Act Two: He’s Making A List, Checking It Nice, Gonna Find Out Who Voted Twice
After this year’s election, Republicans in North Carolina went out looking for cases of voter fraud - all over the state. It was hard to find, hard to prove—until they stumbled across what could have been the best present ever: a seemingly clear-cut case of Democrats out to rig the election.
Act One: South Florida
Two police officers who voted for Obama in 2008 explain to Producer Miki Meek why they went for Trump this time around.
Prologue
There’s a political parable about Hillary Clinton that’s made the rounds this year. Host Ira Glass interviews contributor Jack Hitt, who says that in this parable you can see almost every version of Hillary that exists in the popular imagination: the A student, the opportunist, the mastermind, the rat fink, the pragmatist, the truth-twister.
![](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/collection/public/extras/seriously2.png?itok=hb_tKeOF)
Seriously
15 million people watched this on Facebook. Right before the 2016 election, we asked Sara Bareilles to imagine what President Obama might be thinking about Donald Trump, but couldn’t say publicly. Leslie Odom Jr. sang.
![](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/collection/public/extras/partyguy_0.jpg?itok=X8InhgLC)
Party Guy
The third song we commissioned on the eve of the 2016 election. Broadway composer Michael Friedman imagined what RNC Chairman Reince Priebus might be thinking, but not expressing publicly. John Ellison Conlee sang.
![Paul Ryan standing behind two mics, smiling](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/collection/public/extras/paul-ryan-video-th.jpg?itok=-jFUQvJa)
A Better Way
Just before the 2016 election, we asked the Frozen songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez to imagine what Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was feeling, but couldn’t say publicly, about Donald Trump. Neil Patrick Harris sang the part of Paul Ryan.
Prologue
There’s a seismic, historic change going on in the Republican party this year. Producer Zoe Chace tells Ira about a place you can eavesdrop on a group of Republican friends as they fret and argue about that change week after week: a podcast called Ricochet.
Prologue
Ira talks about what’s alarming him about this year’s election: facts seem less meaningful than they ever have, and the gap between the mainstream media and right-wing media’s versions of the world have never seemed further apart. CNN’s Jake Tapper explains what it was like to be on the air live when Donald Trump tried to take a huge, obvious lie and pass it off as the truth.