It's as American as apple pie.

Or getting in a fist fight over a chicken sandwich.

And it's especially American now that the president

is a ninja level liar.

Donald trump lies so often that even his biggest lies

can get lost in the fray.

This is These American Lies.

(upbeat music)

- [Michael] Have you ever told a lie?

Let's admit it, we all have.

Just this morning I was talking to the doorman at my co-op

and he said, Michael, do you know my name?

And I said, of course I know your name, don't be silly.

In reality I have no idea what my doorman's name is.

I think it's something Italian,

like Credenza, or Gabagool.

So I lied to him.

Today's show is about lies.

People lie about all sorts of things.

They lie about their age, they lie about their weight,

they lie about there whereabouts

the night their neighbor's charcoal grill went missing.

But some people lie more often than others.

One of those people is the president.

And we're gonna look at one of his biggest whoppers,

that three to five million people

voted illegally in the 2016 election.

From WTDS in New York, I'm Micheal Costa.

And Credenza, if you're listening,

I apologize for not knowing your name buddy.

You're listening to The Daily Show presents

These American Lies.

(upbeat music)

Part one.

What's three to five million illegal voters among friends.

I'm here with producer Desi Lydic.

Desi, it's been a while.

- [Desi] I saw you on Saturday.

You crashed your car into my mailbox.

- [Michael] So, you're here to talk

about the voter fraud lie.

- [Desi] Right.

The lie this week is that three to five million people

voted illegally in the 2016 election.

- [Michael] Wait, what?

Do people know about this?

- [Desi] No, it's a lie.

Costa, we're on these American Lies.

- [Michael] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure, sure, okay.

- [Desi] So the voter fraud lie is still important today.

Republicans use fears of voter fraud to restrict voting.

We've seen it in swing states like Georgia,

Virginia, and Wisconsin, where 200,000 people

were recently purged from the voter rolls

by a circuit judge.

And to understand this lie you really

have to know about this guy, Donald Trump.

- [Michael] Hm.

- [Desi] Donald has lived a pretty incredible life.

He's been a real estate developer,

a mail order steak salesman, a two time Emmy loser.

And in 2016 he became the president of the United States.

- [Newscaster] It is now official, Donald Trump has won

the Electoral College.

- [Desi] Now, most people would be happy

to win a presidency, but for Trump winning wasn't enough.

- [Newscaster] Donald trump won with 306 electoral votes.

Even though Hillary Clinton got nearly 2 1/2 million

more popular votes.

- [Desi] See, Trump won the electoral college

but he lost the popular vote.

- [Michael] So it's like he won the lottery,

but only because he stole the winning ticket

from a 7-Eleven cashier?

- [Desi] No, not at all.

- [Michael] Tell me more about that.

- [Desi] Trump won the election even though he got almost

three million fewer votes that Hillary Clinton.

And you've got to understand Donald Trump

has a fragile ego.

At his Comedy Central Roast in 2011,

he told the comedians who were roasting him

there was one thing they couldn't make fun of.

Do you know what that was?

- [Michael] His enormous ass.

- [Desi] His wealth.

He's got think skin, especially when it comes

to having less than others.

So rather than admit he won fewer votes

than Hillary Clinton, Trump did what came natural to him.

He lied.

- [Newscaster] He told members of congress

that maybe three to five million people voted illegally

in the most recent presidential election.

- [Newscaster] It's a claim the president repeated

during his first official White House meeting

with congressional leaders.

Telling them he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton

only because millions of illegal ballots were cast.

The same claim he made on Twitter after his win,

saying, I won the popular vote if you deduct

the millions of people who voted illegally.

- [Desi] I won the popular vote if you deduct

the millions of people who voted illegally.

That's a stunning claim.

- [Michael] Right.

It's kind of like saying, I won at Scrabble,

but only because I kicked my opponent in the crotch.

- [Desi] I can do the rest of the story myself

if you just want to take off.

- [Michael] Oh great, I'm gonna go microwave a taco.

- [Desi] Every lie starts somewhere.

And this American lie was born

in one of the birth places of American democracy.

- [Michael] Long Island?

- [Desi] Massachusets.

(upbeat music)

- [Man] I got a number.

How do you like them apples?

(laughter)

- [Desi] The state flower is a Dunkin Donuts coffee bean,

and the state song is an Irish guy

puking outside a baseball stadium.

And now this state has another claim to fame,

a professor whose work inadvertently

ignited the voter fraud controversy.

- [Newscaster] Brian Schaffner, one of the academics

behind the study told CNN Trump is misinterpreting

the study, calling Trump's claims absurd

and not even plausible.

(phone rings)

- [Brian Schaffner] I'm Brian Schaffner.

- [Desi] This is Brian Schaffner.

- [Brian] I'm a professor of political science

at Tufts university.

- [Desi] He's a professor of political science

at Tufts University.

- [Brian] Why are you repeating everything I say?

- [Desi] Schaffner's a smart guy,

even if he doesn't know how podcasts work.

- [Brian] I'm a principle investigator

for the co-operative congressional external study,

which is the data set that has caused all these problems.

- [Desi] Every election year Schaffner's group

surveys internet users about their political views.

The survey doesn't specifically ask

about voter fraud, and yet.

- [Brian] There's a question included in the survey

that's not really meant to look for non-citizens,

but there's a response option the responders can select

that would identify them as non-citizens.

And that essentially lead to this big controversy.

There were over 30,000 respondents to the survey in 2008,

and among that group there were a little over 300

who identified themselves as non-citizens

when they responded to the survey.

38 of those supposed non-citizens

claimed to have voted.

- [Desi] So we've got this internet survey taken in 2008.

Now flash forward from 2008.

- [Newscaster] Senator Barack Obama of Illinois

will be the next president of the United States.

- [Desi] To 2014.

- [Newscaster] 30 year old Jeremy Meeks,

also known as the hot felon.

- [Desi] Because that's when this data set

evolves from a curiosity to a flaming political hot potato.

(upbeat music)

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Hi everyone, we're back with part two, a rough lie.

I just wanted to say, for anyone listening at home,

the next part of our podcast contains severe profanity

and extreme graphic description of sex acts.

- [Desi] What?

No, it doesn't.

- [Michael] If you're listening with your children

you'd better turn it off unless

you want those kids to grow up fast.

- [Desi] Okay, just ignore him.

Okay, so it's 2014.

Jesse Richman, a researcher at Old Dominion University,

or ODU, comes across this survey.

Richman takes the responses to that final question

about being a citizen and extrapolates

that anywhere between 38,000 and 2.8 million

non-citizens voted in 2008.

There's only one problem with Jesse Richman's conclusion.

- [Michael] Jesse Richman has been dead for 50 years.

- [Desi] Uh, no.

Here's Brian Schaffner revisiting his 2008 survey

that became the basis for Richman's work.

- [Brian] We did a study where we actually recontacted

the people who had claimed to be non-citizens,

and a lot of them, when we asked the same question again,

changed their answer.

And among the people who actually claimed

to be non-citizens both times we asked,

none of them were voters, none of them.

- [Desi] Brian Schaffner had renounced his own findings,

but by this time it's too late.

Right wing media members are using the ODU survey

to claim that voter fraud is an enormous problem,

even though it's based on one study's interpretation

of a flawed data set.

- [Michael] So I guess, Desi, just one question remains.

- [Desi] Right.

How did this lie get to Trump?

- [Michael] Oh, I was gonna ask,

is 15 minutes in the microwave too long for a single taco?

But that's good too.

Your question's good.

- [Desi] So it turns out Trump may have been turned

on to voter fraud in his natural habitat.

- [Man] Four.

- [Desi] A golf course.

Five days after Trump's inauguration

he hosted dinner for Republicans and Democrats.

He tells his guests that he would have won

the popular vote if it hadn't been

for the three to five million illegal votes.

So according to the New York Times

a democrat at the dinner asked Trump,

where are you getting this information?

And trump cites a guy named Bernard Langer.

- [Michael] Oh, I loved him in Das Boot.

- [Desi] Bernard Langer is a German professional golfer.

He won the Masters twice.

- [Commentator] It is not often you smile after a miss.