BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT… DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you so much. You are so great. So the presidential election is not 'til the end of next year, so we spent all of this year talking about it. Let's review some of the highlights, like this question from March.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KURTIS: Emails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, as well as yoga routines.
SAGAL: Who was that describing all the emails that we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about seeing?
KYLE PAIGE: That was Hillary Clinton.
SAGAL: It was Hillary Clinton, very good.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: After more than a week of speculation, Secretary Clinton had a press conference, and she said that she had handed over all of her emails to the State Department except for a handful of personal ones about, as you heard, you know, yoga routines, that kind of thing. By handful, she meant over 31,000 emails.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: More than half of them, she has said is personal and we won't get to see - that is a lot of yoga routines.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: To prove her point, she raised her left leg, put her foot behind her head and said, any questions?
(LAUGHTER)
PAULA POUNDSTONE: I'm confused by what exactly took place.
SAGAL: All right, we'll try to work through it for you, Paula.
POUNDSTONE: Now she's saying she had one email address for simplicity, is that right?
SAGAL: Yes.
POUNDSTONE: But did she say she had two different something else's?
SAGAL: No, no. What she said was that she had used one email address - a personal email address - for both work and business because she didn't want to have to carry around two devices - like one for work and one for personal use. She said that basically it was - it's just too inconvenient to carry a second phone just for her personal affairs, to which her husband Bill said actually it's not that difficult.
AMY DICKINSON: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I, by the way, and I don't - you know, I don't like to speak ill of the former first lady in any way, but I – I carry two devices.
SAGAL: You do?
POUNDSTONE: I do. I carry a flip phone and an iPhone.
RAY BLOUNT, JR.: Why is that?
SAGAL: Why do you that?
DICKINSON: Well, Paula has a burner phone, don't you? For when you do like, undercover…
SAGAL: Drug deals, yeah.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. No, just, you know, so just so she knows that in - the future is brighter than she realizes…
SAGAL: Yes.
POUNDSTONE: …Which is that she will be able to carry two phones and it's not too big of a burden.
SAGAL: All right.
BLOUNT: You know, a flip phone was sort of cool…
DICKINSON: I know.
BLOUNT: …You know? Like those old Zippo lighters, you know - flip…
DICKINSON: Blam.
BLOUNT: …Or a switchblade. It's the same…
DICKINSON: Blam.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I just carry a butcher's knife. Yeah, I use it both for cutting meat and for...
DICKINSON: Whatever.
POUNDSTONE: ...Street fighting. And it seems to work for me.
BLOUNT: The same knife? Oh.
SAGAL: Well…
BLOUNT: I'm not having a sandwich at your - a roast beef sandwich at your house.
POUNDSTONE: I'm just not comfortable carrying two different knives.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
KURTIS: Now, the presidency brings with it a lot of responsibilities. There's foreign policy, the economy and trying not to get taken down by your own bodyguards.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
SAGAL: Amy, the Secret Service is investigating a serious incident in which some guys got drunk and drove a car right through a security gate at the White House. Who did it?
DICKINSON: They did.
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: They did.
SAGAL: The Secret Service did.
DICKINSON: They did it.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
DICKINSON: Yes, they did.
SAGAL: What happened was the Secret Service at the White House was investigating a possible bomb. Somebody had thrown a package at the Whitehouse Fence. And they had seen - sealed off the scene with crime tape. And all of a sudden - they're trying to investigate this and this car with lights flashing comes careening up through the tape, runs over the box with the possible bomb in it and smashes into this gate and stops. And who are the crazed terrorists in the car? Like, two senior members of the Secret Service who were returning from a night of drinking at a nearby bar. And you've got to forgive them 'cause how are they going to relieve their tension once you take away the Colombian prostitutes? Seriously.
DICKINSON: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: It's like a "Police Academy" movie.
SAGAL: It's really crazy.
DICKINSON: Yeah – yeah, no.
SAGAL: And then in a breach of protocol, the two senior officers in the Secret Service were allowed to go home. Normally in a case of an incident like that, the intruders are allowed to wander around the White House until they lie down for a nap.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. You know, the thing is though, I think it's a good thing, and I'll tell you why.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Because the secret part of the service was beginning to erode. People suspected that some of these people were protecting the president.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Do you see what I'm saying?
SAGAL: I see, so they had to sort of...
SAGAL: ...So it was no longer secret.
POUNDSTONE: But now...
BLOUNT: Transparency is what they're doing.
POUNDSTONE: Exactly, when you see buffoons like this, you go no way are they protecting the president.
SAGAL: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: So they're back in service.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I think it was the right thing to do. I do.
SAGAL: But the big news this year was, of course, the man whose campaign started as a joke and then became a much bigger joke.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The question is, who is the joke on?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KURTIS: "I don't care. I'm really rich."
SAGAL: That was...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: ...Someone announcing his candidacy for president this week. Who threw his comb-over into the ring?
(LAUGHTER)
STEVE HOWE: That would be the Donald.
SAGAL: The Donald - Donald Trump, in fact.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Yes. He has flirted with it many times before.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: But this time, Donald Trump really is running for president. He may...
FAITH SALIE: And he really is rich.
SAGAL: He is rich. Donald made - I call him Donald - he made this long, rambling speech where he talked about - well, being super rich - he also said that because he had air-conditioning in his launch event, it meant he could handle ISIS.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And he said because he once sold an apartment to a Chinese guy, he could handle China. It just kept going on and on. His announcement went on so long that at about the four-month mark, he just segued right into his concession speech. It is...
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: At about the four-month mark, those actors who were paid $50 to show up for three hours...
SAGAL: Yes.
SALIE: ...Were like this isn't worth it.
SAGAL: This is amazing 'cause one of the things he said when he came out, he descended...
SALIE: Wait, he came down.
SAGAL: He came down - he descended on an escalator like some sort of weird suburban mall version of an Egyptian pharaoh, right?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And he comes down on the escalator and he steps - and he says what a great crowd. Nobody else has a crowd like this. And all these people are yelling Trump, and they have Trump T-shirts - hired extras. Hollywood Reporter dug out the ad that went out saying they needed extras for the event - 50 bucks for three hours, show up, be enthusiastic. Some of the extras got confused, thought it was a "Mad Max" movie, came dressed for this sort of post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland hellscape...
LUKE BURBANK: Which, ironically, what it would look like if he was elected president.
SAGAL: Pretty much.
SALIE: Did you see he invited a woman at some kind of rally up on stage to touch his hair?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Did he really?
SALIE: He really did. This was in New Hampshire, I think. He...
CHARLIE PIERCE: On the subject of which...
SAGAL: Did she then explode? What happened?
(LAUGHTER)
SALIE: She - she touched it. And he said see? It's real. It's real.
PIERCE: It's easy to make jokes about this ridiculous campaign, but there is a sort of historic element to it, which is people had totally discounted the Whig Party in this country.
(LAUGHTER)
BURBANK: There we go.
SALIE: I really liked when he talked about his plans for ISIS. He said it's such a good plan that he's not going to share it. And he said it's secret and it's surgical and it's beautiful...
PIERCE: And it's huge.
SALIE: ...Which makes me think that he's going to get Melania's plastic surgeon...
SAGAL: Yeah.
SALIE: ...To be in charge of the Department of Defense.
SAGAL: I know. His - you're talking about his wife, Melania?
SALIE: Yeah, that supermodel.
SAGAL: It's a strange name. He's married to, like, a kingdom in "Game Of Thrones."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.