Election Results Breakdown With The Daily Beast Editor In Chief Noah Shachtman

As the election results come in, Noah Shachtman, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast, joins the Big Technology Podcast for an 'Emergency' show to dive into the results, the future of the Democratic Party, and how the tech platforms handled the election. Recorded on 11/4/2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And today, we are recording a special emergency podcast to talk about the election results, where we stand today in the United States of America, and a little bit about how the tech platforms have handled it. Joining us today is Noah Shackman, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast. Welcome to the show, Noah.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for having me.

• 1:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for being here. How are you feeling? How's the last 24 hours been for you?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  It's mellow. It's totally mellow. Had a good night's sleep, got a facial, took a nice jog. It was great.

• 1:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Good stuff. What's it like managing a newsroom on a, on a night like this one?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like luckily, we've got a newsroom where everybody's really, you know, everybody's a baller, everybody's mission focused. And so, you know, people, people are excited to dive into the news. And, and so it's great to see, you don't have to encourage people, really, just gotta kind of unleash them. But look, I think, but, but look, um, you know, when you see results that are, that are confusing or stressful, or what have you, you know, I think it's important to buck people up and remind them of their mission and why they got into this business in the first place, which is to tell the unvarnished truth, no matter what,

• 2:40Speaker 01

  and to really, um, and to find out as much as you can, and then lay it out for people. And so I think, you know, for those of us in the, in the news business, that, that mission is more important than ever.

• 2:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. And I hope we can do some of that over the course, the next, you know, 28 minutes or so, as the time we have here today to talk. I want to introduce you to the audience a little bit to begin with. You have a very interesting background. So you actually worked in politics before going into media. You were on the Clinton campaign in 1992. So can you tell us a little bit about what you did there?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Sure. I was a 20, 21 year old kid at Georgetown University when, when Bill Clinton announced his presidential run there. And I kind of wasn't as taken with him at first, but then he came back for a series of speeches and I got more and more into what he was saying, enough so that I dropped out of Georgetown and, and, and went to go work on his campaign for a while. And then after that, worked at the Democratic National Committee for about a year. But, um, look, you know, politics is a fucking dirty game, played by professional

• 3:55Speaker 01

  liars. And, and honestly, just after a while, I couldn't deal with it anymore. But I had, at the time, started to mess around with some of our chats on, on CompuServe and Prodigy in the early 90s. And, and I had convinced this

• 4:20Speaker 01

  This guy named Bob Newman, who ran a like one or two person PR shop to sort of bring me on board to to run, to start publicizing clients on AOL and Prodigy and CopyServe. And he was sort of like, yeah, yeah, whatever, kid, this will never work. But I kind of did. And so I sort of pivoted from from from politics to technology there. And that kind of eventually led me to a gig, it's kind of confusing, but editing some

• 5:00Speaker 01

  of the first internet business books at a publisher called Van Nostrand Reinhold. And when that publisher got bought up, I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with myself. And so I started freelancing for some of the like, dot com era business magazines about internet business and also a little bit for wired.com.

• 5:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it feels like the Daily Beast sort of is a combination of those two interests, right? It is very political, but it's also deeply steeped in the online communities out there. Is that the right way to describe the publication?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Sure, I think that's true. And then the other thing I was going to say is, you know, throughout this whole time, I was living about half the time in a van and playing rock and roll. And so I'd like to think the Beast has like a has a rock and roll element to it, too. And, and, you know, we like to combine kind of like, you know, really geeking out on our subjects and really, you know, as you said, getting steeped in online communities while totally nerding out on politics and, you know, having fun and presenting the information in a way that's like, you know, yeah, that's like grocable for normal people. And, and so that's what we try to do.

• 6:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great, so let's nerd out a little bit about the results. So it's close. I mean, what do you think? What are you looking at right now?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so look, it's 1:11 East Coast time on Wednesday when we're taping this. You know, at the moment, if you're a poker player, you'd rather have Joe Biden's hand than Donald Trump's hand, for sure. He seems to have more outs. You know, it seems like, you know, these Upper Midwest states and Pennsylvania, you know, have enough ballots out there from urban areas that are going to break Joe Biden's way. But honestly, who the fuck knows? Because, you know, the last five years of politics has been so, you know, so crazy and so topsy-turvy that there's always

• 7:19Speaker 01

  a chance, a large chance, that things, you know, invert.

• 7:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and certainty to me seems like the worst policy in politics right now, especially because this could end up going to the court. But we can talk a little bit about the closeness. I mean, what do you make of the fact that we're living in the middle of coronavirus? Everyone's lives seem to be disrupted. The economy isn't going in any certain direction. And yet, Trump has kept it as close as he has.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I thought Kevin Roos from The Times had a really good point, either last night or this morning, which is, is just, you know, I think that pollsters sort of overestimated people's stated, you know, preferences and underestimated their actual displayed habits, which is to click on Trumpist after Trumpist, you know, news article on Facebook. And I think that we're also a little bit, I think that people in the professional political class have really kind of underestimated how, you know, for normal Americans, Facebook is like one of their biggest

• 8:29Speaker 01

  If not their biggest information source and it is dominated by these sort of pro-Trump pages. And so for if you're, you know, in kind of, you know, red state or purple state America, the chances that that you're getting a lot of your news from from really pro-Trump places is very high. And so I think I think that's a major factor.

• 8:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I was gonna leave some of the questions about the tech side of this to the end, but let's just get into it because I feel like this is important. So what do you so first of all,

• 9:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  what how do you what what sort of importance do you give to the tech platforms influencing people's hearts and minds versus the cable networks? Because we do see right now something important that's happening is Fox News is not going along with, you know, some of the tweets the president is putting out, saying that the election is won already and that the Democrats are trying to steal it. So just in terms of the way and that's that's sort of an important bulwark. So like, just in terms of the way that that social shapes people's hearts and minds, do you give it a higher emphasis than cable news? I mean, how should we think about it?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  I certainly think it's as high, at the very least. Look, I've been saying for about a year that if Trump was going to win this thing or even make it close, it was because of the heroic efforts of Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. And I and I continue to believe that. I mean, I think you've just got to look at how of the kind of behaviors that that Facebook has has valued in that. And you look at some of the reporting about, you know, kind of dialing down, quote unquote, liberal news and dialing up, quote unquote, conservative news. And you can see that for a lot of people whose whose main information source is Facebook, you know,

• 10:14Speaker 01

  they're getting, you know, essentially unfiltered, pro-Trump hardcore agitprop. And it's not as if Facebook, although Facebook will quibble over the numbers somewhat, it's not as if they were unaware of this. They're very aware of it. And this is the direction they chose to go in.

• 10:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but I wonder, like, you know, we like to blame the media and the medium a lot, but doesn't some of this fall on the Democratic Party itself?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Fuck, yes.

• 10:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't there some messaging issue? So let's talk about that and we'll come back to the tech stuff.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there's absolutely an issue. Look, if we're gonna, you know, barely eking out a win over somebody who's overseen the deaths of a quarter million Americans is not good, you know? And honestly, and I've been fighting sometimes with my own reporters about this, but I've been really struck by how little of a message Joe Biden had beyond, you know, Donald Trump's a dickwad, which he is. I mean, Donald Trump has been a disaster of a president.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  But, you know, I've been really struck by how little of a compelling alternative Biden offered. And I think that they've got huge messaging issues, you know, with a huge chunk of America. And even if Biden wins, they're gonna have to take major steps to fix that.

• 11:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  How do they solve it?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. You know, I'm out of the politics game, I'm in the reporting game, so, you know.

• 11:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, okay. Well, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  No, but, I mean, all I can say is that I think that merely being anti is not gonna is not gonna get it done. And they've gotta be really, you know, for something, not just against Donald Trump. And, and, um, so, anyway, like I said, I'm not, I'm not really like, you know, Mr. Political Strategist, and I can say, but I can't, but I do know something about the news business, and I think. One thing that's really important is to actually,

• 12:40Speaker 01

  you know, not get too caught up in these kind of like intra-Washington political stories, or stories that only resonate, you know, resonate on, you know, in the Acela corridor, or, you know, or in the Bay Area. You know, we've really got to make sure that we're, we're telling stories that take place in the whole country. One way we've tried to do that at The Daily Beast is to really tell the coronavirus story, you know, city by city, state by state, and really focus in on, on the dozen different local responses to coronavirus, rather than just focusing on what's going on in the White House. You

• 13:24Speaker 01

  know, we've also got an interest in some topics that, that frankly, some of the other political-focused media just think are beneath them, I think, which is, you know, we love good stories about, about true crime and about, you know, cops and robbers, and we love great pop culture stories. And, you know, we're trying to reach an audience on a bunch of different levels, not just on the political level. And, I don't know, I think that's really important to keep doing.

• 14:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and let's talk a little bit about the message, because it does seem to me, and there's definitely been some talk floating around Twitter today, about how, you know, this could potentially be an indictment on some of the farther-left side of the Democrats.

• 14:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, when you were working on the Clinton campaign, the message was, it's the economy, stupid. The message for the Biden campaign is fight for the soul of our country. And a lot of that has been manifested in talking about how, like, you know, Trump is a jerk, and he's a white supremacist, and I just wonder, I mean, you look at the results, and the Democrats, what Trump, Trump has won the highest share of non-white support of Republicans in decades. So is there a limit to that sort of resistance-style messaging for the Democrats?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely think.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Look, I don't think that the Democrats did a good enough job tying what was actually going on with the coronavirus to Trump's response, right? I think that was, in some ways, you know, if I'm thinking about it, that's kind of the major failure. And I think for a lot of people, coronavirus felt like an act of God, like a hurricane, or like a tsunami, and that, you know, government was just as powerless to stop the virus as it was to stop a hurricane or a tsunami. But of course, we know that's not the case, right? We know that, you know, that had really certain basic public health measures been put in

• 15:36Speaker 01

  place earlier and in a more sustained fashion that, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands or more people would still be alive. And I don't feel like, I don't feel like the Democrats ever quite tied those two things together. And then I don't feel like they, while they said, hey, we're going to take this seriously, we're going to, we're going to be competent. I never felt like I got a great answer out of, at a Team Biden for what they were going to do differently, like, other than just follow the science, which is, you know, a solid foundation, but I don't feel like they laid out like an ABC one, two, three kind of plan. So, I don't know.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  I feel like that's what, that was a message failure there.

• 16:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. But if you take the coronavirus out of it, I mean, they would have had, I mean, it looks like they would have had the floor wiped with that. So, the question is, is, when it comes to the future of the Democratic Party, I know you're not a political strategist, but I also wonder, is, is the thing that comes front and center, is it the economy, or is it the sort of, you know, more, more further left, anti-racist type of message?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I don't know that those things are necessarily intention in the way that that you put it. Um, you know, I feel like, um, that's a bit of a like, I, I feel like, um, you know, there, you can, you can push a, a message of justice that's, that's not like either economic or, um, or racial. Um, so, uh, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm, I'm not quite sure it's an either or there. Um, but what I do think is, you know, you gotta like, you gotta, you gotta speak to people on their level. You gotta like, address people,

• 17:32Speaker 01

  um, you know, eye to eye. And, um, and no matter what message you deliver.

• 17:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, I don't know. I mean, we'll, we'll see how these results play out, but it's certainly still a question. And I definitely think there's probably going to be some form of discussion with the Democrats in terms of what the, the soul of the party looks like, because right now it seems unclear.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. It's gonna be, yeah, like, it's gonna be really, really, really intense between the sort of left wing and centrist wings of the party. And look, uh, and I think, you know, Nancy Pelosi is gonna come under some fire too, right? You know, she had a deal on the table, basically for more stimulus, you know, in the face of coronavirus and, and, you know, turned it down, uh, you know, assuming that, that, that, um, you know, she was gonna get a Democratic Senate and, and a Democratic White House. Now that's very much in question. And that puts a lot of people's livelihoods in question. And, and so she's gonna come under a lot of fire for that. But listen, I, I just want to say this

• 18:36Speaker 01

  too. I mean, I think one of the reasons though, I think the, um, the medium and, uh, the message, things do go hand in hand. And, you know, for a lot of people, they're now living in a, in a closed information ecosystem. Um, whether it's, you know, they're only watching Fox, uh, or they're only watching MSNBC, or, you know, they're only getting their news from, um, you know, from, uh, their favorite people on Twitter, or they're only getting their news, you know, from these Trumpy types on Facebook. And, um, and, and I, I think that that is one of the main reasons why it is hard for any message to penetrate

• 19:21Speaker 01

  these days, even the best of them.

• 19:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, definitely. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more about that and the tech platforms themselves when we come after, when we come back from this break. So why don't we do that? Stay right here. We'll be right back with Noah Shackman, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast, here on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate.

• 20:08Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 20:49Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 21:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 21:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back for our second segment here on an emergency edition of the Big Technology Podcast. Joining us is Noah Shackman, editor in chief of the Daily Beast. We've talked a little bit about the results and sort of figuring out what they mean, you know, as they come in and what it's going to mean for the future of the Democratic Party. Obviously, the Republican Party is going to have some reckoning to do on its own, but the Trump coalition seems to have held up decently, so maybe less of a transformation there, although if he loses, it could definitely lead to some soul searching. But why don't we talk a little bit about the platforms? So as we speak, Twitter's putting like every Trump tweet under a label. There's one that I was looking at. They are working hard, it's from Trump, they are working hard to make up 500,000 vote

• 22:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  advantage in Pennsylvania disappear ASAP likewise in Michigan and others. Twitter has put that under a label, saying that it might be misleading in terms of what's going on with the election. Facebook's also done some labeling, this is what they told us they would do. I personally think that, or I tweeted that the platforms have done a pretty good job over the past 24 hours. Somewhat controversial statement, I'm kind of curious what you make of that, Noah. Do you think they're doing a good job here?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  So I think they're doing a good job on a couple of different fronts. Front number one, they've been much more aggressive on foreign interference than they were four years ago. And I think Twitter and Facebook especially deserve a lot of credit for that. Secondly, I think they've done a good job, but a late job in going after some of the more violent domestic extremist groups like QAnon. You know, I thought the steps that they took on QAnon were really needed if a half step behind, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for that.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  I think they, I think the labeling stuff...

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I think it, I'd be curious how effective some of it is, I guess is, is my question. I'm like, I'm in favor of it in theory, but I'd like to know what the practical effect is. And then, you know, you haven't mentioned it, but I think one thing we ought to get into real quick was Twitter's actions around the New York Post and, and their Hunter Biden story.

• 24:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  And, and I thought there, I, I thought Twitter really kind of overreacted. It's not that the Hunter Biden story was, was legit. You know, I think the Daily Beast kind of led the way in, in debunking a lot of, of that New York Post article and others that were, were hyping the stuff up. But I thought they just, I, I, I really think they, they kind of like tried going after a fly with a howitzer on that one. And I think it wound up making them look bad and, and, and, and selling some, a little bit of distrust. And so I thought that they, they kind of used the nuclear option there when a, when

• 24:53Speaker 01

  a, when a, you know, more tactical weapon would have been called for.

• 24:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no doubt. I, I've thought that the social media companies are doing whatever they can to avoid a repeat of 2016. To me, that seems to be just the operating principle of these companies. And this election is like, let's not do 2016 again, in terms of like all the platform manipulation that went on. So they were on alert that the FBI, you know, from the FBI believe that there might have been a hack and leak operation conducted by some foreign entity. It's still kind of up in the air about whether that happened and then just quickly hit the button saying, we're not going to get blamed, you know, for being manipulated by a foreign entity this year. I mean, the same thing with the, with these labels.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  No, I think that's absolutely right. I think there was a lot of talk in law enforcement, national security and, and, and technology circles to be on high alert for a hack and leak operation, that, that it was, you know, that one was coming. You know, I can say that for a fact, that there are those discussions going on. And I can also tell you that, um, You know, look, Rudy Giuliani, in particular, was looked at as a vector for foreign misinformation. You know, his sort of partner in propaganda, this guy Andre Durkhauch,

• 26:15Speaker 01

  was labeled by the Trump administration to be an active Russian agent. That's a verbatim quote. And Steve Bannon was also mixed up in this, and he's looked on as a vector of, at the very least, overseas disinformation. He's got this Chinese billionaire who pushes a lot of disinformation and is kind of bankrolling Bannon's operation. Bankrolled a lot of Bannon's misinformation about the virus. So, yeah, I agree. I think they were on a hair-trigger, high alert, wanted to avoid any 2016 repeat, and so they overreacted.

• 26:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I personally think, you know, we talked about the labels, too. I kind of think they're effective, like, they do take a little bit of the steam out of the Trump tweet that says, you know, "We won," or, you know, "The Democrats are stealing votes." You look at that, and it just kind of, it seems different. I don't know. It seems like you put less credibility into it.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Here's a question for you. I mean, I'd be curious what you think. If Trump loses, how long will he have his Twitter account for?

• 27:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great question. I mean, it's all going to depend on what happens over the next couple of weeks, right? Because we're in Phase 1 of this right now, which is he's starting to discredit the result. What happens in Phase 2? You know, one of the worries I have about social media is it creates this otherism, right? You start to see people as an other, it dehumanizes them, and you can't see them as another person. And so now, what happens if Trump says the election was stolen by the Democrats and starts to call his supporters into the streets? You know, he hinted at political violence yesterday, but do we end up seeing that happen now? And that's really the worry for me. I kind of think that that's going to be the big story now, is, you know, if Trump loses, how does he react to this loss and what happens?

• 28:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, what do you, I mean, so that's sort of my, so I feel like if he calls people out onto the street and asks for, tries to get them to be violent and has already lost the election, then Twitter might take that account away. But it would have to be such an extreme event for that to happen. What's your perspective?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  My perspective is, um, they were rightly reluctant to take away the account of President Donald Trump.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Private citizen Donald Trump? I don't know, that's a really different thing. If he like loses and actually is out of office, you know, and it's March of next year and he's, you know, spreading, you know, either inciting violence, spreading bullshit, what have you. I don't know. I mean, I think, I think there's going to be a lot of pressure. If he's out of office, there's going to be a lot of pressure, um, within the platforms to, to boot him off.

• 29:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Well, the standard is imminent harm. Like if you're causing something that's going to, you know, put someone in imminent danger, then you're not allowed to use it, uh, not allowed to say it on the, on the platforms. That's why when the coronavirus hit, uh, people that were sharing misinformation about the virus got their accounts either suspended or got the post taken down. And you're right, when he does become a private citizen, it sort of becomes a little bit less easy for the platforms to justify it as newsworthiness, but it would, I mean, it really sort of depends on him, right? Like, if, if this is going to get to a place where we're going to see violence inside it, or we're going to, you know, it'll be winks to people to get out in the street, you know, stand back and stand by. Proud Boys, what does he say to the Proud Boys now? Then I think we get into that situation.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think is going to happen there? By the way, I'm kind of curious what your perspective is. You know, do, if Biden ends up taking this thing, are we going to end up seeing, you know, social media being used to stoke? I mean, I'm, obviously we'll see big protests out one way or the other. But are we at risk of political violence here?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think, you know, we've had a, um, we've had a, uh, right wing, far right wing, not, you know, normal conservatives, but we've had a far right wing in this country that's been, um, increasingly radicalized and has been, uh, and you know, we've seen that, that far right actors who commit. You know, who murder people are celebrated in the, you know, in the sort of broader Trumpist community. And look, you know, one thing we didn't talk about about my background is for

• 30:48Speaker 01

  a while I was a national security and conflict reporter. And I'm reminded by, you know, the years I covered insurgencies and counter insurgencies, which is that it doesn't take that many violent minded people to really, you know, spark a wildfire. It just takes the consent of a lot of people around them. And, you know, I really worry that, you know, you can have, you know, a handful of wackos and a big community of people kind of egging them on or tacitly accepting what they do. And it could be really bad. And look, I think

• 31:31Speaker 01

  that's, that is, I'm sure I'll get some hate tweets on this too. But, you know, I think there's, there's some part of the left too, that of the far left, that has decided that that, that political violence is okay too. And, and at the very, and while they haven't, you know, done the kind of harm to, you know, well, I mean, it's just, look, I just think it's a, it's a bad precedent, and it's a bad situation on both sides. So, yeah, I'm concerned about it. Um, you know, we'll see what happens. I, I really, I really hope, you know, things go smoothly. I really hope so.

• 32:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, and that's sort of when I come down and do a final calculus of the way that the social media companies performed over election day slash week, you know, it's one thing to put these labels, which I think are helpful. But, and I'm also sort of of the belief that we should be pretty hands off, you know, as, as hands off as possible with political content, you know, echoing some of the stuff that you think about the New York Post story. But, you know, What what cost do we pay in terms of the fact that this sense of the other person is a totally different, you know, sort of dehumanized because of the fact that they get painted that way? And these echo chambers created on social media, and what kind of cost do we end up

• 33:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  paying for the fact that social media has helped foster that?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's very difficult to evaluate and say, okay, you did a good job, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, when that sort of stuff still hangs in the balance.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  That's a great point. That's a really great point.

• 33:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we have, we're just about out of time. What's your guess on what happens from here? Speculate a little bit.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, look, I, I mean, fuck, I hate speculating, I'd rather report, but like, you know, it looks like.

• 33:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  We won't hold you to it, but like, you have, yeah, you watch this stuff, so.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, it looks like Biden's in a little bit better shape electorally. There's obviously going to be tons of lawsuits around it. Right now, those legal challenges don't look particularly potent, but, you know, all it takes is, is, you know, a couple of Trumpy judges and we could be into something really freaking crazy. I think the other thing to keep an eye out for is, sure seems like the post office didn't deliver a lot of absentee ballots. I think that's going to be, you know, that has the potential to be really.

• 34:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's, that's, yeah, that's disputed. I think that there's conflicting reports on that.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think that's, I think there's more information on that, like, coming out, like, as we're talking. So I think that that's, you know, that's going to be really big. And then, you know, I, my guess is we'll see, you know, as you said, protests, no matter what, and I, and I hope, you know, they, that's all it says, it says as, is just protests. So.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  You know, I'm, I am hoping for a only slightly insane resolution to this, but you know, it's 2020, man. So, so preparing for the truly insane. Yeah. So preparing for the truly insane is probably the best, is the best approach.

• 35:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I know that we're, we're really early in this process, but I'm kind of hopeful from what I've seen so far. It seems like the voting is going as normal. It seems like Fox News isn't going along with anything that's sort of out of bounds from what we've seen in the past, which is super important. I mean, we don't have a decision yet, but the streets have been fairly quiet, which I think is a good sign. So I'm hopeful, but fingers crossed. It's going to be a very interesting couple of weeks ahead.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the understatement of the year, man.

• 35:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, we're prone to them here. All right. No, Shaq Min from the Daily Beast. Thank you so much for joining us here on this emergency edition of the Big Technology Podcast. If you are a long time listener, it would be great if you could rate us on your app of choice. And if this is your first time here, please subscribe. We do a new edition every Wednesday. I want to thank the folks at Red Circle for helping host and sell ads on the podcast and Nate Guatney, our terrific editor for making sure it sounds good in a limited amount of time today. Thank you all for listening. We will see you again next Wednesday.

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