The President of the United States has been impeached. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot to talk about.
We did it! It’s happened! TRUMP HAS BEEN IMPEACHED!
And now…
Well. For a start, Dan is broken. He’s been working in his workshop day and night, watching the hearings, making crafts for good SaysWhovians, and going ever so slowly insane. He sleeps in a pile of cardboard and printed out transcripts. Maureen watched a bunch of it, but not all. Together, they work out what it all MEANS.
Trump has been taking it well. He’s been writing letters and having rallies. Dan and Maureen look into the Impeachment night rally. Trump has thoughts on toilets and dishwashers, which leads Maureen into a digression so deep a cave diver wouldn’t follow her in. But perhaps you will, SaysWhovia.
Let’s break it down, together.
Dan: This episode of Says Who is brought to you by you, through your support of Patreon.com/sayswho. Your monthly giving is amazing, and it helps make this happen, and we send you a bunch of fun stuff in the mail, too. So, if you are not already a Patreon backer, go to patreon.com/sayswho and get in as your thing you're going to do here at the end of the decade. Patreon.com/sayswho.
Maureen: It's me, Maureen. Hey. Guess what? In January, the conclusion of mystery series is coming to a conclusion. That's right. You heard me. The end of the Truly Devious series is coming. The book is called The Hand on the Wall; so, Truly Devious, the Vanishing Stair, the Hand on the Wall. The Hand on the Wall, coming January 21st. If you go on my website, MaureenJohnsonBooks.com, you can find information on how to get signed copies, how to get a cool free gift if you pre-order... it's this print that if you move it, secret information appears; it's cool... tour information... I'm going to be in Los Angeles, Denver, Athens, Georgia; Christiana, Delaware; and hometown, Oxford Valley, PA. Come on out. MaureenJohnsonBooks.com. There will be information. You can just click some links, and biggety biggety shoo shoo shoo... you get some stuff. Books.
Dan: And hey, this is Dan! The impeachment vote may have happened in the House, and phew, we're going to talk more about that, aren't we, Dexie?
Maureen: Uh oh, the puppy's awake.
Dan: She's excited about it. She's all impeachment! But, the impeachment is not over, and that means Impeachment.FYI is not over. If you want to get abreast on the various happenings in impeachment news, sign up at Impeachment.FYI/signup and I will send you an email.
Maureen: And my dog will bark at you.
Dan: Every evening. And Maureen's dog will... is there a murderer in your house, Maureen?
Maureen: She heard something.
Dan: It's good. That's going to be the last thing that anyone hears from Maureen Johnson.
Dan: Impeachment.FYI.
Maureen: Impeachment.FYI! Woof!
Speaker 3: (music)
Maureen: Hey Dan! Dan, it's done! The impeachment! Dan, the impeachment! It's happened! Last night! Come on, Dan! Dan?
Dan: I'm really tired.
Maureen: Dan!
Dan: I'm really...
Maureen: The Impeachment.FYI guy!
Dan: I know. It's great. It's great.
Maureen: It happened. It actually happened, Dan, this year. It happened. 2019. He was impeached. He has impeached. He is impeached.
Dan: I feel like I'm going to die.
Speaker 3: (music)
Maureen: Welcome to Says Who?, the podcast that isn't a podcast.
Dan: It's a coping strategy. I am Dan Sinker.
Maureen: And I am Maureen Johnson. I paused there for dramatic effect.
Dan: I liked it. I didn't know. I thought it was going to be a big reveal, like you finally pulled the trigger and changed to Maureen Jackson.
Maureen: You're tired.
Dan: I'm really tired. I'm really tired. I'm only partially tired, because I have watched more TV in the last couple of days, Maureen, than I probably have in the last year. I mean, that's actually probably not true, but certainly, concentrated, I have not watched this much TV in a long time.
Dan: And I have a TV hangover. I have an impeachment hangover. And then, last night, my four-year-old decided that he would ask what time it was approximately every five minutes between 1:15 AM and 3:30 in the morning.
Maureen: What time was it?
Dan: It was whatever time... first one was 1:16 in the morning, I remember that. And then we just kept going from there. At some point, I stopped actually looking at the time.
Maureen: He just wanted to know?
Dan: Just needed to know. Apparently, he had an appointment he was waiting for. It was an appointment to go back to sleep once I was thoroughly awake. Anyway... Maureen!
Maureen: Dan.
Dan: We...
Maureen: Dan.
Dan: Have a president that was impeached.
Maureen: Yep. Number three.
Dan: Ever. Number three ever.
Maureen: That's right, Dan, joining Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton.
Dan: Yeah, Donald Trump. Impeached last night. 230-197 on one act, 229-198 on another. He's been impeached, Maureen.
Maureen: And to just remember that Bill Clinton was impeached for saying, "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: And Trump has been impeached for using another country for political gain, withholding political aid, basically aiding another major power in invading another country, and subverting the 2020 election.
Dan: And also for blocking Congress at every turn in investigating that, at a level that has never been seen before by a single President.
Maureen: So those things seem equal.
Dan: (laughs) They don't, actually. But...
Maureen: Doesn't matter.
Dan: Maureen.
Maureen: Doesn't matter.
Dan: Doesn't matter. This is the thing... this is the thing that I feel like... so, first of all, if you are listening to this, because there are more than a few people who are like, "Trump's impeached! He's out of office now!" He's not.
Maureen: Real bad morning for you to find out.
Dan: Sorry to be the bearer of that bad news! He is not. And as a result, that also means that Says Who is not over, because Says Who is always ending when Trump ends. But we're not there. Maybe we're not there yet; maybe we're not there at all.
Dan: But either way, history was made last night.
Maureen: Four more years! Four more years!
Dan: No, no, no, no! What are you doing? What are you doing, Maureen? Don't do that to us! Or to them, everyone listening!
Maureen: We are in a weird headspace.
Dan: Understandable. But yeah, last night, Donald Trump got impeached. That's a big deal.
Maureen: It is a big deal.
Dan: I have been watching all of these hearings, Maureen, and then turning around and writing them up for Impeachment.FYI, and last night was a real, "Okay, the vote's done. Got to finish these thoughts. Got to get it out." And it wasn't until I was brushing my teeth to go to bed last night that I was like, "Oh, whoa! Donald Trump got impeached!"
Maureen: Now, Impeachment.FYI is not done, because while it's called Impeachment.FYI, it's going to follow the entire saga through the Senate.
Dan: Yeah, we'll follow the impeachment trial in the Senate, as well, and so it will-
Maureen: It is the impeachment trial.
Dan: It will continue.
Maureen: Right.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, it will go until that has run its course, but I mean... I don't know. It's hard after three years of this shit to take a moment to enjoy something, but I do think it's important to be like, "Look at this. This is a real thing."
Maureen: Yep. Yeah.
Dan: In a decade, when my four-year-old is taking U.S. History, this will be in that book.
Maureen: It's true. Even my dog recognizes that.
Dan: (laughs) Even...
Maureen: I mean...
Dan: Did you watch the whole thing?
Maureen: Trump is the only President your four-year-old really has ever known.
Dan: Please don't say that, but it's true.
Maureen: Sorry.
Dan: It's sad. It's a sad realization, but it's true, and to that effect, he actually hasn't known him at all. He's too young to know what of anything, and he's sure not going to the Hall of Presidents at Disney until that robot's fucking moved to the back row, so... he might not know.
Maureen: Well, I had it on yesterday, because it was a very busy... obviously, it's the last couple of days of business before the holidays, and I'm getting ready for a book release and a bunch of other projects I'm doing, so I was trying to just grind through a list of stuff. It was one of those things where you're like, "Must get all these things done. Must do it."
Maureen: So I had it on... so, I was sitting at my table with the TV on, and I had the sound off, and I would just kind of, every once in a while, hit the mute button on and off to see what was happening?
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: And those little... what were they, 55 second bursts of testimony?
Dan: Usually, they started as a minute and a half, but yeah, they were very short. Then they got shortened to a minute. The Republicans, at one point, were on this insane 30 second round.
Maureen: Yeah, it was... I mean, the good thing was they were so short, but it was just shit tennis.
Dan: (laughs) Yeah!
Maureen: There was no thoughtfulness to it. There was no... I mean, it really did have me thinking about the Watergate hearings, and how... because they didn't actually get to this point in the Watergate hearings. They got to the point where they ratified the Articles of Impeachment, and then he resigned.
Dan: Right. Right, they passed out a judiciary, but they did not get to a full vote.
Maureen: They were so sober and so broken, and it took Republicans to get on board to get it through, and I spent a lot of the day wondering... and I know this is a very simple question, but we have to sometimes ruminate on the simple questions... how we got to the point where a Republican... which, it's not like they were great people in the early '70s! It wasn't like they were just doing awesome stuff! The Republican party, the party of Nixon... Nixon himself was doing some real dirty deeds. I mean, they were breaking into people's offices. They were beating people up. There was stuff happening that was dirty! And they prolonged a war for political reasons! I mean, this was not great!
Dan: No!
Maureen: But still, they decided to go with the evidence.
Dan: Right.
Maureen: And I spent a lot of time wondering how we moved from here to there, and what it means, without coming to any conclusions... just that, I don't know if it's simple as we have Fox and OANN and crazy right-wing media now... like, we just have such a polarized news media that you just make soundbites for the one you want to be on... or, if there's something kind of deeper.
Maureen: A lot of people sort of suggested that there might be intelligence on a lot of these people, because it's not like these people like him. They all know he's guilty. I believe that. I believe that they are all... if you're in Congress, you're probably functional enough to be able to read over a package of information and understand the basic concepts contained therein, right? You'd think?
Dan: You'd think.
Maureen: It doesn't mean you do the right thing. It doesn't mean you act on the right impulses. But it means you probably can read and understand what's in the packet.
Dan: Sure.
Maureen: I mean, maybe. I mean, we used to think that of the Presidency, but he's special. He's special bad.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: He doesn't have to know dick, and he doesn't. Dan, I don't know. You asked me-
Dan: Yeah, I mean-
Maureen: I believe, sir, you asked me if I watched it? Yeah. I mean... so, I had it kind of flicking on and off, but I was trying to work really hard, but I was like, "This is important, I got to watch it," and then I just was like, "Wow! This has gone on for, like, eight hours of them just saying stuff back and forth at each other, and oh, God," and then I actually watched the vote.
Dan: The actual vote. Yeah. The actual vote was mercifully quick. Yeah, I mean, I think the question... I think there is a bit of a chicken and egg thing in what you are saying to me, in terms of... did things get this bad because of the sort of conservative media feedback loop that exists now? Or do these people believe it?
Dan: I think that it is hard to unravel, but I do think that... and I say this as somebody that works in and around journalism... the state of journalism has a huge part to play in all of this, and not just the conservative media, right?
Dan: I have had many moments where I have thought about the fact that one of the elements of the impeachment investigation was around the demand that Ukraine announce that they were investigating Joe Biden. And as originally it was that Trump wanted these investigations, but as the open hearings progressed, became more and more clear that the aid was being held up and the White House meeting was being held up... not for them to actually do the investigation, but to have a very public announcement that they were going to investigate. And I don't know that I can think of a more damning condemnation of the current state of the news than that.
Maureen: Right.
Dan: That the only thing that they needed to do was announce it; they didn't need to do it.
Maureen: Right.
Dan: Because they knew that that would be enough.
Maureen: Enough, yeah.
Dan: That's fucking awful.
Maureen: So what do we do, Dan? Dan, what's the answer?
Dan: I mean, I think... so, what's the answer? I don't know. I don't know that there is a single answer, because I think that we are looking at a massive failure of multiple systems, right? At this point, right-wing media is not going anywhere, and the chokehold and stranglehold it has is not going anywhere. You don't fix that simply by kind of creating a similar feedback loop on the left.
Dan: Honestly, I don't know how you fix big media, other than ultimately letting it collapse under its own weight. And I say that as somebody that has spent the last decade of his life in the "how do we save journalism" state! So, yeah, I'm just really fucking tired!
Maureen: Right. Well, I think that's a different question. It's a different question.
Dan: It is, because saving journalism is not the same thing as, how do we save existing monoliths?
Maureen: Right.
Dan: And I do think, actually... and Impeachment.FYI has actually been very heartening along these lines for me... is, I actually don't think that there isn't a demand and need for decent journalism now. I started a thing... what, Jesus... six weeks ago? No, two months ago and a few weeks... the beginning of October, whenever that was. Time doesn't mean anything anymore. I'm so tired... as sort of just a like-
Maureen: I'm not laughing at you.
Dan: Oh, feel free! But I started a thing because it was like, "You know what? I wish this existed for me." Right? I wish that there was something that made it so I didn't feel like I needed to be refreshing things every 60 seconds, so that I didn't have to try to sort out what is the fucking bullshit here and what is real news, what's moving a ball forward and what's not... and finally, it was just like, "Fuck it, I'll just make it." It's not going to help me, but it might help some other people, and there's fucking 11,000 people subscribed at this point?
Dan: People want good information, and I just don't think that we are currently up for that. It's not to say that Impeachment.FYI is a model or anything. It's just a tiny little thing that, I think, shows potential ways that we can move forward, and mostly shows that there's a thirst for it.
Dan: So, there's that, and then there's, how do we fix fucking politics, or whatever, and that I... I don't know.
Maureen: All right. I'm disappointed that you don't have the answer.
Dan: I mean, I definitely don't have the answer, but I do... like, I keep coming back to the fact that 2018's House elections are why this impeachment even happened. Right? That that was a direct result of people picking themselves up from the shock of 2016, and saying, "Hey, you know what? I need to engage in this system more. I need to engage in this process more, and I'm going to fucking run for office." And you had this just wave of people getting elected, flipping 30-plus seats. And that's remarkable, and maybe that is... maybe we are seeing a course correction, right?
Dan: Would it have been nice for some Republicans, 20 of which are retiring in 2020, to have been like, "Fuck it, I got nothing to lose. I don't like this dude, I don't like where we're at," and vote to impeach him? Yes, that would have been nice. But... that's their fucking journey, and the journey that 230 Democrats are on was to impeach the motherfucker already, to quote... whatever. My brain doesn't work anymore.
Maureen: Can we talk about the votes, though?
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: Because watching them tick in was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.
Dan: Yeah, it's fun.
Maureen: Because there were... so, they say the first vote was 15 minutes, and then the little ticker appears, and you know the numbers that basically have to show up, and a whole bunch of them drop pretty much instantly. It's like, "tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick," and suddenly you're up to, like, 170, and it's been like a minute.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: And then minutes go by and minutes go by, and actually, minutes expire, and there's still... roughly, say, 25 people still on the table.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: They were there, but they hadn't hit the button, and I've spent all goddamned night trying to think of why!
Dan: (laughs)
Dan: I don't know the mechanics of where those buttons are or how it works, but it's fairly antiquated technology, I would guess, right? And so... and there's a lot of just milling about involved in that process! I don't totally understand!
Maureen: Again... no. No, no, no, no. They had 15 minutes to hit their button, and almost everybody did it instantly, and around 25 people were just lingering, because they all dumped their votes in that last minute after the clock. So clearly those people-
Dan: Maybe they had to pee.
Maureen: Those people were waiting-
Dan: Maybe there was a line at the bathroom.
Maureen: Dan, those people were fucking waiting, and those people were either not going to vote, or they were going to vote... maybe they were going to vote against their party, because these were almost all Republicans, or they were just... oh, also, then, one Republican vote... bing... comes up for impeachment.
Dan: Yeah!
Maureen: And then it fucking goes away!
Dan: Yeah, I wouldn't put a lot of stock in that. Apparently, those fucking buttons get mishit all the time and then get flipped. Because if you watch, there were actually a couple of times where the nay votes for Democrats popped up, and then would pop back down, and I remember watching one of the healthcare votes, and that the same sort of like, "Well, what the fuck? A Republican vote?," and then suddenly it was like, "Oh, shit, nope. It flipped back." I don't put a lot of stock in, somebody decided to be brave and then got yelled at, or got a change of heart; I think that it... I know enough about that process to know that that kind of weird errant vote shit happens, and that's part of why the bong does not hit at the 15 minute mark, and there's no ability to go back and do anything.
Maureen: You don't think a couple people were kind of sitting there going, "Maybe I'll just not vote on this?"
Dan: Well, Tulsi Gabbard voted present.
Maureen: She did vote present.
Maureen: What a brave, brave person.
Dan: That is what I think of his humor now, Maureen.
Dan: Here's the thing. I wish that I felt more celebratory.
Maureen: Okay.
Dan: Don't you?
Maureen: To be honest, it feels... I just feel like how you feel when the most common sense thing is done. Had it been some sort of, will we pull this out... it was like, "Here's all this evidence." I don't know. The bare minimum was correctly accomplished and it feels like, it's like, "You did it." Just, "You did it."
Dan: I mean, I guess... the thing that I think a lot about, and we were on different sides of this at one point... was when the Democrats retook the House and when they took power... at the beginning of the year; let's remember this happened this year... there was almost immediately a, like, fucking, "Let's get Articles written day one," and there were sort of two schools of thought at the time.
Dan: One was, "Yep, impeach the motherfucker already. Get it done," and the other one was, "Why do it? It's not going to go anywhere in the Senate," right? And the flip of that was, "Yeah, that doesn't matter. Fucking impeach him," right?
Maureen: Were we on different sides of this?
Dan: Yeah! I was like, I don't know that they waste the time. I came around fairly quickly when I realized they were spending a lot of time passing bills that were also never going to go anywhere in the Senate, but they wouldn't touch impeachment. But yeah, you were like, "No, just fucking do it."
Dan: And that was certainly among, I think, the progressive left, the pod-bros and things like that... that was certainly the charge at the beginning of the year, was like, "It doesn't matter if it dies in the Senate. Get fucking impeachment done."
Maureen: Oh, so you're like, "Maureen is at one with the pod-bros!"
Dan: That's what I'm saying. I'm saying you're in lockstep.
Maureen: Lockstep with the pod-bros. No, I felt that-
Dan: And now we're here.
Maureen: I felt that way-
Dan: We achieved that.
Maureen: Because if you do a crime, there should be acknowledgment that you did a crime.
Dan: Yeah, totally. And to me, I totally came around on that, as well. It took much longer for-
Maureen: And also then, correction corner... not all the pod-bros were on board!
Dan: All right.
Maureen: Actually, they were kind of against it, and they came around!
Dan: I don't mean to malign the pod-bros.
Maureen: You can malign the pod-bros all you want, because I do hear some pod-bros, and they were not all for it.
Dan: All right. Well, the point being is-
Maureen: (laughs) The guy on the-
Dan: Whoever it was or wasn't-
Maureen: Die on this hill, then!
Dan: I like it!
Dan: We did it, right! We did that! And the Senate trial is such a longshot, as to almost not be a shot, right?
Maureen: Right.
Dan: No Senate has ever found a President guilty in the two other times that they have had that attempt. It takes 67 Senators to say, "Yeah. Guilty." That is hard on a good day, right, and we aren't on a good day. And so, I feel like we need to see this for the kind of victory, symbolic or not, that it is, because this was always going to be as far as it gets.
Maureen: Except that I don't think it is symbolic. It means that the process... that there's still a process, that we still have... you got candy?
Dan: Oh, sorry.
Maureen: I just want to know what kind... what do you got?
Dan: It's not Kisses. I was just moving a bag from one side of my table to another.
Maureen: Oh! Moving a bag, huh?
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: Dan was rustling the bedding that he sleeps in under his desk.
Dan: As we've discussed before, I am a fidgeter when we talk.
Maureen: That he burrows in when he sleeps after doing Impeachment, with his weird set-up of screens and many computers and wires, and then when he's tired and he's done, he crawls into that warm burrow of papers and crafting materials that he's fashioned for himself!
Dan: (laughs) It's not inaccurate. It's not an inaccurate description, Maureen.
Maureen: The Sinker in the wild! He's a multi-chambered burrow made of cardboard and packing peanuts and Bubble Wrap.
Dan: I was working on a-
Maureen: This is my David Attenborough!
Dan: (laughs) I was working on a part of the coping box yesterday while all of the votes was happening, and I ended up, basically, in an entire nest of cardboard until I finally had it doing what I was wanting it to do.
Maureen: I still think that even if we don't get all the way, we've got to keep proceeding. You can't just throw up your hands and say, "Nothing can be done."
Dan: Right.
Maureen: And he really hated it.
Dan: Oh, yeah!
Maureen: Let's get into that, because it's pretty fun. He did not like it.
Dan: He fucking hates it!
Maureen: He doesn't like it!
Dan: And he's not going to like it... it might've been the L.A. Times or some news organization, in their lead on the impeachment vote, was basically like, "Well, the first sentence of Donald Trump's obituary has been written."
Maureen: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dan: He doesn't get out from under this history. This is for real. He is the third President ever in the history of America to be impeached!
Maureen: And also, I think some interesting things might happen next.
Dan: There's an interesting potential play that I worry is a little bit of fan fiction, but the Articles have to be delivered to the Senate in order to start the clock on an impeachment trial. And it is up to Nancy Pelosi to turn those over, and she didn't do it last night. She still has to appoint what are called impeachment managers, because the way an impeachment trial works in the Senate is the House essentially acts as prosecutor. The trial is presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts. And then the White House is the defense. The senators, technically, are jurors, though it's different than a normal jury.
Dan: And so, impeachment managers are who the House has to appoint to actually try this case, and those haven't been named yet. And essentially, she said afterwards that she is not going to turn over Articles to the Senate until there is something set in place to understand what the trial is going to look like, and she's basically saying, "Because I need to choose the right impeachment managers, and that's going to depend on what this trial looks like."
Dan: But the sort of potentially fan fiction side of it is, this is an interesting gambit because Chuck Schumer, the Minority head... God, I'm bad with fucking words today. I got no words, Maureen.
Maureen: You're doing great.
Dan: What the fuck is his deal?
Maureen: You're doing great.
Dan: No. He's the head Democrat, Minority lead, whatever... I don't know.
Maureen: Minority leader?
Dan: Yeah. Thank you. I couldn't say leader. I kept saying lead.
Maureen: You're good.
Dan: I'm not good. He has already kind of issued a letter saying, "Hey, I want to get Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton and a couple other folks from the administration to be witnesses in the trial." And Republicans are basically like, "Uh, no. Fuck off. No."
Dan: And there's an interesting thing right now where Pelosi can hold those Articles, and essentially use them a little bit as leverage to potentially get the trial to look a little bit more like Democrats would like it to look like, with the real kind of stick being... if they never get turned over to the House, he is never acquitted.
Maureen: If they don't get turned over to the Senate, he's never acquitted.
Dan: Thank you! I apologize!
Maureen: No, no, no, I'm just...
Dan: My brain doesn't work!
Maureen: No, no, I'm just making sure I'm...
Dan: Yeah, if the House doesn't turn the Articles over to the Senate, then the Senate cannot hold an impeachment trial, and thusly, they cannot acquit Donald Trump.
Maureen: So if you're acquitted, does the term impeachment go away?
Dan: No, you're still impeached. Bill Clinton was acquitted.
Maureen: Right.
Dan: Right? He's still impeached.
Maureen: Impeached and acquitted, just like Andrew Jackson.
Dan: Right. Exactly. You are only impeached, you are not actually removed... you are not found guilty and removed from office.
Dan: That would eat Donald Trump alive, knowing that he was never acquitted. Granted, he would fucking say something else. In fact, I think already today he tweeted out, "If she doesn't turn them over, then they lose by default," or something like that, which is not a thing.
Maureen: Which is not how it works.
Dan: That is not at all how it works.
Maureen: It's cool to have a President who has no idea how any of these things work.
Dan: That's a potential... oh, none. Zero. Zero knowledge of any of it. None.
Dan: But yeah, so that's actually sort of interesting because there is still a little bit of power that the Democrats wield, because of course, when this moves over to the Senate, the Democrats are the minority party. There are... things like witnesses are decided by a 51 vote, by a simple majority vote, and so unless four Republicans cleave off from the party... which feels like a very high number to me... the Republicans can set the rules however they want. And so there is an interesting thing going on here.
Dan: I think the other thing is, Donald Trump is losing his fucking mind about this, and I don't see him being like, "Cool, Republicans, just have the fastest trial possible. Call no witnesses and acquit me." I think he wants his fucking day in court.
Maureen: He does.
Dan: And if he wants to start calling witnesses, and he wants some fucking wingnut witnesses, right? He wants to call Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and Adam Schiff and shit like that; Nancy Pelosi! If he starts to insist on this, then there has to be a negotiation with Democrats to call their witnesses, too. So, there is a possibility that he... he's pretty good at shooting himself in the dick, right? And so, he could shoot himself in the dick with this. But all of that is also a longshotty.
Maureen: Well, he did send a letter in which he expressed all his feelings.
Dan: (laughs) Oh, my goodness!
Maureen: Now, Dan, the night that he sent this letter, this six page letter, his pre-impeachment feelings, you wrote to me and said, "Hey, why don't you record this? Why don't you read this and record it as a bonus episode?" And I said, "Sure. Why not?" And I started... and let me tell you, it stopped being funny real quick! Because this...
Dan: (laughs)
Maureen: This letter is long!
Dan: It's really long! It's six pages long!
Maureen: It is so long! And what works on the page does not always work when you just try to read it out, because just trying to read it out is exhausting, and I... oh, Dan, you know what I just had a flash of?
Dan: What?
Maureen: Remember our first foray into reading these dumb books about this administration, into the fire and fury and the kind of Shakespearean weird-ass monologue that Steve Bannon does in his weird apartment above the CVS, and he's eating Chinese food? He just sounds all hyped up or speeded up, and he's just yelling about all the dumb stuff Trump's going to do to punch himself in the dick?
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: It just seems to be coming to fruition more and more.
Dan: Yeah, doesn't it?
Maureen: I mean, he's evil but he's not wrong. It's just that... he's not stupid; he just is like, "I'm evil and I'm going to help out the evil, but he's dumb and I can't control"... like, "he's uncontrollable because he's so stupid, so I am the henchman that keeps the shit going, and I can't keep shit going because this guy is real dumb."
Maureen: So to make himself feel better, he does what anyone would do. He had a rally. It's what any one of us does when we have a breakup or something like that that upsets up; we hold a rally.
Dan: (laughs) I wish that was true!
Maureen: It's what you do when you have to kind of self-care; you take a warm bath, you light a candle, you meditate; maybe you eat your feelings a little bit. You eat that pint ice cream, and then you hold a rally, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: Where you claim things like someone's dead husband is looking up from Hell.
Dan: Oh, my God, I forgot about that!
Maureen: And then you also claim that you flush... "Hey, you talk about sinks and toilets. How many times do we flush them? Ten. Not me, you." That's what he said.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: "How many times do we flush?" Everyone said, "Ten!" And he goes, "Not me, you." That's the best thing he's ever said. That's the craziest... Dan, I will argue that that is the craziest thing that he's ever said.
Dan: (laughs) Which part, the original 10 to 15 flush, or now that he is amending it to insist that he doesn't flush 10 to 15 times, but everyone else does?
Maureen: Now. Yes. It's the second one, because the first one is something else, but then you're like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to carry my 10 to 15 flushes remark that I made, that I killed with the other day, and I'm going to start bringing that into my self-care rally, and I'm going to make everyone chant about how many times I claim you have to flush a toilet, but then I'm going to say, 'Not me... you disgusting motherfuckers.'"
Dan: (laughs)
Maureen: "'You filthy, filthy creatures are the ones that have to flush. Not me. I don't have to flush 10 times. You do.'" And he points at all of them. "You. You do." That is the greatest moment of his Presidency. When he starts yelling at his own rallygoers about how many times he thinks they have to flush a toilet.
Dan: Yeah, there was a whole... he has an additional riff in that, where he goes on and on about how bad dishwashers are now.
Maureen: I missed that!
Dan: Oh, yeah! He has a whole new riff! I saw a clip of it last night.
Maureen: What?
Dan: Where he's like, "People tell me that their dishwashers, you used to be able to turn them on and they'd do their thing, and you'd open it up and there'd be all this steam that comes out; and now you turn them on, and you get four drips of water."
Maureen: What? This is incredible!
Dan: He's got a whole fucking water efficiency riff now.
Maureen: Dan! I didn't know this! And I am so inspired. Oh, hold on! We're looking this up!
Dan: Keep in mind that he is delivering this diatribe on water within an hour's drive on Flint, Michigan, that has not had clean water his entire Presidency.
Maureen: Okay, wait. Hold on.
Dan: Also, I'll give two more factoids about Battle Creek, Michigan. One, the Representative of Battle Creek, Michigan is Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party earlier this year, is now an Independent, and voted to impeach the President. Literally at the same time that that rally is happening, he is casting a vote to impeach. Also, Battle Creek, Michigan... home of Kellogg's cereal.
Maureen: That's true.
Dan: Tony the Tiger lives there.
Maureen: Well, wait a minute, Dan. Now it all makes sense. Do you know the story of the Battle Creek Sanitorium and the Kellogg stuff?
Dan: Please, tell me.
Maureen: Dan, it's all coming together. The Kellogg's cereal company... this was all built on... in the early 20th century, the kind of '20s, '30s, they kind of established the first kind of health retreat? It wasn't the first, but it was a big health retreat. One of the things they believed was that you... I believe the phrase was... I'm pulling this out of my memory banks, but it's something like, "an obedient colon is a diseased colon." They believed that you should-
Dan: (laughs) Wait. No! Oh, no, this is really going somewhere I wasn't expecting!
Maureen: Oh, it was mostly about poop! So much of it. He was obsessed with poop and what you should eat, so all of Corn Flakes and GrapeNuts and things are built to... the whole diet, it was supposed to be more natural, but also to get you to poop all the time, and they would have these kind of aggressive exercise sessions until you were literally supposed to poop... they wore diapers. It was like you would kind of get it to the point where your body expelled automatically, so there was a lot of aggressive enemas.
Dan: Oh, God!
Maureen: It was all about constant pooping, and they were like, "That's the sign that you're eliminating correctly."
Maureen: Did you ever meet anyone who did one of those cleanse... like, there was a phase where everyone I knew in grad school subscribed to these cleansing packs, that-
Dan: Oh, I don't know about that!
Maureen: Yeah, it was a phase that a lot of people I went through did these special cleanses. Not like a juice cleanse or a 10 day cleanse; these were six to eight week cleanses where you got a special pack from a guy in the desert. It was like, you ran this company, and you took the supplements and you drank these drinks six times a day, and they weren't like delicious protein shakes. They had Bentonite clay in them, which is... psyllium husk and Bentonite clay. Psyllium is just like Metamucil... any kind of standard laxative is just psyllium husk, basically. But psyllium husk and Bentonite clay, which was supposed to pull the impurities out of your intestines.
Maureen: So you had a very specialized diet where it was like, only vegetables; no salt or pepper or... you basically couldn't really eat anything except vegetables.
Dan: Okay.
Maureen: And you might have been able to have boiled chicken or something, but I can't remember. And you drank these things six times a day, and it was supposed to... by cleaning your diet, and then the Bentonite clay was supposed to pull impurities out of your... this is going to get gross, okay. It's fine.
Dan: This is going to get gross! I like that you're... this hasn't been gross!
Maureen: It's not as gross as-
Dan: Strap in!
Maureen: The thing is, it's going to sound very gross at first, but then I'm going to tell you the twist that makes it not as gross, for about 30 seconds.
Maureen: So, the idea was you were supposed to kind of poop constantly, and eventually this clay, this cleanse, would pull this layer that it said... this mucoid layer that existed on the inside of your intestines would be pulled out, and people were supposed to be pooping out two-feet-long pieces of this layer that was like basically-
Dan: Oh, God!
Maureen: But it's not poop!
Dan: What is happening to this podcast?
Maureen: But wait, wait; it wasn't poop. It was supposed to be that your body was actually shedding a layer of stuff that was bad for you.
Dan: (laughs) Oh, God! Oh, God!
Maureen: The thing is, I'm pretty sure that what has been found out is that you were probably expelling the very clay layer you were putting in, because doctors and all were like, "This is not a thing. This is not a thing. It's not a thing." But I knew so many people who were doing it.
Maureen: So back to Battle Creek; so much of it was about pooping, like aggressively eating fiber and then exercising until you pooped. So it only makes sense that Trump is out there in Pooptown, USA, talking about how many times and he's looking out at Battle Creek, and he's like, "I know you, Battle Creek. You pooping motherfuckers out there! I know what's going on! You've got your Corn Flakes, and you're pooping all day long! And you've got to flush 10 times! Not me! You! Why not me? Because all I eat all goddamned day long are stacks of hamburgers! Hamburger after hamburger!"
Dan: Right. He doesn't flush 10 times because he doesn't poop.
Maureen: No. He has a kind of airlock situation that happens, like one of those space vacuums.
Dan: (laughs) Oh, God.
Maureen: And you know who operates it? Don, Junior.
Dan: Oh, God. This has really taken a turn.
Maureen: It's not a high colonic. It's a space vacuum from NASA.
Dan: Oh, my word.
Maureen: I apologize for everything that's ever happened.
Dan: Oh, my God.
Maureen: I used to be very delicate, but my mother is a nurse, so I always kind of grew up with a... you just have to explain the procedures as they exist, and it's fine. I mean, I'm not saying I have the tolerance of a medical professional, because they can handle it, but I can tolerate... this is always how we had to discuss things.
Maureen: But, really, Dan, it was like a whole phase where everyone I knew was ordering these, and they were not cheap, and none of us had any money, so everyone was shelling out 150 dollars for these kits from the guy in the desert with the powders in them, and I was like, "That's not a thing," and everyone's like, "Sees how much you know when you won't be pooping out three yards of weird material," and I'm like, "I... "
Dan: This is horrible. This is literally the worst thing ever! (laughs) This is so terrible! This is the worst!
Maureen: See, Goop came along to make all this stuff seem like kind of rose gold? But before we had Goop, you just had to go to the guy in the desert and be like, "Sell me your powder so I can poop out weird, weird substances that you claim are inside of me."
Dan: God, what has gone wrong? What has happened? The President has been impeached, and things have gone off the fucking rails here!
Maureen: Well, I looked up... as soon as you said the dishwasher thing, I looked it up and it turns out that he found this out, Dan, from some women. Just women. Just women.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: His quote apparently was, "Now you press it twelve"... okay. Our dishwashers, so, okay. So, he says, "Remember the dishwasher? You press it. Boom. There'd be like an explosion." First of all, if you press a button and it explodes, that's not a dishwasher.
Dan: (laughs)
Maureen: You're operating something else, but it's not a... if you hit a button on your dishwasher and it kind of goes, "(blows raspberry)," then that's not a dishwasher. It's not a dishwasher, unless it's the dishwasher made from the guy in the desert with the powders and he's like, "You really want to dish your dishes? Every time you hit this button, shit blows up! All your dishes would break into a million pieces."
Maureen: Five minutes later, he says, "You open it up and the steam pours out. Now, you press it 12 times, women tell me." Again, that's not how it works. Women. Women, I swear... women, some women.
Dan: Women.
Maureen: Dan, it always feels good when these people talk about us. It just feels good. It just feels good to me.
Dan: It must feel good to be seen.
Maureen: It feels good, Dan. I'm not going to lie to you. It doesn't feel bad.
Dan: Don't. I bet.
Maureen: Just some women. I liked his-
Dan: No men. No men do dishes.
Maureen: Just a group of them. Well, you can't. I mean, that machine blows up! You've got to go in with like a hazmat and a Ghostbusters suit on! Attack it carefully because the shit will blow up at you!
Dan: (laughs)
Maureen: Not me, you! (laughs) I'm going to laugh about this for the rest of my life. That is funny. That's funny!
Dan: (laughs) Oh, Maureen Johnson. The President has been impeached.
Maureen: Not me, you.
Dan: This episode, speaking of you, is made possible by you.
Maureen: Hey, are we done?
Dan: Your support... yeah, we've been going for a hour!
Maureen: They pooped so much at Battle Creek, it was like a [inaudible 00:54:48]... they did a lot of stuff.
Dan: Oh, no!
Maureen: Like you had-
Dan: Through your support of our Patreon-
Maureen: You had to chew all your food for two minutes and then wear diapers, and have a lot of enemas and saunas... like, three enemas or a day or something. It was just a lot.
Dan: At Patreon.com/sayswho, an update-
Maureen: You ever have a high colonic, because that was the conclusion of that cleanse thing... was like, once you've cleaned it out, obviously you will go and have a high colonic.
Dan: No. Never. No.
Maureen: And that was like your present at the end, and again, I was shaking my head like, "Don't do this thing."
Maureen: But do you know how much water they use in a high colonic?
Dan: I don't want to know.
Maureen: My beautiful hippie friends who used to get them all the time-
Dan: Oh no. It's going to happen anyway.
Maureen: It is.
Maureen: I always imagined it was, like, a pint or two, but apparently, it is gallons and gallons and gallons.
Dan: Okay, okay.
Maureen: Like a big tank.
Dan: Anyway...
Maureen: Because they just keep running it... like, they run that through. I rented a Rug Doctor the other day, Dan, and...
Dan: Yeah?
Maureen: First of all, I highly recommend, if you want to have a good time, rent a Rug Doctor.
Dan: (laughs)
Maureen: Because I ran that over the carpet and the upholstery, and the water comes back black with dirt. It is a beautiful thing. It just circles it, it runs it down and sucks it back up. It's like it's spitting it out but it's wet vacuuming it back up again.
Dan: This is the grossest thing we have ever put out in the world, ever.
Maureen: But there's less water, I think, in that normal size Rug Doctor I rented than in a high colonic, but I think it's essentially the same thing, where it's shooting it out and it's dry vacuuming it back. But it has to penetrate your system, really... it gets all through, and there are many... I mean, just saying, that's a lot of water.
Dan: Patreon backers. So, we announced at four months of backing, we send you some more stuff. 10 dollars... four months at 10 dollars, you get-
Maureen: A free high colonic! You're welcome! Hey everybody! (sings)
Dan: No! You get a poster of Says Whovia, which is literally being delivered to my house today. And at 25 dollars a month, you get a coping box, which I have been building and assembling for, like, two weeks now.
Maureen: Oh, these coping boxes are no joke. Every item in there is bespoke and carefully... it's not just like a box subscription that's just like, "Here's just a candle that someone else made." All this stuff... Dan bought a machine and has been down there in Dan's Workshop handcrafting-
Dan: Literally handcrafting.
Maureen: You get a... can we even say some of the stuff is?
Dan: I think we can! Why not? The thing that I've been working on all week now is the spell. Maureen Johnson wrote a spell, and you get a bag with all the materials with which to cast that spell.
Maureen: But it's much-
Dan: The bag-
Maureen: Go on.
Dan: The bag is a black velvet bag with a... I don't even know how to describe it. It's me and you on it.
Maureen: Right.
Dan: (laughs) But it's... there's us on the bag.
Maureen: It's magic us, embossed, and then-
Dan: Yeah, like, holographic golden us on the bag. You get a little spellbook.
Maureen: You get an actual little... Dan has been... turned this spell, because it was so long, what I wrote, into a spellbook, and then you get all the materials for the spell. And really, before I wrote that spell, I went to our local Wicca supply store, because we have a really good local witch store, and I went through and I really watched, because they were doing candle carving, because a lot of people are getting carved candles for the holiday there, and I was really watching what was going on and looking.
Maureen: So when I crafted this, I tried to really absorb the energy. So you get your spellbook, and your... it's really cool.
Dan: Yeah.
Maureen: But that's not all.
Dan: It is a pretty amazing package. That is not all. You get a witch hunt hamburger votive candle. You get a Executive Time sleep mask. You get some Who Apron recipes from us.
Maureen: In a special bespoke Who Apron...
Dan: Sleeve, recipe sleeve. And you get a In Case of Coping Emergency, Open letter, that's sealed up in a bespoke-made envelope.
Maureen: Dan sends me photographs of designs, prototypes and finished products constantly. The amount of just sweat and effort and thought that has gone into this for him... when I say that Dan has a workshop and he's like Santa in there, making stuff for you? You're going to get this... like, it's very holiday-timed. It probably won't go out for the holiday, but it will be right after.
Dan: No, it'll be right after. I think that the final assembly of all of these boxes is going to happen between the Christmas and New Year's window, and that they should be... for the first batch of people who have already been backing for four months, otherwise it will... once you hit that four month mark, you'll get it. You'll also get the poster if you do the 25 because you get the 10 dollar shit, too, and you get... it's bananas.
Maureen: It's art.
Dan: I think probably we're losing money in the long run, but whatever. Ah, Maureen Johnson.
Maureen: Certainly for a cost of time and labor and craftsmanship... that's well out the window.
Dan: Oh, well, yeah.
Maureen: I mean, the poster is a piece of art. The box is a piece of art. So, there's a lot of thought and time, went into these things, just because we wanted to say thanks, and I just want everyone to know that it's Dan and not me.
Dan: Well, that's not true. It is entirely inspired by shit that you send me, and then I'm like, "Oh, man, we can really do this." But also, the coping boxes turned out to be... have been a great coping mechanism for me, as they have almost entirely been done while hearings are happening on the monitor.
Maureen: That's good.
Dan: It's been a very therapeutic thing, but...
Maureen: I like how that you turned impeachment into a cottage industry. (laughs)
Dan: Well, you've got to do what you've got to do! (laughs)
Maureen: Dan's down in his basement, watching the hearings. I just like to think of him just kind of quietly muttering to himself as his glasses... when you see the cartoon with the glasses are getting slowly fogged, you'll see the shine of glasses and the beard, and the light as he's looking down, going, "Oh, impeachment. The machine, the machine, the machine will help me with the impeachment! The machine! Not me, you!"
Dan: (laughs) Patreon.com/sayswho. Our theme music is performed by Ted Leo. The organ music that opened this episode is courtesy of Josh Kantor. Our logo was designed by Darth. We love you, Darth.
Maureen: We love you, Darth.
Dan: You can contact us @sayswhopodcast on Twitter. You can email at hey... that is H-E-Y... @sayswhopodcast.com. Join the discussion on Facebook at /group/sayswhovians. Our Facebook group is moderated by Janice Dillard, and just a shoutout to everyone in the Facebook group and how they have been supporting each other through these days and days and days of hearings, and everything else. You all are amazing, and thanks to Janice for keeping that community growing and being amazing.
Dan: Speaking of things that are amazing, spread the word, subscribe and please leave stars and reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And a programming note, there will be no episode next week. We are taking the Christmas week off. Our next episode, though, will be January 1st, 2020.
Maureen: Oh, boy.
Dan: You will join us. We will ring in the new year together.
Maureen: You will join us.
Dan: We need to figure out our 2020 slogan, Maureen.
Maureen: I think it's, "Not me, you." But we'll work on it.
Dan: (laughs) 2018 was "To the max." 2019 was "Here we go." What will 2020 be? Tune in January 1st for 2020's official slogan. We will see you then.
Maureen: See you in 2020.
Dan: Everyone, have wonderful holidays, whatever they are! I hope they are what they need to be for you.
Maureen: Not me, you.
Dan: (laughs) From my basement in Chicago, I'm Dan Sinker!
Maureen: (laughs) I am Maureen Johnson.
Dan: And this has been Says Who!
Dan: This was our grossest episode ever.
Maureen: I'm sorry.
Dan: By a lot.
Maureen: Not sorry.
Dan: And not the first episode we've talked about poop, but that was real gross.
Maureen: And it was me, that's the surprising thing.
Dan: (laughs) It was all you! I am horrified! I have to listen to this back when I edit it!
Maureen: Good luck!