On Election Day 2026, Chris and his cohosts run a live opinion show about the midterms, voter-ID measures and rigging claims made before votes are counted. The hosts and chat also dig into Christian support for Trump, whether atheism and theism are political, how to handle debate tactics and why polls may mislead. The show is commentary, not neutral reporting.
Is Trump an atheist, and who actually supports him?
A chat voice suggests Trump may be an atheist, but the hosts answer that atheists do not support him, Christians do. They point to people carrying crosses at his speeches, speeches given in the name of Jesus, Pete Hegseth’s talk of a Christian nation, and images of Christians laying hands on Trump while he bows his head. One host adds that even if he were an atheist, what matters is when people hurt others in the name of a belief.
Is atheism or theism inherently political?
The hosts agree that neither theism nor atheism is inherently political and that the two should not be mixed. They argue atheists are not the ones mixing them. Christians are, they say, citing the anti-Christian bias office and the Christian prayer office in government. One host says Christians backed Trump only after he became the nominee, and that even Christians would admit it is more about power than religion, with power then used to force religion on people.
Why do Trump supporters keep believing his promises?
One host describes videos of people at Trump rallies who say he has not finished a promise yet but will. The host argues these supporters have been taught to have faith, so much of it is simply faith. The hosts also mention videos of people turning from red to blue, a red-turning-blue wave. In their telling, even the Epstein story did not move them, but higher gas prices did. The host says supporters will still have things to answer for.
How should atheists handle debate tactics from theists?
Just Creos says he watches Matt Dillahunty mostly to learn how to handle debates, and that a caller on his show used exactly the deflection Matt predicted. The tactic is hitting the atheist with a stream of questions to stay on the offensive. His answer is to turn the questions back on the theist and make them explain their own faith. Chris and Just Creos also agree that skepticism means questioning what you think you already know, and Chris says he wants aliens to be real but refuses to lie to himself.
Are election polls rigged?
Chris says he doubts the polls are deliberately rigged. In his view, the bigger problem may be people who are called for polls and do not answer honestly. Clever Night agrees. Chris also describes a call from a pollster for a Democratic candidate who asked whether he would prosecute the right wing, and says he declined to support that kind of approach. He ends by saying he is not afraid to say publicly that the corruption in politics is open and ugly.
Transcript highlights
Selected passages from the live stream, lightly edited for readability. Click a section time to jump to that part of the video.
Opening parody song, show changes and moderator dashboard
The section opened with a parody song about the Pharaoh’s curse, retelling the Genesis story in which Abram’s claim that Sarai was his sister leads to Pharaoh’s household being plagued. Chris then turned to changes coming to the show. Kelly Laughlin will start hosting the weekend edition of The Daily Atheist Morning Show on the Daily Atheist Media Network. Chris said he didn’t want any host to be alone on air, so the plan is to bring in people who want to be part of the team and train them alongside hosts. He mentioned Miss Jada running with Kelly over the weekend, and said a training section is also being developed.
Chris then described a new dashboard for moderators. Security runs through Discord, so a viewer must be a member of the Discord server and hold the YouTube moderator role to get in. Once inside, moderators can watch the live stream directly on a web page and use a moderator-only chat, where the hosts can also see what they say. Chris admitted the page was not working perfectly yet, since he was still building it, and asked people to test it and report what they saw. Several people had trouble getting in, and Chris worked through the links with Kelly and others until Kif appeared in the moderator chat. Chris said the chat is split on the right, with the YouTube live chat on top and the moderator chat below, and that the layout also works on mobile.
Near the end, Kelly said she was looking forward to voting, because in her small town election day is like a little party at city hall. Chris offered to put a live feed of election coverage up in the background so the team could follow the results as the day went on, though the section ended before that was set up.
Election Day Fraud Claims and Political Talk
Kelly, what are your thoughts about what’s going to happen today? What’s going on today, and what’s coming? I’ve been making predictions for years. I’m hoping we’re going to see that blue wave that everybody’s been talking about.
One of the stars to come out of this election is Abdul El-Sayed, who is from my home state. I got a chance to go see him a week or two ago, and I was lucky enough to be in the room when that viral video happened, the one where he’s talking back to the guy who asked him to deny the Muslim Brotherhood. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it. He was so right on. It was cool to just watch him break it down, how the racism was the whole point.
He didn’t actually say it, Abdul didn’t. He made the other guy bring it out. The guy kept asking why he was being asked this, why he hadn’t asked everybody else in his life this, why it was just him. The guy obviously wouldn’t say it, and Abdul finally said it for him: “We all know why you’re asking me this. We all know.” Tommy had somebody with him too, there were two of them, and after Tommy walked out, his friend walked out with his tail between his legs too. I was really glad with what I saw.
I’m planning to host a political talk show going forward. Sure, it’s an atheist channel, but it’s a left wing, not liberal, progressive, pro trans, pro gay, pro woman, anti-hate kind of thing. I want to give those of us in this group a place to vent our political views. It’s going to be important today, because we’re going to have political crap going on, and we’ll have to be easy on the banhammer unless people start going homophobic or anything like that.
Biden won, and then they actually did make it too rigged to big. The last election was too rigged to big, you know, it was every swing state. There’s this group I can’t remember the name of. Election Truth Alliance, I think it is. They’ve been going all across the country looking into how corrupt the last election was, horrifically corrupt. They’ve overpowered the too big to rig joke.
They concentrate on voter fraud, individual people breaking the rules, but they don’t concentrate on election fraud, where whole blocks of votes are being fraudulent or taken out. That’s what they’re doing. They’re doing election fraud, not voter fraud
Election predictions, trolls and a daughter’s PhD
My daughter’s just about to get her PhD, which is really cool. What is she getting a PhD in, biology? She has two areas of study, trees and bugs: dendrology and entomology. Trees and bugs. That’s weird. So I guess she’s not an evolution denier. You raised her up in your heathen ways. I raised my kids to be skeptics. Congratulations. Kidding aside, congratulations. It would appear that in your family, as in mine, the women are the smarter branches.
[Commercial break]
I keep waiting for something to break. I’m waiting for somebody to come in and start defending Trump’s policies, since we’re doing a political show today. There was somebody earlier, but they ran away after we told them it was kind of silly to vote because you wanted to make the libs cry. Screw the economy, screw public relations, screw every healthcare. As long as we can make the libs cry, it’s okay. Yeah. Your own family, your own friends, your own children.
Are you triggered already? Why are you triggered? What’s wrong? Are you okay? I’m going to ask you a genuine question, and if you can answer me, answer me genuinely. Is triggering someone the full benefit, or are there other things to it? I mean, can you give me a straight answer on that one thing?
Are you ready for that red wave to slam you, Chrissy? I’m ready for that red wave. True enough. Let’s see it happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but let’s see what happens.
I’ve been predicting for years that this is coming. At this point, I say years, this is when the real thing, the fan hits the shit, if you know what I mean. They’re going to lose this election, and they’re going to refuse this election publicly. It’s going to be very, very ugly one way or the other. If they don’t, and they step down willingly, then they’re all going to go get arrested, and they all know this. They know they’re done. It depends on how bought the left is, though. They’re pretty bought.
Election politics, faith, and atheism versus theism
I’m really interested to see what’s going to happen in my state since it’s one of the big battleground states, and our Senate candidate has become such a celebrity throughout the election. People even nationwide have been turned on to who he is. Not everybody knows who he is, but he’s gone a lot bigger than most state candidates do, mostly because of his viral answers to people and trolling him during his appearances. Some of my state is a little bluer than that, but there’s a lot going on. They’re already talking about denying the election in Alaska because they don’t like the way the outcome is going to happen, and Chuck’s calling for the Democratic candidate to be prosecuted too.
That’s just the whole fascist, totalitarian playbook right there. It’s right out of Hitler and Mussolini and all of that business. I want to make sure she’s prosecuted for something she probably doesn’t have anything to do with, and even if she does, it’s not something that’s illegal anyway. Meanwhile, they’re ignoring all the horrific laws the people on the right are breaking, what’s her Susan Collins corruption thing, all thrown out. It’s just crazy.
Michael says he’d be shocked if his state was anything but blue other than one or two counties. I’d say the way they’ve done our state, it would be hard pressed to find any real red, but it’s possible. We had a blue wave in Michigan during Trump’s first presidency, and it has stuck. We’re still blue since then, but Republicans have some inroads, and there are parts of Michigan that are always red. Just like every state, you have your little holdouts.
It just blows my mind how anybody thinks this race is a toss-up. After Donald Trump has done all of these things, how is this election anywhere remotely a toss-up? It’s all money. It’s all corruption. It’s Elon Musk tinkering with the election device. There’s a lot going on.
I hear it all the time when I watch the videos of people who go out into the crowds at Trump rallies and talk to the people there. They’ll say, well, Trump didn’t finish doing this promise yet, but he will. They’ve been taught to have faith in things they believe in, and they’re still holding out faith that Trump is going to do all these crazy things he thinks he’s going to do and make the world a better place for just them. So I think a lot of it is just faith. How long will they go on before they realize it’s not going to happen? We’ve been watching these videos of people who turned from red to blue. It’s not a red wave, but a red-turning-blue wave. Good, because they finally saw it was going to hurt them personally. But once the ship is righted, you people who supported Trump all the way to this point have things to answer for. Even the Epstein thing with Trump wasn’t enough. It was “my gas prices have risen” that finally moved them. We won’t forget. We have it on video.
Trump is an atheist, of course. Well, he may be an atheist, but the atheists don’t support him. Who supports him? It’s the Christians. Remember the blonde ladies who come out with the crosses to his public speeches, and the speeches in the name of Jesus? And Pete Hegseth, what did he say about it? This is a Christian nation, right? It’s clearly the Christians who are voting for him. You don’t have to throw a stone very far to find an image of Christians circling and laying hands on Trump, and you don’t see Trump saying, no, no, I’m an atheist, I don’t do that. He just closes his eyes and bows his head.
Even if he were an atheist, just because we’re all atheists when it comes to Zeus doesn’t mean we should all agree on other things. It’s when you actively believe something and hurt people in the name of that belief that it matters. That’s what the Christians do. I don’t care if you believe in Zeus, but if you go around throwing lightning bolts at everybody, I’m going to stand up and say you’re wrong.
Theism is not inherently political, and neither is atheism. We all agree on that, and we all agree they shouldn’t be mixed. But it’s not us doing the mixing. It’s the Christians, with the anti-Christian bias office, the Christian prayer office, and the government. Christians only supported him after he was a nominee, and I think even the Christians would admit it’s more about power than religion. They get power and then force their religion on people. This is about power now.
JCH is claiming that we believe in fictional characters like Batman and Iron Man. We don’t believe those characters are real. We believe the stories are real in the sense that we can read them, but we don’t believe Iron Man is real the way you believe God is real. JCH is different in defense, because they were saying you can believe in fictional characters, not that we do. I’m not trying to defend an asshole. My bad. I’m usually railing about semantics too, so that really hit me hard. Sorry.
Fearless Paladin says that last time I was on, I kept dropping in and could not help myself. Right now, it’s like a little birdie taking flight. Occasionally you have to pick it up and throw it again, and then it crashes, and you pick it up again. Once the little birdie takes flight, you can go fuck off. Every time I seem like I’ll leave and walk into the other room, the show will be like, oh, shit, he left, I need his attention. But soon it will be ready.
Armin left The Atheist Experience. I was put on a stream with Armin once, and we’re not the same kind of personality. I guess I don’t really know anything about him. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have told you he was on the verge of going back to Islam, just by the way he spoke and the things he did, but I don’t know anything about that. I’m just saying my feelings about what happened during the show. We were not matched personality-wise, and I’ll leave it at that.
Atheist Banter, Postmortem Baptism Kit and Debate Tactics
Chris opens with some banter about Jesus, comparing his feelings toward him to his feelings about Bullwinkle the moose. He admits he doesn’t watch the Line much, and says the channel’s strict rules on self-promotion and chat moderation have shaped how he runs his own show. He explains that he has been learning to trust his mods more, while acknowledging that some removals, like a sock account returning after a ban, were justified once the reasons were explained. Chris says he wants his show to be looser with its chat than other shows, though he notes that Matt Dillahunty is just as rough on his viewers.
The group then plays a parody ad for Father Flanagan’s postmortem baptismal kit, which mocks the idea of saving loved ones from hell after they die. The sketch ends with a line that the kit is sold for $59.99 and that the buyer can “damn them to an eternity in heaven.”
Just Creos joins and says he watches Matt Dillahunty occasionally, mostly to learn how to handle debates. He says Matt is a soldier in a fight against Christianity that is trying to force itself on people, and that he will support him as long as he is on the same side. Just Creos says Matt’s videos have helped him, and that when he took calls for the show, a caller did exactly the kind of deflection Matt had predicted. He describes the tactic of hitting the atheist with a stream of questions to stay on the offensive, and says the answer is to turn the questions back on the theist and make them explain their own faith.
Chris and Just Creos agree that skepticism matters, and that the most important habit is to question the things you think you already know. Chris says he wants aliens to be real but refuses to lie to himself or sell stories about it to other people. They also discuss how people lie to themselves because belief is easier than facing uncertainty, and how misinformation aimed at people willing to believe on faith can produce dangerous political results.
The conversation then turns to polling. Chris says he doubts the polls are deliberately rigged, and that the bigger problem may be people who are called for polls and do not answer honestly. Clever Night agrees. Chris also describes receiving a call from a pollster for a Democratic candidate who asked whether he would prosecute the right wing, and says he declined to support that kind of approach. He ends the segment by saying he is not afraid to say publicly that the corruption in politics is open and ugly.
Election Day Politics and Libertarian Taxes
The real problem is the corruption we’re having to deal with right now. You’ve probably heard about that politician who switched parties and endorsed the conservative GOP candidate. When I look at her, I think, how did she become our representative in the first place? She’s just clearly hurt. It was no surprise, and I was very proud of the people who work with her who immediately quit.
I’ve been watching politics since the 1980s, and this happens all the time. People switch parties all the time, and it usually doesn’t make any difference to anything, even an election this close to the vote. I don’t think there’s any difference. It’s people’s ideas about her that matter.
I didn’t know much about the guy from the video you sent me until I watched him dismantle that little racist. That was awesome, right? I don’t keep up with the little racist people out there, so I don’t know who this person is. From what I understand, Tommy was just some local guy who thought it would be cool to go troll Abdul El Sayed in a small room.
Our neighbors to the north, south, east, and west are going to have some interesting viewing today and tomorrow as they watch our country unravel from the outside. I think a lot of those countries’ leaders are cheering for this election to go one way and not the other. I’m actually surprised that our illustrious president, I have a hard time saying his name, was able to keep up with the campaign schedule he did. I was really surprised that he was physically able to do it.
I haven’t paid much attention because I’ve been busy with other things. Honestly, I think it’s my ADHD and this time problem. It’s like being out on a paddle boat, just paddling along, and then you see the wave coming. I knew it was getting closer and closer, and here it is, upon us.
I don’t go for libertarianism because I think it’s selfish, and I’m not a selfish person. Libertarians have all the greed of conservatism without any of the responsibility some conservatives seem to feel they have to the rest of the country. They want to enjo
Election day plans, chat tech and stream trouble
Chris floated the idea of a possible afternoon stream called “The Wheels Come Off,” focused on the political side of election day, which might include Kelly and other hosts or guests. He also said a new chat moderator bot had been installed after moving the system to a new computer, that it seemed more restrictive than the old one, and he asked the mods to leave notes in the mod chat about it. Kelly’s connection then dropped, which Chris said caused his automation system to throw an error, so he shut the stream down and brought it back up. Kelly mentioned he was heading to vote at city hall, a block from his store, and Chris asked whether any poll watchers had been seen there.
Chris thanked a viewer for a small super chat, read a few other chat messages, and asked Kif to tell Kaleja about the new mod channel. He then signed off until the next day.
[Commercial break]
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