BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm America's next top model, Bill Kurtis.
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KURTIS: And here is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, everybody.
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SAGAL: We got a great show for you today. Later on, we're going to be talking to Chris Thile. He's that great musician who'll be taking over as host of "Prairie Home Companion" next month. But first - this is true - an article in The Atlantic this week said that you shouldn't generalize about Donald Trump supporters, quote, "except to say that most of them would rather be waterboarded than sit through an episode of WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME."
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SAGAL: Unquote.
ADAM BURKE: We can do both.
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SAGAL: The election is over. If everybody who cannot sit through an episode of this show votes for Donald Trump, the White House will be covered in gold leaf by Christmas.
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SAGAL: If you can't sit through a whole show, better call now to play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant.
Hi. Welcome to WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
VIRGINIA KORKOVIAC: Hi there. This is Virginia Korkoviac calling from Portland, Ore.
SAGAL: Hey. We love Portland.
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SAGAL: What hip thing do you do in Portland?
KORKOVIAC: I am a 911 dispatcher for our city and our beautiful Multnomah County.
SAGAL: Oh, yeah, OK. That's not very hip, but it's important.
PETER GROSZ: You don't do it ironically, do you?
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SAGAL: That'd be like, yeah? What's the emergency? Do you ever have, like, Portland-specific kinds of emergencies?
KORKOVIAC: We get a lot of calls, yeah, I guess about goats walking down the street.
SAGAL: There you go.
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GROSZ: My oversized bicycle ran into a ditch.
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BURKE: It's like whine-1-1.
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KORKOVIAC: Yes, the whambulance (ph), yes.
SAGAL: (Laughter) Well, Virginia, it's nice to have you with us. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a veteran of "The Colbert Report" and the creator of the comedy blog Quality Time With Pete And Deb, it is Peter Grosz.
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GROSZ: Hello.
SAGAL: Next, it's a feature writer for The Washington Post style section, Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hello.
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SAGAL: And finally, a comedian who will be at Zanies in downtown Chicago on September 20 through the 24, it's Adam Burke.
BURKE: Hello. Hi.
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SAGAL: So, Virginia, welcome to the show. You, of course, are going to start us off with Who Is Bill This Time? That's how we start the show. Bill Kurtis is going to read for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job - correctly identify or explain two of them. Do that and you win our prize - the voice of the immortal Carl Kasell on your voicemail. Are you ready to do this?
KORKOVIAC: So ready I can't believe it.
SAGAL: All right, here is your first quote.
KURTIS: Be right back, vomiting in terror.
SAGAL: That was liberal pundit Jonathan Chait reacting to the news that who seems to be pulling ahead in the polls?
KORKOVIAC: I can only guess, Trump?
SAGAL: Yes, Donald Trump.
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SAGAL: Yes. So Hillary had a very bad week. It started when she called out half of Donald Trump supporters as a, quote, "basket of deplorables," unquote. First, what kind of phrase is that? Nobody uses baskets anymore. They're old. If she wanted to do better with millennials, which she will need to do, she should have said a messenger bag of deplorables.
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BURKE: I mean, if you don't want to be quoted endlessly, don't come up with a phrase as amazing as basket of deplorables. First of all, it is my favorite appetizer at Chili's.
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GROSZ: I think it's every - doesn't it say that on the front of Chili's?
BURKE: (Laughter) Yeah, yeah.
GROSZ: On the front of the menu? Everything in here is part of the...
BURKE: Yeah, it's a lot of red meat...
SAGAL: I like to go to the Olive Garden the where it's the bottomless basket.
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ROBERTS: Since when - OK, just point of order.
SAGAL: Yes.
ROBERTS: When did deplorables become a noun?
SAGAL: It is now.
GROSZ: Oh, that's an even bigger sin.
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GROSZ: Oh, that'll really get Trump supporters pissed off.
SAGAL: Oh, yeah.
GROSZ: Edit the grammar. Oh, my gosh.
SAGAL: We can't stand any more of those neologisms.
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BURKE: Yeah, they're coming into...
GROSZ: Who do you think you are? I'll respond to that when I see it in the Oxford English Dictionary, thank you very much.
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SAGAL: We need to stop and talk about what Mr. Trump did this week. He - the whole issue of health became a big thing. He was accusing Hillary of being sick and not revealing enough about her health and lying about it. So he decided to show his brand of transparency by going on the "Dr. Oz Show..."
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SAGAL: ...And talking about his health. And on that show, he said, and I could not make this up, that he gets his exercise by gesticulating at his rallies.
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GROSZ: Trump is the kind of guy who probably has, like, somebody - he has, like, a dog with his Fitbit on. And, like, the dog, like, runs around or something...
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GROSZ: And he's like, look what I did, 10,000 steps. I'm the most fit person ever.
BURKE: And that poor dog...
GROSZ: And I have to pee on this hydrant now.
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BURKE: And that dog had terrible hair also.
SAGAL: All right, very good. Here is your next quote. Now, your next quote is a description of Hillary Clinton from a former colleague of hers.
KURTIS: A 70-year-old person with unbridled ambition. Greedy, not transformational, with a husband still blanking bimbo's at home.
SAGAL: Whose opinions about a lot of people became public this week with the release of his hacked, private emails?
KORKOVIAC: Colin Powell.
SAGAL: Yes, Colin Powell.
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SAGAL: Powell's emails were released this week by a hacker group supposedly linked to the Russian government. Everything he ever wrote to anyone is already, or will be leaked. And that, people, is why you put a private email server in your basement.
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SAGAL: Now, that was one of some - many - harsh things that Powell said about Mrs. Clinton. Now, it turns out that he may have just been angry at her because in another email, Powell complains he lost a high-paying speaking gig because the very same college had just gotten in trouble for paying a lot of money to have Hillary speak there. So she talk-blocked (ph) him.
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SAGAL: He did not have a lot of good things to say about Donald Trump. He called Trump a national disgrace and an international pariah. He also called Dick Cheney's whole family, quote, "idiots."
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SAGAL: The next Bush administration pool party reunion is going to be awkward.
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GROSZ: I think Powell's going to bring real anthrax to that one.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Here's the thing, I mean, I actually think that Powell - he comes off OK because he's got these - and we think of him as, like, this straitlaced military guy, this diplomat. Turns out, he's got a lot of really sharp opinions. General Colin Powell is catty.
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GROSZ: Yeah.
SAGAL: He should host the red carpet at the State of the Union.
BURKE: I call him General Colin Meowell (ph).
SAGAL: Yeah.
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BURKE: Sorry.
SAGAL: He'll be there outside the Capitol, you know, for E! Network. And he'd be like, I'm sorry Mrs. Pelosi, but the only weapon of mass destruction I see this time is that skirt and jacket.
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BURKE: I do love...
GROSZ: It's international pariah, Harry Reid.
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SAGAL: Virginia, we have one more quote for you, and it is actually some serious, published health advice.
KURTIS: Diet tip - nibble on a cookie an hour before lunch.
SAGAL: That was from an organization that we learned this week has been bribing scientists for at least five decades to say good things about what?
KORKOVIAC: Junk food?
SAGAL: Well, now, a specific ingredient in most junk food, especially desserts.
KORKOVIAC: Oh, sugar?
SAGAL: Yes, sugar.
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SAGAL: It turns out it's all a scam. So according to papers published this week, we now know that back in the 1960s, the sugar industry was worried because their customers were becoming fat and then dead.
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SAGAL: So - and this is all true - they paid a bunch of Harvard researchers to put out papers proving that the real problem that was killing people and giving them coronary disease wasn't sugar. No, no, no. It was fat. It was fat. Fat is bad. That's why all of us who grew up in the '70s and '80s were told not to eat bacon. But these new, so-called, Lucky Charms are a miracle food.
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SAGAL: Now, we've always known that the sugar lobby is powerful. Sugar is - right, it's always a good thing. That's why the song is "Sugar Pie Honeybunch" not fat pie, greasybunch (ph).
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SAGAL: Nobody is like, give me the news straight, don't fat coat it.
GROSZ: (Singing) Pour some fat on me.
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GROSZ: No way.
ROBERTS: All right, wait...
BURKE: I mean, I'm not surprised by this. I mean, clearly, they got to Mary Poppins back in the '60s.
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SAGAL: They did. They did. I'm sure they sponsored that.
GROSZ: (Laughter) Spoonful of sugar. The first spoonful of sugar's free, kid.
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SAGAL: Bill, how did Virginia do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Three and 0, could we expect less?
SAGAL: Well done, Virginia. Congratulations.
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KORKOVIAC: Thank you.
SAGAL: Thank you so much for calling. Take care.
KORKOVIAC: Thank you. Take care.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOW WOW WOW SONG, "I WANT CANDY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.