Today is President’s Day, the national holiday honoring all presidents of the United States. Good presidents, bad presidents, long-dead presidents, recent presidents. It even honors impeached presidents. But what about illegitimate presidents? Does a person who was selected rather than elected get to bask in the glow of this holiday?

Well, today, in recognition of President’s Day, we continue our discussion of the stolen election of 2000. Several months ago, in mid-November, a review of uncounted ballots in the Bush-Gore election revealed that George W. Bush would have lost Florida and therefore the Presidency if there had been a complete statewide recount. The data, compiled by Associated Press and seven other news organizations, suggests that Gore would have won if all of Florida’s votes had been counted. Ironically, Bush would only have won if Gore had gotten what he wanted–aselective recount of only four counties.

But this is not how the major media reported it several months ago. Virtually every newspaper in the country said the opposite–that the recount study showed Bush carried Florida. The results of a study indicating that the wrong person is in the White House would be incredible under any circumstances, but even more so considering the fact that the man in power has declared war on the world.

We go now to an interview I conducted in mid-November with author Jeffrey Toobin. As a staff-writer for the New Yorker, Toobin spent much of the fall of 2000 in Florida, reporting on the battle for the presidency. At the time of the interview, he had just published his own book about the infamous election. I began by asking him about the book and why, despite his argument that Gore had won the election, it had been titled, Too Close to Call: TheThirty-Six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election.

Guest:

• Jeffrey Toobin, writes for the New Yorker, and is the author of Too Close To Call: TheThirty-Six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election.