BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. U-tah (ph)? Me Bill.
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KURTIS: I'm Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
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SAGAL: Thank you, Salt Lake. Thank you. We've got a great show for you today. Later on, we're going to be talking to pioneering biologist Nalini Nadkarni. But first, this week, we are celebrating the broadcast of our 1,000th show.
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SAGAL: I think so, anyway. We're all liberal arts majors, and we're bad at math.
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SAGAL: This is a big deal. Nobody gets to do a thousand shows - except, of course, soap operas.
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SAGAL: So it's only appropriate that this week, I reveal that I am pregnant with Bill's baby.
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KURTIS: This anchorman's going to have an anchor baby.
SAGAL: The next plot twist we want, of course, is a surprise call from you. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant.
Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
AMY JOHNSON: Hi. This is Amy Johnson in Washington, D.C.
SAGAL: Hey, Washington, D.C. - what a terrible, horrible place.
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SAGAL: On the other hand, you must be pretty excited about your baseball team.
JOHNSON: Uh, sure.
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SAGAL: Wait a minute.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Oh, wait.
SAGAL: Wait. Wait.
ROBERTS: Wait.
SAGAL: Wait. Wait.
PETER GROSZ: Woah.
SAGAL: That was a very unexcited, well, sure. Are you not...
JOHNSON: Yes.
SAGAL: ...Particularly a Nationals fan?
JOHNSON: I am now.
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SAGAL: I guess you kind of have to be just by peer pressure. Amy, let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, meet a humorist and author most recently of "Save Room For Pie." It's Roy Blount, Jr.
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ROBERTS: Hi.
SAGAL: Next, the features right here for the style section of The Washington Post - your hometown paper - Roxanne Roberts.
ROBERTS: Hello, Hello. Go Nats.
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SAGAL: And finally, a writer for the upcoming season of "At Home With Amy Sedaris" - it's Peter Grosz.
GROSZ: Hi.
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SAGAL: Amy, you're going to play Who's Bill This Time. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three quotations from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you will win our prize - any voice from our show you might choose on your voicemail. You ready to play?
JOHNSON: I feel like I should say yes.
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KURTIS: Good feeling.
SAGAL: I think you're correct. That would be the appropriate response. All right. Here's your first quote. It's a headline from this week.
KURTIS: Tiff with Schiff in the SCIF.
SAGAL: That was Elle magazine describing the scene when who stormed a classified congressional hearing?
JOHNSON: Oh, that would be Florida man Matt Gaetz and his 40 friends.
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SAGAL: That's exactly right.
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SAGAL: A bunch of House Republicans - this week, the Republicans finally came up with a response to the growing evidence that the president is, as the founders said in "The Federalist Papers," super guilty.
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SAGAL: One day, after damning testimony from the acting ambassador to Ukraine, a bunch of Republican House members stormed into the impeachment hearing led by Matt Gaetz, Republican of Delta House.
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SAGAL: Because really - and I've got to say this - there's nothing more stirring than a bunch of powerful white men shouting about the violation of their rights because they don't immediately get everything they want.
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SAGAL: It was great. It's stirring. It makes the heart beat a little faster. Am I right?
ROY BLOUNT JR: They had to do it to prove they weren't human scum.
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SAGAL: That's right.
ROBERTS: Except about a third of that group had privileges to be inside those hearings.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
ROBERTS: They were Republicans who were part of the committees, and they therefore had the right to be in there.
SAGAL: There were a dozen people outside the hearing demanding to be let into the hearing who could have just walked into the hearing.
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ROBERTS: Exactly. Exactly.
SAGAL: Now, these guys...
GROSZ: That would be like if, like, in "A Streetcar Named Desire," Stanley's, like, Stella. And she's, like, you have a key. Just open the door.
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GROSZ: You're not locked out, man.
SAGAL: Or maybe it's, like, Stanley, you're in our bedroom. Why are you yelling?
GROSZ: (Laughter) Yeah, exactly.
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SAGAL: Also, it's, like, they stormed in. I thought they were going to, like, storm in and then take all the videos and then turn around and be, like, the Democrats are letting people into this private room, and they're letting them videotape stuff with their phones.
BLOUNT JR: Either way, it was a classy thing to do.
SAGAL: It was.
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SAGAL: Now, what happened to maybe bring this on was that the day before, the ambassador to Ukraine had testified that the president withheld aid to Ukraine and demanded that they investigate Joe Biden before he released it. Now, even though the White House is still claiming the president is innocent, Trump and his allies clearly believe it is not a quid pro quo unless you actually say the words this is a quid pro quo...
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SAGAL: ...When you do it. And that makes sense because just like the law says that when you murder someone, it's not a crime unless you say this is a murder as you stab.
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GROSZ: That's like a - that's why at the end of the show, we say, this is NPR. Because otherwise...
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GROSZ: ...It could be anything. You never know. Yeah. It could be, like, an adult contemporary station.
SAGAL: Amy.
JOHNSON: Yes. I'm here.
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SAGAL: Amy, your next quote is someone responding to the question, are you Pierre Delecto?
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SAGAL: Oh, you know this guy - friend of yours?
KURTIS: C'est moi.
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SAGAL: Who admitted in his patented down-to-earth style...
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SAGAL: ...To being Pierre Delecto?
JOHNSON: That would be Mitt Romney.
SAGAL: It is Mitt Romney.
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BLOUNT JR: Maybe somebody here in Utah can explain - can just unpack this.
SAGAL: Well, we might have to ask you. Of course, Mitt Romney, senator from the great state of Utah - he admitted that he had this fake Twitter account under the name Pierre Delecto. Now, if you've ever wondered what lies beneath the placid, G-rated exterior of Senator Romney...
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SAGAL: ...The man who once said, quote, "my favorite meat is hotdog"...
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SAGAL: If you've wondered what deep, dark secrets he might divulge if he had the shield of anonymity, well, as his alter ego Pierre Delecto, Romney sometimes suggested that other people might be mistaken.
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SAGAL: The real question, of course, is which is a weirder name - Pierre Delecto or Mitt Romney?
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GROSZ: Yeah.
ROBERTS: Well...
GROSZ: Mitt Romney sounds like the name - like, the fake name that somebody with an interesting name like Pierre Delecto...
SAGAL: Exactly.
GROSZ: ...Would pick as a fake name to throw people off his scent.
ROBERTS: OK. But Delecto - I kind of thought, well, this is going to be kind of his sexy, swaggery (ph), you know, hidden Mitt, right? And instead, I was so disappointed because it wasn't sexy. And he was - I felt bad for him. I didn't think it...
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ROBERTS: It wasn't...
GROSZ: He thought that he, like, set himself up for something really spicy.
ROBERTS: Yeah.
GROSZ: And then he just - he, like - it's, like, we have hot salsa here. And he was, like, I'll have the mild...
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SAGAL: Exactly.
GROSZ: ...Thank you very much.
ROBERTS: But then why the Delecto?
SAGAL: But he will have salsa.
GROSZ: Yeah. Yeah.
SAGAL: Pierre - by the way...
ROBERTS: Should we be happy he's as wholesome as he is?
SAGAL: I guess it's not - I mean, it would - in a weird way, although it seems kind of disappointing that he's just as bland in private as he is in public...
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SAGAL: ...It would be worse to find out, like, he's just as awful as the rest of us, right?
GROSZ: I think, like, somebody like Mike Pence pretends that he's bland, but that is a dark, evil person.
SAGAL: Right.
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GROSZ: And I think that Mitt Romney...
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GROSZ: Like, Mitt Romney is, like, I have a deep dark secret, and it's very similar to who you think I am.
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GROSZ: And that is endearing. That's an endearing quality.
SAGAL: Basically, what he did was he created a fake Twitter account and then used it just to defend his own public actions. That's like creating a fake Tinder profile just to hit on your own wife.
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SAGAL: Speaking of which, in a strange way, this allows his wife to make history. Ann Romney is now the first Mormon with two husbands.
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SAGAL: All right. Here is your last quote, Amy.
KURTIS: I would swipe right for her.
SAGAL: That was a comment on a Washington Post article about France's strangely sexy logo for what sporting event that's coming in 2024?
JOHNSON: The Olympics.
SAGAL: The Olympics, yes.
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SAGAL: Paris is hosting the 2024 Olympics. And they just revealed their logo for it, and it's being criticized for being too sexy - and not just because it's smoking a Gauloise and writing poetry.
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SAGAL: The logo...
GROSZ: And ignoring an American logo.
SAGAL: Exactly.
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SAGAL: The logo is a version of the French national symbol, a woman named Marianne. It's combined with the Olympic flame. But instead of an expression of national pride, most people see - with this incredibly sexy woman's face, it looks like an icon for a dating app. Now, the logo's designers defend it, saying that she, quote, "reflects the unique energy of the games." And they assured everyone that as sexy as it might be, it's better than their first attempt, the Eiffel Tower proudly rising from an Olympic ring on either side of its base.
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GROSZ: Does the rest of the world just need to catch up to how sexy France is?
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: Like, are we - are they right, and we're just all a bunch of Puritans? Or are they, like, the hedonists, and we're just kind of lame?
BLOUNT JR: I'll bet Mitt Romney went to France once, and that's where he got that name.
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GROSZ: He locked it away, and he was, like, one day, there'll be something called Twitter, and I will release this name.
SAGAL: Bill, how did Amy do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Amy did great.
SAGAL: She did.
KURTIS: And so will the Nationals.
JOHNSON: Yay.
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SAGAL: Congratulations, Amy.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
SAGAL: Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRES TRES CHIC")
MOCEAN WORKER: (Singing) Supersonic, magnifique, tres, tres cool et tres, tres, chic. Supersonique, magnifique, tres, tres, cool... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.