their community for some reason they believe, and this is a faulty thinking also, they believe their community is Trump and in many places, think of Texas. The community is completely Trump. There's nowhere to go, but to leave a larger community like most of Texas in order to get away from it. And they don't want to do that because they lose something in the departure. So there is a parallel. And I will ask our guest tomorrow, Sandra Schwartz, who is a classicist at UH, whether it worked then in the classic times and whether it works now. Okay, thank you, Jay. Hey, Winston, to you, by the way, Winston, I think you're on mute. I'm gonna read a quote from Joe Biden yesterday and he was talking about calling out the big lie. And here's one of the things he said on the podium. In America, if you lose, accept the results. Follow the Constitution. Try again. You don't call facts fake and try to bring down the American experiment just like you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship, that's selfishness. So with that quote in mind, how does Fox News get away? I mean, if Donald Trump and others have been banned from Facebook and Twitter because they're making false statements about the pandemic, false statements about the virus, false statements about the election and creating basically a social insurrection and that took place on the Capitol on January 6th, if Facebook and Twitter banned them, what's going on with the FCC and why haven't the FCC stepped in to tell Fox, knock it off? I think there's some parallel, maybe for the same reason why Joe Biden doesn't talk about Donald Trump. It's just, it's a monster. And imagine trying to ban, it's just, I think it's not gonna happen. We do have the First Amendment. It's unpopular. I mean, the idea is that you bring these festering boil lies out into the public arena where they can be properly cleansed and purged. But the reality is, of course, we have a willfully ignorant electorate and just willing to completely ignore facts, not alternative facts, just facts. They have been manipulated, like Jay said, about Jonestown. You're getting essentially one new source that I think there's something hypnotic about it. As I said, if you don't, if you, just for our viewers who might be liberal or even moderate, turn up boxes and listen to it for a day. And if you're not terrified by the communist, gay, Islamic terrorists coming to overthrow Democrat, demo of Nazi socialists coming to overthrow America and take your guns and your Bible, then you haven't been paying attention to the message because it's a very message laden with fear and mistrust and distrust. And Tucker Carlson himself won't even say that he got a COVID shot or not, while he's saying that he, you know, we can't get our people to get COVID shots. Well, Tucker, I'll bet that he did get a COVID shot. And if he didn't, okay, he didn't. But I think the French have is where the world is gonna go and we're gonna see this and Macron came out and the headlines were interesting. It says one million French citizens sign up for COVID shot. And what it didn't say is you can't board a plane, a train, go into a public building or restaurant unless you have your shots within a period of time. So they say, you don't have to get your shots. You just won't be able to go anywhere outside of your home, basically. And he just said, this is the thing that we do. It's responsible to do it. And of course, people are growling against it. And anyway, I think, you know, any oxygen that we give to this and that Joe Biden didn't mention anybody by name, I don't think when he said that. Should he have mentioned Trump by name? No, I don't think so. I don't think he should give him anything. And he's only saying that so that people can say Joe Biden didn't not say anything. He's saying that for us so that we realize he knows the big lie is still going on. I think that's, it was, you know, if you're not a fan of Joe Biden, you don't care. Or even if you're moderate, you don't care. I think so many people are just turned off in the last year. I think a better quote to say in it, this was from attributed to Joseph Goebbels, although there's no proof that he said it, but it's the definition of the big lie. And I think it bears some repeating here. If you tell a big lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such a time as the state can shield people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent. For the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie. And thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state. This is, of course, in Nazi times, and you can understand how that might be, if it's on Jewishvirtuallibrary.org, which has a lot of stuff about how these lies become the truth and then have devastating consequences. So in our case, I think we just need to keep the slow and steady Joe Biden is doing the right thing. He's not giving it oxygen. The media has by and large just ignored Donald Trump as much as possible. And now you're having the ankle biters come in. You're having the Christie Gnomes sending the National Guard to where did she send it? Texas outsourcing that with private money. You have the governor of Florida. Definitely gonna be some trouble for Donald Trump coming up. And there's an interesting article about that one that says essentially that Donald Trump and the governor of Florida and for a hitting of heads. And then the lie itself is being called out in these memoirs that are now gonna come out. Like Jay was saying, we got a lot of information coming out. Will it make a difference? I don't know, but it'll at least substantiate what we all know. Like in the Washington Post, I think it was yesterday. And he says the Republican Party's top lawyer of election fraud arguments by Trump's lawyers, a joke that could mislead millions. Well, it wasn't a joke, but it did list mislead millions. And Joe Biden is right. He's trying to up and that was on the 12th of July. He's trying to up and our entire system. It's not right. It's not. Let me ask you this. Does it help at all for those attorneys who were representing Donald Trump on the election lawsuits that were filed in many courtrooms around the swing states? Does it help at all that now some of the federal judges are saying those attorneys that filed those suits are now being looked at for possible sanctions and or complete disbarment? Absolutely. Does it help the argument that the big lie is just that, a big lie? Absolutely, because they are sworn officers to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Now, it's like I said, we can vary on whether or not we should extend unemployment benefits or raise social security taxes. Those are reasonable arguments to have, but when these lies, when they're knowingly made by essentially officers of the court of the government, they need to be held accountable. And this is where Donald Trump's never going to be held accountable. But the minions under him, around him, all of these people that were in it for the buck or for the power or just the delusion, I think these people can fall on the defense of the QAnon shaman who said he was a member of a cult. He was deceived. Let's see if the lawyers in Michigan and in all these other states where they filed these spurious and absolutely fabricated lawsuits. Let's see what happens to them when it comes up to their license and being disbarred. They may play the cult member card as well. And actually, it's probably a reasonable defense at this point. Do you have any predictions about these attorneys that are being called out? Do you think they will be sanctioned or disbarred, or do they get disbarred in New York? So it's coming. And I think that these lawyers have a code, an ethical code that they are, you're not supposed to bring these things when you know that they're false. And doing so and causing harm to society like this by bringing these lawsuits has consequences for them. And they are held to a higher standard than your average Joe because they know very well what they're doing and how to manipulate the process. So, and Jay can probably speak more to that. But I know that the two of you said that. You said that you thought it was a reasonable defense that they were drawn into it by a cult. I don't think that's a reasonable defense. Bring those people before me, I'll fix it. I'll tell you the truth, I would disbar them all. They lied and they knew they lied and they used their skills just as you said Winston in order to try to fool the court and fool the public and fool the country and undermine our democracy. They have all taken an oath to prove to ethics, to the ideals of the country and the constitution and they have all grossly breached the terms of that oath. They should never be able to practice law anywhere in the country again. And that may be the case with, depending on who they come before, but this is where, this is how part of the repairing of our country is that you get these folks out who would do mortal damage to our nation for these reasons and we'll see what happens at the end of the day. But I think you're gonna see a lot more of this where this came from, especially as these revelations and memoirs come out. So let's just- And the question Winston and Tim and Cynthia is just gonna work out soon or are we running out of time? I mean, just one element that is much more to talk about but one element is the virus. I find it remarkable that Trump has taken the vaccine but he still has some kind of influence on people not to take them, to be skeptical about the science. That's the message he was giving about the virus all through and still. And as a result, we have more cases in the states and communities where they believe him and we have more of the greater risk of the Delta variant and other variants, American variants. The more cases you have concentrated in the same area, the greater the risk of a new variant. So the country is backsliding, something awful. And again, it's his fault. I'll mention his name, Donald Trump, psychopath. It's his fault and it's the fault of those who follow him. And as far as I'm concerned, they should all pay the price. They should all have consequences. And the people who choose not to take the variant, not only risking their lives but the lives of their families and community. Macron has the answer. I would come down like, you know, pentons on Macron right now and do exactly the same thing in this country. And I don't know why or when Biden is gonna do this. When, what's gonna happen is as soon as the FDA says this is not an experimental vaccine, you're gonna see rollouts across the board for hospitals, for the military, for prisons that says this is a mandatory vaccine, just like all the other mandatory vaccines. Why don't they say it already? What's wrong with that? I don't know what they're holding up for. It's just the same reason why they're holding up on saying we're gonna need to boost your shot. Of course, we're gonna need to boost your shot. They're afraid of scaring people away who aren't already getting the shot. Well, it's, we're beyond 600,000 dead. We're beyond being scared, I believe. Just tell them they can't go to Costco and they can't go to Walmart and they can't go to Macy's and, or any hotel or, and that'll take care of it. Are you sure that's not happening in the red states? Why doesn't he do that? Yeah. Yeah. It won't happen in the red states. He can do that. What is, you know, you can say he made this very passionate speech yesterday because couldn't Jim Clyburn made him do it, which I think is what happened. But he's still being fucked. Likely to pay, it doesn't even mention. I disagree. I think it was a fairly impassioned speech. I mean, at this point, it's one of many speeches he needs to make. Maybe his tone gets a little rougher, but, you know, he basically had to start off with an introduction of why he's at the podium in the first place. And the first things out of his lips was, I swore oath to the constitution to protect this nation from all foreign and domestic forces. And very nice that he called that out. But the fact is it's just a speech. That's all it is. You know, he himself made this very important distinction between speeches and action. Where's the beef? Well, right now, the beef is democracy. And the beef is the preservation of our democracy. And that's gonna be done one of two ways. It's either called the People's Act, H1, or the John R. Lewis Voting Amendment Act, H4. And he addressed that specifically. And yeah, he might have been prompted by Clyburn. Mr. Clark, I want to see him go in there and knock off the filibuster right now today. I don't want to see the metronome swing one more time. I want it now. He's had seven months in office. How about some action? Cynthia, react to Jay's comment right now that he just made, react to it. Well, he got a little bit of action because he stood up and called a lie a lie. At least he very specifically said, and I've got a little bit of a quote from him here too about it, when he said, you know, the 2020 election was the safest election. It's not hyperbole to suggest the most examined and the fullest expression of the will of the people in the history of this nation, this should be celebrated. The example of America at its best, but instead we continue to see an example of human nature at its worst, something darker and more sinister. And that's the thing that I think we need to worry about more than anything. This Trump movement has been, you know, all along sort of flirting with violence, right? Sort of flirts with supporting the second amendment that, you know, everybody needs to have guns. We need more guns to protect us from the guns. And you know, I'm gonna quote something from an article from the Atlantic that just was the other day. And it says, the Trump movement was always authoritarian and illiberal. It indulged periodically in the rhetoric of violence. Trump himself chased against the restraints of law, but what the United States did not have before 2020 was a large national movement willing to justify mob violence to claim political power, and now it does. Now all the talk of the virus and the vaccines and all of that isn't gonna do us any good if these violent people are still willing to go out there. And as Trump himself said this last week, he's worse. He was impeached twice. It didn't make him better. It made him worse in his own words. What does he mean by worse? And how could you possibly get worse than he already was? And you know, I agree with Winston that Trump, I mean, that Biden should not even say his name, which he didn't in the speech, but you knew exactly who he was talking about. And he also refers to him as his predecessor, but that's as close as he gets to calling him by name. And so I think that's good because we don't mean to give him- Well, maybe Jay has a point. Maybe Jay has a point, and stop beating around the bush, get to the matter. Thank you very much. That's what I thought was right. But then you're giving him oxygen. So which one is it? Well, I'd say our tippy-toe around the rose bush isn't doing it. Thank you. And the question is the result. What's the outcome here? And tippy-toe has not worked. Oil is about oxygen and not mentioning his name and making him disappear. It's not working. And Trump is still on a radar for 70 million people. How about taking some action? Okay, well, let me throw out three quick quotes from Biden yesterday's speech. One, that caught my attention. One, the big lie is just that, a big lie. Number two is when he was test-ising his fellow members in Congress and he was referring to the GOP, he said, have you no shame? And the last comment that had got my attention was, I'm not trying to alarm you, but you should be alarmed. So, I mean, before you can act, you've got to prep your audience for what you're going to do. You've got to show them the, you know, the road of what you're going to take or hopefully he's going to take. And I agree with you, Jay, he's not taking it yet, but you just can't take the road and not explain yourself in advance because then all sorts of, you know, you can have all sorts of consternation and protest and maybe you can reduce that somewhat by trying to explain your game plan and why you're doing it. Comments from anyone on that. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR was in front of Congress in a matter of two hours. That's action. And he called for a declaration of war and war he got. It was action. I'm not saying right or wrong on either side of it, but there's an example of leadership there. You know, we've been waiting seven months for something to happen. There's no commission yet. All we got is newcasts and op-ed pieces and a lot of speculation by the press. And this tippy-toe thing is not really... Okay, what? You made a good point that you have to socialize your audience first. Well, if your audience is to socialize by now, when exactly will it be? Gotcha. Let me ask you a question from a scale of one to 10. Of all the speeches Biden has made since he became president, can you rate this last one yesterday? Can you rate it on our score of one to 10 as far as aggressiveness and calling out the big lie? The best he's ever done. I would give it a nine. No, I think he needs to go further. And I don't believe in the oxygen theory. Okay, great. We're out of time, but I'm gonna go around the table here and get your last thoughts on where we're at with the big lie and Joe Biden calling it out. But also any comments about the filibuster? Joe Manchin seems to be a lot more amenable to the John Lewis Act. He's not very happy about the People's Act, H1, but he does seem to be willing to think about how the filibuster can be reformed. Cynthia, to you. I think that Joe Manchin is seeing that these Republican counterparts that he thought would come around are not gonna come around. And he's finally starting to try to figure out where his place in all that is. But I wanna comment mostly to that comment about have you have no shame? Do you have no shame? When he said that to me, I got no, they don't. They lost their shame the day that they turned their backs on those little kids getting ripped out of their parents' arms. That to me. And I mean, I was like, no, you know, the TV, of course, at this point. Go, no, they have no shame. So to ask them if they have shame is like, no. What we need to do is- Well, maybe it was a rhetorical question. Right, point out that they do have no shame instead of saying it, you know, like that. It's like, you guys, you have no shame anymore. What is it that will make you get there? And so I thought it's that tippy-toe thing again. And I definitely, that was sort of where I was gonna end with that before we stopped. I was like, that's what I wanna see him do. Yeah, we sort of heard him kind of start to say it, but I wanna see him take it to the next step. And so he said he would fight back. He would only be nice for a certain amount of time. Time's up. That's how I- All right, great, great comments. Winston, to you. Yeah, I think the good points, you know, what Cynthia was talking about, I think that when you were reading the Atlantic article, there's a word for what Trumpism is becoming by David Fromm, great article in the Atlantic. Again, these things require you to sit down and read it and process it. It's not gonna come out in a TikTok feed. But actually that might be an interesting idea. One TikTok at a time, one line at a time. But you know, where's the beef, Jay says? The beef is, remember when Biden met Putin last week or whatever it was? And he said, I don't think you should be shutting down our beef factories or any other things because we have things we could do as well. Did you notice like the ransom sites just disappeared overnight? And Ben Putin said, will you do anything? Yeah, we can. I guess the beef is flowing again for those of you that are still eating meat. But in this nation, the other thing is that I do believe in the oxygen theory and action as well. Joe Biden needs to turn on the taps. And maybe if we're being completely cynical and not that we are, but if these politicians are only interested in being re-elected so that they can get re-elected, then Joe Biden needs to say, how much was spent on that Georgia election with Ossoffer and Reverend Warnock against the two people? It was almost a billion dollars, wasn't it? Half a billion? Maybe Joe Biden needs to go there to the moderate Republicans and just say, I will give you, I will promise you a half a billion dollars in your campaign fund if you switch to become a Democrat. And Democrats of the world, can you please donate? Careful, that's buying votes. Careful. If not buying votes, it's just saying, we know you're a sane person and this is the party of sanity and we'll help you get re-elected if you switch to be a little D after your name and Democrats of the world. You're not gonna like a lot of the stuff these people do at all, but we're gonna get this important stuff through. So please donate to the whoever, Susan and the lady in Alaska, Murkowski, over and over. It's a little bit cynical, but you know what? If he's turning on the taps for everything else, why not there too? All right. Great comments too. Thank you very much, Winston. Jay, you get last word, last comments. Yeah, okay. Well, I'd like to turn it a little bit to your friend Joe Manchin. Watching is like watching a reality show. Everybody is speculating, what is he having for breakfast today? What's going on with him in Kirsten? What does he feel really? And who was he talking to? The bottom line is he's holding it up. He's holding up the amendment of the filibuster and therefore he's holding up both voting rights acts, him alone. And we've been waiting like a metronome to find out what is it going to do? And so far he's been consistent. You know, the definition of insanity is you keep on doing the same thing expecting a different result. He hasn't given us a result. And kissing his shoelaces is not helping. And speculating on what he had for lunch is not helping. I don't believe he's sincere. When I think that Biden and the country have to plan other options to get around him, he's not going to cooperate. If he hasn't cooperated in seven months, he's not going to cooperate now. All right. With that, we've run out of time. I love this show because the guests we have on the show bring the best and brightest opinions to the table. And that's why I love the show. So with that, I hope everyone joins us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now, America. I'd like to thank Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, Cynthia Lee Sinclair. And we will see you next Wednesday. I'm Tim Apatel, your host, Anna Loha.