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Who's Bill This Time

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm not Kendrick Lamar, but sit down, be hum-Bill (ph).

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

KURTIS: Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

(APPLAUSE)

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Bill. We have got a wonderful show for you today. Later on, we're going to be talking to freshman Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, ask him how he fills his time with so little going on in Washington.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Speaking of which, one of the things that makes our job challenging is just when we figure out what we're going to talk about on our show something else happens and we have to change everything. And then it happens again. So we have just written today's script, well, Mad Libs style. And we're just going to fill in the blank as the news happens. So as of show time, this is what we've got - Donald Trump verbed (ph) an under-age noun while riding a domesticated noun, a scene onlookers described as adjective and unbelievably adjective. Many nouns are now calling for him to be im-verbed (ph).

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So quick, before we fall behind any more, give us a call. The number is 1-888-WAITWAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

SUMMER HANFORD: Hi, Peter. This is Summer Hanford from St. Clair, Mich.

SAGAL: So what - you're in St. Clair. Where's that?

HANFORD: It is halfway between Detroit and the Blue Water Bridge.

SAGAL: The Blue Water Bridge.

HANFORD: (Laughter) That goes from the U.S. to Canada.

SAGAL: Oh, I see. And so what do you do there?

HANFORD: I write Jane Austen fan fiction.

(APPLAUSE)

HANFORD: I am very loyal fan.

SAGAL: Wait a minute. When you write Jane Austen fan fiction, are you writing fiction about Jane Austen and how great she is or writing sort of extensions of her stories?

HANFORD: Exactly. It's more like redoing Elizabeth and Darcy so that people get to re-experience it all over again.

SAGAL: Wow, that's really impressive. Do you ever, like, do anything, like, really twisty or weird, like throw in vampires or zombies or aliens...

JANELLE JAMES: Or black people?

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Well, wait a minute. Let's not get crazy here. I mean, come on, it's fiction...

JAMES: It's not vampires, but...

SAGAL: I know. I mean, vampires I'll believe.

(LAUGHTER)

JAMES: I like horses.

SAGAL: Well, Summer, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a humorist, author and motel huckster with a heart of gold. It's Tom Bodett.

TOM BODETT: Hello, Summer.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Next, it's a contributor for "CBS Sunday Morning" and author of the recent memoir "Approval Junkie." It's Faith Salie.

FAITH SALIE: Hi, Summer.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And finally, it is the comedian performing next weekend, May 26, 27, at the Big Hunt in Washington, D.C., and in Bloomington, Ind., at the Limestone Comedy Festival June 1 to the 3, making her debut on our panel. It's Janelle James.

(APPLAUSE)

SALIE: Yay.

JAMES: Hey, Summer.

SAGAL: Summer, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read for you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them you'll win our prize, the voice of scorekeeper emeritus Carl Kasell on your home voicemail. Are you ready to play?

HANFORD: I am.

SAGAL: All right, your first quote is from, naturally and inevitably, the president of the United States.

KURTIS: This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Mr. Trump was using his bully pulpit to come to the aid of what beleaguered victim of unfair prosecution?

HANFORD: I'm pretty sure it's himself.

SAGAL: Yes, indeed. It is...

(LAUGHTER, SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: ...Donald Trump. That tweet, by the way, you heard from Bill, came after almost 48 hours of silence from the president's Twitter account. That was unnerving.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: Yes.

BODETT: It took him that long to get out of the straitjacket.

SAGAL: I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It's like what they say about actual children. Don't worry when they make noise, worry when they get really quiet.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: Yep. He was drawing on the walls with his own poop.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Given Mr. Trump's official designation of this as a witch hunt, constitutional lawyers are now suggesting a, quote, "29th Amendment solution where we throw him in the Potomac and see if he floats."

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: And given everything - I wonder if he meant which hunt as in W-H-I-C-H, which hunt?

SAGAL: Yeah, I know.

BODETT: The Emoluments clause...

SALIE: There are so many.

BODETT: ...Are we going after the Russian collision? Which is it?

SAGAL: All right, we should try to recap what happened this week. It started with the news that Trump had blurted out some top secret classified information to, of course, Russians in the Oval Office. His aides said anonymously in his defense - and this is true, this was their defense - that he is so ignorant and oblivious he did not know he was doing it.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And there's nothing you can do about it because he's like a puppy. If you don't punish him for messing on the floor right away, he's forgotten he's done it. There's no point in bringing it up to him. He doesn't know he did it. That's why General H.R. McMaster will now be attending all national security briefings with a spray bottle.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: Can you explain what...

SAGAL: No.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Whatever you're asking, I got nothing, but go for it.

SALIE: Everyone's talking about memos, right?

SAGAL: The Comey memos.

SALIE: The Comey - did he handwrite this and...

SAGAL: Apparently James Comey, who was a very particular and careful man from all accounts...

SALIE: He's a Virgo, yeah.

JAMES: Super hot.

SAGAL: Is he, in fact, super hot to your eye?

JAMES: Yeah, 6' 8"? Yeah, I'll take that.

SAGAL: You find that...

JAMES: FBI.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: Wait, he's 6-foot-8?

SAGAL: He is.

JAMES: Yeah. That's why Trump don't like him, is why (unintelligible)...

BODETT: He's taller than he is.

SAGAL: Really? Just about the memos. Apparently what Comey did was after every encounter he had with Trump, because he realized they were unusual, he wrote down a detailed memo, a detailed account of what had just happened so he'd have a record...

SALIE: Like in his journal?

SAGAL: Sort of. In fact, the memos read a lot like "Letters To Penthouse" because it'd always start with, you're never going to believe what happened to me...

SALIE: You're never going to believe this...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, Summer, your next quote comes from a NATO official.

KURTIS: We're bracing for impact.

SAGAL: That official was talking about the preparations they were making for whose first foreign trip?

HANFORD: Donald Trump?

SAGAL: Yes, him again.

(LAUGHTER, SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Who knew? President Trump's first foreign trip starts this weekend. It's a doozy with five different countries on the agenda. Sources say he's visiting so many countries because he's not sure which one will offer him asylum.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It was so tough to get the president to pay attention to the briefing books that were prepared for him about this trip that the aides inserted his own name in every paragraph so that they would hold his interest.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's not a joke.

(LAUGHTER)

SALIE: No, they were like little bread crumbs.

SAGAL: That's true. It's from The New York Times.

JAMES: Donald goes to China.

SAGAL: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

JAMES: Donald...

SAGAL: It's basically like that. The trip starts in Saudi Arabia, then it goes on to Israel and the Vatican. So Trump can violate the moral strictures of all three great world religions right in their faces.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And then when he's in Israel he's going to Yad Vashem. That is the very solemn state memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. But again - this is true - he has insisted that he only spend 15 minutes there. He will not spend any longer than that. And, of course, 10 minutes of that has to be in the gift shop.

(LAUGHTER)

JAMES: This is also...

SAGAL: He wants to complete his collection of atrocity spoons. He's got almost all of them.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Oh.

SALIE: Oh, my (laughter).

(LAUGHTER)

JAMES: He also finds out that he can't hide any money in the West Bank.

SAGAL: It's true.

(LAUGHTER)

JAMES: He thought.

SAGAL: I know.

BODETT: Yeah, I wanted to see that West Bank. It's one I haven't really tapped yet, you know?

SAGAL: Summer, for a change of pace, well, here's your last quote.

KURTIS: I love the smell of diabetes in the morning.

SAGAL: That was a poster on Reddit reacting to news that Lucky Charms, our favorite cereal, is offering a limited run of its own cereal featuring only what?

HANFORD: Only marshmallows?

SAGAL: Yes, only marshmallows.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And you didn't think there was any good news in this week. Finally, General Mills is making all our dreams as a child come true by making a box of Lucky Charms that is finally all marshmallows.

JAMES: Hell yeah.

SAGAL: Hell yeah. You're excited.

JAMES: I'm excited.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: No more picking them out of the oats and milk.

JAMES: No.

BODETT: If you wet down a box of entirely marshmallow, how big would that become? I mean, it's like those...

JAMES: What?

SAGAL: If you wet it down, if you soak...

BODETT: It's like those magic monkey things, you know?

SALIE: Oh, yeah.

BODETT: I mean, don't they, like, get...

SALIE: They expand.

BODETT: Don't they get huge when you...

JAMES: What Lucky Charms are you eating?

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: Well, it's been a few years.

JAMES: Those are toys.

BODETT: No wonder I never liked that cereal.

JAMES: You're eating the prizes that come in the box.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Summer do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Well, she wrote a book while she's been playing.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

KURTIS: And she got them all right.

SAGAL: Congratulations, Summer.

KURTIS: What a winner.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Dear Jane would be proud.

HANFORD: Thanks so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOW WOW WOW SONG, "I WANT CANDY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.