BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm no doctor, but I'll be your health care bill. Bill Kurtis.
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KURTIS: And here is your host at the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Thank you so much. We are excited. It's an exciting time. We're excited to be back in Dallas, where by Texas state law eating lots of meat is good for you.
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SAGAL: That's freedom. I should say people are worried about the country right now. Will people still have health care? Will they have jobs? All right, it's scary. But here in Texas there is a bright side. All of this is great material for country songs.
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SAGAL: We'll be talking to a country music legend Charley Pride about how happy he must be with all this material.
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SAGAL: But first, we want to hear from you. Give us a call at 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.
SASHA FALKOWSKI: Hi. My name is Sasha Falkowski. And I'm calling from Princeton, N.J.
SAGAL: Princeton, N.J. How are things...
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PETER GROSZ: Half the crowd is from Princeton, N.J.
SAGAL: They're - yeah.
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SAGAL: Most Princeton graduates do end up here in Dallas working in cattle.
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SAGAL: So what do you do there in beautiful Princeton?
FALKOWSKI: I am a sommelier.
SAGAL: You are kidding. You are a Princeton sommelier?
FALKOWSKI: Yes.
SAGAL: A wine expert?
GROSZ: And you listen to NPR? So shocking.
SAGAL: I know.
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FALKOWSKI: They go hand in hand.
SAGAL: Well, welcome to our show, Sasha. Let me introduce you to our panel. You've heard from them already. First up, it's the comedian who'll be performing at Thalia Hall in Chicago on May 13. It's Paula Poundstone.
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SAGAL: Next up, it's a features writer for The Washington Post's style section. It's Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hi, Sasha.
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FALKOWSKI: Hi, Roxanne.
SAGAL: And finally, it's a veteran of "The Colbert Report" and one of the people behind America's favorite blog, "Quality Time With Pete And Deb." It's Peter Grosz.
GROSZ: Hi.
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FALKOWSKI: Hello.
SAGAL: So, Sasha, you knew this, but you're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to perform for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job, correctly identify or explain just two of them. Do that, you'll win our prize, the voice of Carl Kasell perhaps recommending a nice beaujolais on your voicemail.
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SAGAL: Here is your first quote.
KURTIS: I guess I can't be doing so badly...
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KURTIS: ...Because I'm president and you're not.
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SAGAL: I'm going to give you three guesses on that one because it's hard.
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SAGAL: Who said that?
FALKOWSKI: Donald Trump.
SAGAL: That was, in fact, Donald Trump, yes.
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PAULA POUNDSTONE: Yes, but he plagiarized it from Taft.
SAGAL: It's true.
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SAGAL: That quote, that amazing, real quote came from the latest issue of Time magazine. That's the one with the cover that reads, "Is Truth Dead?"
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SAGAL: The answer is, yes. Truth died late this week after Republicans took away its health care coverage.
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POUNDSTONE: No, you know what?
SAGAL: What?
POUNDSTONE: If truth makes over $250,000 a year, it's good.
SAGAL: Yeah, it's great.
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POUNDSTONE: It's all set with health care coverage.
SAGAL: Yeah. On Monday, we found out - speaking of how well President Trump is doing, we found out there's an official FBI investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. FBI Director Comey said so in a public hearing. The White House denies there is any such investigation or any ties to Russia or Russia hacking in the election or that Russia even exists.
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SAGAL: Spokesman Sean Spicer said, you're just making up words.
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SAGAL: Another thing we learned this week watching the hearings, FBI Director James Comey, he's 6 foot, 8 inches tall. That's true. That's going to be one big body Trump is going to have to get rid of.
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POUNDSTONE: Oh, I didn't know he was 6 foot, 8 inches tall.
GROSZ: He's huge...
SAGAL: He's a tall gentleman. There was another thing - just - I just want to just round out the week for President Trump. It turns out we also found out that he and Melania, his wife, you may remember, sleep, even when they're together - and they're not much - even when they're together they sleep in separate beds. It's not unusual, to be fair. Besides, Melania is tired of Putin snoring.
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POUNDSTONE: You know, I don't care about Trump's sex life one way or the other, and so I don't care what bed they sleep in. But I will mention the Sleep Number bed.
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POUNDSTONE: Where you can - you know, for couples...
SAGAL: Yeah.
POUNDSTONE: ...That like their bed at different tilts. They could try that.
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SAGAL: You know, they don't pay - they don't pay us more money if you mention them more than once.
POUNDSTONE: I just - no.
ROBERTS: I...
POUNDSTONE: But Ivanka is selling this now. And I just want to put in a plug for her.
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SAGAL: Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: We've been dreaming of this since you and I were drinking at a keg.
SAGAL: That was Speaker of the House Paul Ryan last week talking about his days as an idealistic college student drinking some beers with his bros and dreaming of taking away what from people?
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FALKOWSKI: Medicaid.
SAGAL: Close enough. Yes, health care.
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SAGAL: That's exactly right. So in addition to learning that the GOP can't agree on how to repeal Obamacare this last week, we learned that Paul Ryan was really a drag at his college parties.
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SAGAL: All the other guys were like, who's that creepy guy with a widow's peak who keeps talking about taking away people's health care?
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SAGAL: On Thursday, the American Health Care Act, as it is called, was withdrawn from the House because there wasn't enough Republican votes for it. This happened despite Paul Ryan's last-minute changes to appeal to GOP holdouts by making it much crueler. That's true.
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SAGAL: He added provisions that, for example, would take Medicaid from people sooner and make the people who do get Medicaid work for it, all true. Ryan is such a softy. He should've made Medicaid patients dance for it.
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SAGAL: So this is amazing. While everything was collapsing in the House on Thursday, the president, the master negotiator, author of "Art Of The Deal," was busy pretending to drive a truck in the White House driveway. I am not kidding.
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SAGAL: There are pictures of him sitting at the wheel of this 18-wheeler, wearing a button that says I heart trucks. And he's pretending to drive and making vroom (ph) noises with his lips.
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SAGAL: That's all true.
GROSZ: My son has that same truck. We got it for him for his birthday. It's really cute. It's cute.
SAGAL: Yeah, I know. It's as if the real politicians needed to get some work done so they put the president over in the play area.
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GROSZ: This truck is not a metaphor for you being president, by the way.
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POUNDSTONE: But meanwhile, Sean Spicer's standing there at the podium and his father, Geppetto, must worry...
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SAGAL: He is...
POUNDSTONE: I mean, we want...
SAGAL: He's not Pinocchio. If he was Pinocchio the end of his nose would be in the Treasury Department across the street.
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GROSZ: Like, pokes through the pool camera right in the back of the room.
SAGAL: Pierce the lens...
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POUNDSTONE: No, he reminds me a little bit of Larry Mondello from "Leave It to Beaver."
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SAGAL: I'm not familiar with Mr. Mondello's work...
GROSZ: I think Trump reminds me of Eddie Haskell, too, of, like, hey.
POUNDSTONE: I'm sure that Sean Spicer is not inherently a dishonest person. But, you know, from the very start - his first day on the job he had to go out and go, you know, the president had the largest (laughter) - you know, the largest crowd at his inauguration ever, period. And I just picture Larry Mondello going, gee, Beaver, I really don't want to say this.
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POUNDSTONE: No, Larry. If you don't say that, my dad will kill me.
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SAGAL: All right, Sasha. Here is your last quote.
KURTIS: T-Rex, rubber ducky and penguin.
SAGAL: Those three characters will be showing up where?
FALKOWSKI: Oh, Monopoly pieces.
SAGAL: Yes, Monopoly pieces.
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SAGAL: Here's one of the few stories this week that will not cost anybody their lives, probably.
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SAGAL: Parker Brothers introduced their classic Monopoly game 80 years ago, which is just about the length of time it takes to play the game.
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SAGAL: And in those decades, there have been very few changes, especially to the little tokens you move around the board. The original set included things that were familiar to Depression-era players like a wheelbarrow, a thimble, a starving street urchin and an untreated infection.
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SAGAL: So Hasbro, the current manufacturers, had a national contest and those old-fashioned ones were voted out. And the people chose, as you heard, the T-Rex, rubber ducky and the penguin to replace them. They also voted overwhelmingly for something else to do with the family at Thanksgiving, anything, please just something that will end.
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POUNDSTONE: You know I took this worse than losing Pluto as a planet.
SAGAL: Really?
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POUNDSTONE: I - yeah, if you didn't like - like, OK. Hasbro, as a company, how tone deaf can you be? You really thought that maybe the reason game sales were down was because there was a shoe and a wheelbarrow and a thimble?
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POUNDSTONE: I don't think that's it.
GROSZ: Yeah, they'd have to replace the game pieces with, like, a PlayStation, an Xbox and a Wii because...
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POUNDSTONE: Yeah, exactly.
SAGAL: Bill, how did Sasha do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Sasha got all three right. She's a winner, all three.
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SAGAL: Congratulations, Sasha.
FALKOWSKI: Oh, Peter, thank you so much.
SAGAL: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE TV THEME PLAYERS' "FAMILY AFFAIR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.