Welcome to Beg to Differ, the Bulwerks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum, from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and I'm joined by our regulars,

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal.

Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center, and Damon Linker of the Week.

Our special guest this week is John Fasmin, who writes for The Economist, and before delving into the weeks news about the election and

so forth John Fasvin I have a question for you first of all thank you so much for

coming on the podcast.

Here's my question.

I love the economist.

It is one of the best publications written in the English

language, I would say.

But why do you guys call it a newspaper? It looks like a magazine to me.

That is just a that's just what we do. We seem to have picked a name and we're sticking to it. I see has it always been called a newspaper how well how old is the economist? The economist started in 1843. Okay and has it always been called a newspaper?

I believe so.

Yeah.

I believe so.

All right.

As we speak, the Electoral College count is either 253 to 214, which is the New York Times and a few other sites count, or 264 to 214.

Wall Street Journal, I think Politico has it there.

There are still votes being counted,

but our sitting present in the United States said today, not in a tweet, but in an official

statement from his campaign, quote, if you count the legal votes, I easily win the election. If you count illegal and late votes they can

...