722: The Unreality of Now

Ira Glass

Hey, there, America. Can we just get this election over with already? We've had enough excitement, right? More than enough plot twists. The president getting coronavirus, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying, that whole first debate, the alleged contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive-- which are either totally unconvincing or deeply, urgently important, depending on your point of view.

We finally got to see the president's tax records after all these years. That barely seemed to make a dent in anything. Militia plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan. And then after that, the president's followers chanted, "Lock her up." The president joking, not joking, told his supporters in North Carolina to go out and try to vote twice. And then after that, the attorney general declared on CNN to Wolf Blitzer that voting twice might actually be legal.

Ira Glass

Attorney General William Barr looks amazingly relaxed as he says all this. Calm, like nothing's out of the ordinary. Nothing to see here, officer. Watching him, it's hard not to think, is this really happening?

I got that same feeling looking at photos of the president's rallies where, even now, he's packing people in. Tons of people with no masks, not following CDC guidelines. He's doing this even after he, his wife, his son, his press secretary, his campaign manager, the chair of the Republican National Committee, White House housekeeping and military staff, members of the vice president's staff, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, and Hope Hicks all got coronavirus. Even though cases are at an all-time high and on the rise. Looking at the not socially distanced crowds, it's like, is this really happening?

And now, coming up, this coming Tuesday, we're either going to have an election with a clear winner or, apparently, the vote will be contested. A contested election seems so possible because the president keeps saying over and over that he's way ahead in the polls, and those polls that we are always seeing on the news saying that he's way behind, those are fake. And so if he loses, he says, there's only one possible explanation.

Ira Glass

That was Monday in Allentown. Here he is in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Ira Glass

There is no evidence for any massive fraud like he's talking about. When he talks about mail-in ballots being a problem-- which he does nearly everywhere-- there's no evidence for that either. Lots more Democrats than Republicans are voting with mail-in ballots this year. Here's the president on Sunday in New Hampshire, calling those ballots into question.

Ira Glass

So, this Tuesday, he may fight those ballots. And we might find ourselves in a big, no-holds-barred season finale, contested election, constitutional national meltdown, with both sides arguing over whether to count mail-in ballots and ballots that arrive after November 3. And if that happens, people on both sides will probably take to the streets to protest, and who knows where that might lead?

And then, of course, there are the scenarios where the whole thing gets thrown to Congress or the Supreme Court to decide. So many different ways this could play out, where, whichever side loses, red or blue, they'll probably never be able to see the final decision as fair and legitimate. So one half of the country will not accept who the other half puts into office.

Or maybe that won't happen. Maybe somebody is going to win decisively. That's where we are. Our world is either about to slip into utter chaos or the election will go just fine, and things will be fine. That's the unreality of now. There are so many things right now that make it feel like the ground underneath us is thin as a cracker with molten lava underneath. So many things, it's hard to understand. This is real. This is really happening.

And today on our program, we have people trying to get their minds around that. I have to say that is so much of the mood as we head into the Simpsons Halloween Special of an election day. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Would You Like to Come Up to First Class? So the journalist E. Jean Carroll has been in the news this week when a federal judge ruled that the president can be sued by Caroll. Caroll says that back in the 1990s, Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room in the department store at Bergdorf Goodman. He says she's lying. She's suing him for defamation. She's one of dozens of women who've accused the president of sexual assault and harassment. The president denies all of their allegations.

These stories have been so widely covered and everybody is so used to them. But to Caroll, it felt like, at this point, they were just being ignored, which seemed kind of incredible to her. Our program today is about people feeling like, is this is really happening? And she definitely felt that about this. It killed her that these stories just somehow didn't seem to matter.

And this summer, she decided to try to do something about it. She had a bunch of conversations with other women who have accused the president and published them in a series of stories in The Atlantic. And her idea was, most people only have a vague sense of these stories and don't have much of a sense of what these women say actually happened. And by diving into the details of these stories, she'd restore them to human size, in full color.

She's adapted one of the articles that she wrote for us. It's with one of the president's accusers named Jessica Leeds. A warning about content before we start-- this is a frank conversation about sexual assault. Here's E. Jean Caroll.

E. Jean Carroll

Let me set the scene-- midsummer twilight, and Jessica Leeds and I are letting down what's left of our hair. Jessica's in her elegant crib in the Blue Ridge mountains. I'm in my little shack just off the Appalachian Trail. And we're Zooming like two old screech owls, discovering how much we had in common, which includes our love for Mr. Paul Newman, our age, and our height.

E. Jean Carroll

About 40 years ago, when Jessica was working as a salesperson for a company that sold newsprint to publications like the Washington Post, she sat down next to Donald Trump on an airplane.

Let me just say that if you have never Zoomed with a silver-haired, soigné 78-year-old woman who describes what it's like being strapped in a seat on a Braniff Airlines flight with a future president of the United States trying to fasten his lips on her like a 6' 2" suckfish-- well, in my opinion, you have not lived, let alone Zoomed, at all.

But before we board that flight, a refresher. Jessica was one of the first women to publicly accuse Trump of sexual assault in 2016. It was on the front page of The New York Times.

E. Jean Carroll

How did Jessica know? Because Jessica is an old bat. Old bats are the best, even better than screech owls. I'm an old bat myself. We old bats don't kid ourselves. And, in fact, one day after The New York Times published the story about what happened to Jessica on that plane in 1980, Trump yammered about her accusations at a rally.

E. Jean Carroll

I told Jessica the same thing happened to me.

For the honor of Jessica Leeds and old bats everywhere, Jessica is a beauty now, and she was a beauty 40 years ago when she got on that flight to New York. And as she remembers it, it was a Braniff flight. Braniff was the chic airline. Her seat would have been full grain leather. Her flight attendant would have been clad in Halston. And her plane, it would have been painted in Perseus Green, Mercury Blue, or Sparkling Burgundy.

E. Jean Carroll

I know exactly what she means. It was the same for me with the dress I had on at Bergdorf's.

E. Jean Carroll

What we're talking about is how things used to be-- buying a ticket, putting on our best clothes, hopping on a cocktail party, heading for New York or Chicago or Miami or any jazzy city, USA. And this party lacked zip unless somebody very rich or very pretty was present.

Men in first class would size up the female passengers before boarding and hold a brief conference with the check-in crew. Or, alternatively, a helpful flight attendant would simply stand in the aisle, waving people away and rearranging the seating chart so that an extremely tall chap, for instance, with black hair like greased felt could have the spot by me, which is what I told Jessica had happened on a jumbo jet to LA.

After the plane took off, following the meal, the chap shows me a photo of his private plane. Then he shows me a photo of his Rolls Royce. Then he shows me his erection.

The flight attendant escorts Jessica to the front of the plane. She sits down in the aisle seat beside Donald Trump.

E. Jean Carroll

It wouldn't have. This was 1979, 1980. Jessica wasn't a native New Yorker. And she was not yet aware of all the levels, the ranks, the spheres of New York society that Trump, a young rat out of Queens, was chewing his way through.

E. Jean Carroll

She glances away from the screen with a revolted wince.

E. Jean Carroll

Jessica is ladylike. Therefore, allow me-- for I have experience with Trump-- to say in plain English what I believe Trump is about to do. I believe he will go straight for the crotch, just like he brags on the Access Hollywood tape. This man who today claims that he has never kissed or groped a woman without consent.

E. Jean Carroll

Jessica grabs her purse and storms to the back of the plane.

E. Jean Carroll

Although we talk about Trump groping women, most people don't understand how brazen Trump really is because no one knows what groping means. It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to the Trump accusers. Who knows what the heck Trump is actually doing or on what part of the female body he is doing it?

One of Trump's accusers described for me Trump putting his hand up her skirt and onto her vulva. And she used the plain English. "It was like a squish," she said. "A squeeze." And she made a motion with her hand like squeezing a rubber duck. That is groping.

So why does Trump do it? Jessica and I ponder.

E. Jean Carroll

So Trump grabs one woman. Then he grabs the next woman and the next woman. And pretty soon, we start thinking Trump grabbing women is normal. Then Trump grabbing women becomes so normal, it's boring.

Well, some people may have forgotten us, but you know who has not forgotten us? The men who are voting for Trump because he grabbed us, because he is macho, because Trump proved he can paw any woman he wants. And you know who else has not forgotten? Women like Jessica and I. We'll never forget.

E. Jean Carroll

The gala at Saks Fifth Avenue. This is a year or two after the flight, and it's a benefit for the Humane Society of New York and a few other charities. Jessica is the assistant to the president of the Humane Society and is handing out table assignments.

E. Jean Carroll

The future president of the United States remembers Jessica, too.

Ira Glass

E. Jean Carroll, she's a journalist and the author of the memoir, What Do We Need Men For, her series of conversations with women who accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault. It's available at theatlantic.com.

[MUSIC - "DAREDEVIL" BY FIONA APPLE]

Coming up, seeing people fight over corn dogs in a grocery store leads one woman to do something that she has avoided for years. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, The Unreality of Now. As we approach this historic and momentous election day, we have stories of people trying to get their heads around and adapt to this strange time we are living through. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The Gun Reality of Now.

One sign of how shaken up people are in our country right now-- gun sales. They're going nuts. A record year, according to the FBI. The FBI is doing twice the number of background checks they did last year. A survey of gun store owners by an industry trade group estimates that something like 40% of their sales are to first-time gun buyers-- 40% to people who've never owned a gun. Lilly Sullivan talked to some of them, and it was like a tour of different fears that people have about this country right now.

Lilly Sullivan

The thing I wanted to know was, why now? What's the thing that made you want a gun? Brian told me he was around guns some when he was growing up. He'd sometimes do target practice or go shooting. When he was 16, he was hunting with his family, and he killed a deer. It made him really sad. So he never bought a gun.

Now he's 52 and lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It's in the mountains, kind of a ski town in the winter. He just bought a gun the day I talked to him, a Glock 9 millimeter. The thing that made him want one? The first presidential debate, the one where there was so much yelling.

Lilly Sullivan

For DeJonae, the moment she decided to buy a gun happened in March. She's a nurse in San Bernardino County, outside of LA. DeJonae has an aunt who wanted her to get a gun for years. Her aunt owns a gun store. It's actually the only Black-owned gun store on the West Coast, where she trains women to shoot. DeJonae is pretty, her aunt told me. She worries about her niece dating and living alone. DeJonae had even had a stalker once.

But the thing that flipped DeJonae wasn't the stalker. She was in the grocery store after work one day. The pandemic had just arrived.

Lilly Sullivan

A lot of first-time gun owners I talked to explain their reason this way. They had started to feel something weird in the air, a kind of amorphous anxiety.

Shane is 49. He has a house in the hills in Northern California. So in addition to all the coronavirus strangeness, they've also had wildfires and rolling blackouts. One day, a few months ago, the power went out. And it didn't come back for 14 days, which meant no internet. And then the cell towers stopped working.

Lilly Sullivan

I asked Shane and everyone else, when you think about needing a gun, what do you picture? Is there a scene that plays in your mind? Nearly everyone said it's night. They're sleeping, and someone dangerous shows up.

Shane's version is people wandering to his house in a disaster, finding it in the woods through the smoke, and trying to take his family's supplies, their food, their generator, the things they need to survive. There's something pre-apocalyptic about it. He's on his own, protecting his home from marauders.

This is stuff he doesn't think will happen. But at the same time, for months, they've been surrounded by fires, smoke so thick that it can look like dusk in the middle of the day. So somehow, it does seem possible to him. All kinds of things do.

Lilly Sullivan

Nancy bought her pistol around Mother's Day. She send me a photo of herself on Mother's Day, dressed in a Lilly Pulitzer blouse and pale blue cardigan, holding a Smith and Wesson 380 EZ. She's 53. She owns a small business making luggage tags. She's also worked as a nurse a lot in hospice.

She lives with her family just outside of Appleton, Wisconsin. She described her town to me as your typical, don't-have-to-lock-your-door suburb. Before this year, she'd never even held a gun. It was actually kind of hard for her to explain why it felt so urgent.

Lilly Sullivan

Since the pandemic, she says, her world has suddenly shrunken to just her family and her home.

Lilly Sullivan

Nancy lives two hours north of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where there were big protests after the shooting of Jacob Blake by police officers. Some demonstrators set cars and buildings on fire. The National Guard was called in. A teenager, a Trump supporter who came to the protests in support of Blue Lives Matter, shot three people, killing two of them. There have been protests in Appleton near where Nancy lives.

Lilly Sullivan

The police in Appleton don't use the word "riot" to describe what happened there. One man was assaulted, but there were no fires, no vandalism. And when Nancy and I talked about it more, she agreed that riot wasn't the right word.

Nancy already owned her gun by the time this happened, but a lot of gun store owners have said that customers point to the protests as one of the reasons they felt so worried.

Lilly Sullivan

One more person. Elsa lives in a small town in North Carolina. Growing up, no one around her had guns. She grew up in Kenya, moved to the US over 30 years ago. That nightmare scenario that nearly everyone talked about of being woken up in the night by intruders, asleep and helpless, it actually happened to Elsa a couple of years ago.

The intruders fled before hurting anyone, but it was terrifying. She thought about getting a gun. But she didn't until this year, when COVID hit and when police violence set off protests around the country.

Lilly Sullivan

The last question I had for everyone-- now that people have their guns, does it help? Do you feel better?

Lilly Sullivan

Again, here's DeJonae, who bought her gun when she saw people fighting over corn dogs.

Lilly Sullivan

Again, here's Nancy from Wisconsin.

Lilly Sullivan

Here's Shane, who worried about marauders and neo-Nazis.

Lilly Sullivan

And finally, Brian, who had so much trouble finding a gun. He finally picked one up the day I talked to him.

Lilly Sullivan

Brian told me he grew up with guns. But they were for hunting and target practice, for fun. He says nobody talked about self-defense. Nobody talked about shooting other people. But that's all anybody talks about today. That's one thing that unites us. We're united in fear of each other.

Ira Glass

Lilly Sullivan is a producer on our program. Noor Gil helped her with additional reporting.

[MUSIC - "I'M SCARED" BY LON MILO DUQUETTE]

Ira Glass

Act Three, Second Time's the Charm. So maybe you've heard we're trying to hold an election this year with a possible record-breaking turnout that is also during a pandemic, which has led us into a vast territory of, who knows if this is going to work? Reporter Johnny Kauffman has been embedded with the election staff in Fulton County, Georgia. That's the county with the most people in the state and with the city of Atlanta.

For months, Johnny's been given unusual access to the election staff, the people who are responsible for handling the mail-in ballots and the voting machines and all that stuff. He was interested in seeing how things would go this November, partly because they went so badly when they tried to hold the primary during the pandemic back in June. Here's Johnny Kauffman.

Johnny Kauffman

The primary election here was a mess. Some voters asked for mail-in ballots, but never got them. Then people who wanted to vote in person waited and waited in line.

Johnny Kauffman

One guy famously started his cell phone timer running. And by the time he voted, it was 1:00 in the morning. He'd been there almost eight hours and watched all of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8 on his phone. The front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution said, "Complete Meltdown."

The state government was pretty clear whose fault they thought all this was. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, said, quote, "This all lays on Fulton County." He launched an investigation into the county and asked for a new law that would let him take over county election departments if needed. The guy whose job he'd take over if he did that, the man currently running the Fulton County Elections Department, is Rick Barron.

Johnny Kauffman

It's worth pointing out Raffensperger and the state government are Republican. Fulton County and Atlanta are controlled by Democrats. Rick started working in elections after he quit his job as a middle manager at a bank. He told me he wanted to contribute to, quote, "the betterment of man or something," end quote.

Rick has this quality that I think lots of people might like to see in the guy who runs their elections. He's measured and kind of boring in public. Like at press conferences, he'll just rattle off stat after stat. But during the primary, beneath that public face, Rick was full of dread.

Johnny Kauffman

One of the things that went wrong in June is that Fulton had these new touchscreen voting computers that were imposed on them by the state. And there wasn't enough time to train poll workers properly.

But Rick and the Fulton staff say most of the troubles in their primary were really about the pandemic. So many applications for mail-in ballots came in, the email system crashed. And then some of the staff got COVID. It slowed their operations, and they had to close the elections office to disinfect it.

Then, close to primary election day, dozens of poll workers quit, scared about the virus. Polling places like churches decided they didn't want to be polling places anymore. Tim Cummings is a manager at the warehouse where the county stores its election equipment. He told me at the last minute the Fulton staff thought about just pitching a tent in the middle of an Atlanta park.

Johnny Kauffman

In the middle of all this, a beloved longtime employee named Beverly Walker died. Everyone had to cope with that. She was 62 and worked in the department for 14 years. Even after she retired, she would come back to help as a temp. Here's Tim Cummings again.

Johnny Kauffman

This is Caryn Ficklin. She runs the mail-in ballot operation for Fulton County.

Johnny Kauffman

In the lead-up to the general election, the county made a bunch of changes in hopes of avoiding another meltdown like the primary. For starters, 91 more polling places on Election Day, with more training on the touchscreen voting computers for all the poll workers. Nonprofits gave them millions of dollars to help pay for all that.

But the thing they're really hoping will make this different than last time is that they're trying to get people to vote now in person or in the mail. Rick will tell any reporter who gets within two feet of him that he wants as many people as possible to vote before Election Day. 80% is his goal.

So a couple of weeks ago, early voting began in Georgia. Rick and his team had been working nonstop through the weekends, right up till the midnight before the polls opened, to make sure the machines would work without a hitch, and the lines would move quickly. When I saw Rick, he was often harried, messy hair, hopping between meetings.

On Monday morning, October 12, the first day of early voting, I went to the largest polling place in the county. It's actually the giant arena where the Atlanta Hawks play. The team offered it up after what happened during the primary. I wanted to see how things would go.

When I get there around 8:00, hundreds of people were already lined up, and TV crews were camped out. I tracked down Rick near some closed concession stands.

Johnny Kauffman

Rick takes a call, talking through a black mask with "Vote" written on it in bold white print. He's more put together than usual-- clean shaven, wearing a dark blue suit. It's a big day. Then, an election worker comes up to him. People are trying to vote, but an error keeps popping up-- "Session ID invalid."

Johnny Kauffman

They have over 300 voting computers at the arena. Apparently, none of them are working. Rick hurries down some stairs, past empty seats, to the floor of the arena where the voting computers are set up, a jumbotron overhead. Lines fill the hallways of the arena.

Johnny Kauffman

A Hawks employee comes up to Rick and is like, what are we supposed to tell the people in line?

Johnny Kauffman

Rick is on the phone basically this whole time. I've seen him in situations like this before. Everyone around him is wound up, and he sort of slows down.

Johnny Kauffman

He runs up the stairs, breathing hard because of his mask, looking for a county IT employee. Then the CEO of the Hawks, Steve Koonin, comes up to him. This is not the public relations win Koonin was hoping for when he offered up his team's arena.

Johnny Kauffman

Rick and the Fulton staff finally figure out a fix. They have to update a file and reset the iPads used to check people in. The lines start moving. People can vote.

[CHEERING]

It was a small win for Rick and the Fulton staff. Later, the Hawks CEO, Koonin, came up to Rick again. An hour made a big difference. Everyone's pumped up, except for Rick. Listen to this exchange. Koonin's beaming, and Rick is like, this was awful.

Johnny Kauffman

Pitts tells the reporters and TV cameras how great things are going. Then Rick gets the job of explaining what went wrong.

Johnny Kauffman

Afterward, Rick walks to the floor of the arena and pauses, just for a moment. It's serene, watching the people quietly vote. Then he heads to his car. It's around noon, but he seems tired.

Johnny Kauffman

There were snags in those first days. Lines did get long sometimes. But Rick felt like things were under control. But Tuesday night, I got an email from Rick's assistant with some scary news. One of the election staff tested positive for the virus, just like during the primary. I called Rick the next day. By then, even more people had tested positive.

Johnny Kauffman

The warehouse is where the county keeps all the printers and voting computers. They've always been worried about the virus spreading there because it's so full of equipment, and it's hard to stay six feet apart. People do wear masks. And one manager even had a barrier in her office so that people couldn't get close. But she still got sick.

Johnny Kauffman

By Monday, two days later, the total was 23 cases. At least one person was in the hospital. All the workers at the warehouse were sent home, except for a few who hadn't tested positive.

Johnny Kauffman

I called Tim Cummings one night. He's the manager at the warehouse who you heard earlier.

Johnny Kauffman

He's talking about getting the voting computers all ready for testing and then delivered to polling places by Election Day.

Johnny Kauffman

All over the country, people are freaking out about the election, worried about hacking, violence and intimidation, the supposed voter fraud President Trump keeps talking about. But none of that has been a big problem for Rick and the Fulton staff. Their problem is something bigger.

Johnny Kauffman

The county hired some outside help. Rick says the plan right now is just for everyone to work really long days.

Ira Glass

Johnny Kauffman is a reporter with Atlanta's public radio station, WABE. His reporting at the Fulton County Elections Department is possible thanks to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and the Abrams Foundation. As I'm recording this, the total number of election workers in Fulton County that have tested positive for COVID is 25. Two people are in the ICU. Some others have returned to work.

[MUSIC - "UNREAL REALITY" BY THE KINKS]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Robyn Semien and Susan Burton. The people who put our program together today include Bim Adewunmi, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Hilary Elkins, Noor Gill, Damien Grave, Michelle Harris, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry.

Special thanks to Chris Haxel, Emma Hurt, Mate Halmos, Mikaela Robertson, Anna Luhrmann, John Carey, Geneva Solomon and Redstone Firearms, Laurie Abraham, and Katherine Wells.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He was invited to a party this week. He dressed for Halloween as Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. When he got there, he realized it was a fundraising gala, black tie.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[MUSIC - "UNREAL REALITY" BY THE KINKS]