September 26, 2023 • 50 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 42: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Now we get the just-before-midnight answer to the Gag Order request, as insane as anything else since Friday, written not for legal purposes but to please Trump. Quote: “the proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls. Keenly aware that it is losing that race for 2024, the prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump’s (but not President Biden’s) political speech on pain of contempt)." Trump’s ambulance chasers slipstream behind his threats against NBC, referring to “President Biden and his surrogates (including those in the corporate media.” They dance along the lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses because quote “no witness has suggested that he or she will not testify because of anything president Trump has said.”
It is impossible to believe their rhetoric will have any impact on Judge Chutkan. It doesn’t have to. It was written so Trump could get excited by it. Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer.
And the late response was only the last of a string of insane moments by Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday - ten days after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when he was legally ineligible to do so… Trump in South Carolina bought a gun or tried to, when he was legally ineligible to do so.
And all THAT followed worse. Under 18 US Code 4241 a prosecutor can request that the judge order that the defendant must undergo a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if he’s competent to stand trial and unable to aid in his own defense and when it is proved that he isn’t, the judge can order him institutionalized and Jack Smith should make the request and Judge Chutkan should grant it because in the 72 hours before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against issuing a gag order on him as they did with exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight eastern last night after he’d threatened the court and tried to poison the jury pool, Trump demanded that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed, insisted NBC News was guilty of something he made up called “Country Threatening Treason” because it had published a poll about him that he didn’t like, promised that as president he would make it and other news organizations “pay a big price,” and argued that the homes of all Democratic Senators be raided just cause, and bought a gun or tried to, and conflated the Bush Brothers and I don’t mean Billy.
B-Block (22:45) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS (28:08): The gold bars are funny but isn't the issue with Senator Menendez the, you know, spying? Fox News was kind enough to just disprove the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/Burisma phony story. And after she gets 35,000 people to register to vote in one day, a GOP propaganda site attacks... Taylor Swift? AND her fans? THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (28:08): Congresswoman Sage Steele? The district they want her to run in wraps around but excludes the ESPN campus. Last year the Congressman won a Family Award. This year his missus says he's abandoned his family. And Kathleen Parker, who infamously wrote it'd be ok even if Trump won, tops herself: insisting Trump is "well-dressed."
C-Block (33:25) THE FINAL WORDS ON DAVID BROOKS AND HIS $78 WHISKEYBURGER TWEET. Obviously, whose words would be better to use, than Brooks' own?
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Mark as Played
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. Under
eighteen US Code four to two four one, a prosecutor
(00:25):
can request that the judge order the defendant undergo a
psych eval a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if
he is confident to stand trial or unable to aid
in his own defense, and when it is proved that
he is not, the judge can then order him institutionalized.
And Jack Smith should make that request and Judge Tanya
(00:46):
Chutkin should grant it, because in the seventy two hours
before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against
issuing a gag order against him, as they did with
exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight Eastern last night,
after he'd threatened the court and tried to poison the
jury pool. In that last seventy two hours, Trump demanded
(01:07):
that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed,
insisted that NBC News was guilty of something he had
made up called country threatening treason because it published a
poll about him that he didn't like, promised that as president,
he would make NBC and other news organizations quote pay
a big price, and argued that the homes of all
(01:28):
Democratic senators be rated just because he bought a gun
or tried to, and he conflated the Bush brothers and
I don't mean Billy. Then came the just before midnight
answer to the gag order request, as insane as anything
else since Friday of last week, written not for legal
(01:48):
purposes but to please and arouse Donald Trump. Quote, the
proposed gag order is nothing more than an obvious attempt
by the Biden administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent
political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in
the polls keenly aware that it is losing that race
for twenty twenty four. The prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump's,
(02:13):
but not President Biden's political speech, on pain of contempt.
Trump's ambulance chasers slip streamed behind his threats against NBC.
Referring in the document to President Biden and his surrogates,
including those in the corporate media, they dance along the
lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses,
(02:35):
they say, because quote, no witness has suggested that he
or she will not testify because of anything. President Trump
has said. It is impossible to believe that their rhetoric
will have any impact on Judge Chutkin. It doesn't have to.
This was written so Trump could get aroused by it.
Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer, and that late
(02:58):
response was only the last of a string of insane
moments from Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday, ten days
after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when
he was legally ineligible to do so, Trump, in South
Carolina bought a gun or tried to when he was
legally ineligible to do so. That audio tweeted with video
(03:34):
by his spokesman Stephen Chung, who wrote, President Trump purchases
a glock in South Carolina exclamation point, which would be
an inarguable violation of Trump's bail. You cannot buy a
gun while under felony indictment. You do it, you do it,
bail is revoked, You go inside. Chung deleted the tweet,
(03:56):
denied the purchase was completed. It will now have to
be investigated, and then Trump went on to continue his
mental deterioration personal tour. He has already warned Biden may
start World War two. He claimed he ran against Obama
in twenty sixteen, and now in Iowa. He has decided
that George W. Bush and Jeb Bush were the same person,
(04:19):
and after two terms as president, they came back to
run against him seeking a third term. In the Iowa
primary of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win.
And then they took a poll and they found out
Trump was up by about fifty points Sevenone said, what's
going on right here? They thought Bush, because Bush supposedly
was a military persaid, great, you know what he was?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
All?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
He got us into the he got us into the
Middle East. I did that workout right? But they all
thought that Bush might win. Jeb, remember Jeb he is
he is the word Jeb. He didn't use the word Bush.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I said, you mean Trump is not mentally competent. And
we have been tiptoeing around this obvious fact for the
last eight years, in fact, probably for the last seventy
five years. So while this reality that his occasional bouts
of scene i mean clarity are in fact just careful
and skilled impersonations of human behavior. While that is nothing new,
(05:12):
the patience of a nation has been exhausted. The window
is closing, during which we might yet roll back Trump's
introduction of violence and the threat of violence as components
of our political ecosystem, as common as bribing Clarence Thomas
or making up stories about letterboxes and grammar schools. And
all legal measures available to defeat him, destroy him, remove him,
(05:36):
and send his cultists scurrying back into their sewers must
be utilized before the gates slam shut, and we turn
the United States of America permanently over to a lunatic
with the soul of a terrorist and the conscience of
a mass murderer, who is also now bent on universal retribution.
Trump is insane. He is more than likely criminally insane.
(06:01):
His mental stability is clearly declining now from weak too,
and it's not like he started the year with very
much of it left in the first place. Every single day,
judges institutionalize people far less dangerous to others who have
made far fewer threats or issued carefully phrased stochastic calls
(06:21):
for violence and public disorder every day, and now one
of them must institutionalize him. You cannot metaphorically stand before
a crowd of violent, armed thugs who have proved again
and again that they await your commands and say of
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he
(06:42):
has committed quote, an act so egregious that in times
gone by, the punishment would have been death. You can't
do that, nor should Trump be allowed to do that.
More practically, there is every reason to believe that General
Millie is on the witness list in both federal cases
against Trump, and Trump's threats by proxy against him are
(07:04):
an other direct violation of the terms under which Judge
Trutkin granted him bail in the election fraud trial in
Washington and the terms under which Judge Cannon granted him
bail in the classified documents trial in Florida. Milly was
a witness before the January sixth Committee. He testified Trump
had privately admitted he had lost the election, an essential
(07:25):
element of Jack Smith's case in Washington, and it was
Milly's iran document which Trump waved around to Liz Harrington
and Mark Meadow's publishers in what became the thirty second
count against Trump in the indictment in Florida. Trump has
directly threatened a witness directly in times gone by, the
(07:47):
punishment would have been death. It's not just poisoning the
jury pool. It is a call to kill a witness
who may testify against him. Al Capone would have cleaned
this up. And the witness happens to be chairman of
the joints chiefs of Staff. There are no circumstances in
(08:09):
which such a threat can be tolerated by this country. However,
lame the arguments Trump's lawyers made against a gag order. Yesterday.
Jack Smith's answer is due by Saturday, and it should
be He named one of the witnesses and suggested that
the witness should be punished by death. A gag order
is now insufficient. You must revoke his veil and detain him.
(08:33):
And by the way, he's clearly not competent to aid
in his own defense at trial, and he is a
manifest danger to the lives of this witness and all
the other witnesses, and yourself your honor. So under code
four two four one, I request a pre trial competency test.
Hell Smith can just write, damn straight, you should grant
(08:55):
a gag order. Literally, put a gag in his mouth
and put him in a straight jacket. Whatever. We cannot
normalize Trump's behavior any longer, and we cannot promit Trump's
behavior anymore. And in the tragedy unfolding in the background,
the most obvious barometer of how sick a society is.
(09:16):
It is at the flashing red alert stage of dangerous
sick normalization of Trump and his murderous, psychotic threats. Because
on Friday night, Donald Trump threatens the life of the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the witness against him,
Mark Milly. And on Monday morning, CNN publishes an article
headlined Mark Milly leaves a controversial legacy as America's top general,
(09:40):
and Politico headlines its coverage in its morning newsletter of
Trump's attempt to talk to somebody as crazy as he
is into killing Mark Milly quote speaking of threats, and
Politico devotes exactly eleven lines to it, while it gives
twenty three lines to letting us know the really important
news from Washington, the thirty five members of the media
(10:02):
political complex whose birthday it was? And then Mike Allen
and Axios somehow do even worse for its newsletter. Its headline,
forty eight hours after Trump's threat against Millie was Trump
dodges threat. No, I'm not making that up. Trump dodges threat,
(10:23):
referring to Axios's inexplicable conclusion that Trump does not have
to worry about the fourteenth Amendment anymore because several state
secretaries of State are saying they will not use it
to keep the murderous psychopath off the ballot. They will
let the juries do that if the juries want to.
Mike Allen, john Harris, Daphnel Lindzer, sarahgu Nick Johnson, when
(10:45):
Trump writes, I say upfront, openly and proudly that when
I win the presidency of the United States, they and
others of the lame stream media will be thoroughly scrutinized
for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things,
and events. Who the hell do you think he's threatening?
Just the Times in the post. They are a true
(11:07):
threat to democracy and are in fact the enemy of
the people. Don't worry, He's only talking about Mother Jones there.
The fake news media should pay a big price for
what they have done to our once great country. Now
that's unfortunate, but happily he's just mad at NBC and ABC.
We here at Politico and Axios, We'll be fine. We
(11:29):
publish those devastating analysis of how weak the resistance was.
And of course, Mike led his email by attacking the
fourteenth Amendment, and he and Trump had burgers together once
we're on his good side. In the bursts of violence,
vengeance fantasies that dance across the cesspool of his brain.
(11:51):
As he composes these nightmarish posts, Trump envisions crowds dragging you,
Mike Allen and the others dragging you out of your office.
This is buy your feet and killing you, killing you,
or if he's in a good mood, just having the
(12:14):
crowds take you to some camp where you will find
already behind bars me and oh, by the way, saysar
Conde from NBC, and President Kim Godwin from ABC, and
Chuck Todd and Kristin Welker. And here's the best case
scenario for you, guys. You'll have to listen to me
screaming I told you so between our respective trips to
(12:37):
the torture block, because two weeks ago, I guarantee you
that more than one person inside the surprisingly nondescript executive
offices of NBC News beamed at the thought that not
only would a Trump interview guarantee Kristin Welker a terrific
debut number as the host to meet the press. But
it would get NBC back in the good graces of
(13:00):
Trump and secure a debate and maybe, just maybe a
republic primary debate, to say nothing of the advantages if
Trump were to regain the White House. And one week
and ten hours after they platformed him and softballed him
and did in fact check him in real time, he
called them the enemy of the people in all caps,
(13:23):
guilty of country, threatening treason. Nice work, Kristen Welker. And
of course, the craziest thing about Trump's explosion against NBC,
as if we really had to pict just one craziest
thing was the assumption that when he threatened them, it
(13:45):
meant NBC had to be working on some really devastating
new story about Trump or was about to drop something
new and explosive, and everybody missed the reality of the thing.
Trump was angry about NBC's whole from Sunday. That's it.
There's no NBC scoop coming. Trump didn't get wind of anything.
(14:10):
He's not attacking them before they can attack him. The
NBC poll story began three quarters of voters say they're
concerned about President Joe Biden's age and mental fitness. But
Trump didn't notice that. He noticed the next half of
the same first sentence quote, while nearly two thirds are
concerned about the multiple trials former President Donald Trump faces,
(14:35):
and he noticed forty seven percent have either major concerns
thirty four percent or moderate concerns thirteen percent about Trump,
at age seventy seven, not having the necessary mental and
physical health to be president. That is the country threatening
treason that Trump referred to to merely acknowledge that people
(15:00):
are concerned about Trump's mental health. And by the way,
the accurate number is six major, moderate, or minor concerns.
NBC shaved the number to make Trump look better because
they're not going to let their dividends drop when this
country goes fascist. No Surrey Bob a poll. Trump went
ballistic about a pole. If you think I'm mistaken, His
(15:23):
attack on NBC and MSNBC was posted at seven point
fifty three pm Eastern on Sunday. At nine to fifty
pm Eastern on Sunday, he gave it away. He attacked
ABC about its pole, which showed him up by ten points,
but they didn't mention the ten points enough to satisfy
Trump's unquenchable need for validation. Quote, they spend millions of
(15:47):
dollars on these poles, and then if the result isn't
what they wanted to be, refused to properly report the results.
What is properly? It's whatever underlines Trump is as he
is so often and so pathetically refers to himself, your
favorite president, me, And who decides whether it is or
(16:11):
isn't properly. You already know the answer to that one.
He's insane. He's declared his desire to get Mark Milly killed.
And Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania because voting is Marxist, and
Letitia James and Judge Engern of New York we went
after yesterday afternoon, mostly because they said he had less
(16:33):
money than he says he has. And the people at
NBC News and the people at ABC News and CBS
and Fox and Politico and Axios and anybody who thwarts him,
and anybody who disagrees with him, and anybody who points
out that when he tells the striking auto workers quote,
I will keep your jobs and make you rich, he
sounds like the text content of an email from another
(16:56):
human being, who, like Trump himself, does not actually exist,
the proverbial fictional Nigerian prince. He threatened by proxy to
get the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff killed.
He threatened directly to punish the news media NBC and
ABC in particular. He demanded the Republican Party shut down
(17:18):
the government because he is under the delusion that that
will shut down the Office of the Special Council. He
bought a gun while under felony indictment. There are witnesses,
there is video, There is a tweet from his spokesman.
Revoke his bail, send the marshals, let the chips fall
(17:38):
where they may, and if there is a gag order,
go ahead, make it a literal one. Put a goddamned
gag in his mouth and put him in a straitjacket
where he belongs. We have a fascist takeover to stave off.
And this guy is the fascist. Oh, by the way.
(18:02):
Cassidy Hutchinson's first life lawyer Trump's ambulance chaser Stefan Pasentino.
He has sued the lawyer and talking head Andrew Weissman
for libel assault by talking mean slander for claiming Pasentino
coached Hutchinson July to the January sixth committee. And it's
(18:25):
hilarious enough that the minimum amount that he wants for
damage to his reputation is seventy five thousand dollars. And
who thinks it's a good idea for anybody to tell
the world that his own reputation is only worth seventy
five thousand dollars. But now on top of that, for
Stefan Pasentino comes the d Umont Stephan. Pasentino's suit against
(18:47):
Andrew Weisman has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkin. Also
of interest here on an all new edition of Countdown,
Fox News just proved there is no Ukraine case against
President Biden. Republicans cleverly attack Taylor Swift and her fans.
And if you thought we were all done roasting David
(19:11):
Brooks for the airport burger tweet, I'm not done. I'm
going to let David Brooks destroy himself with his own words.
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Overman.
(19:36):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Union City, New Jersey. I don't know
about you. I'm kind of indifferent to the money part
of the Bob Menendez scandal. In fact, the idea that
he took gold bars is kind of epic. See. My
problem is that the senator from this vantage point sure
(19:57):
seems like he was what's the word spying for what's
the word EGYPTI chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, may
have been tipping them off about what questions the Senate
would be asking about the Egyptian part of the murder
of Jamal Kashagi. And maybe when they arragn him tomorrow,
(20:19):
you know, if he was supplying information to another country
sensitive American information, confidential information, maybe he should not be
released on bail. Also, the idea that you keep, in
the event of emergencies four hundred and eighty thousand dollars
in cash around the house, with drawn a little bit
(20:41):
at a time, over the course of seven or eight centuries,
I guess, I mean, what were the emergencies? Oh right,
getting arrested for accepting bribes? Duh, I'm sorry, were those, Bob?
Were those emergency gold bars too? I mean, as opposed
to a regular stash of gold bars that you kept
(21:04):
in a bank or a fort or somewhere. Thank you,
(21:36):
Nancy Faust smooth criminal indeed dateline sixth Avenue, New York.
Some more of them. Fox really screwed up, really screwed up.
Ryan Kilmead put on the fired Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Chokun,
who claims he was fired when then Vice President Biden
demanded it because Chokun was getting too close to Hunter. Biden,
(21:57):
you know, all the crap that was disproved seven years ago,
seven years before Trump bought a gun under exactly the
same circumstances as Hunter. Oops. Instead of doing that, just
sticking with that, having the bullshit interview on, they then
had kill Mead interview the former president of Ukraine Petro
Poroshenko for reaction, and President Poroshenko called Victor Choken quote
(22:21):
a completely crazy person and added there's something wrong with him.
And then at the end, kill Mead asks Poroshenko Choken
didn't get fired because of Joe Biden, and Paroshenko answered
he was fired because of his own statement, and kill
Mead hurriedly says, all right, mister president, thanks so much.
(22:42):
I have to go. My uh grandmother is on fire.
All right. I made the last part up about the grandmother,
but it is an absolute shock that Fox did not
fire Brian Killmead or the producer after that segment. Just
play the tape on a loop the next time somebody
asks about Hunter Biden, like Jim Jordan and Dateline Washington.
(23:09):
A week ago today, on National Voting Day, Taylor Swift
posted a message encouraging people to register to vote at
the nonpartisan vote dot org, and thirty five thousand people
registered to vote. She could decide the presidential election if
she wanted to or win it. So what appears on
(23:32):
the right wing site The Federalists yesterday, twenty six hundred
impenetrable words by Molly Hemingway's husband Mark, under the headline
Taylor Swift's popularity is a sign of societal decline. And
I'd love to tell you why this idiot decided to
represent the Republican Party as it attacked the most popular
(23:54):
entertainer in America and her fans. But all I got
out of reading this was something something me music, something something,
She's no Tom Petty. And just to add to the stupidity,
the article begins quote after Taylor's Swift's massive eras tour,
he misspelled Taylor. It reads Taylor Swift Tayr. Please everybody
(24:24):
on the right, please continue to attack Taylor Swift and
her fans every day and whenever you can remember to
misspell her name, still ahead on countdown. Instead of things,
(24:53):
I promise not to tell something a little different. Remember
the whole thing with David Brooks and the Newark Airport
and the whiskey and the other whiskey and the other
whiskey after that, and the seventy eight dollar burger. I'm
gonna let David Brooks metaphorically hang himself with his own words,
because here's the little secret about David Brooks in twenty
(25:14):
years of the New York Times, He's an idiot first
time for the daily round up of the miss Greens,
morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute two day's
worst persons in the world, besides David Brooks the Bronze.
When you sit there and you ask rhetorically, how could
this freaking timeline get any worse? And somewhere in the universe,
(25:37):
a god or an algorithm or something hears you say
that and says ha ha oh okay. Connecticut Republicans are
reportedly trying to recruit a former media figure to run
for the House of Representatives in the Connecticut fifth district
former SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele. The biggest news here is that,
(26:02):
when asked by the Indianapolis Star a new if this
were true, my least favorite co anchor this century anyway,
replied no comment on this, but I appreciate you asking.
This marks the first time Sage Steele has ever not
commented on anything. One note here, The Connecticut fifth Congressional
District is drawn really weirdly, even for a congressional district,
(26:26):
kind of like a rabbit standing on its head, Danbury
at the southwest corner, Avon at the northeast, New Britain,
and Plainville, Plainville, Connecticut at its southeast. But it wraps
around weirdly so that it does not include the ESPN
campus in Bristol, Connecticut, which is literally walking distance of Plainville, Connecticut.
(26:49):
But it's smart that they did that because she would
lose seventeen hundred to three there. The Connecticut fifth, however,
does include Palyachi's restaurant in Plainville on East Street. I
highly recommend it where the ESPN elite meet to eat
hunner up. This is the kind of house Republican. They
think that Sage Steele would fit in with Congressman Jeff
(27:10):
Duncan of the South Carolina fifth twenty twenty two winner
of the Friend of the Family Award from the Faith
and Freedom Coalition, and twenty months later, Missus Duncan, mother
of his three adult children, has filed on him, saying
he said multiple affairs and he moved out of the
house to go live with one of the Hussies. Duncan
is a member of the Freedom Caucus, and based on
(27:32):
how they've been doing lately, we now know what it's
freedom from Its freedom from personal responsibility and ethics. But
our winner Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post. As the
Post continues to cover itself in glory or cover itself
in something, you thought her famous column before the twenty
(27:52):
sixteen election insisting everything would be okay no matter who
was elected, was a career ender. Evidently not. Evidently she's
still writing for the Post. It's amazing you thought her
turn as co anchor of CNN's eight pm newscast might
have done it. Now she survived, although to be fair,
the CNN eight Pm Hour did not. Now Kathleen Parker
(28:14):
has joined this mindless assault on John Fetterman and the
relaxation of Senate dress rules. As little as I have
loved Republicans these past few years, she wrote, coinciding with
the rise of our own little autocrat. At least Donald
Trump knows how to dress. I can't imagine that even
he would demean his office or his country by dressing down.
(28:36):
What Donald Trump knows how to dress wouldn't dress in death.
What the baseball cap is. Knowing how to dress, the
cheap kind with a plastic extender in the back, spraying
rustolium gold number two four five two t one on
his hair is knowing how to dress. Wearing a tie
(28:56):
that hangs twelve inches below his belt so you don't
look at his gut. That's a that's knowing how to dress.
The rotating selection of thirty five suits that he bought
in bulk from Rochester, big and tall. I don't want
to go out on a limb here, but I'm beginning
to wonder maybe Kathleen Parker isn't qualified for her job.
(29:17):
Kathleen knows how to dress. Parker knows how to dress.
I've seen cadavers dug up by court orders. Six months
after burial that look better dressed than Trump has on
his best day two days, worst parker in the world.
(29:53):
Let's close with something different today. Instead of my favorite
topic me, I'd like to look instead at the favorite
topic of everybody else from the last week, the David
Brooks airport tweet. You know, this meal just cost me
seventy eight dollars at Newark Airport. This is why Americans
think the economy is terrible. And then there's a picture
of a burger fries, a lot of salad, two or
(30:18):
three hundred empty catchup packets, and what must have been
David Brooks's nineteenth Scotch. Let me note briefly that I
don't think of David Brooks the way most people seem to,
as that kind of passive, largely benign conservative who only
disgraces The New York Times every couple weeks and think
how much it could be worse than this. He's a
(30:39):
liar and a propagandist and a con man and a
bad writer, and the worst kind of each of those categories,
the unctuous suck up kind. He's in fact much more
dangerous than the other kind, because when he lies, as
he did in that tweet, unless he was drunk enough
to risk spontaneous combustion. Who did he think he would
(31:00):
be fooling with the idea that that costs seventy eight dollars?
He died to advance an agenda that the economy is
worsening rather than improving, despite Corporate America's manipulations to the contrary.
He lied like the columns are all lies. They may
be smooth, they may be stupid, they're full of lies.
(31:22):
And he has been doing this subtle, respectable face of
fascism crap at the New York Times for twenty years now.
I am indebted to the author of the Great Nixon
Land book, Rick Pearlstein, for pointing out the column that
got David Brooks his job at the Times more than
twenty years ago. It was in the Weekly Standard April
(31:43):
twenty eight, two thousand and three. And I'm not reading
the whole thing. It's three thousand words. He could have
written the same thing in about four hundred words. But
I'm going to read a lot of it because frankly,
it's so bad, it's so condescending, it's so wrong that
it should have been the end of a career, and
(32:04):
they should have I've built a monument to it. Don't
do what he did in this column. It should have
been the end of a career, not the entree to
The New York Times. The Collapse of the Dream Palaces
by David Brooks, April twenty eight, two thousand and three,
twelve zero zero Am, George Orwell was a genuinely modest man.
(32:30):
All right. I'm going to interrupt periodically here. His name
was Eric Blair. George Orwell was his pen name. That
was the name of the character who wrote the books.
In a manner of speaking. I understand it's clunky to
explain that in the first sentence, but saying George Orwell
was a genuinely modest man, well, no, there's no George Orwell.
(32:54):
It's like starting your very serious column on this subject
by saying Batman was a genuinely modest man. I knew him,
George W. Batman, all right. I said this was not
going to be about me. It was going to be
about David Brooks. But he knew he had a talent
for facing unpleasant facts. That doesn't seem at first glance
(33:16):
like much of a gift, but when one looks around
the world, one quickly sees how rare it is. Most
people nurture the facts that confirm their worldview and ignore
or marginalize the ones that don't, unable to achieve enough
emotional detachment from their own political passions to see the
world as it really is. Well, that's kind of a
(33:37):
good sentence because he's confessing. He's not confessing. Listen to
this again. April twenty eighth, two thousand and three. Now
that the war in Iraq is over, we'll find out
how many people around the world are capable of facing
unpleasant facts. This is after the mission accomplished. Crap, Now
(33:57):
that the war in Iraq is over. Yeah, you're wrong
on that by about two even nineteen years and eleven
months in twenty nine days. For the events of recent
months confirmed that millions of human beings are living in
dream palaces. There is the first dream palace of the Arabists.
In this dream palace, it is always the twelfth century,
(34:18):
and every Western incursion into the Middle East is a crusade.
The Americans are always invaders and occupiers. Yeah, David, two
thousand and three, I have this question for you, So
it's a one word question. Afghanistan. Then there is the
dream Palace of the Europeans. In this palace, America is
(34:39):
a bigger threat to world peace than Sodom Hussein. America
is the land of rotting cities, the electric chair, serial killers,
gun crazed hunters, shallow materialists, religious nuts, savage capitalists, the
oil lobby, the military industrial complex, and bloodthirsty cowboy presidents. Well,
I mean, that's the Trump administration there, except for the
(35:01):
cowboy president part. In this dream Palace, the Hollywood cliches
are taken to be real. George Bush really is Rambo,
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne rolled into one. Will we
see what happened to Clint Eastwood after this? John Wayne
was already dead. Rambo is a fictional character. American life
really is NYPD Blue and Baywatch, those cultural references held
(35:25):
up David In this dream Palace, Oliver Stone is as
trustworthy as the Washington Post. Michael Moore accurately depicts the
American soul. Doctor Strangelove is a textbook of American government,
and Noam Chomsky tells it like it is. You see
where he's going here. The point of this piece in
April two thousand and three was to insist that George
(35:46):
Bush was right and everybody else was wrong, and it
had been decided for all time. And now don't you
feel stupid? April two thousand and three, we already knew
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. David
Brooks was pretending it was proof. Case closed seventy eight
dollars Scotchenburger. Finally, there is the dream Palace of the
(36:07):
American Bush haters. Oh hi, this is my part of
the article. Huh. In this dream palace there is so
much contempt for Bush that none is left over for
sodom or for tyranny, whatever the question, the answer is
that Bush and his cronies are evil. Yeah. What to
do about Iraq? Bush is evil? Yeah? What to do
about the economy? Bush is venal? What to do about
(36:30):
North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite? Yeah. I don't see
how this works to your advantage or or argument, David Brooks.
In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney and a hunt of
corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war in
Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils
to Halliburton and Bechtel. Well, just Halliburton. In this dream palace,
(36:55):
the war mongering Lekudniks in the administration sit around dreaming
of conquests in Syria, Iran and beyond. Yeah, pretty much.
In this dream palace. The boy genius Carl Rove, this
was written a long time ago, hatches schemes to use
the Confederate flag issue to win more elections. Yeah, that's
(37:15):
also kind of prophetic, David, but not in the way
you must have thought when you wrote this, starting off
with the words George Orwell was a modest man. Ah,
The boy genius Karl Rove hatches schemes to use the
Confederate flag issue to win more elections. John Ashcroft wages
holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and
(37:37):
his cabal of neo conservatives long for global empire. In
this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed,
and all the windows are shuttered with hate. Well, he
got the names wrong, But you tell me. If you
said Trump wages holy war on American liberties and putin
longs for global empire, it becomes instead chilling prophecy. Except Brooks's, well,
(38:00):
this is all a seventy eight dollars burger to him,
isn't it. These palaces have taken a beating over the
past month. As the scientists would say, they are conceptual
models that failed to predict events. David doesn't know what
that phrase means. But as we try to understand the
political and cultural importance of the war in Iraq, the
question is this, Will they crumble under the weight of
(38:23):
undeniable facts? Will the illusions fall on the political landscape change?
My guess is that the Bush haters will grow more
vociferous as their numbers shrink. Well, he sure got that right.
Our numbers truly shrank so much that within three years
of this piece being written, Bush had completely spent his
(38:46):
entire post nine to eleven universal benefit of the doubt mandate,
and he got wiped out in the midterms. Even progress
in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because, as many
people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies
is all that is left of their leftism. Oh see,
that's clever, left of their leftism. Hire this band for
(39:07):
the New York Times. In fact, I let him write
all of the opinion columns of the New York Times.
That's not quite a sentence. That is all that is
left of their leftism and all that is right of
their rightism. I'm sorry, that's your next column. Oh, I'm sorry, David.
And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they
(39:27):
will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their
Gorvidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over
the Democratic Party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee.
Who'd that turn out to be? David? I forget two
thousand and eight? Who is that guy? What happened in?
(39:49):
In other words, there will be no magic aha moment
that brings the dream palaces down, even if Saddam's remains
are found, even if weapons of mass destruction are displayed,
even if Iraq starts to move along a winding, muddled
path towards normalcy. No will come when the enemies of
this endeavor turn around and say we were wrong. Bush
was right, Probably because we were right. Bush was wrong.
(40:18):
We didn't find Sodom Hussein's remains because this terrible, evil
monster who could never be defeated was hiding in what
amounted to an underground outhouse, and then we executed him,
and there were no weapons of mass destruction to display.
Let me know when Iraq starts moving towards normalcy. Also,
let me know the name of any Republican, any Republican,
(40:39):
not just Trump, but any Republican of twenty twenty three
who will now say Bush was right about Iraq. But
there is another larger group of people whose world views
will be permanently altered by the war in Iraq. Members
of this group were not firm opponents of the war.
What lessons will they draw from the events of the
past month. How will the fall of Saddam effect their
(40:59):
voting patterns, their approach to the next global crisis. One
way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment.
This was written for money. One way to think about
this is to conduct a thought experiment event a representative
twenty year old Joey Tabula Rasa and try to imagine
(41:20):
how he would have perceived the events of the past month.
Oh my god, Joey tabular Rasa. Oddly enough, the guy
who served David Brooks' seventy eight dollars burger at Newark Airport.
Joey Tabula Rasa from Nutley. Joey doesn't know much about history,
(41:43):
not much biology either. I believe. According to the song,
he was born in nineteen eighty three and was only
six when the Berlin Wall fell. He really has no
firm idea of what labels like liberal and conservative mean.
But now he is in college and he's been glued
to the cable coverage of the war and is ready
to form some opinions. Over the past months, certain facts
and characters have entered his consciousness, like characters in a
(42:05):
play he is seeing for the first time. The first
character is America itself. He sees that his country is
an incredibly effective colossus that can drop bombs onto pinpoints,
destroy enemies that already even aware they are under attack.
That's why everything's so good in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
He sees a ruling establishment that can conduct wars with
(42:25):
incredible confidence and skill, and of course lying about Saint
pat Tillman or what was her name, Private Blair? Wasn't
it Blair? No Lynch? Private Jessica Lynch? Blair? Was George
Orwell's name? Did I mention that George Orwell was a
modest man? Well? Back to Joey Tabula Rossa. He sees
(42:48):
a federal government that can perform its primary task protecting
the American people magnificently except for nine to eleven. Of course.
The second great character in Joey's mind is the American soldier.
When Joey thinks of youthful idealism, he doesn't think of
college students protesting in the streets. He thinks of young
soldiers risking their lives to liberate a people. These are
(43:12):
the men and women Joey saw interviewed by the Dozen
on TV. They seem to enjoy being in the military.
They seem to believe in their mission. They seem to
be involved in something large and noble, even at a
young age. They seem to not realize they were going
to get PTSD and struggle with it for the rest
of their lives. When Joey looks at the talking heads
on TV, he begins to form judgments about this country's
political device. First, he sees the broad majority of people
(43:34):
who support the war, who, it seems to him, deserve
to be called the progressives. These people talk optimistically of
spreading democracy and creating a new Middle East. How's that going?
How are we doing spreading democracy to Israel? For instance?
They have a very confident approach to what America can
achieve in the world. People in this political movement include
(43:56):
Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller, Paul Wolfowitz, Joseph Lieberman,
John McCay, Dane, Richard Holbrook, Charles Crowdhammer, the staff of
Fox News, Bernard Lewis, and George Bush. Let's see Hitchens
drunk and then dead. Dennis Miller professionally dead, wolf of Witz.
(44:18):
I don't know what happened to Wolfa Witz. Lieberman still
out there trying to get Trump elected. McCain lost, humiliated
by Trump. Holbrook, you know CNN wanted him to co
anchor Mornings with Paula's on and Fox News. Yes, they're
the progressives, aren't they? The second group Joey ces he
calls the conservatives. These people are far more skeptical of
(44:40):
the war and grand endeavorors of that sort. They emphasize
all the things that could go wrong. They seem more
prudent and less idealistic revisionary. They were not necessarily implacably
opposed to the effort in Iraq, but they thought it imprudent.
People in the conservative camp include Brent Scowcroft, Joe Klein,
the State Department, John Kerry, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, and
(45:04):
most of the press corps. George Orwell was a modest man.
When Joey listens to these conservatives, he thinks they raised
some ballid concerns. They serve as a useful break on
the progressives, but they're not exactly inspiring or hopeful, and
their prognostications on Iraq proved more wrong than right. I'm
(45:24):
now going to say something I don't know that I've
ever said before. I think I was pretty much right
about Iraq and was one of the first ones to
say anything about Iraq. But you know what, Chris Matthews's
predictions about Iraq were actually eventually, not immediately, but eventually correct.
(45:46):
He jumped off the ship too, took up a little longer.
But I'm actually complimenting Chris Matthews. The whole point of
this article, on my reading it to you, is it's
April twenty eight, two thousand and three, and David Brooks
is writing this as if these events had happened a
thousand years ago and nothing had changed. Well, I guess
things are stable now. We can just write this as history.
It's never gonna chack back to Joey Tabula rasa. Joey
(46:10):
likes to think of himself as fundamentally independent. He looks
at the people living in their dream palaces, the Arabists,
the European elites, the bush haters, and he knows he
doesn't want to be like them. He doesn't want to
be so zealous and detach from reality. He wants to
have a seventy eight dollars burger. He's not even into
joining political movements at home. But he is less independent
than he thinks. He has started to acquire certain assumptions
(46:31):
over the past months which will shape his thinking in
years to come. As a rule, these assumptions are the
exact opposite of the assumptions he would have formed if
he had been watching the Vietnam War unfold. His politics
will be radically different from those of the Vietnam generation.
Joey isn't one of a kind. There are millions of
(46:52):
Joey's and variations on Joey. Inevitably, then, in ways subtle
and profound, the events of the past month will shape
our politics for the rest of our lives. Wait, that's it,
not even something in here about. In conclusion, Iraq is
a land of contrasts. Turns out it did not shape
(47:14):
our politics for the rest of our lives. David Brooks
got it everything wrong that he could get wrong in
this piece, and there's another fifteen hundred words. I did
not read everything. And he got a job with The
New York Times out of this at which for two
decades he has lied about big things, and he has
lied about small things like seventy eight dollars burgers at
(47:35):
Newark Airport. And I think we should never let him
forget everything he writes. Every time he appears in public,
somebody has to offer him a seventy eight dollars burger
and sixty two whiskies plus Joey Tabula rasa. You know
(47:57):
what I think this explains. I think the Times hired
David Brooks in two thousand and three after this column
because he, his imagery and his characters were actually dumber
than Maureen Dowd's. I've done all the damage I can
(48:25):
do here. Thank you for listening. Just had to get
that off my chest. We'll do that periodically as David
Brooks's columns appears. Countdown has come to you from the
studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire. The music you heard
was for the most part arranged and produced by Countdown
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil. Brian Ray
handled guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shaneil. The orchestration
(48:47):
and the keyboards produced by T. K OBErs. Other music,
including other Beethoven tunage, arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call it
the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy
m musical comments, which we resumed thankfully in this episode,
are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
(49:11):
Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
the nine hundred and ninety fourth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants
till then. For Joey Tabula Rasa and the rest of
(49:32):
the staff, I'm Keith Alderman, good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck George Orwell was a genuinely modest man
(49:54):
Countdown with Keith Olreman is 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. Under
eighteen US Code four to two four one, a prosecutor
(00:25):
can request that the judge order the defendant undergo a
psych eval a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if
he is confident to stand trial or unable to aid
in his own defense, and when it is proved that
he is not, the judge can then order him institutionalized.
And Jack Smith should make that request and Judge Tanya
(00:46):
Chutkin should grant it, because in the seventy two hours
before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against
issuing a gag order against him, as they did with
exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight Eastern last night,
after he'd threatened the court and tried to poison the
jury pool. In that last seventy two hours, Trump demanded
(01:07):
that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed,
insisted that NBC News was guilty of something he had
made up called country threatening treason because it published a
poll about him that he didn't like, promised that as president,
he would make NBC and other news organizations quote pay
a big price, and argued that the homes of all
(01:28):
Democratic senators be rated just because he bought a gun
or tried to, and he conflated the Bush brothers and
I don't mean Billy. Then came the just before midnight
answer to the gag order request, as insane as anything
else since Friday of last week, written not for legal
(01:48):
purposes but to please and arouse Donald Trump. Quote, the
proposed gag order is nothing more than an obvious attempt
by the Biden administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent
political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in
the polls keenly aware that it is losing that race
for twenty twenty four. The prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump's,
(02:13):
but not President Biden's political speech, on pain of contempt.
Trump's ambulance chasers slip streamed behind his threats against NBC.
Referring in the document to President Biden and his surrogates,
including those in the corporate media, they dance along the
lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses,
(02:35):
they say, because quote, no witness has suggested that he
or she will not testify because of anything. President Trump
has said. It is impossible to believe that their rhetoric
will have any impact on Judge Chutkin. It doesn't have to.
This was written so Trump could get aroused by it.
Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer, and that late
(02:58):
response was only the last of a string of insane
moments from Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday, ten days
after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when
he was legally ineligible to do so, Trump, in South
Carolina bought a gun or tried to when he was
legally ineligible to do so. That audio tweeted with video
(03:34):
by his spokesman Stephen Chung, who wrote, President Trump purchases
a glock in South Carolina exclamation point, which would be
an inarguable violation of Trump's bail. You cannot buy a
gun while under felony indictment. You do it, you do it,
bail is revoked, You go inside. Chung deleted the tweet,
(03:56):
denied the purchase was completed. It will now have to
be investigated, and then Trump went on to continue his
mental deterioration personal tour. He has already warned Biden may
start World War two. He claimed he ran against Obama
in twenty sixteen, and now in Iowa. He has decided
that George W. Bush and Jeb Bush were the same person,
(04:19):
and after two terms as president, they came back to
run against him seeking a third term. In the Iowa
primary of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win.
And then they took a poll and they found out
Trump was up by about fifty points Sevenone said, what's
going on right here? They thought Bush, because Bush supposedly
was a military persaid, great, you know what he was?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
All?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
He got us into the he got us into the
Middle East. I did that workout right? But they all
thought that Bush might win. Jeb, remember Jeb he is
he is the word Jeb. He didn't use the word Bush.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I said, you mean Trump is not mentally competent. And
we have been tiptoeing around this obvious fact for the
last eight years, in fact, probably for the last seventy
five years. So while this reality that his occasional bouts
of scene i mean clarity are in fact just careful
and skilled impersonations of human behavior. While that is nothing new,
(05:12):
the patience of a nation has been exhausted. The window
is closing, during which we might yet roll back Trump's
introduction of violence and the threat of violence as components
of our political ecosystem, as common as bribing Clarence Thomas
or making up stories about letterboxes and grammar schools. And
all legal measures available to defeat him, destroy him, remove him,
(05:36):
and send his cultists scurrying back into their sewers must
be utilized before the gates slam shut, and we turn
the United States of America permanently over to a lunatic
with the soul of a terrorist and the conscience of
a mass murderer, who is also now bent on universal retribution.
Trump is insane. He is more than likely criminally insane.
(06:01):
His mental stability is clearly declining now from weak too,
and it's not like he started the year with very
much of it left in the first place. Every single day,
judges institutionalize people far less dangerous to others who have
made far fewer threats or issued carefully phrased stochastic calls
(06:21):
for violence and public disorder every day, and now one
of them must institutionalize him. You cannot metaphorically stand before
a crowd of violent, armed thugs who have proved again
and again that they await your commands and say of
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he
(06:42):
has committed quote, an act so egregious that in times
gone by, the punishment would have been death. You can't
do that, nor should Trump be allowed to do that.
More practically, there is every reason to believe that General
Millie is on the witness list in both federal cases
against Trump, and Trump's threats by proxy against him are
(07:04):
an other direct violation of the terms under which Judge
Trutkin granted him bail in the election fraud trial in
Washington and the terms under which Judge Cannon granted him
bail in the classified documents trial in Florida. Milly was
a witness before the January sixth Committee. He testified Trump
had privately admitted he had lost the election, an essential
(07:25):
element of Jack Smith's case in Washington, and it was
Milly's iran document which Trump waved around to Liz Harrington
and Mark Meadow's publishers in what became the thirty second
count against Trump in the indictment in Florida. Trump has
directly threatened a witness directly in times gone by, the
(07:47):
punishment would have been death. It's not just poisoning the
jury pool. It is a call to kill a witness
who may testify against him. Al Capone would have cleaned
this up. And the witness happens to be chairman of
the joints chiefs of Staff. There are no circumstances in
(08:09):
which such a threat can be tolerated by this country. However,
lame the arguments Trump's lawyers made against a gag order. Yesterday.
Jack Smith's answer is due by Saturday, and it should
be He named one of the witnesses and suggested that
the witness should be punished by death. A gag order
is now insufficient. You must revoke his veil and detain him.
(08:33):
And by the way, he's clearly not competent to aid
in his own defense at trial, and he is a
manifest danger to the lives of this witness and all
the other witnesses, and yourself your honor. So under code
four two four one, I request a pre trial competency test.
Hell Smith can just write, damn straight, you should grant
(08:55):
a gag order. Literally, put a gag in his mouth
and put him in a straight jacket. Whatever. We cannot
normalize Trump's behavior any longer, and we cannot promit Trump's
behavior anymore. And in the tragedy unfolding in the background,
the most obvious barometer of how sick a society is.
(09:16):
It is at the flashing red alert stage of dangerous
sick normalization of Trump and his murderous, psychotic threats. Because
on Friday night, Donald Trump threatens the life of the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the witness against him,
Mark Milly. And on Monday morning, CNN publishes an article
headlined Mark Milly leaves a controversial legacy as America's top general,
(09:40):
and Politico headlines its coverage in its morning newsletter of
Trump's attempt to talk to somebody as crazy as he
is into killing Mark Milly quote speaking of threats, and
Politico devotes exactly eleven lines to it, while it gives
twenty three lines to letting us know the really important
news from Washington, the thirty five members of the media
(10:02):
political complex whose birthday it was? And then Mike Allen
and Axios somehow do even worse for its newsletter. Its headline,
forty eight hours after Trump's threat against Millie was Trump
dodges threat. No, I'm not making that up. Trump dodges threat,
(10:23):
referring to Axios's inexplicable conclusion that Trump does not have
to worry about the fourteenth Amendment anymore because several state
secretaries of State are saying they will not use it
to keep the murderous psychopath off the ballot. They will
let the juries do that if the juries want to.
Mike Allen, john Harris, Daphnel Lindzer, sarahgu Nick Johnson, when
(10:45):
Trump writes, I say upfront, openly and proudly that when
I win the presidency of the United States, they and
others of the lame stream media will be thoroughly scrutinized
for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things,
and events. Who the hell do you think he's threatening?
Just the Times in the post. They are a true
(11:07):
threat to democracy and are in fact the enemy of
the people. Don't worry, He's only talking about Mother Jones there.
The fake news media should pay a big price for
what they have done to our once great country. Now
that's unfortunate, but happily he's just mad at NBC and ABC.
We here at Politico and Axios, We'll be fine. We
(11:29):
publish those devastating analysis of how weak the resistance was.
And of course, Mike led his email by attacking the
fourteenth Amendment, and he and Trump had burgers together once
we're on his good side. In the bursts of violence,
vengeance fantasies that dance across the cesspool of his brain.
(11:51):
As he composes these nightmarish posts, Trump envisions crowds dragging you,
Mike Allen and the others dragging you out of your office.
This is buy your feet and killing you, killing you,
or if he's in a good mood, just having the
(12:14):
crowds take you to some camp where you will find
already behind bars me and oh, by the way, saysar
Conde from NBC, and President Kim Godwin from ABC, and
Chuck Todd and Kristin Welker. And here's the best case
scenario for you, guys. You'll have to listen to me
screaming I told you so between our respective trips to
(12:37):
the torture block, because two weeks ago, I guarantee you
that more than one person inside the surprisingly nondescript executive
offices of NBC News beamed at the thought that not
only would a Trump interview guarantee Kristin Welker a terrific
debut number as the host to meet the press. But
it would get NBC back in the good graces of
(13:00):
Trump and secure a debate and maybe, just maybe a
republic primary debate, to say nothing of the advantages if
Trump were to regain the White House. And one week
and ten hours after they platformed him and softballed him
and did in fact check him in real time, he
called them the enemy of the people in all caps,
(13:23):
guilty of country, threatening treason. Nice work, Kristen Welker. And
of course, the craziest thing about Trump's explosion against NBC,
as if we really had to pict just one craziest
thing was the assumption that when he threatened them, it
(13:45):
meant NBC had to be working on some really devastating
new story about Trump or was about to drop something
new and explosive, and everybody missed the reality of the thing.
Trump was angry about NBC's whole from Sunday. That's it.
There's no NBC scoop coming. Trump didn't get wind of anything.
(14:10):
He's not attacking them before they can attack him. The
NBC poll story began three quarters of voters say they're
concerned about President Joe Biden's age and mental fitness. But
Trump didn't notice that. He noticed the next half of
the same first sentence quote, while nearly two thirds are
concerned about the multiple trials former President Donald Trump faces,
(14:35):
and he noticed forty seven percent have either major concerns
thirty four percent or moderate concerns thirteen percent about Trump,
at age seventy seven, not having the necessary mental and
physical health to be president. That is the country threatening
treason that Trump referred to to merely acknowledge that people
(15:00):
are concerned about Trump's mental health. And by the way,
the accurate number is six major, moderate, or minor concerns.
NBC shaved the number to make Trump look better because
they're not going to let their dividends drop when this
country goes fascist. No Surrey Bob a poll. Trump went
ballistic about a pole. If you think I'm mistaken, His
(15:23):
attack on NBC and MSNBC was posted at seven point
fifty three pm Eastern on Sunday. At nine to fifty
pm Eastern on Sunday, he gave it away. He attacked
ABC about its pole, which showed him up by ten points,
but they didn't mention the ten points enough to satisfy
Trump's unquenchable need for validation. Quote, they spend millions of
(15:47):
dollars on these poles, and then if the result isn't
what they wanted to be, refused to properly report the results.
What is properly? It's whatever underlines Trump is as he
is so often and so pathetically refers to himself, your
favorite president, me, And who decides whether it is or
(16:11):
isn't properly. You already know the answer to that one.
He's insane. He's declared his desire to get Mark Milly killed.
And Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania because voting is Marxist, and
Letitia James and Judge Engern of New York we went
after yesterday afternoon, mostly because they said he had less
(16:33):
money than he says he has. And the people at
NBC News and the people at ABC News and CBS
and Fox and Politico and Axios and anybody who thwarts him,
and anybody who disagrees with him, and anybody who points
out that when he tells the striking auto workers quote,
I will keep your jobs and make you rich, he
sounds like the text content of an email from another
(16:56):
human being, who, like Trump himself, does not actually exist,
the proverbial fictional Nigerian prince. He threatened by proxy to
get the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff killed.
He threatened directly to punish the news media NBC and
ABC in particular. He demanded the Republican Party shut down
(17:18):
the government because he is under the delusion that that
will shut down the Office of the Special Council. He
bought a gun while under felony indictment. There are witnesses,
there is video, There is a tweet from his spokesman.
Revoke his bail, send the marshals, let the chips fall
(17:38):
where they may, and if there is a gag order,
go ahead, make it a literal one. Put a goddamned
gag in his mouth and put him in a straitjacket
where he belongs. We have a fascist takeover to stave off.
And this guy is the fascist. Oh, by the way.
(18:02):
Cassidy Hutchinson's first life lawyer Trump's ambulance chaser Stefan Pasentino.
He has sued the lawyer and talking head Andrew Weissman
for libel assault by talking mean slander for claiming Pasentino
coached Hutchinson July to the January sixth committee. And it's
(18:25):
hilarious enough that the minimum amount that he wants for
damage to his reputation is seventy five thousand dollars. And
who thinks it's a good idea for anybody to tell
the world that his own reputation is only worth seventy
five thousand dollars. But now on top of that, for
Stefan Pasentino comes the d Umont Stephan. Pasentino's suit against
(18:47):
Andrew Weisman has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkin. Also
of interest here on an all new edition of Countdown,
Fox News just proved there is no Ukraine case against
President Biden. Republicans cleverly attack Taylor Swift and her fans.
And if you thought we were all done roasting David
(19:11):
Brooks for the airport burger tweet, I'm not done. I'm
going to let David Brooks destroy himself with his own words.
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Overman.
(19:36):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Union City, New Jersey. I don't know
about you. I'm kind of indifferent to the money part
of the Bob Menendez scandal. In fact, the idea that
he took gold bars is kind of epic. See. My
problem is that the senator from this vantage point sure
(19:57):
seems like he was what's the word spying for what's
the word EGYPTI chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, may
have been tipping them off about what questions the Senate
would be asking about the Egyptian part of the murder
of Jamal Kashagi. And maybe when they arragn him tomorrow,
(20:19):
you know, if he was supplying information to another country
sensitive American information, confidential information, maybe he should not be
released on bail. Also, the idea that you keep, in
the event of emergencies four hundred and eighty thousand dollars
in cash around the house, with drawn a little bit
(20:41):
at a time, over the course of seven or eight centuries,
I guess, I mean, what were the emergencies? Oh right,
getting arrested for accepting bribes? Duh, I'm sorry, were those, Bob?
Were those emergency gold bars too? I mean, as opposed
to a regular stash of gold bars that you kept
(21:04):
in a bank or a fort or somewhere. Thank you,
(21:36):
Nancy Faust smooth criminal indeed dateline sixth Avenue, New York.
Some more of them. Fox really screwed up, really screwed up.
Ryan Kilmead put on the fired Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Chokun,
who claims he was fired when then Vice President Biden
demanded it because Chokun was getting too close to Hunter. Biden,
(21:57):
you know, all the crap that was disproved seven years ago,
seven years before Trump bought a gun under exactly the
same circumstances as Hunter. Oops. Instead of doing that, just
sticking with that, having the bullshit interview on, they then
had kill Mead interview the former president of Ukraine Petro
Poroshenko for reaction, and President Poroshenko called Victor Choken quote
(22:21):
a completely crazy person and added there's something wrong with him.
And then at the end, kill Mead asks Poroshenko Choken
didn't get fired because of Joe Biden, and Paroshenko answered
he was fired because of his own statement, and kill
Mead hurriedly says, all right, mister president, thanks so much.
(22:42):
I have to go. My uh grandmother is on fire.
All right. I made the last part up about the grandmother,
but it is an absolute shock that Fox did not
fire Brian Killmead or the producer after that segment. Just
play the tape on a loop the next time somebody
asks about Hunter Biden, like Jim Jordan and Dateline Washington.
(23:09):
A week ago today, on National Voting Day, Taylor Swift
posted a message encouraging people to register to vote at
the nonpartisan vote dot org, and thirty five thousand people
registered to vote. She could decide the presidential election if
she wanted to or win it. So what appears on
(23:32):
the right wing site The Federalists yesterday, twenty six hundred
impenetrable words by Molly Hemingway's husband Mark, under the headline
Taylor Swift's popularity is a sign of societal decline. And
I'd love to tell you why this idiot decided to
represent the Republican Party as it attacked the most popular
(23:54):
entertainer in America and her fans. But all I got
out of reading this was something something me music, something something,
She's no Tom Petty. And just to add to the stupidity,
the article begins quote after Taylor's Swift's massive eras tour,
he misspelled Taylor. It reads Taylor Swift Tayr. Please everybody
(24:24):
on the right, please continue to attack Taylor Swift and
her fans every day and whenever you can remember to
misspell her name, still ahead on countdown. Instead of things,
(24:53):
I promise not to tell something a little different. Remember
the whole thing with David Brooks and the Newark Airport
and the whiskey and the other whiskey and the other
whiskey after that, and the seventy eight dollar burger. I'm
gonna let David Brooks metaphorically hang himself with his own words,
because here's the little secret about David Brooks in twenty
(25:14):
years of the New York Times, He's an idiot first
time for the daily round up of the miss Greens,
morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute two day's
worst persons in the world, besides David Brooks the Bronze.
When you sit there and you ask rhetorically, how could
this freaking timeline get any worse? And somewhere in the universe,
(25:37):
a god or an algorithm or something hears you say
that and says ha ha oh okay. Connecticut Republicans are
reportedly trying to recruit a former media figure to run
for the House of Representatives in the Connecticut fifth district
former SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele. The biggest news here is that,
(26:02):
when asked by the Indianapolis Star a new if this
were true, my least favorite co anchor this century anyway,
replied no comment on this, but I appreciate you asking.
This marks the first time Sage Steele has ever not
commented on anything. One note here, The Connecticut fifth Congressional
District is drawn really weirdly, even for a congressional district,
(26:26):
kind of like a rabbit standing on its head, Danbury
at the southwest corner, Avon at the northeast, New Britain,
and Plainville, Plainville, Connecticut at its southeast. But it wraps
around weirdly so that it does not include the ESPN
campus in Bristol, Connecticut, which is literally walking distance of Plainville, Connecticut.
(26:49):
But it's smart that they did that because she would
lose seventeen hundred to three there. The Connecticut fifth, however,
does include Palyachi's restaurant in Plainville on East Street. I
highly recommend it where the ESPN elite meet to eat
hunner up. This is the kind of house Republican. They
think that Sage Steele would fit in with Congressman Jeff
(27:10):
Duncan of the South Carolina fifth twenty twenty two winner
of the Friend of the Family Award from the Faith
and Freedom Coalition, and twenty months later, Missus Duncan, mother
of his three adult children, has filed on him, saying
he said multiple affairs and he moved out of the
house to go live with one of the Hussies. Duncan
is a member of the Freedom Caucus, and based on
(27:32):
how they've been doing lately, we now know what it's
freedom from Its freedom from personal responsibility and ethics. But
our winner Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post. As the
Post continues to cover itself in glory or cover itself
in something, you thought her famous column before the twenty
(27:52):
sixteen election insisting everything would be okay no matter who
was elected, was a career ender. Evidently not. Evidently she's
still writing for the Post. It's amazing you thought her
turn as co anchor of CNN's eight pm newscast might
have done it. Now she survived, although to be fair,
the CNN eight Pm Hour did not. Now Kathleen Parker
(28:14):
has joined this mindless assault on John Fetterman and the
relaxation of Senate dress rules. As little as I have
loved Republicans these past few years, she wrote, coinciding with
the rise of our own little autocrat. At least Donald
Trump knows how to dress. I can't imagine that even
he would demean his office or his country by dressing down.
(28:36):
What Donald Trump knows how to dress wouldn't dress in death.
What the baseball cap is. Knowing how to dress, the
cheap kind with a plastic extender in the back, spraying
rustolium gold number two four five two t one on
his hair is knowing how to dress. Wearing a tie
(28:56):
that hangs twelve inches below his belt so you don't
look at his gut. That's a that's knowing how to dress.
The rotating selection of thirty five suits that he bought
in bulk from Rochester, big and tall. I don't want
to go out on a limb here, but I'm beginning
to wonder maybe Kathleen Parker isn't qualified for her job.
(29:17):
Kathleen knows how to dress. Parker knows how to dress.
I've seen cadavers dug up by court orders. Six months
after burial that look better dressed than Trump has on
his best day two days, worst parker in the world.
(29:53):
Let's close with something different today. Instead of my favorite
topic me, I'd like to look instead at the favorite
topic of everybody else from the last week, the David
Brooks airport tweet. You know, this meal just cost me
seventy eight dollars at Newark Airport. This is why Americans
think the economy is terrible. And then there's a picture
of a burger fries, a lot of salad, two or
(30:18):
three hundred empty catchup packets, and what must have been
David Brooks's nineteenth Scotch. Let me note briefly that I
don't think of David Brooks the way most people seem to,
as that kind of passive, largely benign conservative who only
disgraces The New York Times every couple weeks and think
how much it could be worse than this. He's a
(30:39):
liar and a propagandist and a con man and a
bad writer, and the worst kind of each of those categories,
the unctuous suck up kind. He's in fact much more
dangerous than the other kind, because when he lies, as
he did in that tweet, unless he was drunk enough
to risk spontaneous combustion. Who did he think he would
(31:00):
be fooling with the idea that that costs seventy eight dollars?
He died to advance an agenda that the economy is
worsening rather than improving, despite Corporate America's manipulations to the contrary.
He lied like the columns are all lies. They may
be smooth, they may be stupid, they're full of lies.
(31:22):
And he has been doing this subtle, respectable face of
fascism crap at the New York Times for twenty years now.
I am indebted to the author of the Great Nixon
Land book, Rick Pearlstein, for pointing out the column that
got David Brooks his job at the Times more than
twenty years ago. It was in the Weekly Standard April
(31:43):
twenty eight, two thousand and three. And I'm not reading
the whole thing. It's three thousand words. He could have
written the same thing in about four hundred words. But
I'm going to read a lot of it because frankly,
it's so bad, it's so condescending, it's so wrong that
it should have been the end of a career, and
(32:04):
they should have I've built a monument to it. Don't
do what he did in this column. It should have
been the end of a career, not the entree to
The New York Times. The Collapse of the Dream Palaces
by David Brooks, April twenty eight, two thousand and three,
twelve zero zero Am, George Orwell was a genuinely modest man.
(32:30):
All right. I'm going to interrupt periodically here. His name
was Eric Blair. George Orwell was his pen name. That
was the name of the character who wrote the books.
In a manner of speaking. I understand it's clunky to
explain that in the first sentence, but saying George Orwell
was a genuinely modest man, well, no, there's no George Orwell.
(32:54):
It's like starting your very serious column on this subject
by saying Batman was a genuinely modest man. I knew him,
George W. Batman, all right. I said this was not
going to be about me. It was going to be
about David Brooks. But he knew he had a talent
for facing unpleasant facts. That doesn't seem at first glance
(33:16):
like much of a gift, but when one looks around
the world, one quickly sees how rare it is. Most
people nurture the facts that confirm their worldview and ignore
or marginalize the ones that don't, unable to achieve enough
emotional detachment from their own political passions to see the
world as it really is. Well, that's kind of a
(33:37):
good sentence because he's confessing. He's not confessing. Listen to
this again. April twenty eighth, two thousand and three. Now
that the war in Iraq is over, we'll find out
how many people around the world are capable of facing
unpleasant facts. This is after the mission accomplished. Crap, Now
(33:57):
that the war in Iraq is over. Yeah, you're wrong
on that by about two even nineteen years and eleven
months in twenty nine days. For the events of recent
months confirmed that millions of human beings are living in
dream palaces. There is the first dream palace of the Arabists.
In this dream palace, it is always the twelfth century,
(34:18):
and every Western incursion into the Middle East is a crusade.
The Americans are always invaders and occupiers. Yeah, David, two
thousand and three, I have this question for you, So
it's a one word question. Afghanistan. Then there is the
dream Palace of the Europeans. In this palace, America is
(34:39):
a bigger threat to world peace than Sodom Hussein. America
is the land of rotting cities, the electric chair, serial killers,
gun crazed hunters, shallow materialists, religious nuts, savage capitalists, the
oil lobby, the military industrial complex, and bloodthirsty cowboy presidents. Well,
I mean, that's the Trump administration there, except for the
(35:01):
cowboy president part. In this dream Palace, the Hollywood cliches
are taken to be real. George Bush really is Rambo,
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne rolled into one. Will we
see what happened to Clint Eastwood after this? John Wayne
was already dead. Rambo is a fictional character. American life
really is NYPD Blue and Baywatch, those cultural references held
(35:25):
up David In this dream Palace, Oliver Stone is as
trustworthy as the Washington Post. Michael Moore accurately depicts the
American soul. Doctor Strangelove is a textbook of American government,
and Noam Chomsky tells it like it is. You see
where he's going here. The point of this piece in
April two thousand and three was to insist that George
(35:46):
Bush was right and everybody else was wrong, and it
had been decided for all time. And now don't you
feel stupid? April two thousand and three, we already knew
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. David
Brooks was pretending it was proof. Case closed seventy eight
dollars Scotchenburger. Finally, there is the dream Palace of the
(36:07):
American Bush haters. Oh hi, this is my part of
the article. Huh. In this dream palace there is so
much contempt for Bush that none is left over for
sodom or for tyranny, whatever the question, the answer is
that Bush and his cronies are evil. Yeah. What to
do about Iraq? Bush is evil? Yeah? What to do
about the economy? Bush is venal? What to do about
(36:30):
North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite? Yeah. I don't see
how this works to your advantage or or argument, David Brooks.
In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney and a hunt of
corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war in
Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils
to Halliburton and Bechtel. Well, just Halliburton. In this dream palace,
(36:55):
the war mongering Lekudniks in the administration sit around dreaming
of conquests in Syria, Iran and beyond. Yeah, pretty much.
In this dream palace. The boy genius Carl Rove, this
was written a long time ago, hatches schemes to use
the Confederate flag issue to win more elections. Yeah, that's
(37:15):
also kind of prophetic, David, but not in the way
you must have thought when you wrote this, starting off
with the words George Orwell was a modest man. Ah,
The boy genius Karl Rove hatches schemes to use the
Confederate flag issue to win more elections. John Ashcroft wages
holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and
(37:37):
his cabal of neo conservatives long for global empire. In
this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed,
and all the windows are shuttered with hate. Well, he
got the names wrong, But you tell me. If you
said Trump wages holy war on American liberties and putin
longs for global empire, it becomes instead chilling prophecy. Except Brooks's, well,
(38:00):
this is all a seventy eight dollars burger to him,
isn't it. These palaces have taken a beating over the
past month. As the scientists would say, they are conceptual
models that failed to predict events. David doesn't know what
that phrase means. But as we try to understand the
political and cultural importance of the war in Iraq, the
question is this, Will they crumble under the weight of
(38:23):
undeniable facts? Will the illusions fall on the political landscape change?
My guess is that the Bush haters will grow more
vociferous as their numbers shrink. Well, he sure got that right.
Our numbers truly shrank so much that within three years
of this piece being written, Bush had completely spent his
(38:46):
entire post nine to eleven universal benefit of the doubt mandate,
and he got wiped out in the midterms. Even progress
in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because, as many
people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies
is all that is left of their leftism. Oh see,
that's clever, left of their leftism. Hire this band for
(39:07):
the New York Times. In fact, I let him write
all of the opinion columns of the New York Times.
That's not quite a sentence. That is all that is
left of their leftism and all that is right of
their rightism. I'm sorry, that's your next column. Oh, I'm sorry, David.
And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they
(39:27):
will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their
Gorvidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over
the Democratic Party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee.
Who'd that turn out to be? David? I forget two
thousand and eight? Who is that guy? What happened in?
(39:49):
In other words, there will be no magic aha moment
that brings the dream palaces down, even if Saddam's remains
are found, even if weapons of mass destruction are displayed,
even if Iraq starts to move along a winding, muddled
path towards normalcy. No will come when the enemies of
this endeavor turn around and say we were wrong. Bush
was right, Probably because we were right. Bush was wrong.
(40:18):
We didn't find Sodom Hussein's remains because this terrible, evil
monster who could never be defeated was hiding in what
amounted to an underground outhouse, and then we executed him,
and there were no weapons of mass destruction to display.
Let me know when Iraq starts moving towards normalcy. Also,
let me know the name of any Republican, any Republican,
(40:39):
not just Trump, but any Republican of twenty twenty three
who will now say Bush was right about Iraq. But
there is another larger group of people whose world views
will be permanently altered by the war in Iraq. Members
of this group were not firm opponents of the war.
What lessons will they draw from the events of the
past month. How will the fall of Saddam effect their
(40:59):
voting patterns, their approach to the next global crisis. One
way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment.
This was written for money. One way to think about
this is to conduct a thought experiment event a representative
twenty year old Joey Tabula Rasa and try to imagine
(41:20):
how he would have perceived the events of the past month.
Oh my god, Joey tabular Rasa. Oddly enough, the guy
who served David Brooks' seventy eight dollars burger at Newark Airport.
Joey Tabula Rasa from Nutley. Joey doesn't know much about history,
(41:43):
not much biology either. I believe. According to the song,
he was born in nineteen eighty three and was only
six when the Berlin Wall fell. He really has no
firm idea of what labels like liberal and conservative mean.
But now he is in college and he's been glued
to the cable coverage of the war and is ready
to form some opinions. Over the past months, certain facts
and characters have entered his consciousness, like characters in a
(42:05):
play he is seeing for the first time. The first
character is America itself. He sees that his country is
an incredibly effective colossus that can drop bombs onto pinpoints,
destroy enemies that already even aware they are under attack.
That's why everything's so good in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
He sees a ruling establishment that can conduct wars with
(42:25):
incredible confidence and skill, and of course lying about Saint
pat Tillman or what was her name, Private Blair? Wasn't
it Blair? No Lynch? Private Jessica Lynch? Blair? Was George
Orwell's name? Did I mention that George Orwell was a
modest man? Well? Back to Joey Tabula Rossa. He sees
(42:48):
a federal government that can perform its primary task protecting
the American people magnificently except for nine to eleven. Of course.
The second great character in Joey's mind is the American soldier.
When Joey thinks of youthful idealism, he doesn't think of
college students protesting in the streets. He thinks of young
soldiers risking their lives to liberate a people. These are
(43:12):
the men and women Joey saw interviewed by the Dozen
on TV. They seem to enjoy being in the military.
They seem to believe in their mission. They seem to
be involved in something large and noble, even at a
young age. They seem to not realize they were going
to get PTSD and struggle with it for the rest
of their lives. When Joey looks at the talking heads
on TV, he begins to form judgments about this country's
political device. First, he sees the broad majority of people
(43:34):
who support the war, who, it seems to him, deserve
to be called the progressives. These people talk optimistically of
spreading democracy and creating a new Middle East. How's that going?
How are we doing spreading democracy to Israel? For instance?
They have a very confident approach to what America can
achieve in the world. People in this political movement include
(43:56):
Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller, Paul Wolfowitz, Joseph Lieberman,
John McCay, Dane, Richard Holbrook, Charles Crowdhammer, the staff of
Fox News, Bernard Lewis, and George Bush. Let's see Hitchens
drunk and then dead. Dennis Miller professionally dead, wolf of Witz.
(44:18):
I don't know what happened to Wolfa Witz. Lieberman still
out there trying to get Trump elected. McCain lost, humiliated
by Trump. Holbrook, you know CNN wanted him to co
anchor Mornings with Paula's on and Fox News. Yes, they're
the progressives, aren't they? The second group Joey ces he
calls the conservatives. These people are far more skeptical of
(44:40):
the war and grand endeavorors of that sort. They emphasize
all the things that could go wrong. They seem more
prudent and less idealistic revisionary. They were not necessarily implacably
opposed to the effort in Iraq, but they thought it imprudent.
People in the conservative camp include Brent Scowcroft, Joe Klein,
the State Department, John Kerry, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, and
(45:04):
most of the press corps. George Orwell was a modest man.
When Joey listens to these conservatives, he thinks they raised
some ballid concerns. They serve as a useful break on
the progressives, but they're not exactly inspiring or hopeful, and
their prognostications on Iraq proved more wrong than right. I'm
(45:24):
now going to say something I don't know that I've
ever said before. I think I was pretty much right
about Iraq and was one of the first ones to
say anything about Iraq. But you know what, Chris Matthews's
predictions about Iraq were actually eventually, not immediately, but eventually correct.
(45:46):
He jumped off the ship too, took up a little longer.
But I'm actually complimenting Chris Matthews. The whole point of
this article, on my reading it to you, is it's
April twenty eight, two thousand and three, and David Brooks
is writing this as if these events had happened a
thousand years ago and nothing had changed. Well, I guess
things are stable now. We can just write this as history.
It's never gonna chack back to Joey Tabula rasa. Joey
(46:10):
likes to think of himself as fundamentally independent. He looks
at the people living in their dream palaces, the Arabists,
the European elites, the bush haters, and he knows he
doesn't want to be like them. He doesn't want to
be so zealous and detach from reality. He wants to
have a seventy eight dollars burger. He's not even into
joining political movements at home. But he is less independent
than he thinks. He has started to acquire certain assumptions
(46:31):
over the past months which will shape his thinking in
years to come. As a rule, these assumptions are the
exact opposite of the assumptions he would have formed if
he had been watching the Vietnam War unfold. His politics
will be radically different from those of the Vietnam generation.
Joey isn't one of a kind. There are millions of
(46:52):
Joey's and variations on Joey. Inevitably, then, in ways subtle
and profound, the events of the past month will shape
our politics for the rest of our lives. Wait, that's it,
not even something in here about. In conclusion, Iraq is
a land of contrasts. Turns out it did not shape
(47:14):
our politics for the rest of our lives. David Brooks
got it everything wrong that he could get wrong in
this piece, and there's another fifteen hundred words. I did
not read everything. And he got a job with The
New York Times out of this at which for two
decades he has lied about big things, and he has
lied about small things like seventy eight dollars burgers at
(47:35):
Newark Airport. And I think we should never let him
forget everything he writes. Every time he appears in public,
somebody has to offer him a seventy eight dollars burger
and sixty two whiskies plus Joey Tabula rasa. You know
(47:57):
what I think this explains. I think the Times hired
David Brooks in two thousand and three after this column
because he, his imagery and his characters were actually dumber
than Maureen Dowd's. I've done all the damage I can
(48:25):
do here. Thank you for listening. Just had to get
that off my chest. We'll do that periodically as David
Brooks's columns appears. Countdown has come to you from the
studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire. The music you heard
was for the most part arranged and produced by Countdown
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil. Brian Ray
handled guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shaneil. The orchestration
(48:47):
and the keyboards produced by T. K OBErs. Other music,
including other Beethoven tunage, arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call it
the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy
m musical comments, which we resumed thankfully in this episode,
are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
(49:11):
Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
the nine hundred and ninety fourth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants
till then. For Joey Tabula Rasa and the rest of
(49:32):
the staff, I'm Keith Alderman, good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck George Orwell was a genuinely modest man
(49:54):
Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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