July 12, 2024 • 39 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 212: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I've never actually seen it done before: somebody put the toothpaste back into the tube.
Not all of it. Not hardly. There are still a thousand reasons to ask President Biden to leave the ticket. He called Zelensky "Putin" and Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump" and when Trump tried to mock him on it he shoved it up Trump's posterior. And more importantly, for 50 minutes he interwove foreign and domestic policy, his own post-debate mistakes, the history of the relations between South Korea and Japan, his own calculations and miscalculations about retaining the presidency, and expressed an openness to change both his approach and maybe candidates.
It was unprecedented.
Simply, if he had been like this at the debate, or if he had held this news conference the day after it, it is impossible that the events of the last two weeks could've unfolded the way they have. So I do not know what to think (that'll get me kicked out of the pundits club) but I think there is a germ of an idea here if the plan is to stick with Biden atop the ticket:
Put him on TV live once a week. Press conferences, sit-down TV interviews, Town Halls. Put him on TV to do THAT every week and maybe he will put all the toothpaste back in the tube.
In the interim, he needs to offload many of his campaign advisers and handlers because they are killing him.
B-Block (25:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Chuck Todd somehow transfers his own selfishness and personal failure onto Biden. In humorous relief, the Toronto Globe and Mail asserts that a man fought for his life while being interviewed by NBC. And Lauren Boebert gets caught speeding. Was it because she couldn't handle a stick?
C-Block (30:20) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Fitting for an examination of the dumbing down of America and how it has kept Trump viable: the woman who thought MacBeth wasn't as good as her standard paperbacks: "The Macbeth Murder Mystery."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
don't think I've ever seen anybody actually put the toothpaste
(00:26):
back into the tube before even just a lot of
the toothpaste. Yet that is exactly what Joe Biden did
last night, many years ago, probably in two thousand and
six or two thousand and eight. I was seated at
an anchor desk on an election night at thirty Rock,
probably a primary night, and the man seated next to me,
(00:49):
who was at least sixty years old at the time,
got the queue to do our reset at the top
of a new hour, and his millions watched, he loudly
and quickly announced, quote, good evening, the polls have just closed.
Alongside Chris Matthews. I'm Keith Olberman. He never noticed he
said it, He never corrected it, he never thought to
(01:09):
correct it. He certainly never ever would have made a
joke about it at his own expense. I will now
say to you, with those two statements as preface, something
that very few political commentators will say, or sports commentators
or analysts or political analysts will ever say, I do
(01:30):
not know right now what we should do next. I
will also say I was prepared to insist that today
President Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd and Ted
Kaufman and Jim Clyburn and Majority Leader Schumer and Minority
Leader Jeffries and John Meacham and anybody else they think
would help, needed to go to the White House and
(01:53):
plead with President Biden to withdraw his name from the
Democratic ticket. And I am not certain that that is
not still the best course. And I will also say
that when ninety minutes before four last night's news conference
even began, mister Biden called Zelenski Putin, and then when
the news conference began, he called Vice President Harris vice
(02:13):
President Trump. I thought that was still the only course,
and then Joe Biden acknowledged that might be the course.
There may be multiple courses. And then Biden acknowledged that
he had to do better, and he had to show
more people in more unrehearsed settings that he does better.
(02:33):
And then Biden spent fifteen minutes deconstructing and recapitulating every
conceivable aspect of our foreign policy, from how this Israel
different from golda my years Israel, through Ukraine towards China's
movement towards Russia and Europe's subsequent movement away from China.
And then he moved effortlessly into self evaluation and evaluation
(02:56):
of Vice President Harris and of what had changed in
his original twenty twenty plan to be a transitional president
to the next generation, and of what's circumstances he might
not run in after all. And as I started to
delete line after line after line from my notes from
yesterday afternoon, up popped something on the front page of
the Holy goddamn New York Times. President Biden had some flubs,
(03:21):
but he also delivered kagent responses on some complex issues.
You bet your ass. And then Joe Biden took the
two gaffs that he made and he made fun of them,
and he made fun of himself, and most importantly, he
jiu jitsued Trump tried to make fun of him, and
he shoved it back up Trump's ass.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And now I want to hand it over to the
President of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he
has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin, President Putin, He's
got to beat President Pusin. President Lensky, I'm so focused
on beating Putin. We gotta worry about it anyway, President,
(04:03):
you are a hell hawker vice President Harris's ability to
beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of
the ticket. Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump
to be vice president. I think she was not qualified
to be president. Misso in your oling answer, you preferred
to Vice President Harris as vice President Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Right now, Donald Trump is usually that to mock your
age and your memory?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
How do you get bat that criticism from Zenia's listen
to him?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Shortly thereafter came the tweet I would presume written by
somebody else, but under his byline, and certainly consistent with
that snark. The dare the dismissiveness of what he said
at the press conference about Trump. It's a screenshot of
Trump's Joe begins his big boy press conference with I
wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president,
(04:55):
though I think she was not qualified to be president.
Great job. Joe attached to that this dagger thrust from Biden. Quote.
By the way, yes, I know the difference one's a
prosecutor and the others a felon. I do not know
what to do next. I do know that I am
(05:18):
not alone in suggesting that had President Biden spoken in
that way during the debate, or if he had held
that news conference the night after the debate, it would
have been almost impossible for the events of the last
two weeks to have unfolded the way they did. Impossible.
It is also impossible to conceive of Trump holding such
(05:38):
a press conference dealing substantially and accurately with foreign policy. Now,
I mean the actual foreign policy of the world out
here that we live in, and not the vainglorious fantasies
of a madman who I am convinced does not believe
he is mortal or is that he is ever going
to die. I don't mean asking Trump to hold a
(06:00):
substantive fifty minute news conference. I mean asking him to
hold three or four minutes about other things and other
people besides himself, and how wonderful he is. And by
the way, every three or four minutes Trump makes more
gaffs than Biden did in one hour last night. In
two thousand and nine, I had the odd pleasure of
(06:21):
an off the record lunch at the White House with
President Obama, and I believe eleven other commentators and news
analysts were there. I could look up the names the
premise of it, explained Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when I
expressed surprise that people were taking notes, was that all
of these guys, John Dickerson was there, Geene Robinson from
the Washington Post, a bunch of others. They would be
(06:44):
writing columns or doing pieces on what Obama might think
about this foreign policy issue or what his options might
be in that domestic policy dilemma. And the White House thought,
what the hell, let's at least let them find out
what he's actually thinking. So when they guess in their columns,
maybe they'll be right. And I got to hear of
(07:04):
Barack Obama weave together over one of the best meals
I've ever been served, everything from Afghanistan to the price
of the produce sitting in front of us, and I
was confident I would never hear anything as intricate and
as accurate or as comprehensive again in my life. Biden
exceeded that last night and mixed in humility and mixed
(07:27):
in pure anger at the end. And by the way,
on the record, and that little.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Button, yeah, control guns, not girls, I mean the idea
we're sitting around this for Kamos so good as well.
We're sitting around more children are killed as by a
bullet in any other cause of death. The United States
of America, What hell are we doing? What are we doing?
(07:58):
We got a candidate say promised, then don't worry. I'm
not going to do anythe I'm not going.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
To do anything.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So I do not know what to do next other
than to think about it some more. Because as impressive
as that was, it did not magically wipe away the
remaining negatives, And the primary remaining negative is that there
is now a presidential campaign who's genuinely mentally ill. Candidate
is being let off the hook for calling Biden Obama,
(08:26):
and calling Nicky Haley Nancy Pelosi, and for forgetting his
son's name, and for descending into gibberish five times a speech,
week in and week out. Because the other guy is
the president of the United States and not insane, so
we hold him to a higher standard, and because the
news media of this nation is irreparably broken, and because
(08:47):
that opposition campaign has sixty one million dollars in AD
money to spend on making sure that everybody in this
country who's not giving Joe Biden to benefit of the
doubt or wasn't watching the news conference. Here's him calls
Zlenski putin. And after the debate, that benefit of the
doubt started to dry up, and as of last night
the wellbed had been pretty dry. I'm out of analogies here.
(09:09):
Maybe toothpaste in the well bed. There also remains the
unmistakable reality that the news conference last night was a
first step, and it should have been taken first, and
now instead it could easily be the last straw, because
ultimately this is not about Joe Biden doing the job.
It's about him winning the election. But one thought it
(09:32):
is possible that in that news conference are the seeds
of a way to keep President Biden on the ticket
and get him over the finish line. I have suggested
here previously that taped television interviews are useless, as was
the opening of the news conference where he read from
the teleprompter other than to let him toot his own
(09:53):
horn for a while. But live television interviews would not
be useless. Tell NBC the President will give Lester Holt
an hour, but it must be live, or it must
be a live town hall, or cancel the interview and
hold another news conference or a town hall or have
(10:14):
him just stop people on the street, live, live, live, Live.
Saturate the airwaves with Joe Biden Live, Joe Biden making
sense on foreign policy, making sense on jobs, making sense
on inflation, on democracy, on immigration, on guns, on Trump.
(10:35):
Flood the Zone with Joe Biden Live every week. Last
night he did something extraordinary, something I flatly thought impossible
until I saw it, and I wish I would not
have believed if I had merely heard an account of it.
Keep doing that. Bring him back once a week, hell twice.
(10:55):
If you can get people to carry it, put them
on live so often that he begins to bore voters
to tears. All right, all right, I'll vote for you.
Get off my television. Lost in our attempt to fathom
how the idiots and haters of this country not just
stand Trump but love Trump is the simplicity of what
(11:17):
he means to them. He is a television show. Virtually
every Saturday for two years, he has gone somewhere and
in front of a raucous crowd, presented this bizarre cross
between an hour of he Haw and a Hitler rally.
It's always there, always talking, always soothing the people whose
(11:39):
lives are failures, and need somebody else to blame. But
mostly he's just there like McDonald's. Well, maybe Biden can
be that for the rest of the nation. Maybe that
is the lesson the last night. It is sad, and
as a sixty five year old man, it is terrifying
(12:01):
for me to contemplate that I will be there soon
enough to remember the harshness of my own words. But America,
especially our underinformed voters, will in fact choose the crazy
old man yelling at the cloud over the sane old
man who's whispering at the wind. It is cruel, It
is the opposite of their best interests. That don't make
(12:24):
it any less true, because, as I have said for
two weeks, the worst place in the world for the
hopes of this country and this humanity is where we
are in the middle, as forces on both sides of
this heart rending uncertainty gather strength and will and resoluteness,
and even gather anti Harris polling leaked by the Biden
campaign in as irrational a political decision as I've ever seen,
(12:51):
do we give Joe Biden a week to fight his
way completely back to put the rest of the toothpaste
in the tube? He said, if they show him data
that shows he cannot beat Trump, he'll go. He said
his delegates can vote for somebody else in August at
the convention. And I know he conditioned on a lot
of other factors, but can you imagine anybody else saying
that ever in American history? And then, by the way,
(13:12):
segueing back to the complicated history between Japan and South
Korea again, this is not an unquestioned endorsement of the
continued candidacy of Joe Biden. I have reached the conclusion
after two years of doing this podcast, and after the
(13:35):
two weeks since the debate, in which I have thought
about nothing else, that if Joe Biden's age were not
part of this campaign, and Joe Biden's gaffes were not
part of this campaign, and the efforts to shield Joe
Biden from risky situations were not part of this campaign,
all of the spotlights, the justifiable spotlights, and the media
creation spotlights would turn entirely on Trump. The media would
(13:59):
be full time hunting Trump. I'm not an idiot. I
don't think Vice President Harris or President Harris would sail
untouched through an unprecedented replacement campaign. But I do think
she would get nearly all of the independent voters, and
I do think she would get nearly all of the
so called double haters. And I do think she would
(14:20):
every day speaking, not speaking, smiling, not smiling, tooth pasting
or not tooth pasting, she would remind every American that
Trump is a dangerous, psychopathic, unstable old man. Trump's candidacy
I think is viable, plausible, not inherently ridiculous, largely because
(14:40):
Joe Biden blunts much of the shock each day that
Trump should inflict but does not. The number of things
that we cannot now say about Trump, the number of
things that would in Biden's absence occur to our vast
under informed demographic who will actually decide this election, would
be enormous. The oxygen supply for Trump the other thing
(15:02):
we can't conceive. He can point to Joe Biden and
say to his supporters and say, I'm not old, he's old,
I'm not unreliable. He's unreliable. No Biden, and that vanishes,
not vanishing from Trump. He will continue to say those things,
(15:24):
and now he would say new and racist things as well.
But the ability to point at President Biden and score
both sides ist, what about his points By merely noting
Biden's age, or his infirmity or his struggles, that would
be gone. That enticing scenario remains. And the other problem
(15:45):
that isn't going away is about those around the president.
After the news conference yesterday and the news stories yesterday,
there's no immediate need to test Joe Biden's acuity, but
there certainly are reasons to test his staff sanity. The
ABC Washington Post poll yesterday that showed fifty seven percent
of Democrats want the president to drop out actually buried
(16:05):
the lead from the poll. It also polled a Trump
Kamala Harris matchup. She leads that forty nine to forty seven.
Trump and Biden are tied at forty six, and those
poll numbers would be Vice President Harris's start, not her finish.
But a campaign staff memo leaked to The New York
Times from the Biden campaign chairman and manager insists that
(16:28):
for the president there is quote clear pathway ahead and
then goes in a dark direction quote. There is also
no indication that anyone else would outperform the president versus Trump.
Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and
surveys do not take into account the negative media environment
(16:48):
that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate
for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
That there is mud slinging by implication against the vice
president by those around the president is bad enough. What's
worse is that those conclusions are ridiculous. After Trump's convictions,
the President had finally taken the lead in the polling averages.
(17:12):
He was on the upswing nationally, he was on the
upswing in every swing state, and now this tie in
the post ABC poll is the best result since the debate.
Most polls have Biden trailing by three or four or
five points and hemorrhaging support in the swing states. It
is not baked in. To continue the analogy, there is
(17:33):
a lot more of it in the oven, and the
goddamned oven may also be on fire. There were also
three other sets of other leaks yesterday, one to NBC
attributed to campaign staffers saying they see no path for
a Biden victory and he should drop out. One to
The New York Times, attributed to longtime aids and advisors
saying they are seeking ways to convince him to drop out,
(17:55):
and a third to the nonprofit Notice News, saying that
the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus covers up
several members who believe he needs to step down but
aren't saying it so they can say they're unanimous. The
senators at the meeting with Biden staffers say they were
provided no new data yesterday, no polling, no new information.
(18:18):
One Democratic senator has now called for Biden to step aside.
Fourteen Democratic members of Congress have done the same, including
the contrarian Marie Glusen camp Perez, and she says the
President should also resign his office. And then there were
the radio interviews. The White House provided questions to WURD
(18:40):
in Philadelphia before it interviewed President Biden, and to the
Civic Media Progressive Radio Network in Wisconsin. The Philadelphia station
has already parted ways with its host, who went along
with this manipulation. Now the Wisconsin outlet is revealing that
after their interview with the questions, President Biden certainly were
considered ready for the campaign, was concerned that he had
(19:03):
made a factual error in one answer and made an
unfortunate reference to hanging in another answer, and they asked
the network to edit those answers down, and it complied.
The New York Times and yes, their editorial choices have
damaged their reputation beyond repair. The solution here maybe to
replace The New York Times with Kamala Harris. The New
(19:25):
York Times actually then did some decent gum shoe reporting.
It went and looked for more instances of this. It
cited two interviews on the same day before the State
of the Union in March, in which Biden was asked,
first by a radio host in Charlotte, quote if he
would list his accomplishments, say why he had decided to
run for a second term, and explain what was its
(19:45):
stake for black voters in the election. And then same
day he was asked by a radio host in Dallas,
quote if he would list his accomplishments, say why he
had decided to run for a second term, and explain
what was at stake for black voters in the election.
And The Times found repeated instances in which, quoting them again,
the president has been served up identical questions, pre screened
(20:07):
or suggested ahead of time by campaign staff members, and
in nearly every case, the questions set the president up
to deliver on message talking points without notable flubs. The
ethics of this are atrocious and stupid. How could they
not know this would come out? The people around Biden
(20:30):
who did that can destroy him. Yet, so to me,
the first step now is he needs new people making
these decisions. Maybe he could do a live news conference
about it, about new people to make his decisions. Just
keep him talking every week forty five minutes any topic,
because he still has got it. They just haven't let
(20:52):
him show it off. And I might circle back to
the beginning of this and add that after several years
of things like the other guy calling himself me, they
actually management at MSNBC, that is, told me that it
was now my choice. I could anchor the elections and
primaries solo going forward, or we could keep the other
(21:15):
guy as my co anchor. And I said keep him.
I mean, other than those gaffes, he really knows his stuff.
And man, those gafs are really funny. You guys ever
thought of trying to get them sponsored by advertisers? Also
(21:38):
of interest here, of course, if I invoke Chris Matthews,
there must be a Chuck Todd story. Well, who could
make the Biden situation worse. Who could suck the humanity
out of it, the tragedy even and try to make
Biden look petty and selfish and merely wind up doing
that only to himself. Who the hell do you think
(21:59):
could do that, Chuck Todd, That's who. That's next countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Oldwoman. Presidents may rise and fall,
(22:33):
but there are always new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, the
brons worse. Chuck Todd still lurking over in the basement
at NBC News. He still goes to work even after
(22:54):
they fired his ass or meet the press. And I
know this might be seen as somewhat hypocritical of me,
giving what my open commentary was, but still, Chuck Todd sucks.
Listen to this clip from his podcast about the president's
decision to stay in the race.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
It has made me want to rethink a lot of
the Biden biography. I still can't believe he ran for
president in the first place, given that his family was
in crisis in twenty eighteen. That you look at what
has happened. I can't believe he put his family through
this and now looking at his behavior now and clinging
to this, I you know, I think the entire narrative
(23:34):
on Joe Biden is going to change, and that he
was he's always been. Everything has been about his ambition,
and his ambition comes first.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
This isn't bad enough that Chuck doesn't have to project
his own failures, his own selfishness on a man who's
actually served this nation. Chuck Todd is a bitter and
broken man. The runner up, and yes, these last two
would be in the matter of comic relief, wors sir.
The Toronto newspaper, the Globe and Mail, proving again the
(24:03):
value of sentence construction and the placement of commas and
semi colons and all that kind of stuff. Right there
there was a picture of the cargo ship the Dolly,
knocking down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor,
with crumpled girders sitting on its bow. The headline that
the Globe and Mail added, Baltimore Bridge collapse. Survivor recounts
(24:26):
fighting for his life in NBC interview After this week,
I think we all know how that poor NBC interviewee
felt Paul's fighting for his life in an NBC interview.
But our winner, the worst Congresswoman Lauren Bobert, caught on
May twelfth. It turns out Mother's Day doing eighty four
(24:48):
in a sixty five mile an hour zone by the
Colorado State Patrol at Vale Pass. They gave her a
speeding ticket, told her to pay one hundred and seventy
four dollars and fifty cents, and she was supposed to
pay it by July third, and guess what she didn't
a scoff law. She now has a court appearance scheduled
for July twenty sixth. Well, I'm just going to assume
(25:09):
here that she at that court appearance will be explaining
to the judge that the speeding was accidental because she
isn't good at handling a stick. Lauren Bobert, get a grip.
Two Day's worst person in the world.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
That's here it for the ball. Let's get the boy.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Fridays with Thurber and the Works of the Master, and
one I have not read to you here before but
is one of my favorites because it is well you'll
Fridays with Thurber and the Macbeth Murder Mystery by James Thurber.
It was a stupid mistake to make, said the American woman.
(26:15):
I had met at my hotel in the English Lake Country.
But it was on the counter with the other Penguin books,
the little sixpenny ones, you know, with the paper covers,
and I supposed, of course it was a detective story.
All the others were detective stories. I'd read all the others,
so I bought this one without really looking at it carefully.
You can imagine how mad I was when I found
(26:36):
it was Shakespeare. I murmured something sympathetically. I don't see
why the Penguin Books people had to get out Shakespeare's
plays in the same size and everything as the detective stories.
Went on. My companion, I think they have different colored jackets,
I said, well, I didn't notice that, she said. Anyway,
(26:58):
I got real comfy in bed that night and all
ready to read a good mystery story. And here I
had the track. If Macbeth a book for high school students,
like like ivan Hoe or Lorna Doone, I said, exactly,
said the American lady. And I was just crazy for
(27:18):
a good Agatha Christie or something. Ercule Poirot is my
favorite detective. Is he the Rabbity one, I asked, Oh, no,
said my crime fiction expert. He's the Belgian one you're
thinking of, mister Pinkerton, the one that helps Inspector Bull.
He's good too. Over her second cup of tea, my
(27:39):
companion began to tell me the plot of a detective
story that had fooled her completely. It seems it was
the old family doctor all the time. But I cut
in on her. Tell me, I said, did you read Macbeth?
I had to read it, She said, there wasn't a
scrap of anything else to read in the whole room.
(28:02):
Did you like it, I asked, No, I did not,
She said decisively in the first place, I don't think
for a moment that Macbeth did it. I looked at
her blankly. Did what I asked? I don't think for
a moment that he killed the king? She said, I
(28:24):
don't think the Macbeth woman was mixed up in it either.
You suspect them the most, of course, but those are
the ones that are never guilty, or shouldn't be anyway.
I'm afraid I began that I but don't you see,
said the American lady. It would spoil everything if you
could figure out right away who did it. Shakespeare was
too smart for that. I've read that people never have
(28:46):
figured out Hamlet, so it isn't likely Shakespeare would have
made Macbeth as simple as it seems. I thought this
over while I filled my pipe. Who do you suspect?
I asked suddenly, Macduff, she said promptly. Good God, I
(29:08):
whispered softly. Oh McDuff did it all right, said the
murder specialist. Erkuo Paro would have gotten him easily. How
did you figure it out? I demanded, Well, she said
I didn't right away. First I suspected Banquo, and then
of course he was the second person killed. That was
good right in there that part. The person you suspect
(29:30):
of the first murder should always be the second victim.
Is that so, I murmured. Oh, yes, said my informant.
They had to keep surprising you well after the second murder.
I didn't know who the killer was for a while. Uh.
How about Malcolm and Donald Bain, the King's sons, I asked,
(29:51):
as I remember it, they fled right after the first murder.
That looks suspicious. Too suspicious, said the American lady, much
too suspicious. When they flee, they're never guilty. You can
count that, I believe. I said, I'll have a brandy,
and I summoned the waiter. My companion leaned toward me,
(30:14):
her eyes bright, her teacup quivering. Do you know who
discovered Duncan's body? She demanded? I said, I was sorry,
but I had forgotten McDuff discovers it, she said, slipping
into the historical present. Then he comes running downstairs and shouts,
confusion has broke open the Lord's anointed temple, and sacrilegious
(30:37):
murder has made his masterpiece, and on and on like that.
The good lady tapped me on the knee. All that
stuff was rehearsed. She said, you wouldn't say a lot
of stuff like that offhand, would you, if you'd found
a body. She fixed me with a glittering eye. I began,
you're right, She said, you wouldn't unless you had practiced
(31:00):
it in advance. My god, there's a body in here
is what an innocent man would say. She sat back
with a confident glare. I thought, for a while, but
what do you make of the third murderer, I asked,
You know the third murderer has puzzled Macbeth's scholars for
(31:21):
three hundred years. That's because they never thought of McDuff,
said the American lady. It was McDuff. I'm certain you
couldn't have one of the victims murdered by two ordinary thugs.
The murderer always has to be somebody important. But what
about the banquet scene, I asked, after a moment, how
do you account for Macbeth's guilty actions there when Banquo's
(31:43):
ghosts came in and sat in his chair. The lady
leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There
wasn't any ghost, she said. A big strong man like
that doesn't go around seeing ghosts, especially in a brightly
lighted banquet hall with dozens of people around. Macbeth was
shielding somebody. Who was he shielding, I asked, missus Macbeth.
(32:10):
Of course, she said, he thought she did it, and
he was going to take the rap himself. The husband
always does that when the wife is suspected. But what
I demanded about the sleepwalking scene, then the same thing,
only the other way around, said my companion. That time
she was shielding him. She wasn't asleep at all. Do
(32:33):
you remember where it says enter lady Macbeth with a taper? Yes,
I said, Well, people who walk in their sleep never
carry lights, said my fellow traveler. They have a second sight.
Did you ever hear of a sleepwalker carrying a light? No,
I said, I never did. Well, then she wasn't asleep.
(32:54):
She was acting guilty to shield Macbeth. I think, I said,
I'll have another brandy, and I called the waiter. When
he brought it, I drank it rapidly and rose to go.
I believe I said that you have got hold of something.
Would you lend me that? Macbeth. I'd like to look
(33:15):
it over tonight. I don't feel somehow as if I've
ever really read it. I'll get it for you, she said,
but you'll find that I'm right. I read the play
over carefully that night, and the next morning, after breakfast,
I sought out the American woman. She was on the
putting green, and I came up behind her silently and
(33:36):
took her arm. She gave an exclamation. Could I see
you alone? I asked in a low voice. She nodded
cautiously and followed me to a secluded spot. You've found
out something, she breathed. I've found out, I said, triumphantly,
the name of the murderer. You mean it wasn't McDuff,
(33:57):
She said. McDuff is as innocent of those murders, I said,
as Macbeth and the Macbeth woman. I opened the copy
of the play which I had with me, and turned
to act too seem to hear, I said, you will
see where Lady Macbeth says, I laid their daggers ready.
(34:19):
He could not miss him. Had he not resembled my
father as he slept, I had done it. Do you
see no, said the American woman bluntly. I don't. But
it's simple, I exclaimed. I wonder I didn't see it
years ago. The reason Duncan resembled Lady Macbeth's father as
(34:42):
he slept is that it actually was her father. Good God,
breathed my companion softly. Lady Macbeth's father killed the king,
I said, and, hearing someone coming, thrust the body under
the bed and crawled into the bed himself. But said
(35:03):
the lady, you can't have a murder who only appears
in the story once. You can't have that I know that,
I said, and I turned to Act two, Scene four.
It says, here enter Ross with an old man. Now
that old man is never identified, and it is my
contention that he was old mister Macbeth, whose ambition it
(35:24):
was to make his daughter queen. There you'll have your motive.
But even then, cried the American lady, he's still a
minor character, not, I said, gleefully when you realize that
he was also one of the weird sisters in disguise.
You mean, one of those three witches. Precisely, I said,
(35:46):
listen to this speech of the old man's. On Tuesday last,
a falcon towering in her pride of place was by
a mousing owl, hawked at and killed. Who does that
sound like? It sounds like the way the three witches talk,
said my companion reluctantly. Precisely, I said, again, Well, said
(36:08):
the American woman. Maybe you're right, but I'm sure I am,
I said. And do you know what I'm going to
do now? No, she said, what buy a copy of Hamlet?
I said, and solve that. My companion's eyes brightened. Then
she said, you don't think Hamlet did it? I am?
(36:32):
I said, absolutely positive, he did not, but who she demanded,
who do you suspect? I looked at her cryptically, everybody,
I said, and disappeared into a small grove of trees
as silently as I had come. The Macbeth Murder Mystery
(36:58):
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
do here. Thank you for listening. Maybe by Tuesday I'll
figured this out. Probably not. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray
(37:22):
and John Phillip Schanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy
of ESPN inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
(37:45):
by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium morganist ever our
announcer today is my friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
one hundred and seventeenth day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election. Now, wouldn't it be funny if over the
weekend Trump dropped out or was dropped out. It's also
(38:08):
the eighty second day since convicted felon Donald J. Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the
mental health system, mister president, you've got it. Use presidential
immunity against Trump to stop him from doing it again
(38:30):
while we still can put the toothpaste back in his tube.
You know what I mean. The next scheduled countdown he
is Tuesday bulletins is the news requires till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. I'm going to go think good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(39:10):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
don't think I've ever seen anybody actually put the toothpaste
(00:26):
back into the tube before even just a lot of
the toothpaste. Yet that is exactly what Joe Biden did
last night, many years ago, probably in two thousand and
six or two thousand and eight. I was seated at
an anchor desk on an election night at thirty Rock,
probably a primary night, and the man seated next to me,
(00:49):
who was at least sixty years old at the time,
got the queue to do our reset at the top
of a new hour, and his millions watched, he loudly
and quickly announced, quote, good evening, the polls have just closed.
Alongside Chris Matthews. I'm Keith Olberman. He never noticed he
said it, He never corrected it, he never thought to
(01:09):
correct it. He certainly never ever would have made a
joke about it at his own expense. I will now
say to you, with those two statements as preface, something
that very few political commentators will say, or sports commentators
or analysts or political analysts will ever say, I do
(01:30):
not know right now what we should do next. I
will also say I was prepared to insist that today
President Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd and Ted
Kaufman and Jim Clyburn and Majority Leader Schumer and Minority
Leader Jeffries and John Meacham and anybody else they think
would help, needed to go to the White House and
(01:53):
plead with President Biden to withdraw his name from the
Democratic ticket. And I am not certain that that is
not still the best course. And I will also say
that when ninety minutes before four last night's news conference
even began, mister Biden called Zelenski Putin, and then when
the news conference began, he called Vice President Harris vice
(02:13):
President Trump. I thought that was still the only course,
and then Joe Biden acknowledged that might be the course.
There may be multiple courses. And then Biden acknowledged that
he had to do better, and he had to show
more people in more unrehearsed settings that he does better.
(02:33):
And then Biden spent fifteen minutes deconstructing and recapitulating every
conceivable aspect of our foreign policy, from how this Israel
different from golda my years Israel, through Ukraine towards China's
movement towards Russia and Europe's subsequent movement away from China.
And then he moved effortlessly into self evaluation and evaluation
(02:56):
of Vice President Harris and of what had changed in
his original twenty twenty plan to be a transitional president
to the next generation, and of what's circumstances he might
not run in after all. And as I started to
delete line after line after line from my notes from
yesterday afternoon, up popped something on the front page of
the Holy goddamn New York Times. President Biden had some flubs,
(03:21):
but he also delivered kagent responses on some complex issues.
You bet your ass. And then Joe Biden took the
two gaffs that he made and he made fun of them,
and he made fun of himself, and most importantly, he
jiu jitsued Trump tried to make fun of him, and
he shoved it back up Trump's ass.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And now I want to hand it over to the
President of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he
has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin, President Putin, He's
got to beat President Pusin. President Lensky, I'm so focused
on beating Putin. We gotta worry about it anyway, President,
(04:03):
you are a hell hawker vice President Harris's ability to
beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of
the ticket. Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump
to be vice president. I think she was not qualified
to be president. Misso in your oling answer, you preferred
to Vice President Harris as vice President Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Right now, Donald Trump is usually that to mock your
age and your memory?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
How do you get bat that criticism from Zenia's listen
to him?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Shortly thereafter came the tweet I would presume written by
somebody else, but under his byline, and certainly consistent with
that snark. The dare the dismissiveness of what he said
at the press conference about Trump. It's a screenshot of
Trump's Joe begins his big boy press conference with I
wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president,
(04:55):
though I think she was not qualified to be president.
Great job. Joe attached to that this dagger thrust from Biden. Quote.
By the way, yes, I know the difference one's a
prosecutor and the others a felon. I do not know
what to do next. I do know that I am
(05:18):
not alone in suggesting that had President Biden spoken in
that way during the debate, or if he had held
that news conference the night after the debate, it would
have been almost impossible for the events of the last
two weeks to have unfolded the way they did. Impossible.
It is also impossible to conceive of Trump holding such
(05:38):
a press conference dealing substantially and accurately with foreign policy. Now,
I mean the actual foreign policy of the world out
here that we live in, and not the vainglorious fantasies
of a madman who I am convinced does not believe
he is mortal or is that he is ever going
to die. I don't mean asking Trump to hold a
(06:00):
substantive fifty minute news conference. I mean asking him to
hold three or four minutes about other things and other
people besides himself, and how wonderful he is. And by
the way, every three or four minutes Trump makes more
gaffs than Biden did in one hour last night. In
two thousand and nine, I had the odd pleasure of
(06:21):
an off the record lunch at the White House with
President Obama, and I believe eleven other commentators and news
analysts were there. I could look up the names the
premise of it, explained Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when I
expressed surprise that people were taking notes, was that all
of these guys, John Dickerson was there, Geene Robinson from
the Washington Post, a bunch of others. They would be
(06:44):
writing columns or doing pieces on what Obama might think
about this foreign policy issue or what his options might
be in that domestic policy dilemma. And the White House thought,
what the hell, let's at least let them find out
what he's actually thinking. So when they guess in their columns,
maybe they'll be right. And I got to hear of
(07:04):
Barack Obama weave together over one of the best meals
I've ever been served, everything from Afghanistan to the price
of the produce sitting in front of us, and I
was confident I would never hear anything as intricate and
as accurate or as comprehensive again in my life. Biden
exceeded that last night and mixed in humility and mixed
(07:27):
in pure anger at the end. And by the way,
on the record, and that little.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Button, yeah, control guns, not girls, I mean the idea
we're sitting around this for Kamos so good as well.
We're sitting around more children are killed as by a
bullet in any other cause of death. The United States
of America, What hell are we doing? What are we doing?
(07:58):
We got a candidate say promised, then don't worry. I'm
not going to do anythe I'm not going.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
To do anything.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So I do not know what to do next other
than to think about it some more. Because as impressive
as that was, it did not magically wipe away the
remaining negatives, And the primary remaining negative is that there
is now a presidential campaign who's genuinely mentally ill. Candidate
is being let off the hook for calling Biden Obama,
(08:26):
and calling Nicky Haley Nancy Pelosi, and for forgetting his
son's name, and for descending into gibberish five times a speech,
week in and week out. Because the other guy is
the president of the United States and not insane, so
we hold him to a higher standard, and because the
news media of this nation is irreparably broken, and because
(08:47):
that opposition campaign has sixty one million dollars in AD
money to spend on making sure that everybody in this
country who's not giving Joe Biden to benefit of the
doubt or wasn't watching the news conference. Here's him calls
Zlenski putin. And after the debate, that benefit of the
doubt started to dry up, and as of last night
the wellbed had been pretty dry. I'm out of analogies here.
(09:09):
Maybe toothpaste in the well bed. There also remains the
unmistakable reality that the news conference last night was a
first step, and it should have been taken first, and
now instead it could easily be the last straw, because
ultimately this is not about Joe Biden doing the job.
It's about him winning the election. But one thought it
(09:32):
is possible that in that news conference are the seeds
of a way to keep President Biden on the ticket
and get him over the finish line. I have suggested
here previously that taped television interviews are useless, as was
the opening of the news conference where he read from
the teleprompter other than to let him toot his own
(09:53):
horn for a while. But live television interviews would not
be useless. Tell NBC the President will give Lester Holt
an hour, but it must be live, or it must
be a live town hall, or cancel the interview and
hold another news conference or a town hall or have
(10:14):
him just stop people on the street, live, live, live, Live.
Saturate the airwaves with Joe Biden Live, Joe Biden making
sense on foreign policy, making sense on jobs, making sense
on inflation, on democracy, on immigration, on guns, on Trump.
(10:35):
Flood the Zone with Joe Biden Live every week. Last
night he did something extraordinary, something I flatly thought impossible
until I saw it, and I wish I would not
have believed if I had merely heard an account of it.
Keep doing that. Bring him back once a week, hell twice.
(10:55):
If you can get people to carry it, put them
on live so often that he begins to bore voters
to tears. All right, all right, I'll vote for you.
Get off my television. Lost in our attempt to fathom
how the idiots and haters of this country not just
stand Trump but love Trump is the simplicity of what
(11:17):
he means to them. He is a television show. Virtually
every Saturday for two years, he has gone somewhere and
in front of a raucous crowd, presented this bizarre cross
between an hour of he Haw and a Hitler rally.
It's always there, always talking, always soothing the people whose
(11:39):
lives are failures, and need somebody else to blame. But
mostly he's just there like McDonald's. Well, maybe Biden can
be that for the rest of the nation. Maybe that
is the lesson the last night. It is sad, and
as a sixty five year old man, it is terrifying
(12:01):
for me to contemplate that I will be there soon
enough to remember the harshness of my own words. But America,
especially our underinformed voters, will in fact choose the crazy
old man yelling at the cloud over the sane old
man who's whispering at the wind. It is cruel, It
is the opposite of their best interests. That don't make
(12:24):
it any less true, because, as I have said for
two weeks, the worst place in the world for the
hopes of this country and this humanity is where we
are in the middle, as forces on both sides of
this heart rending uncertainty gather strength and will and resoluteness,
and even gather anti Harris polling leaked by the Biden
campaign in as irrational a political decision as I've ever seen,
(12:51):
do we give Joe Biden a week to fight his
way completely back to put the rest of the toothpaste
in the tube? He said, if they show him data
that shows he cannot beat Trump, he'll go. He said
his delegates can vote for somebody else in August at
the convention. And I know he conditioned on a lot
of other factors, but can you imagine anybody else saying
that ever in American history? And then, by the way,
(13:12):
segueing back to the complicated history between Japan and South
Korea again, this is not an unquestioned endorsement of the
continued candidacy of Joe Biden. I have reached the conclusion
after two years of doing this podcast, and after the
(13:35):
two weeks since the debate, in which I have thought
about nothing else, that if Joe Biden's age were not
part of this campaign, and Joe Biden's gaffes were not
part of this campaign, and the efforts to shield Joe
Biden from risky situations were not part of this campaign,
all of the spotlights, the justifiable spotlights, and the media
creation spotlights would turn entirely on Trump. The media would
(13:59):
be full time hunting Trump. I'm not an idiot. I
don't think Vice President Harris or President Harris would sail
untouched through an unprecedented replacement campaign. But I do think
she would get nearly all of the independent voters, and
I do think she would get nearly all of the
so called double haters. And I do think she would
(14:20):
every day speaking, not speaking, smiling, not smiling, tooth pasting
or not tooth pasting, she would remind every American that
Trump is a dangerous, psychopathic, unstable old man. Trump's candidacy
I think is viable, plausible, not inherently ridiculous, largely because
(14:40):
Joe Biden blunts much of the shock each day that
Trump should inflict but does not. The number of things
that we cannot now say about Trump, the number of
things that would in Biden's absence occur to our vast
under informed demographic who will actually decide this election, would
be enormous. The oxygen supply for Trump the other thing
(15:02):
we can't conceive. He can point to Joe Biden and
say to his supporters and say, I'm not old, he's old,
I'm not unreliable. He's unreliable. No Biden, and that vanishes,
not vanishing from Trump. He will continue to say those things,
(15:24):
and now he would say new and racist things as well.
But the ability to point at President Biden and score
both sides ist, what about his points By merely noting
Biden's age, or his infirmity or his struggles, that would
be gone. That enticing scenario remains. And the other problem
(15:45):
that isn't going away is about those around the president.
After the news conference yesterday and the news stories yesterday,
there's no immediate need to test Joe Biden's acuity, but
there certainly are reasons to test his staff sanity. The
ABC Washington Post poll yesterday that showed fifty seven percent
of Democrats want the president to drop out actually buried
(16:05):
the lead from the poll. It also polled a Trump
Kamala Harris matchup. She leads that forty nine to forty seven.
Trump and Biden are tied at forty six, and those
poll numbers would be Vice President Harris's start, not her finish.
But a campaign staff memo leaked to The New York
Times from the Biden campaign chairman and manager insists that
(16:28):
for the president there is quote clear pathway ahead and
then goes in a dark direction quote. There is also
no indication that anyone else would outperform the president versus Trump.
Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and
surveys do not take into account the negative media environment
(16:48):
that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate
for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
That there is mud slinging by implication against the vice
president by those around the president is bad enough. What's
worse is that those conclusions are ridiculous. After Trump's convictions,
the President had finally taken the lead in the polling averages.
(17:12):
He was on the upswing nationally, he was on the
upswing in every swing state, and now this tie in
the post ABC poll is the best result since the debate.
Most polls have Biden trailing by three or four or
five points and hemorrhaging support in the swing states. It
is not baked in. To continue the analogy, there is
(17:33):
a lot more of it in the oven, and the
goddamned oven may also be on fire. There were also
three other sets of other leaks yesterday, one to NBC
attributed to campaign staffers saying they see no path for
a Biden victory and he should drop out. One to
The New York Times, attributed to longtime aids and advisors
saying they are seeking ways to convince him to drop out,
(17:55):
and a third to the nonprofit Notice News, saying that
the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus covers up
several members who believe he needs to step down but
aren't saying it so they can say they're unanimous. The
senators at the meeting with Biden staffers say they were
provided no new data yesterday, no polling, no new information.
(18:18):
One Democratic senator has now called for Biden to step aside.
Fourteen Democratic members of Congress have done the same, including
the contrarian Marie Glusen camp Perez, and she says the
President should also resign his office. And then there were
the radio interviews. The White House provided questions to WURD
(18:40):
in Philadelphia before it interviewed President Biden, and to the
Civic Media Progressive Radio Network in Wisconsin. The Philadelphia station
has already parted ways with its host, who went along
with this manipulation. Now the Wisconsin outlet is revealing that
after their interview with the questions, President Biden certainly were
considered ready for the campaign, was concerned that he had
(19:03):
made a factual error in one answer and made an
unfortunate reference to hanging in another answer, and they asked
the network to edit those answers down, and it complied.
The New York Times and yes, their editorial choices have
damaged their reputation beyond repair. The solution here maybe to
replace The New York Times with Kamala Harris. The New
(19:25):
York Times actually then did some decent gum shoe reporting.
It went and looked for more instances of this. It
cited two interviews on the same day before the State
of the Union in March, in which Biden was asked,
first by a radio host in Charlotte, quote if he
would list his accomplishments, say why he had decided to
run for a second term, and explain what was its
(19:45):
stake for black voters in the election. And then same
day he was asked by a radio host in Dallas,
quote if he would list his accomplishments, say why he
had decided to run for a second term, and explain
what was at stake for black voters in the election.
And The Times found repeated instances in which, quoting them again,
the president has been served up identical questions, pre screened
(20:07):
or suggested ahead of time by campaign staff members, and
in nearly every case, the questions set the president up
to deliver on message talking points without notable flubs. The
ethics of this are atrocious and stupid. How could they
not know this would come out? The people around Biden
(20:30):
who did that can destroy him. Yet, so to me,
the first step now is he needs new people making
these decisions. Maybe he could do a live news conference
about it, about new people to make his decisions. Just
keep him talking every week forty five minutes any topic,
because he still has got it. They just haven't let
(20:52):
him show it off. And I might circle back to
the beginning of this and add that after several years
of things like the other guy calling himself me, they
actually management at MSNBC, that is, told me that it
was now my choice. I could anchor the elections and
primaries solo going forward, or we could keep the other
(21:15):
guy as my co anchor. And I said keep him.
I mean, other than those gaffes, he really knows his stuff.
And man, those gafs are really funny. You guys ever
thought of trying to get them sponsored by advertisers? Also
(21:38):
of interest here, of course, if I invoke Chris Matthews,
there must be a Chuck Todd story. Well, who could
make the Biden situation worse. Who could suck the humanity
out of it, the tragedy even and try to make
Biden look petty and selfish and merely wind up doing
that only to himself. Who the hell do you think
(21:59):
could do that, Chuck Todd, That's who. That's next countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Oldwoman. Presidents may rise and fall,
(22:33):
but there are always new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, the
brons worse. Chuck Todd still lurking over in the basement
at NBC News. He still goes to work even after
(22:54):
they fired his ass or meet the press. And I
know this might be seen as somewhat hypocritical of me,
giving what my open commentary was, but still, Chuck Todd sucks.
Listen to this clip from his podcast about the president's
decision to stay in the race.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
It has made me want to rethink a lot of
the Biden biography. I still can't believe he ran for
president in the first place, given that his family was
in crisis in twenty eighteen. That you look at what
has happened. I can't believe he put his family through
this and now looking at his behavior now and clinging
to this, I you know, I think the entire narrative
(23:34):
on Joe Biden is going to change, and that he
was he's always been. Everything has been about his ambition,
and his ambition comes first.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
This isn't bad enough that Chuck doesn't have to project
his own failures, his own selfishness on a man who's
actually served this nation. Chuck Todd is a bitter and
broken man. The runner up, and yes, these last two
would be in the matter of comic relief, wors sir.
The Toronto newspaper, the Globe and Mail, proving again the
(24:03):
value of sentence construction and the placement of commas and
semi colons and all that kind of stuff. Right there
there was a picture of the cargo ship the Dolly,
knocking down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor,
with crumpled girders sitting on its bow. The headline that
the Globe and Mail added, Baltimore Bridge collapse. Survivor recounts
(24:26):
fighting for his life in NBC interview After this week,
I think we all know how that poor NBC interviewee
felt Paul's fighting for his life in an NBC interview.
But our winner, the worst Congresswoman Lauren Bobert, caught on
May twelfth. It turns out Mother's Day doing eighty four
(24:48):
in a sixty five mile an hour zone by the
Colorado State Patrol at Vale Pass. They gave her a
speeding ticket, told her to pay one hundred and seventy
four dollars and fifty cents, and she was supposed to
pay it by July third, and guess what she didn't
a scoff law. She now has a court appearance scheduled
for July twenty sixth. Well, I'm just going to assume
(25:09):
here that she at that court appearance will be explaining
to the judge that the speeding was accidental because she
isn't good at handling a stick. Lauren Bobert, get a grip.
Two Day's worst person in the world.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
That's here it for the ball. Let's get the boy.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Fridays with Thurber and the Works of the Master, and
one I have not read to you here before but
is one of my favorites because it is well you'll
Fridays with Thurber and the Macbeth Murder Mystery by James Thurber.
It was a stupid mistake to make, said the American woman.
(26:15):
I had met at my hotel in the English Lake Country.
But it was on the counter with the other Penguin books,
the little sixpenny ones, you know, with the paper covers,
and I supposed, of course it was a detective story.
All the others were detective stories. I'd read all the others,
so I bought this one without really looking at it carefully.
You can imagine how mad I was when I found
(26:36):
it was Shakespeare. I murmured something sympathetically. I don't see
why the Penguin Books people had to get out Shakespeare's
plays in the same size and everything as the detective stories.
Went on. My companion, I think they have different colored jackets,
I said, well, I didn't notice that, she said. Anyway,
(26:58):
I got real comfy in bed that night and all
ready to read a good mystery story. And here I
had the track. If Macbeth a book for high school students,
like like ivan Hoe or Lorna Doone, I said, exactly,
said the American lady. And I was just crazy for
(27:18):
a good Agatha Christie or something. Ercule Poirot is my
favorite detective. Is he the Rabbity one, I asked, Oh, no,
said my crime fiction expert. He's the Belgian one you're
thinking of, mister Pinkerton, the one that helps Inspector Bull.
He's good too. Over her second cup of tea, my
(27:39):
companion began to tell me the plot of a detective
story that had fooled her completely. It seems it was
the old family doctor all the time. But I cut
in on her. Tell me, I said, did you read Macbeth?
I had to read it, She said, there wasn't a
scrap of anything else to read in the whole room.
(28:02):
Did you like it, I asked, No, I did not,
She said decisively in the first place, I don't think
for a moment that Macbeth did it. I looked at
her blankly. Did what I asked? I don't think for
a moment that he killed the king? She said, I
(28:24):
don't think the Macbeth woman was mixed up in it either.
You suspect them the most, of course, but those are
the ones that are never guilty, or shouldn't be anyway.
I'm afraid I began that I but don't you see,
said the American lady. It would spoil everything if you
could figure out right away who did it. Shakespeare was
too smart for that. I've read that people never have
(28:46):
figured out Hamlet, so it isn't likely Shakespeare would have
made Macbeth as simple as it seems. I thought this
over while I filled my pipe. Who do you suspect?
I asked suddenly, Macduff, she said promptly. Good God, I
(29:08):
whispered softly. Oh McDuff did it all right, said the
murder specialist. Erkuo Paro would have gotten him easily. How
did you figure it out? I demanded, Well, she said
I didn't right away. First I suspected Banquo, and then
of course he was the second person killed. That was
good right in there that part. The person you suspect
(29:30):
of the first murder should always be the second victim.
Is that so, I murmured. Oh, yes, said my informant.
They had to keep surprising you well after the second murder.
I didn't know who the killer was for a while. Uh.
How about Malcolm and Donald Bain, the King's sons, I asked,
(29:51):
as I remember it, they fled right after the first murder.
That looks suspicious. Too suspicious, said the American lady, much
too suspicious. When they flee, they're never guilty. You can
count that, I believe. I said, I'll have a brandy,
and I summoned the waiter. My companion leaned toward me,
(30:14):
her eyes bright, her teacup quivering. Do you know who
discovered Duncan's body? She demanded? I said, I was sorry,
but I had forgotten McDuff discovers it, she said, slipping
into the historical present. Then he comes running downstairs and shouts,
confusion has broke open the Lord's anointed temple, and sacrilegious
(30:37):
murder has made his masterpiece, and on and on like that.
The good lady tapped me on the knee. All that
stuff was rehearsed. She said, you wouldn't say a lot
of stuff like that offhand, would you, if you'd found
a body. She fixed me with a glittering eye. I began,
you're right, She said, you wouldn't unless you had practiced
(31:00):
it in advance. My god, there's a body in here
is what an innocent man would say. She sat back
with a confident glare. I thought, for a while, but
what do you make of the third murderer, I asked,
You know the third murderer has puzzled Macbeth's scholars for
(31:21):
three hundred years. That's because they never thought of McDuff,
said the American lady. It was McDuff. I'm certain you
couldn't have one of the victims murdered by two ordinary thugs.
The murderer always has to be somebody important. But what
about the banquet scene, I asked, after a moment, how
do you account for Macbeth's guilty actions there when Banquo's
(31:43):
ghosts came in and sat in his chair. The lady
leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There
wasn't any ghost, she said. A big strong man like
that doesn't go around seeing ghosts, especially in a brightly
lighted banquet hall with dozens of people around. Macbeth was
shielding somebody. Who was he shielding, I asked, missus Macbeth.
(32:10):
Of course, she said, he thought she did it, and
he was going to take the rap himself. The husband
always does that when the wife is suspected. But what
I demanded about the sleepwalking scene, then the same thing,
only the other way around, said my companion. That time
she was shielding him. She wasn't asleep at all. Do
(32:33):
you remember where it says enter lady Macbeth with a taper? Yes,
I said, Well, people who walk in their sleep never
carry lights, said my fellow traveler. They have a second sight.
Did you ever hear of a sleepwalker carrying a light? No,
I said, I never did. Well, then she wasn't asleep.
(32:54):
She was acting guilty to shield Macbeth. I think, I said,
I'll have another brandy, and I called the waiter. When
he brought it, I drank it rapidly and rose to go.
I believe I said that you have got hold of something.
Would you lend me that? Macbeth. I'd like to look
(33:15):
it over tonight. I don't feel somehow as if I've
ever really read it. I'll get it for you, she said,
but you'll find that I'm right. I read the play
over carefully that night, and the next morning, after breakfast,
I sought out the American woman. She was on the
putting green, and I came up behind her silently and
(33:36):
took her arm. She gave an exclamation. Could I see
you alone? I asked in a low voice. She nodded
cautiously and followed me to a secluded spot. You've found
out something, she breathed. I've found out, I said, triumphantly,
the name of the murderer. You mean it wasn't McDuff,
(33:57):
She said. McDuff is as innocent of those murders, I said,
as Macbeth and the Macbeth woman. I opened the copy
of the play which I had with me, and turned
to act too seem to hear, I said, you will
see where Lady Macbeth says, I laid their daggers ready.
(34:19):
He could not miss him. Had he not resembled my
father as he slept, I had done it. Do you
see no, said the American woman bluntly. I don't. But
it's simple, I exclaimed. I wonder I didn't see it
years ago. The reason Duncan resembled Lady Macbeth's father as
(34:42):
he slept is that it actually was her father. Good God,
breathed my companion softly. Lady Macbeth's father killed the king,
I said, and, hearing someone coming, thrust the body under
the bed and crawled into the bed himself. But said
(35:03):
the lady, you can't have a murder who only appears
in the story once. You can't have that I know that,
I said, and I turned to Act two, Scene four.
It says, here enter Ross with an old man. Now
that old man is never identified, and it is my
contention that he was old mister Macbeth, whose ambition it
(35:24):
was to make his daughter queen. There you'll have your motive.
But even then, cried the American lady, he's still a
minor character, not, I said, gleefully when you realize that
he was also one of the weird sisters in disguise.
You mean, one of those three witches. Precisely, I said,
(35:46):
listen to this speech of the old man's. On Tuesday last,
a falcon towering in her pride of place was by
a mousing owl, hawked at and killed. Who does that
sound like? It sounds like the way the three witches talk,
said my companion reluctantly. Precisely, I said, again, Well, said
(36:08):
the American woman. Maybe you're right, but I'm sure I am,
I said. And do you know what I'm going to
do now? No, she said, what buy a copy of Hamlet?
I said, and solve that. My companion's eyes brightened. Then
she said, you don't think Hamlet did it? I am?
(36:32):
I said, absolutely positive, he did not, but who she demanded,
who do you suspect? I looked at her cryptically, everybody,
I said, and disappeared into a small grove of trees
as silently as I had come. The Macbeth Murder Mystery
(36:58):
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
do here. Thank you for listening. Maybe by Tuesday I'll
figured this out. Probably not. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray
(37:22):
and John Phillip Schanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy
of ESPN inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
(37:45):
by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium morganist ever our
announcer today is my friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
one hundred and seventeenth day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election. Now, wouldn't it be funny if over the
weekend Trump dropped out or was dropped out. It's also
(38:08):
the eighty second day since convicted felon Donald J. Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the
mental health system, mister president, you've got it. Use presidential
immunity against Trump to stop him from doing it again
(38:30):
while we still can put the toothpaste back in his tube.
You know what I mean. The next scheduled countdown he
is Tuesday bulletins is the news requires till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. I'm going to go think good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(39:10):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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