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The Gangsta Chronicles is a weekly podcast hosted by former gang banger and inmate James McDonald, rapper MCE and myself, Norm. Still weekly. We get together and have conversations with everyone from former gangsters, drug dealers and bank robbers to police, rappers and politicians. Gangsta Chronicles podcast is a glimpse into a world where society is rarely allowed access. Nothing is ever scripted in this 100 percent real. We don't glorify the game. We simply educate, inform the world on what goes on in the streets of urban America.

The Gangsta Chronicles podcast available on our Radio Apple podcast, where we get your podcast. Well, hello, everybody, welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show, I am Trevor Noah, running on four hours of sleep. Today is Wednesday, the 4th of November, which means we're now on day two of Election Day. It's almost like a Hanukkah miracle that no one wanted anyway. Coming up on tonight's show, we look at how Donald Trump has had it with all of these votes.

Roy Wood Junior will never trust the polls again. And we'll find out why Hispanic voters are going mad. So let's do this, people.

Welcome to the daily social distancing show from Trevor's couch in New York City to your couch somewhere in the world. This is the Daily Social Decency Show with criminal issues.

So Election Day is over, but because it's 20, 20, Election Week has just begun. And that means it's time for more election coverage in our continuing segment, Vote Chasm 20 20, The Awkward Day OFDA.

Let's kick it off with really the only news right now. Joe Biden looks like he is on pace to become the forty sixth president of the United States. Not the time that I'm seeing this. He's leading in enough states to win the entire thing and it might even be declared tonight. In fact, you might even know watching this right now, if the election is over and if you do, please don't tell me no spoilers. I like this feeling of stress.

Now, this is all happening after a chaotic, nerve wracking election night that featured all types of weird moments, predictions flipping left and right, ballots being delivered with a police escort, Steve Kanakis Kalki. But but maybe what's weirdest is that after all of that, the night actually ended up going mostly as everyone expected. You know, Trump jumped ahead early and a lot of states because Republicans mostly voted in person and those votes got counted first.

And then as the Democratic mail in ballots came in, Biden jumped ahead, which is what everyone knew might happen for weeks when everyone except the president of the United States, we were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off.

The results tonight have been phenomenal. And we are getting ready. I mean, literally, we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good. We had such a big night. You just take a look at all of these states that we've won tonight, and then you take a look at the kind of margins that we've won. But we won states and all of a sudden I said, what happened to the election?

It's off. And we have all these announcers saying, what happened?

And then they said, oh, yeah, dude, because first they counted your votes and now they're counting the other guy's votes. I mean, I knew that Trump didn't like science, but I didn't realize he had disavowed numbers. I mean, maybe this explains why he's always in debt. This is just a level of stupidity from Trump that I did not expect. He always exceeds the levels of stupidity and you can go higher. Sometimes it feels like Trump is an actual toddler.

First I had a nose, then suddenly my uncle stole it and I had no nose. What happened? You know, normal folks, I don't have a nose anymore. Although Trump could be playing four dimensional chess here. Yeah, maybe he's laying the groundwork for his legal defense over his taxes. Your Honor, as you can see, I have no idea how our numbers work. Therefore, I cannot be held accountable. Case dismissed, sir. You cannot dismiss your own case.

I also don't know how the law works. Double case dismissed. Hashtag winning. But yeah, needless to say, Donald Trump was upset. The more votes got counted, the more Biden pulled ahead of him. And for Donald Trump, they could only be one solution. Stop counting the votes.

Something just breaking in the last couple of minutes as well. Things are moving fast and furiously with the president's campaign. The campaign manager, Bill Stepien, announcing that the Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit in the state of Michigan, saying President Trump's campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots in the counting process is guaranteed by Michigan law. We have filed suit today in the Michigan court of claims to halt counting.

This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country.

We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.

This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots at four o'clock in the morning and add them to the list, OK?

It's it's a very sad it's a very sad moment to me, this is a very sad moment and we will win this. And as far as I'm concerned, we already have one.

Wow. I know everyone was expecting it, but still, can we just take a moment to admit that it is insane that an American president is just demanding that they stop that they stop counting votes while he's ahead? This is a textbook authoritarian move, which is impressive coming from a guy who's never read a textbook. And I got to say, for a guy who hates shithole countries, Trump really likes Jack this style. I mean, I never thought I'd see the day when someone yelling at me to go back to Africa sounded more like a concern for my rights instead of a threat.

All I'm saying is, be careful, America. If you let Trump do this, then voting could soon become one of those things that people do to feel better but doesn't actually do anything, you know, like taking CBD oil or recycling plastic. Now, look, nobody knows what the Supreme Court is going to decide if Trump ends up bringing this case to them. I mean, we hope that they'll be neutral and rule on the merits. But I mean, Trump is also the person who appointed so many of them that who knows?

I mean, they might just be like, according to the Constitution, only the president gets to be president. So then how do you get a new president? But let's move on to the other big news of election night, which is actually very bad news for Democrats. It looks like Republicans will very likely be holding on to the Senate.

And some high profile races really did not turn out the way Democrats wanted, even when they spent a lot of money.

Minutes after the polls closed in Kentucky, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell winning reelection for his seventh term. Democrat Amy McGrath, giving McConnell a challenging fight, smashing fundraising records. Her campaign spending more than 70 million dollars on the race. In South Carolina, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham holding on to his Senate seat after Harrison raised more than one hundred million dollars in his campaign.

God damn. I don't know who the bigger losers are here, the Democratic candidates or the donors who gave them one hundred and seventy million dollars to lose their races. I mean, those donors gave them the best possible chance and they still lost. That's like your parents being billionaires, but you still end up as dongjun. But shit, if you can raise that much money, will the next time I'm going to run for Senate against Mitch McConnell.

All right, everybody, if I'm going to beat this guy, I'm going to need a new Tesla, the new five and also two hundred GS for snacks and stuff. I think I got this people. And, you know, on one level, I guess it is an encouraging story. It's an encouraging story about the limits of money in politics because it means you could have all the money in the world, but it can't buy you the charisma of Mitch McConnell.

So overall, even if Biden does manage to pull off a victory in the next few days or hours, Democrats are still a bit shell shocked. They didn't do as well as they were hoping and they didn't even do as well as they thought they would.

Trump did have a better night than expected, outperforming the polls once again. President Trump has actually exceeded his 2016 numbers in every single demographic with gender and race except for white men. He exceeded his white women vote blacks, Hispanics with black women and black men.

Once again, the polls and the entire political world in Washington, D.C. and New York totally missed the scale of of the Democrats underperformance last night. I'm going to pop over here to Wisconsin. There was a poll from ABC the other day that had Joe Biden up 17 points in this state. Look where you are right now. It's seventy one percent of the vote. And Trump's got a lead here by four points.

The polling was wrong. It was wrong. Again, even worse than it was in twenty sixteen.

The polling was even worse than in twenty sixteen. How do the polls just keep getting worse? One of the New York Knicks. But that's right, the Democrats had super high expectations last night and they badly underperformed. Basically, the Democrats are the Sinabung of politics. It smells amazing. You get excited, but once you're eating it, you're like, oh yeah, Cinnabon.

For more on what went down last night. Let's turn to a man who was up all night, Roy Wood, Jr.. What's going on, Roy?

No, man. What's going on, man?

You know, this race between Biden and Trump is a lot tighter than anyone was expecting.

This race is tighter than one of Donald Trump's t shirts. Look, first of all, we've got to give it up to Trump. First and foremost. Let's just just look at everything he did. He teamed up with Coronavirus to kill people. He got everybody hating. Everybody managed to pay less taxes than Lauryn Hill and somehow still be in this race. That's crazy, dude. Man, I wrote one bad check to Circuit City. They still won't let me back in the snow, and they had a business.

So then what's the lesson here, man? Well, I'll tell you what the lesson is for me. The lesson for me is to stop trusting the polls. I'm done. I'm done trusting people. You watch all these polls running, they mouth about Biden. Did have you thinking Biden was going to win Florida, Texas, Mexico, diamond and silk. I'm done. I'm done with all these polls, man.

It's a slice. I'm telling you right now, I'm never trusting polls again, but Roy, we talked about this in twenty sixteen, you said you weren't going to trust the polls again, that I am bringing up all that old shit, man.

Yes, I said that, yes. But then the pollsters, they said that we could trust them again. So I did. Plus they have four years to fix it. So silly me for thinking that they may have actually had some changes to the damn polling system, you know, just like I got to Mexicans, but I go to. Right. And they always get shut down for health violations. But the food. So I let it slide.

When you go back in there, they shut down for a little while. You go back in there and you be like, oh, they cleaned it up. Nope. It's the same old stuff. Only nice to do when a different apron. So you're not going to ever try and predict elections again, right? No, I will try to predict elections again. Only now I will be using more reliable predictions like astrology or the reading the entrails of a guinea pig or or like on the night of a full moon going outside your and seen of my pee, making any type of words or letters I can read them in a Ouija board.

Well, I mean, another option is you could you could always just try and talk to people of different communities and try and suss out their perspective of the world.

Yeah, I said I said talk to astrologists. That's what I said. You know, listening.

OK, but just so we're on the same page, you're done with polls.

Yes, I am done with the update, Suzanne.

Oh, shit, they talk about dynamite win Texas, we did it baby by night with Texas. Boy, I don't think we had a real quick manual. I'm saying this is good news right here, Roy.

Right. Those are pollsters again. Roy, you come. Roy, why not just wait for the results?

ROY No, no, man. I've got to put it up. I've got to go. I've got to spread the good news to everybody on the Internet. Man, this is good. Hey, we back in Atlanta.

Why is he phoning the Internet? All right. Well, thanks for that, Roy. No need to break his heart again today. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we'll be talking about all the election results that weren't about the president. And spoiler alert, if you're in Jersey, it's time to get high.

You don't want to miss it. Hey, what's up? This is Adam Devine andas home Blake Anderson and Kyle Neurogenic, and you might recognize these sweet, sultry voices from the hit television program, Workaholic.

We also were on a major hit motion picture game Overman heard.

And if you haven't, check it out, it's on Netflix. And we were sitting around and we were bored and quarantine.

We're always on these dumb calls and these dudes are like, I miss this dude.

Yeah, I miss you guys. It's true. I do miss you guys a lot. I miss you guys so constantly. So we thought, hey, you know what, our conversations this important told with these are important conversations we're having and the world needs to hear it.

So please do yourself a favor and listen to this is important on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The Daily Show is brought to you by GrubHub, GrubHub offers perks always on deals, free food and rewards from local restaurants and national favorites. Over 300000 restaurants nationwide, GrubHub delivers food to your door safely with contact, free delivery or curbside pickup with GrubHub. Your new favorite place for Italian, Chinese or burgers is just one click away if you're stuck ordering the same thing from the same place in your neighborhood.

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So if your family can never agree on what to eat now, they don't have to. Everyone can order from their own place and enjoy their own favorite food order with GrubHub and enjoy perks from your favorite restaurants. Welcome back to the daily social distancing show. Look, people, it's no secret that Donald Trump is a polarizing president. Some people love him, most people hate him, and that's just in his family.

So it's no surprise that with him on the ticket, people were not going to miss their chance to weigh in, to say this country is making history night tonight might just be an understatement when all the ballots are counted, more than one hundred and fifty million Americans will have voted, shattering all previous records.

It looks like we're on track to have the highest voter turnout in terms of percentage of the electorate since the turn of the century, not this century. Last one.

Nineteen hundred damn the highest turnout since nineteen hundred, although it's a little different because back in nineteen hundred, most of the electorate was horses and not even female horses either. Only male horses who owned land very different time. Also back then, people had more time to vote when they could just switch shifts with their kids. Thank you so much for covering my ass to me. I owe you a pint of Guinness for that. But today I'm only seven years old.

Right? Straight whiskey. Molad, what was I thinking? Although when you think about it, it makes sense that turnout this year is close to nineteen hundred because I mean, thanks to Korona, life is a lot like nineteen hundred. You know, we're home a lot. Life is slow paced. We're baking our own bread. The only difference is we have Netflix and back then they only had Hulu.

I can't wait to watch that had made today. I heard Kerans in this episode.

Now of course the presidential race was the main thing, bringing people to the polls and then after that, the Senate and congressional races.

But all across the country, people were also approaching voters on street corners and saying, yo, you want to vote on this drug ballot initiative.

Also on the ballot in five states, legalization of marijuana, four states, Arizona, Montana, South Dakota and New Jersey, all voting to allow recreational marijuana use, while Mississippi voting to allow the use of medical marijuana.

Voters in D.C. passed a measure dropping magic mushrooms to quote, the lowest level of law enforcement priority and a first in the nation.

In Oregon, voters deciding there to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine and meth. Those found in possession will now have the option to pay a fine or go to a free recovery center.

Damn, you see, Oregon did it right there, the only state with a backup plan in case Biden loses. Honestly, though, I think this is a good thing because way too many people get locked up in America for way too long. Although let's be real, we have a proposal. This will definitely have a little heroin, cocaine and meth on them at the same time. Right now, personally, I don't want to get high in Mississippi because that's one of those states where you need your wits about you.

But I am excited for New Jersey to have we'd imagine how next level edibles are going to be when Italian Americans are running dispensaries. Yeah, so listen in the pepperoni calzone. Yeah, I like it. What a side of OG Kush marinara sauce. You want some of this?

Oh, and if you were looking for some more good news that came out of the election, well, you're in luck because just check out some of the new people who are going to be starting work next year.

Last night's election marked a number of notable wins in first on both sides of the political aisle. So first, you've got Richie Torez and Monder Jones, both from New York, will become the first openly gay black members of Congress when they join the House in January, they will join nine other openly LGBTQ members of Congress. Jones calling the accomplishment a lot of responsibility. Then you've got Sarah McBride, who made history back in twenty sixteen as the first openly transgender person to speak at a major party convention.

She made history again as she was elected to the Delaware state legislator, becoming the highest ranking a trans lawmaker in the country. McBryde celebrated last night, saying in a statement that she is humbled by the support that she's received and she hopes her win, quote, shows an LGBTQ kid that our democracy is big enough for them to.

Oh, yeah, we got transgender people. We got gay people of color. What America's legislatures are on their way from turning from Mad Men into pose. And it's so inspiring that after so many years, the LGBTQ community will finally have an opportunity to get their legislation blocked by Mitch McConnell. And having the first two openly gay black members of Congress is amazing. I mean, except for all the straight members are always going to be trying to set them up together.

So, you know, who else is gay and black? Oh, and there's one more candidate who's breaking barriers this morning.

The Republican candidate for the state legislature in North Dakota who died from covid-19 in October won his election. Tuesday night's election results in North Dakota, showing the Bismarck area districts going to David, Andol and Dave nearing a district, choosing to representatives, typically, and I'll die due to complications. From covid-19 when he was fifty five in October. Oh, hell no. If you lose to a dead guy, kill yourself, at least make it a tight race.

Seriously, can you imagine losing to a dead guy? Your campaign is literally you just saying, hey, I'm alive. And the voters are like, yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know.

All right. We have to take a quick break, but don't go away, because when we come back, we'll be talking about the surprisingly high Hispanic votes for Donald Trump with Professor Heraldo Córdova.

Stick around. This episode of The Daily Show airs, Ed. is brought to you by Les Mills to help you stay active and work out at home during lockdown. Les Mills is offering all Daily Show listeners free access to Les Mills on demand. Les Mills called the Netflix of Fitness, provides a high quality video streaming experience for all workouts. With workouts ranging from 15 minutes to 55 minutes. You can fit in your workouts in and around a busy schedule. Les Mills offers over 1000 online workouts, including iconic programs like body pump and body combat, as well as strength training, hit yoga, dance, cycling and kids fitness.

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LSM L'Escargot Trevor extremely active brothers and sisters who already know what it is. The Gangsta Chronicles The Lane from Oregon all the way down to Mexico to all my essay proposition. Viva La Raza. The Gangsta Chronicles is a weekly podcast hosted by former gang banger and inmate James McDonald, rapper and myself, Norm Style Weekly. We get together and have conversations with everyone from former gangsters, drug dealers and bank robbers to police, rappers and politicians. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a glimpse into a world where society is rarely allowed access.

Nothing is ever scripted in this 100 percent real. We don't glorify the game. We simply educate and inform the world on what goes on in the streets of urban America. Gangsta Chronicles podcasts available on our radio app Apple podcast Wherever You Get Your podcast. The Gangster Chronicles is run by book. That podcast network. Welcome back to the Daily Social Distancing Show. So earlier today, I spoke with history professor and author Heraldo Córdova. We talked about yesterday's surprising Hispanic vote and how both parties can reach Hispanic voters.

Heraldo Córdova, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.

Thank you so much. It's great to be here, Trevor.

You are. I'm going to read this to get it right. You're an associate professor of history and Latin studies at Northwestern University. You most recently wrote a book entitled The Hispanic Republic and the Shaping of an American Political Identity. From Nixon to Trump. It seems like a paradox on the surface. What do you think it is about the Hispanic vote, the Latino vote that a lot of people don't seem to understand where to begin?

I mean, it seems like Americans rediscover Latinos every four years at election time. And I think this year it's especially pronounced because Latinos seem to have moved towards this president that has, at least on the face of things, spent four years abusing us. The truth is, Latinos have voted for the Republican candidate in every election since nineteen seventy two when Richard Nixon won re-election at a rate of about twenty five to thirty three percent, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.

So you could say that there's a half century tradition by this point of a significant minority of Latinos voting for Republicans.

One conversation that has always stuck with me was when I was at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland right before the twenty sixteen election, and there was a Mexican woman in the street and she was waving a Trump flag. And I was genuinely, genuinely curious. And I walked up to and I said, hey, how can you support Trump? And she said, because he is working for me. And she said he's building a wall to stop illegal Mexicans from coming over.

And she said, my family's waiting in line. My people are trying to do things the right way, and he's trying to make us the witness instead of them. And I that that shook my perspective because up until that point, American media had always told me the story of Latinos as a monolith. This was the first time when I came to realize that maybe, just maybe, these are all human beings who have different political perspectives.

What a shocking realization. I mean, it's amazing. And so, you know, there is no such thing as the Latino vote, but there are truly millions of Latinos who do vote and it's therefore important to understand their political behavior. I don't think the Republican Party has given up on recruiting Latino immigrants as well. I talked to the chairman of the Republican Party in El Paso who told me that he personally shows up at every naturalization ceremony in El Paso to try to hand out like literature, describing what the Republican Party stands for in the United States.

You can also look at the Latino evangelical church that is in many ways an immigrant religion. Latin American immigrants are evangelical in their home countries, come start churches here and belong to churches here. So it's truly a much more diverse lot than you would think. It feels like in many ways.

The Republican approach has really been focused, though, because on on the Democrat side, I find that there's a lot of in-fighting about how to handle the message. An interesting thing that I heard was from the Democratic winner in Arizona writes the congressional winner in Arizona, who was asked, just asked, hey, what do you think Democrats could do to do better with the with the Latino vote? And he said, well, first of all, stop calling them leathernecks.

And that was an interesting, interesting one for me, because I know that that's been a fight, is people saying, like, I'm not Latin ex. I'm Puerto Rican. I'm I'm Dominican, I'm Cuban, I'm Mexican. I am. Don't call me this thing. Do you think that there's a disconnect sometimes between the academic approach that Democrats take to to in referring to a group versus how the groups just refer to themselves in the streets? That's really interesting.

I mean, I hadn't thought about it in exactly those terms. But I do think that Democrats often fight over identity politics in some ways more than Republicans do. So, you know, remarkably, I think the Republican strategy for recruiting Latinos has been remarkably consistent since the Reagan years in 1980. And it's kind of really relied on identifying what these might be misunderstandings. But they've nevertheless stuck with this kind of core set of issues like family values, of work ethic, patriotism.

And Reagan defined those things. And in many ways, Trump is just running the same playbook that Republicans have run for the past four years. I think you're right. It's a kind of rejection of identity politics and saying that you're Mexican Americans or Cuban Americans are Americans. Instead, you're Americans of Mexican descent. Interestingly, when I was interviewing a Latino Republican leader, he rejected the whole idea of Hispanic Republican. He wanted me to call him a Republican of Hispanic descent instead.

Interesting. It's funny that you say that because I find that Republicans do a much better job of coding their identity politics, I don't agree with the notion that Republicans don't engage in as much identity politics as Democrats. I think Democrats are too blatant about it. So Democrats will say we've got to get black voters and the black vote and the Hispanic vote and we've got to get these gay people to come and help us. And do you know what I mean?

Whereas Republicans go, we've got to protect our farmers. We've got to do a better job of protecting that factory worker in Ohio. We've got to protect him.

You know who he is. And it's a very interesting technique that they use that implies a certain connotation of a person, but it doesn't make that person feel like they're reduced to only the color of their skin. Do you think that could be part of the reason that Republicans do so well?

Oh, man, I wish I got to talk to you every day about this stuff. I mean, that's absolutely right, man. If I hear one more time about, like, the dairy farmer of Wisconsin or the auto worker in Detroit, never mind the fact that there are many, many Latinos who work as dairy farmers or work in auto plants. I mean, but I do think, yes, these are all kind of coded appeals and they do very much suggest a Republican version of identity politics, even if we don't recognize it as such.

I've been coming to the United States, I don't know, on and off for, let's say, a decade. I've lived here for five years now. One thing that's always surprise me is people say, man, as the Hispanic vote grows, the Republican Party is going to be under water. But the one thing I've always asked people, and maybe you're the perfect person to ask is this. Is there not an assumption that may be incorrect, that Hispanic or Latino voters will naturally progressed towards the Democratic Party because they identify in that way, as opposed to understanding that some people can sort of migrate to the space of being white?

If that makes sense? And I say this because I come from a country where we had many classes of people where they said, hey, if you work the right way and if you act the right way, we'll give you white classifications and some of the privileges that white people get. Do you think that that's a possibility going forward? For sure?

That kind of. We also know that one of the many ways that Latinos are diverse is their skin color, even more racially diverse than the class background. And there are all kinds of things. So, yeah, that's certainly part of it. You know, I think there are so many problems with the idea that demography is destiny and demographic change is going to naturally lead to more Democratic victories. I mean, the first, obviously, is that Latinos are politically diverse and feel different ways about a lot of different things.

But the second thing is that it kind of takes for granted that the Republican Party is just going to be static and roll over and play dead as this sea of demographic change washes over them. And I think one of the particularly surprising things about the results from last night is that Donald Trump truly made inroads among Latino voters. And that's shocking to the idea that Donald Trump would be the second coming of someone like George W. Bush to expand the Latino vote.

It just kind of blows the mind. Right. But the fact is he did and he expanded Latino support. And if I were a Democrat today, I wouldn't kind of rest comfortably on this idea that Latinos may be helped by it and win in Arizona and Nevada.

I would be really worried that Trump trumps Latino support seems to have expanded by several points. And that's something we need to spend a lot of time thinking about and questioning a lot of our assumptions.

Well, I will say talking to you is one of the most fascinating conversations I've had. I hope to have you on the show again, and I genuinely recommend that everyone read your book. Thank you so much for taking the time. Take care. Bye bye.

Be sure to check out Harold's great book, The Hispanic Republican The Shaping of an American Political Identity From Nixon to Trump. When we come back, we'll talk more about the election with award winning reporter Evan Osnos.

Don't go away. Ever wondered why there are two ways to spell doughnut's or why some people think you can find water underground just by wandering around with a stick? Believe it or not, this is stuff you should know. You know the podcast with over a billion listeners. It's now for your eyes so you can read it. Stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things covers everything from the origin of the Murphy bed to why people get lost preorder.

It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

Welcome back to the Daily Social Distancing Show. So earlier today, I spoke with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Evan Osnos. We talked about the election and what kind of President Joe Biden could be. Evan Osnos, good to see you again, too.

Nice to see you.

Yeah, it feels like the last time I saw you, I was 30 something years old and now I'm fifty two, but I only aged in one night. How are you doing.

I'm one hundred and twelve actually, but holding up ok. Thank you. Holding up really well. Welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show. Thanks for having me.

You are a Pulitzer Prize winning author. You are a journalist. You are somebody who has spent a lot of time living the life of Joe Biden through the lens of your work as this moment unfolds. How do you think Joe Biden is situated to help the country recover from what is going to be arguably one of the most tumultuous elections in history?

Well, in a strange way, he's had a lot of practice of a certain kind for this. And it's terrible practice. I mean, if we know anything about Joe Biden, we know that he has been through some really wretched things in his life. After all, we know is remember his late wife, nearly a hunter, his daughter, Naomi, they died in a car accident when he was just twenty nine. And then later his son Beau died of a brain tumor.

And I mention that partly because I think in politics, sometimes we're sort of a little cynical about things like that. We think that it's kind of being used as a prop. And what I find fascinating from looking into his life is seeing the way that it really altered him. It changed him. I mean, just being acquainted with suffering in quite that way, in that very personal way resonates with the condition we're in as a country. We are literally suffering.

We're literally grieving. And so he knows something of that.

If Joe Biden is to win the election, he's going to be in an interesting position where it looks like Republicans will still have the Senate, Democrats will have the House. And so now in many ways, his selling point is going to be tested.

Can Joe Biden be the person who brings the sides together to get things done for America, even though no president, incoming president, if that's what he is, would ever ask to preside over a country is divided as he is. The truth is he actually has some experience in these moments to give you one example, when they came in in 2009, one of the first things he did was he started lobbying the late Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to change parties, go from being a Republican to a Democrat.

He was also given an assignment. The Obama administration said, all right, Joe Biden, we want you to call up members of Senate, try to get them to vote for the stimulus bill. So we did that. We started working the phones. He's kind of constantly on the phones with people on Capitol Hill and he got people that got three votes. And those turned out to be the three votes that ended up being decisive in passing that bill.

So in a way, if he was a boxer, you would say that he's kind of comfortable in the clutch, like right up close. That's that's his that's his happy place.

As strange as it may sound, once once Obama took office and once the Tea Party took its hold of the Republican Party and then Trump, and by extension, there's no denying that politics has changed dramatically. Do you think he'll still have the same pull and sway with the Republicans to get them to do it? Or do you think that he's now just going to be facing if he wins again, four years of just being blocked by Mitch McConnell and the Senate crew?

I think, look, we'd be insane not to worry about that. That's the reality. That's the lay of the land. It's certainly the politics we inhabit right now. I think there's something interesting that we sometimes lose sight of, which is that it matters the posture with which a president sells the policy, meaning if they're selling it from the middle, strangely enough, you can actually sometimes sell things that you can't sell if you're coming at it from a distinctly progressive direction or a hard line conservative direction.

I mean, in fact, some progressive analysts have done some survey work. And what they find is that people in America might go for more aggressive climate change legislation if it's being presented to them as job growth or building a sustainable economy rather than, look, this is a moral obligation to future generations.

You've written extensively about Biden. You've also written extensively about China. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges that America faces going forward. Where do you think Biden begins? Because he's had he's had some tough rhetoric on China, but you can't deny that America needs the relationship with China. It's been set up in such a way that they need it. So, like, what does what does he do and how do you see that relationship unfolding?

Well, for one thing, I think, frankly, China is going to be a little sorry to see Donald Trump go, because even though Donald Trump sort of uses a lot of language of confrontation, he has sort of efficiently undermined American credibility in the eyes of the world. There was a recent study that showed that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin now have higher favorability than Donald Trump. So from China's perspective, Joe Biden is actually a little bit more of a problem.

He's kind of like a recognizable form of a president and diplomat. So I think what you're likely to see is that Biden will probably actually hold on to some of this confrontational stuff that the Biden that the Trump administration has done, because it makes it easier, it gives him leverage. But what he'll do that's completely different is he'll do it with allies. He'll do it in the concert of American allies in Europe and in Asia rather than America first, which often meant that we were doing things alone.

Do you think Biden will be able to sell himself as that guy? Because, I mean, one of the big differences between Trump and really any US president has been that Trump knows how to sell his achievements, whether they exist or not. Joe Biden seems to be the kind of person who says, well, read my record, check what I did. And people like we don't read Joe. We don't read. That's not the world we live in.

Do you think that he will be able to rebuild some of the bridges that have been broken down in many of these industrial areas that he used to have such a strong base?

Well, I mean, it is true that he is kind of like stubbornly attached to the reality based universe. He seems to think that is consequential and that he has to respond to that. We know there are millions of Americans who just voted for Donald Trump. It wasn't a fluke this time. They knew what they were doing and what he's going to do. I think his basic strategy is he said to me, and he has said to others is if you begin from the principle that I am listening, I'm listening to you in a real way, you'd be surprised what the effect might have on our political chemistry.

Look, that's an optimistic take, but he doesn't have any option. It's better than going in there and saying, I'm giving up on half of you because you didn't vote for me.

When you look at the journey that America faces, the next American president would face if it would be Joe Biden, would you say that his personal loss and the tragedies that he's faced put him in a position to be the best leader to lead America out of one of its greatest tragedies, which has been the pandemic?

I do. I think in a curious way, this life of ups and downs that he's had of failures in some cases of embarrassment and then of great successes has primed him to fit into where we are as a country. Because let's be frank, we've had our ups and downs lately. And if we are now talking more candidly also about our whole history and the ways in which we have not treated people the way we should, and I think he's at a moment now where we are coming to terms with a little bit more of a humbler notion of what it means to be Americans, both at home and in the world.

And he's a bit of a humbler person than he was when he got into the Senate some hundred and fifty years ago. So I think he really is coming at this from the position of recognizing our strengths and our limitations. And that's better. Probably than coming at it with an imagined idea of what we are and that we're going to make ourselves something we never really were.

Evan, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for joining us today. And hopefully I'll see you again soon. My pleasure. Thanks, Trevor. Thank you so much, Evan.

Be sure to check out Evan's new book, Joe Biden The Life, The Run and What Matters Now. Well, that's our show for tonight. But before we go, there is going to be a lot of uncertainty in the next few weeks about vote counting. Now, luckily, the American Civil Liberties Union has been fighting all year to secure everybody's fundamental rights to vote. And now they're working hard to ensure that every single vote is counted. If you can help them out with this immensely important mission, then please donate whatever you can to support the cause until tomorrow.

Stay safe out there, wear a mask. And remember, there's only one thousand four hundred and sixty one days until Election Day. Twenty twenty four. So pace yourselves, everybody. The Daily Show with Criminal Ears Edition, watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11:00, 10:00 Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central and watch full episodes and videos at The Daily Show Dotcom. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to The Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more.

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