September 16, 2023 • 51 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 36: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:30) BULLETIN:
Gag Order now. Jail, later. Jack Smith has asked Judge Tonya Chutkan to shut Trump up and there is the tantalizing possibility that he wants her to at least threaten him with revocation of his bail and the terms of his release and that would mean jail.
Smith leaves the penalty TO Judge Chutkan. But he writes “The court should ensure that public statements by the defendant and his agents do not prejudice these criminal proceedings. The defendant’s repeated, inflammatory public statements regarding the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors and potential witnesses are substantially likely to materially prejudice the jury pool, create fear among potential jurors, and result in threats or harassment to individuals he singles out…” That is strong language that Smith couches as if – to be blunt – it isn’t. Quote: “The Government proposes two narrowly tailored orders that impose modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial extrajudicial conduct."
What Smith is accusing Trump of – and what Smith is asking Chutkan to DO – has bearings on Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump there. You may recall that the Judge’s warnings to Trump about the terms of his release – the fact that he has been permitted to remain free on bail – are FAR more explicit than what Jack Smith has gotten so far in Florida or Washington: “The defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any witness…” and yet Smith’s document says Trump has threatened witnesses. “The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.” Jack Smith’s motions doesn’t just quote the threats and intimidation in Trump’s “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual” – it actually includes reproductions of images of TEN of them. If Judge Chutkan finds against Trump in Washington, Trump could be immediately found guilty of violating his bail in Georgia.
Trump replied by calling him quote “Deranged Jack Smith” again and referring to himself in the third person again and by mastering sophistry again by explaining that his poll numbers mean he can say anything he wants and claiming quote “I am not allowed to COMMENT? They leak, lie and sue and they won’t allow me to SPEAK? How else would I explain that Jack Smith is deranged…”
This is not about the 1st Amendment. This is not even about the most extreme theoretical example of the 1st Amendment: the cliché about yelling fire in a crowded theater. This is about a man who yells fire in a crowded theater, and then goes to every theater in the country and yells fire again. This is about a creature who believes himself omnipotent and untouchable. This is about a potential scenario in which – if not in response to THIS filing by Jack Smith, then by SOME filing by SOME prosecutor at SOME point after SOME high number of these violations in one of these cases – a judge has to send federal or state marshals to apprehend Trump and bring him to a jail or prison for detention. He is not going to stop – he does not understand the concept of having to stop. He will have to be forced to. You can insert your own thoughts about the implications if he resists arrest.
One thing that Trump and his lawyers and his apologists and his cultists cannot say, is that they have not been warned. “The fact that he’s running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,”Judge Chutkan told the Trump lawyer Lauro on the 11th of last month. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be. Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the jurors,” Judge Chutkan continued, on August 11th. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”
Judge, he’s not going to stop. You’re going to have to lock him up. Do it now.
B-Block (19:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert of the anti-drag party, is dating a bar owner who reportedly hosted a drag party. Drew Barrymore re-starts her talk show even though the writers are on strike. That makes her a SCAB. Bill Maher re-starts his "comedy" show even though the writers are on strike (and he insults the writers in the process) and he is a SCAB. (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I didn't know until 2009 that Maher and I met at Cornell in 1978 and in less than a minute he'd been so obnoxious I was ready to sock him. In a terrific irony considering his scabbing for his corporate masters, way back then he called me a "corporate sellout."
C-Block (43:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The immortal short story "The Night The Bed Fell."
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. A
gag order perhaps now, revoking Trump's bail and sending him
to jail, perhaps later. This is the Countdown bulletin podcast
(00:29):
coverage of the news that Jack Smith has asked Judge
Tanya Chutkin to shut Trump up with a gag order,
and with it, there is the tantalizing possibility that Smith
also wants the judge to at least threaten Trump with
revocation of his bail and the terms of his release,
and that could mean jail. This would be the second
(00:50):
gag order this week against Trump. Smith himself does not
propose a penalty that Trump would face when he breaks it,
and of course, if it had gone into immediate effect,
Trump would have violated it within an hour, because he
repeated exactly the same dangerous threats and attacks and promises
of violence and intimidation of witnesses that had caused the
(01:10):
Special Council to ask for the gag order in the
first place one week ago. Smith leaves the penalty to
Judge Chutkin, but he writes, quote, the court should ensure
that public statements by the defendant and his agents do
not prejudice these criminal proceedings. The defendants repeated inflammatory public
statements regarding the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors, and
(01:34):
potential witnesses are substantially likely to materially prejudice the jury,
pool create fear among potential jurors, and result in threats
or harassment to individuals. He singles out that is strong language,
which Smith couches as if to be blunt. It is
not strong language. It is quote. The government proposes two
(01:57):
narrowly tailored orders that impose modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial
extra judicial conduct unquote. And I get the feeling that
what Smith writes modest permissible restrictions he means Chutkin should
use modest the way the eighteenth century satirist Jonathan Swift
used the word modest in his searing essay A Modest Proposal,
(02:20):
in which the modest proposal turns out to be solving
child poverty by eating babies. Jack Smith wants Hutkin to
bar Trump and his lawyers. There's also a claim that
Trump attorney John Laurow has violated a District of Columbia
law about pre trial statements from making quote statements regarding
(02:40):
the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses, and statements
about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors
that are disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating unquote. He also
wants the judge to reinforce her previous order, demanding that
the defense notify her in advance if it tries to
(03:03):
do any of potential jurors inside the District of Columbia
in hopes of buttressing its argument for a change of venue.
And Smith wants all that, as he repeats again and
again in the filing, because Trump's threats are an attempt
to prejudice, or influence or intimidate the jury pool. There
(03:25):
are eighteen separate references to Trump tampering with the jury pool,
eighteen in nineteen pages. This is finally the revelation of
that Daily extra Judicial Statements filing that was made under
Seal a week ago, in which I surmised here as
many did elsewhere, was a response to Trump's barrage of
(03:46):
incendiary remarks, and just as importantly, a response to Trump's
clear belief that he is entitled to threaten mass violence
that no law applies to him that no one can
stop him. Trump's lawyers asked for this process to be
sealed from public view. Smith then filed to have it unsealed,
(04:08):
and Judge Chutkin did that Friday afternoon, and then Smith's
motion for the gag order followed, and the timing was extraordinary.
It was released almost six weeks to the hour since
on Friday, August fourth, Trump first broke his legal promise
to not threaten or obstruct by posting if you go
(04:29):
after me, I'm coming after you. That post was described
by Smith in the filing as a quote threatening message,
and Smith's motion went on to say Trump quote has
made good on his threat. Since the indictment in this case,
the defendant has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on
truth social on a near daily basis regarding the citizens
(04:52):
of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
Smith's nineteen page filing goes on to site line by
line Trump's threats against the justice system, the judicial system,
Judge Chutkin, Judge Chutkin's court, and the citizens of the
District of Columbia. Smith's filing reproduces Trump's posts attacking undermining
(05:13):
and attempting to intimidate the prosecutors in the case, including
knowingly false accusations of misconduct against a junior prosecutor. Smith's
filings quote Trump falsely accusing the President of the United
States with ordering the indictments. Smith's filing lists Trump's posts
bolstering or attacking and attempting to intimidate witnesses, including Mike
(05:35):
Pence and the former Attorney General Barr Smith's motion is
also filled with redacted names. The big black bar of
a fig leaf that is unfortunately no protection for those
Trump has threatened. You do not have to be an
expert or even an expert at googling to figure out
that Smith is acting in defense of the likes of
the Georgia election workers and former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Duncan
(05:58):
and his own former cybersecurity director Chris Krebs, all of
them victims of Trump's intimidation, and the threats and other
harassment against them and others is spelled out in chilling detail.
The redacted references to Georgia are not I don't think coincidental,
because what Smith is accusing of and what Smith is
asking the judge to do has bearings on Fannie Willis's
(06:22):
prosecution of Trump in Georgia as well. You may recall
that the judge's warnings to Trump there about the terms
of his release the fact that he has been permitted
to remain free on bail are far more explicit in
Georgia than what Jack Smith has gotten so far in
Florida or Washington. The defendant shall make no direct or
(06:44):
indirect threat of any nature against any witness, and yet
Smith's document says Trump has threatened witnesses. The above shall include,
but are not limited to, posts on social media or
reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.
Jack Smith's motion not just quote the threats and intimidation
(07:07):
in Trump's posts on social media or repost a post
made by another individual. It actually includes reproductions of images
of ten of the posts. If Judge Chutkin finds against
Trump in Washington, Trump could be immediately guilty of having
violated his bail in Georgia. Trump, of course replied by
(07:30):
calling him quote deranged. Jack Smith again twice online and
in person in person at the laughably titled Concerned Women
for America Leadership Summit in Washington Friday night. I assume
the concerned women in question are Christy Nome and Lauren
(07:53):
your tax dollars on the job, Bobert.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Deranged Jack Smith, he's the prosecutor. He's a deranged person.
Wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment.
I want to take away my right of speaking freely
and openly. Never forget, our enemies want to stop us
because we are the only ones that can stop them.
They want to take away more.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Even before that latest insane self martyrdom, Trump posted as
if Chutkin needed any more evidence, referring to himself in
the third person, again mastering sophistry, again explaining that his
poll numbers mean he can say anything he wants, again
and claiming, quote, I am not allowed to comment. They leak,
lie and sue, and they won't allow me to speak.
(08:39):
How else would I explain that Jack Smith is deranged? Quote?
The answer, of course is he wouldn't. This is not
about the First Amendment. This is not even about the
most extreme theoretical example of the First Amendment. That cliche
about yelling fire in a crowded theater. This is about
(09:00):
a man who yells fire in a crowded theater and
then goes to every other theater in the country and
yells fire again and again, even the one Lauren Bobert
is out on a date in This is about a
creature who believes himself omnipotent and untouchable. This is about
(09:22):
a potential scenario in which, if not in response to
this filing by Jack Smith, then in response to some
filing by some prosecutor at some point after some high
number of these violations. In some of these cases, a
case in which a judge has to send federal or
state marshals to apprehend Donald Trump and bring him to
(09:46):
a jail or prison for detention because he has violated
the terms of his bail. He is not going to stop.
He does not understand the concept of having to stop.
He will have to be forced to. You can insert
your his own thoughts about the implications of him resisting arrests.
(10:09):
But one thing that Trump and his lawyers, and his
apologists and his cultists can never say is that they
have not been warned the fact that he's running a
political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice.
Judge Chutkin told the Trump lawyer Lauro on the eleventh
of last month. If that means he can't say exactly
(10:31):
what he wants to say about witnesses in this case,
that's how it has to be. And yet he has
said what he wanted to say about them repeatedly, endlessly, recklessly, dangerously, violently,
And his response to this motion was to start the
process all over again. From the beginning, quote, even arguably
(10:55):
ambiguous statements from parties or their council, if they can
be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential
jury rors, can threaten the jurors. Judge, Chuck Can continued
on August eleventh, I will take whatever measures are necessary
to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings. Judge, there is
(11:18):
nothing ambiguous about Trump's statements. Judge, he is not going
to stop. Judge, you are going to have to lock
him up. Do it now. Trump's lawyers have until a
week from Monday to respond. A note about the rest
(11:42):
of this podcast. I mentioned at the beginning that this
is the second gag order proposed against Trump since Wednesday.
Rather than recapitulate the gag order that Judge Eileen Cannon
already issued against Trump in Florida, I'm going to simply
replay that segment from that podcast. Thus the rest of
this edition is not new material. If you've heard it already,
(12:02):
feel free to hit stop, although if I were you,
I would stick around just to hear me call Bill
Maher a scab scumbag again. Judge Eileen Cannon, you have
(12:24):
unsuspected depth. Trump's appointee has stunned Trump World by not
only limiting what he can say and when he can
say it during his prosecution and trial for stealing our
top secret documents, but also for limiting when he and
his lawyers can see the war plans and other classified
information he stole. This has gotten buried under the McCarthy
(12:47):
illegal impeachment inquiry, which is the point of that inquiry.
It is a diversion to misdirect the American news media
and the public. And as we know all too well,
if you spend ninety seconds trying to misdirect the American
news media, you will succeed utterly. But Trump has been
counting on Eileen Cannon to do his bidding for him,
(13:09):
and in this first non timing ruling out of Jack
Smith's Florida case against Trump, the judge has given US
hope that she may yet turn out to be more
than just the former flamenco dancing and yoga correspondent of
the Miami El Nuevo Herald newspaper. In short, Cannon's ruling
(13:31):
is almost everything Jack Smith asked for. Any evidence marked classified,
Trump cannot discuss it publicly. The evidence marked classified that
Trump has lied about and said he declassified, Trump cannot
discuss that publicly. The evidence marked classified that has become
public knowledge without being officially declassified, Trump cannot discuss that publicly. Either.
(13:54):
Trump wanted a skiff a sensitive compartmented Information facility SCIF
reinstalled at marri Lago, and Cannon not only did not
give it to him, she has ignored the request. Looks
like when he or his attorneys want access to these documents,
they will have to go to an established skiff under
(14:16):
the control of a classified information security officer already assigned
to the case in Florida. Trump can only look at
the secrets he stole inside the skiff. He can only
talk to his defense team about the secrets he stole
inside the skiff. For the classified audio recordings, Trump cannot
(14:38):
have copies. He cannot listen to them. Except on a
standalone computer not attached to a network, without Wi Fi,
without Internet inside the skiff, and the headphones on which
he listens to the audio recordings cannot be wireless. They
have to be plugged into the computer. Honest to God,
(15:00):
Judge Cannon's order includes every protection against Trump's kleptomania except
requiring him to leave a credit card at the desk,
and it has a sting in its tail, and that
sting is not merely be kind. Please rewind quote. The
limitations on disclosure of classified information set forth in this
order are binding on defendant and his counsel, and violations
(15:24):
may result in criminal and or civil penalties. In short,
Trump could go to jail for stealing these documents, and
he could also go to jail for stealing them again.
And he could also also go to jail for talking
about them. And wait, there's more. His Florida co defendant
(15:44):
Walt Naude. In this equation the SAP Walt Nauda figured
he could serve his Lord and Master Trump yet one
more time by gaining his own access to the classified documents,
and who knows where they'd wind up. Then Judge Cannon
shot that down to with the impeccable logic that since
Nauda is charged with obstruction and law dying and not
(16:05):
secret stealing quote, the defense may not disclose classified information
to him. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead
(16:29):
on Countdown a doubleheader Fridays with Thurber and coming up
on a very topical things. I promised not to tell
the day I met Bill Maher asshole. Turned out that
day was about twenty years earlier than either of us
had remembered, and he became an asshole about forty years
(16:49):
earlier than most of you understood. First time for the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
Spoiler alert, the winner is Bill Maher. But first the
bronze to congress Woman Lauren No, this dress fits, I'll
make it fit Bobert. You saw the video of her
(17:12):
being ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and for
singing along and for illegally recording the stage version of Beetlejuice.
The thirty six year old grandmother's date was reportedly an
Aspen bar owner named Quinn Gallagher, and who cares I mean,
who cares. Bobert is a nitwit. The nation is full
(17:35):
of knitwits. Her odds of meeting her end because her
mouth mysteriously seals shut and traps an unsurvivable amount of
hot air in her lungs. They're about two to one
in favor k Sarah live and let live. But this
tears it. Bobert and the rest of her nihilist Nazi
(17:56):
party are still pushing the drag queens and LGBTQ perge
stuff and this guy Gallagher, the bar owner. In Jack January,
the bar hosted quote a Winter Wonderland burlesque and drag
show at the bar of Lauren Bobert's boyfriend, starring Ken Dramatic.
(18:20):
I mean, it's one thing to jeopardize the lives of
people because of how they behave or dress, or that
you don't like them. It's quite another to jeopardize the
lives of people because of how they behave, or live
or dress when you don't even care and you are
just doing it to stir outrage. Watch out for those
(18:41):
sealed lips. Bobert the runner up Drew barrymore Well, it
was a nice career. In May, the actress and TV
talk show host pulled out of her gig as MC
of the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity with
the writer's strike, and that solidarity lasted a solid three months.
She says she's bringing her show back without writers. And
(19:04):
if you think, oh, it's a talk show, it doesn't
have to have writers, it just has to have talk.
It has writers. Trust me, I've done talk shows. I've
hosted talk shows. I've been on talk shows. It's more
writers than say Countdown had. Now her writers will be
scab writers, and she will also be a scab Drew
(19:26):
Scab Barrymore of the Drew Scab Barrymore Show. But our
winner is this is a surprise. It's Bill Maher. I
have a confession. Now. I don't think I've ever actually
said this before. I have been on his HBO show
several times, and I had him on my old MSNBC
show because the publicity was useful, and they would, by
(19:51):
the way, fly guests to Los Angeles first class on
their dime, so it was work and a free flight.
And to get it all you had to do was
sort of pretend you didn't hate Bill Maher. I'm guilty.
I pretended I didn't hate Bill Maher in point of fact,
as you will hear today, I have hated Bill Maher
(20:13):
continuously since the spring of nineteen seventy flipping eight. I
went to college with him. For a long time, Mar's
show was a good venue to reach a liberal audience
until he began to turn into a complete fascist. So
I last went on the show the night Trump was inaugurated,
(20:35):
and in fact I canceled an appearance scheduled for later
in twenty seventeen. So I'm not just now bailing on
this useless idiot. I bailed six years ago because mar
now has announced that his HBO show is also like
Drew Barrymore's returning despite the writer's strike quote, it has
been five months and it is time to bring people
(20:57):
back to work. The writers have important issues that I
empathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction.
But they are not the only people with issues, problems,
and concerns. Bill says he will quote honor the spirit
of the strike by not doing a monologue or other
written style pieces. Well as an aside, that's good news
(21:20):
because not one of his monologues or other pieces has
been funny since about in ten twenty eleven. But listen
to this quote. But the heart of the show is
an off the cuff panel discussion that aims to cut
through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue.
I've been in these panel discussions. A couple of them were. Okay, Frankly,
(21:44):
you know how I feel about Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews
did panel discussions better than Bill Maher does. I think
it was twenty fifteen when they finally invited me on
and I said, all right, I'll come out, I'll take
the free flight and I'll do the one on one interview.
But these panels, you know what they are. They're just
they're bullshit and predictable parts ship and Bill doesn't understand
(22:08):
the issues. I'd like to be left out of those.
And the producer says, I understand, and you're right, Bill
doesn't understand any of it. Doesn't even try anymore. But
you kind of have to be on the panel. Went
all right, it's still a free flight and a free
hotel room. Okay, fine. The panels are terrible. The panel
guests are terrible. They're usually c list at best. When
(22:32):
I was on the Panels, I was terrible to cut through.
To use Bill's word, the bullshit here. What Bill Maher
is doing right now is as always putting himself first
and then finding some rationalization to do so. This is
about saving his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief HBO boss
(22:54):
David Zaslab, the one who says HBO is a bad name,
so he changed it to Max David's as Lab is
the evil villain at the heart of this strike that
the studio's forced and the Hollywood media machine, much to
his surprise, is drying up and dying, and he is
being blamed every day of the week. The writers and
the actors have been amazingly solid and courageous except for
(23:19):
Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher, and the studios are losing
these strikes. So Bill is going to help the studios
by being a scab, by siding with the corporations over
the writers and the actors who are on a legal
and justified strike. Which is especially funny because, as I'll
(23:40):
get to in a moment, the day I met Bill Maher,
he called me a quote corporate sellout, which is what
he is now, a corporate sellout and a scab and
a reminder, by the way, particularly to liberals, but to
in fact anybody contemplating going on Real Time now or
when the writers and actors win the strike. If you
(24:01):
go on real Time on HBO, too, will be a scab.
This will be a particularly bad look. Democrats and lists
will be kept bill. By the way, without writers, the
new Scab edition of Real Time with Bill Maher will
be about eighty three seconds long, not counting all the
(24:22):
time that mar leaves so he can laugh at his
own jokes in a desperate attempt to make them seem
funny rather than just stupid mar scab two days. Worst
person in the world, and he's a scab. Sometime in
(24:52):
nineteen eighty five or nineteen eighty six I saw a
movie on cable called DC Cab. There was a character,
and it clearly the actor portraying him was talented and funny,
but for some reason I felt like I knew him
from so and I really didn't like him. I remember
the feeling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. His
(25:13):
name was Bill Maher mah er Well. I had a
teacher named Bill Mayer, but his name had a y
in it. He was my advisor in high school. Now
it wasn't him, but I knew three things. He was talented,
I didn't like him, and I knew him from somewhere.
This is pre Internet, of course, so no way to
(25:33):
find out where I knew him from. Hallowell's annual film
Guide would be my best bet. Maybe he'd be in
the new one coming out. Checked calendar just eight or
nine months from now. Eventually I found out Bill Maher
was in the year ahead of mine at Cornell University.
He was not at my radio station. He was not
in my college. Maybe I knew him from a class somewhere.
(25:56):
I could never nail it down. I like to say
I have a photographic memory, but it's all polaroids and
I haven't always bothered to label them. Almost everything that
ever happened is stuck inside this big empty head of mine.
But often key details like who, what, when and where
are just missing. Never wrote him down, and honestly, in
(26:18):
this case, it was not worth the effort. I knew
I was was the right word. The word was aware
of him when we were both in college. Occasionally, especially
after I went from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen ninety seven.
A writer would note the coincidence of university and years
and ask me about it, and I would say just
that I don't remember if he was in a class
(26:39):
with me or I knew him somehow, but I was
aware of Bill Maher. And then twenty two years ago,
this month, November twenty third, two thousand, I went on
his old show, Politically Incorrect, used to be the late
night show on ABC. This was when I was doing
sports for Fox in LA and it was an all
sports episode. Lennox Lewis, the boxer, Mark Cuban, the owner
(27:02):
of the Dallas Mavericks, Todd Zeald the first basement of
the New York Mets, and me from Fox Sports. When
I met Bill Maher before the show, I asked him
about Cornell and whether or not we ran into each other.
I didn't know anybody there. I didn't see anybody. I
didn't go comedy anywhere. I didn't talk to anybody. I
didn't meet you. Okay, excuse me. That settles it. Except
(27:22):
during the recording of the show, when Mark contradicted me
on some point, I got angry at him, and there
was no reason to get angry at him, so I
dismissed the anger, and I dismissed the moment, except on
the way home, I kept thinking, I know him from
school somehow, no matter what he says, and I know
(27:44):
I didn't like him in school. In the next decade,
Bill switched to his weekly HBO political show, and I
went back and turned MSNBC into a political network. And
the Internet happened so that Cornell juxtaposition became easier for
reporters to stumble over, so I would tell them the
same thing. I can't remember the detail, but for twenty
(28:05):
nine years now I have been convinced I was aware
of Bill Maher at Cornell. Finally came the day March twentieth,
two thousand and nine, when they asked me to go
on Real Time and Bill Maher Cornell University seventy eight
asked me Cornell University seventy nine something about colleges, and
I said, well, as you know, we overlapped at Cornell,
(28:27):
and I don't know if we met, but I was
aware of you there, and he interrupted and said, no,
you weren't, and I just went back and answered his question. Now,
after every episode of his program, mar has or at
least had a little party backstage, I mean catered with booze,
and with more guests than there are people in the
studio audience, and usually a bunch of models having done
(28:50):
that show four times, where they will fly you in
first class and put you up for the weekend in
LA just to do their show, and there's a party.
I began to suspect that, like many of the guests,
Bill Maher does the show just so he can have
the party. Anyway. Not long after it started, it overcomes
(29:10):
mar and he's mad at me. And mind you, even
if his allegation that he is five feet eight is correct,
I'm just under six ' four, So he's giving up
a lot of height during an argument, and he starts
yapping about how I should stop saying I was a
way heir of him at Cornell, and I'm just trying
to get publicity off something that never happened. And who
could remember that kind of crap anyway? And he never
(29:31):
talked to anybody in four years in college because quote
except for the Ethica high school students I sold drugs
to unquote. And I notice he's getting heated, and this
is just triggering that core belief of mine that I
was aware of him in college, and I didn't like him,
And now it becomes clear to me he didn't like
(29:53):
me either. He's getting loud enough and he's swinging his
arms around now and it looks kind of funny, but
apparently it happens in the office sometimes. And this is
when Scott Carter, who was the executive producer whom I
definitely did know since like nineteen ninety two when he
worked at Comedy Central with my friend Alan Havy, Scott
Carter comes over to defuse the situation. Scott was a
(30:18):
three piece suit kind of guy with a thumbs tuck
in the vest, who would call a group of men fellows,
as in say fellows. So Scott comes over and says,
say fellows with your Cornell alumni reunion here, And of
course this makes Bill Maher even angrier. Let me ask
you something. I used to drive down from Hobart to
(30:38):
see concerts at Cornell to say, I think Cornell was
the leading concert school in the nation back in our day.
And now Scott starts the list who he saw in
concert at Cornell. Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead
concert at Cornell at Barton Hall. He was there and
I say, I went to Springsteen, and Mar mumbles something
about Loggins and Messina, and I know what Carter's doing here.
(31:01):
He's diffusing. And we do a couple of rounds of
who you saw which Cornell concert, and finally I say,
I can top both of you comic geniuses. I saw
Robert Kleine in concert at Cornell. Now it is criminal,
but there's an excellent chance you may not know who
Robert Kline is, suffice to say, as prominent a comedian
(31:25):
in the sixties, seventies eighties as George Carlin or Richard
pryor HBO. Itself was built on annual George Carlin concerts
and annual Robert Klein concerts and everybody else. And Robert
Kline wasn't quite as deep or eternal as George Carlin,
but he was really on the money during Watergate and
during Reagan. So I say, I saw Robert Klein in
(31:48):
concert at Cornell, and Mar looks at me funny and
not angrily, and says quietly, I was at that too.
I saw Robert Klein too, And I don't really register
that Mar's mood has now utterly changed. He's not angry,
he's confused. Well, I say, I can still top you,
(32:08):
because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill
Maher starts to squint, and he looks at me, and
he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back at me,
and he says, wait, I interviewed Kleine after that concert too.
And I'm smiling through all this and smiling and smiling
(32:29):
and smiling, and then suddenly, simultaneously it hits Bill Maher
and me at the same moment, in the same fullness
of detail, and I stop smiling, and I shout at
Bill Maher, you and he pulls his arms in towards
his stomach and kind of bends forward at the waist
and covers his face with his hands, and he says,
oh God, I'm so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry,
(32:50):
I'm sorry. And while the anger wells up inside me
so powerfully, I can almost see it in my own eyeballs.
Bill Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say, fellows,
did I miss something? Did I have a brief stroke
or episode? And I say, Bill, and I just remember
(33:12):
it how I happened to be aware of him in
school and Mar still has got his hands over his
face and people are looking at us, and Bill is
shouting apologies, and I say, you want to tell him?
Or should I? And mar just shakes his body no
and mumbles, oh God, you do it. I can't, I can't,
(33:32):
I can't, And it all came back to me. For years,
I would tell people the story of the Robert Klein
concert at Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight. Our radio
station co sponsored his appearance along with the Cornell Concert Commission,
and in the contract we specified that a couple of
us real comedy nerds at the radio station would get
(33:54):
to go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or
fifteen minute interview with Robert Klein. Basically, we paid him
not much, but we paid him to do an interview.
And when my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage
to talk to Robert Klein, and we have our two
microphones and two mike stands and three tape recorders, there
is this guy, this short guy, and he's yelling at
(34:18):
the chief of the Corneill Concert Commission, and he's yelling
at Robert Clein's manager, and he's demanding that he should
get to interview Robert Clin because like Klein, this kid
says he is a stand up comedian and he publishes
the Corneill Humor magazine. And he points at me and
he says he should get priority over these quote corporate
sellouts from the Cornell radio station. I hated him on site.
(34:44):
Oh wait, I say to him in nineteen seventy eight.
And he's small and he's got dirty streaming hair and
he's loud, and I say, you are the publisher of
the Cornell humor magazine, the Cornell Widow. And he snorts
and says I would get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout,
Cornell Widow. And so I say, oh so, then that
it means you're the publisher of the Cornell Alternative humor magazine,
(35:07):
the Not So Big Red or whatever it is they
call it. He says, no way, they are corporate sellouts.
I publish this, and he pulls out a stack of
mimeographed pages stapled together and there's like a drawing on
the front of a naked girl and handwritten it says
it's his comedy magazine. And I look at Robert Klein's
(35:30):
manager and I say so it's ten o'clock and if
you leave now while this idiot is screwing this up,
the limo can still get mister Klein to Elaine's in
the city before it closes, right, And the manager is
wildly impressed, you know of Elaine's. And I said yes,
and I felt like an adult. And I also said,
(35:50):
if we give this guy five minutes of our time
right now while we're setting up our tape recorders, can
we still have ten minutes with mister Klein. And the
manager says, good plan. I like the way you think,
and he points to the kid and gestures for him
to come along. No, the kid shouts, I want half
an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing. And now I'm
getting angry. I say, buddy, so far all the corporations
(36:15):
in the world have paid me about one hundred bucks.
So I threaten him. Now, mind you, I believe this
is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven, when I was
eight years old, I have started two fistfights two in
fifty five years. I am a man of peace. I
am loud, but I am a man of peace. But
(36:36):
I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you in
the face, and he runs to where client's manager is
still gesturing towards him, and he screams corporate sell out,
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade mimeograph ten or twelve page
(37:00):
humor publication, and I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened, because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mahr's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher. And now back in
(37:27):
well technically this is correct, back in real time, at
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand and nine,
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame, and I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes,
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
(37:49):
And he mumbles no. And he says, if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
just call and he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and by the way, Bill Maher, if Bill
Maher's comedy magazine, by Bill, are you a corporate sellout?
And he says kind And that's how I was aware
(38:13):
of Bill Maher in college. I have argued before that
James Thurber is the greatest American humorist. And it dawns
on me that the argument is not unlike the idea
(38:34):
that Shohei Otani of the Los Angeles Angels is almost
automatically the most valuable player in baseball each year because
he is an All Star hitter and an All Star
pitcher in the same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer,
and in his spare time, he was an equally brilliant,
almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple
(38:56):
drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations.
His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
so I'll just read and I will read you now
in this episode, what is probably his most famous story
from my life in hard times, The night the bed
(39:17):
fell James Thurber I suppose that the high water mark
of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the
bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
it five or six times, than it does a piece
of writing, For it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
(39:41):
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat
incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened then
that my father had decided to sleep in the attic
one night, to be away where he could think. My
(40:02):
mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the old
wooden bed up there was unsafe, It was wobbly, and
the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in
case the bed fell and kill him. There was no
dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he
closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow,
twisting stairs. We later heard I'm in his creakings as
(40:25):
he crawled into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the
attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some
days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone six
or eight days, and returned growling and out of temper
with the news that the Federal Union was run by
a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of the
Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch.
(40:49):
We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first
cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he
was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It
was his feeling that if he were not awakened every
hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He
had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring
at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this.
(41:13):
He slept in my room, and I told him that
I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit
breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly.
He tested me the first night, which I had suspected
he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing
had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however,
and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears
(41:37):
a little but he took the precaution of putting a
glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at
the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse
him until he was almost gone. He said he would
sniff the camphor. A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the
only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old
(41:57):
Aunt Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with
two fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that
she was destined to die on South High Street because
she had been born on South High Street and married
on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Chauf,
who never went to bed at night without the fear
that a burglar was going to get in and blow
(42:19):
chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity,
for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of
losing her household goods, she always piled her money, silverware,
and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom,
with a note reading, this is all I have. Please
take it and do not use your chloroform, as this
(42:40):
is all I have. Aunt Gracie's Chauf also had a
burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She
was confident that burglars had been getting into her house
every night for forty years. The fact that she never
missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary,
She always claimed that she scared them off before they
could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When
(43:05):
she went to bed, she piled where she could get
at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house.
Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she
would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband,
who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long
ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep
(43:26):
or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he
would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that
presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly,
and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction,
and its mate down the hall in the other direction.
Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a
(43:46):
couple of pear. But I am straying from the remarkable
incidents that took place during the night that the bed
fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed.
The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their
occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred.
In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom,
(44:09):
where my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang
in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers,
briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one.
My brother Roy was in a room across the hall
from ours. Our bull terrier Wrecks slept in the hall.
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs
(44:31):
which were made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only
by putting up flat, with the middle section the two sides,
which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop
leaf table. When these sides are up, it is perilous
to roll too far toward the edge, for then the
cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole
(44:51):
bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This,
in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in
the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene,
later first referred to it as the night the bed
fell on your father. Always a deep sleeper and slow
to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at
(45:14):
first unconscious of what had happened when the iron coot
rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on me.
It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for
the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence I
did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness
and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother
in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion
(45:37):
that her worst dread was realized. The big wooden bed
upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed, let's go
to your poor father. It was this shout, rather than
the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in
the same room with her, he thought that mother had become,
for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, mama, he shouted,
(45:59):
trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for
perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father, and
you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this time
I was conscious of what was going on in a
vague way, but did not yet realize that I was
under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in
(46:24):
the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came
to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and that
we were all trying to bring him out. With a
low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at the
head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, he
poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor. Ugh
(46:45):
ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had
almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of
pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward
the open window, but he came up against one that
was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in
(47:08):
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn that the whole uproar was being made
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out
of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I
had the night marrish belief that I was entombed in
(47:30):
a mine global gas. Briggs, floundering in his camphor by
this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting,
was trying to open the door to the attic in
order to go up and get my father's body out
of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would
(47:52):
not yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to
the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were
now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father
farthest away and sound sleeper of all, had by this
time been awakened by the battering on the attic door.
He decided that the house was on fire. I'm coming, ok,
(48:16):
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right,
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right, He still
(48:38):
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear
(49:00):
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked Father. The situation was finally put
(49:25):
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(49:56):
Thank you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shaneil, who are the countdown musical director. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Scheneil, Guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven's elections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and
(50:20):
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and eighty third 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
(50:43):
next scheduled countdown is Monday or Tuesday. I gotta tell
I gotta shake this throat thing. So if there's no
real news over the weekend, I'm just gonna take Monday off. Okay,
one way or the other. Your subscription will notify you
and bulletins as the news warrants anyway, because me, I'm
(51:06):
your local neighborhood Masochist. Till then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Bill maher is
a Scab Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(51:36):
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. A
gag order perhaps now, revoking Trump's bail and sending him
to jail, perhaps later. This is the Countdown bulletin podcast
(00:29):
coverage of the news that Jack Smith has asked Judge
Tanya Chutkin to shut Trump up with a gag order,
and with it, there is the tantalizing possibility that Smith
also wants the judge to at least threaten Trump with
revocation of his bail and the terms of his release,
and that could mean jail. This would be the second
(00:50):
gag order this week against Trump. Smith himself does not
propose a penalty that Trump would face when he breaks it,
and of course, if it had gone into immediate effect,
Trump would have violated it within an hour, because he
repeated exactly the same dangerous threats and attacks and promises
of violence and intimidation of witnesses that had caused the
(01:10):
Special Council to ask for the gag order in the
first place one week ago. Smith leaves the penalty to
Judge Chutkin, but he writes, quote, the court should ensure
that public statements by the defendant and his agents do
not prejudice these criminal proceedings. The defendants repeated inflammatory public
statements regarding the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors, and
(01:34):
potential witnesses are substantially likely to materially prejudice the jury,
pool create fear among potential jurors, and result in threats
or harassment to individuals. He singles out that is strong language,
which Smith couches as if to be blunt. It is
not strong language. It is quote. The government proposes two
(01:57):
narrowly tailored orders that impose modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial
extra judicial conduct unquote. And I get the feeling that
what Smith writes modest permissible restrictions he means Chutkin should
use modest the way the eighteenth century satirist Jonathan Swift
used the word modest in his searing essay A Modest Proposal,
(02:20):
in which the modest proposal turns out to be solving
child poverty by eating babies. Jack Smith wants Hutkin to
bar Trump and his lawyers. There's also a claim that
Trump attorney John Laurow has violated a District of Columbia
law about pre trial statements from making quote statements regarding
(02:40):
the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses, and statements
about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors
that are disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating unquote. He also
wants the judge to reinforce her previous order, demanding that
the defense notify her in advance if it tries to
(03:03):
do any of potential jurors inside the District of Columbia
in hopes of buttressing its argument for a change of venue.
And Smith wants all that, as he repeats again and
again in the filing, because Trump's threats are an attempt
to prejudice, or influence or intimidate the jury pool. There
(03:25):
are eighteen separate references to Trump tampering with the jury pool,
eighteen in nineteen pages. This is finally the revelation of
that Daily extra Judicial Statements filing that was made under
Seal a week ago, in which I surmised here as
many did elsewhere, was a response to Trump's barrage of
(03:46):
incendiary remarks, and just as importantly, a response to Trump's
clear belief that he is entitled to threaten mass violence
that no law applies to him that no one can
stop him. Trump's lawyers asked for this process to be
sealed from public view. Smith then filed to have it unsealed,
(04:08):
and Judge Chutkin did that Friday afternoon, and then Smith's
motion for the gag order followed, and the timing was extraordinary.
It was released almost six weeks to the hour since
on Friday, August fourth, Trump first broke his legal promise
to not threaten or obstruct by posting if you go
(04:29):
after me, I'm coming after you. That post was described
by Smith in the filing as a quote threatening message,
and Smith's motion went on to say Trump quote has
made good on his threat. Since the indictment in this case,
the defendant has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on
truth social on a near daily basis regarding the citizens
(04:52):
of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
Smith's nineteen page filing goes on to site line by
line Trump's threats against the justice system, the judicial system,
Judge Chutkin, Judge Chutkin's court, and the citizens of the
District of Columbia. Smith's filing reproduces Trump's posts attacking undermining
(05:13):
and attempting to intimidate the prosecutors in the case, including
knowingly false accusations of misconduct against a junior prosecutor. Smith's
filings quote Trump falsely accusing the President of the United
States with ordering the indictments. Smith's filing lists Trump's posts
bolstering or attacking and attempting to intimidate witnesses, including Mike
(05:35):
Pence and the former Attorney General Barr Smith's motion is
also filled with redacted names. The big black bar of
a fig leaf that is unfortunately no protection for those
Trump has threatened. You do not have to be an
expert or even an expert at googling to figure out
that Smith is acting in defense of the likes of
the Georgia election workers and former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Duncan
(05:58):
and his own former cybersecurity director Chris Krebs, all of
them victims of Trump's intimidation, and the threats and other
harassment against them and others is spelled out in chilling detail.
The redacted references to Georgia are not I don't think coincidental,
because what Smith is accusing of and what Smith is
asking the judge to do has bearings on Fannie Willis's
(06:22):
prosecution of Trump in Georgia as well. You may recall
that the judge's warnings to Trump there about the terms
of his release the fact that he has been permitted
to remain free on bail are far more explicit in
Georgia than what Jack Smith has gotten so far in
Florida or Washington. The defendant shall make no direct or
(06:44):
indirect threat of any nature against any witness, and yet
Smith's document says Trump has threatened witnesses. The above shall include,
but are not limited to, posts on social media or
reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.
Jack Smith's motion not just quote the threats and intimidation
(07:07):
in Trump's posts on social media or repost a post
made by another individual. It actually includes reproductions of images
of ten of the posts. If Judge Chutkin finds against
Trump in Washington, Trump could be immediately guilty of having
violated his bail in Georgia. Trump, of course replied by
(07:30):
calling him quote deranged. Jack Smith again twice online and
in person in person at the laughably titled Concerned Women
for America Leadership Summit in Washington Friday night. I assume
the concerned women in question are Christy Nome and Lauren
(07:53):
your tax dollars on the job, Bobert.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Deranged Jack Smith, he's the prosecutor. He's a deranged person.
Wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment.
I want to take away my right of speaking freely
and openly. Never forget, our enemies want to stop us
because we are the only ones that can stop them.
They want to take away more.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Even before that latest insane self martyrdom, Trump posted as
if Chutkin needed any more evidence, referring to himself in
the third person, again mastering sophistry, again explaining that his
poll numbers mean he can say anything he wants, again
and claiming, quote, I am not allowed to comment. They leak,
lie and sue, and they won't allow me to speak.
(08:39):
How else would I explain that Jack Smith is deranged? Quote?
The answer, of course is he wouldn't. This is not
about the First Amendment. This is not even about the
most extreme theoretical example of the First Amendment. That cliche
about yelling fire in a crowded theater. This is about
(09:00):
a man who yells fire in a crowded theater and
then goes to every other theater in the country and
yells fire again and again, even the one Lauren Bobert
is out on a date in This is about a
creature who believes himself omnipotent and untouchable. This is about
(09:22):
a potential scenario in which, if not in response to
this filing by Jack Smith, then in response to some
filing by some prosecutor at some point after some high
number of these violations. In some of these cases, a
case in which a judge has to send federal or
state marshals to apprehend Donald Trump and bring him to
(09:46):
a jail or prison for detention because he has violated
the terms of his bail. He is not going to stop.
He does not understand the concept of having to stop.
He will have to be forced to. You can insert
your his own thoughts about the implications of him resisting arrests.
(10:09):
But one thing that Trump and his lawyers, and his
apologists and his cultists can never say is that they
have not been warned the fact that he's running a
political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice.
Judge Chutkin told the Trump lawyer Lauro on the eleventh
of last month. If that means he can't say exactly
(10:31):
what he wants to say about witnesses in this case,
that's how it has to be. And yet he has
said what he wanted to say about them repeatedly, endlessly, recklessly, dangerously, violently,
And his response to this motion was to start the
process all over again. From the beginning, quote, even arguably
(10:55):
ambiguous statements from parties or their council, if they can
be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential
jury rors, can threaten the jurors. Judge, Chuck Can continued
on August eleventh, I will take whatever measures are necessary
to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings. Judge, there is
(11:18):
nothing ambiguous about Trump's statements. Judge, he is not going
to stop. Judge, you are going to have to lock
him up. Do it now. Trump's lawyers have until a
week from Monday to respond. A note about the rest
(11:42):
of this podcast. I mentioned at the beginning that this
is the second gag order proposed against Trump since Wednesday.
Rather than recapitulate the gag order that Judge Eileen Cannon
already issued against Trump in Florida, I'm going to simply
replay that segment from that podcast. Thus the rest of
this edition is not new material. If you've heard it already,
(12:02):
feel free to hit stop, although if I were you,
I would stick around just to hear me call Bill
Maher a scab scumbag again. Judge Eileen Cannon, you have
(12:24):
unsuspected depth. Trump's appointee has stunned Trump World by not
only limiting what he can say and when he can
say it during his prosecution and trial for stealing our
top secret documents, but also for limiting when he and
his lawyers can see the war plans and other classified
information he stole. This has gotten buried under the McCarthy
(12:47):
illegal impeachment inquiry, which is the point of that inquiry.
It is a diversion to misdirect the American news media
and the public. And as we know all too well,
if you spend ninety seconds trying to misdirect the American
news media, you will succeed utterly. But Trump has been
counting on Eileen Cannon to do his bidding for him,
(13:09):
and in this first non timing ruling out of Jack
Smith's Florida case against Trump, the judge has given US
hope that she may yet turn out to be more
than just the former flamenco dancing and yoga correspondent of
the Miami El Nuevo Herald newspaper. In short, Cannon's ruling
(13:31):
is almost everything Jack Smith asked for. Any evidence marked classified,
Trump cannot discuss it publicly. The evidence marked classified that
Trump has lied about and said he declassified, Trump cannot
discuss that publicly. The evidence marked classified that has become
public knowledge without being officially declassified, Trump cannot discuss that publicly. Either.
(13:54):
Trump wanted a skiff a sensitive compartmented Information facility SCIF
reinstalled at marri Lago, and Cannon not only did not
give it to him, she has ignored the request. Looks
like when he or his attorneys want access to these documents,
they will have to go to an established skiff under
(14:16):
the control of a classified information security officer already assigned
to the case in Florida. Trump can only look at
the secrets he stole inside the skiff. He can only
talk to his defense team about the secrets he stole
inside the skiff. For the classified audio recordings, Trump cannot
(14:38):
have copies. He cannot listen to them. Except on a
standalone computer not attached to a network, without Wi Fi,
without Internet inside the skiff, and the headphones on which
he listens to the audio recordings cannot be wireless. They
have to be plugged into the computer. Honest to God,
(15:00):
Judge Cannon's order includes every protection against Trump's kleptomania except
requiring him to leave a credit card at the desk,
and it has a sting in its tail, and that
sting is not merely be kind. Please rewind quote. The
limitations on disclosure of classified information set forth in this
order are binding on defendant and his counsel, and violations
(15:24):
may result in criminal and or civil penalties. In short,
Trump could go to jail for stealing these documents, and
he could also go to jail for stealing them again.
And he could also also go to jail for talking
about them. And wait, there's more. His Florida co defendant
(15:44):
Walt Naude. In this equation the SAP Walt Nauda figured
he could serve his Lord and Master Trump yet one
more time by gaining his own access to the classified documents,
and who knows where they'd wind up. Then Judge Cannon
shot that down to with the impeccable logic that since
Nauda is charged with obstruction and law dying and not
(16:05):
secret stealing quote, the defense may not disclose classified information
to him. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead
(16:29):
on Countdown a doubleheader Fridays with Thurber and coming up
on a very topical things. I promised not to tell
the day I met Bill Maher asshole. Turned out that
day was about twenty years earlier than either of us
had remembered, and he became an asshole about forty years
(16:49):
earlier than most of you understood. First time for the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
Spoiler alert, the winner is Bill Maher. But first the
bronze to congress Woman Lauren No, this dress fits, I'll
make it fit Bobert. You saw the video of her
(17:12):
being ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and for
singing along and for illegally recording the stage version of Beetlejuice.
The thirty six year old grandmother's date was reportedly an
Aspen bar owner named Quinn Gallagher, and who cares I mean,
who cares. Bobert is a nitwit. The nation is full
(17:35):
of knitwits. Her odds of meeting her end because her
mouth mysteriously seals shut and traps an unsurvivable amount of
hot air in her lungs. They're about two to one
in favor k Sarah live and let live. But this
tears it. Bobert and the rest of her nihilist Nazi
(17:56):
party are still pushing the drag queens and LGBTQ perge
stuff and this guy Gallagher, the bar owner. In Jack January,
the bar hosted quote a Winter Wonderland burlesque and drag
show at the bar of Lauren Bobert's boyfriend, starring Ken Dramatic.
(18:20):
I mean, it's one thing to jeopardize the lives of
people because of how they behave or dress, or that
you don't like them. It's quite another to jeopardize the
lives of people because of how they behave, or live
or dress when you don't even care and you are
just doing it to stir outrage. Watch out for those
(18:41):
sealed lips. Bobert the runner up Drew barrymore Well, it
was a nice career. In May, the actress and TV
talk show host pulled out of her gig as MC
of the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity with
the writer's strike, and that solidarity lasted a solid three months.
She says she's bringing her show back without writers. And
(19:04):
if you think, oh, it's a talk show, it doesn't
have to have writers, it just has to have talk.
It has writers. Trust me, I've done talk shows. I've
hosted talk shows. I've been on talk shows. It's more
writers than say Countdown had. Now her writers will be
scab writers, and she will also be a scab Drew
(19:26):
Scab Barrymore of the Drew Scab Barrymore Show. But our
winner is this is a surprise. It's Bill Maher. I
have a confession. Now. I don't think I've ever actually
said this before. I have been on his HBO show
several times, and I had him on my old MSNBC
show because the publicity was useful, and they would, by
(19:51):
the way, fly guests to Los Angeles first class on
their dime, so it was work and a free flight.
And to get it all you had to do was
sort of pretend you didn't hate Bill Maher. I'm guilty.
I pretended I didn't hate Bill Maher in point of fact,
as you will hear today, I have hated Bill Maher
(20:13):
continuously since the spring of nineteen seventy flipping eight. I
went to college with him. For a long time, Mar's
show was a good venue to reach a liberal audience
until he began to turn into a complete fascist. So
I last went on the show the night Trump was inaugurated,
(20:35):
and in fact I canceled an appearance scheduled for later
in twenty seventeen. So I'm not just now bailing on
this useless idiot. I bailed six years ago because mar
now has announced that his HBO show is also like
Drew Barrymore's returning despite the writer's strike quote, it has
been five months and it is time to bring people
(20:57):
back to work. The writers have important issues that I
empathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction.
But they are not the only people with issues, problems,
and concerns. Bill says he will quote honor the spirit
of the strike by not doing a monologue or other
written style pieces. Well as an aside, that's good news
(21:20):
because not one of his monologues or other pieces has
been funny since about in ten twenty eleven. But listen
to this quote. But the heart of the show is
an off the cuff panel discussion that aims to cut
through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue.
I've been in these panel discussions. A couple of them were. Okay, Frankly,
(21:44):
you know how I feel about Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews
did panel discussions better than Bill Maher does. I think
it was twenty fifteen when they finally invited me on
and I said, all right, I'll come out, I'll take
the free flight and I'll do the one on one interview.
But these panels, you know what they are. They're just
they're bullshit and predictable parts ship and Bill doesn't understand
(22:08):
the issues. I'd like to be left out of those.
And the producer says, I understand, and you're right, Bill
doesn't understand any of it. Doesn't even try anymore. But
you kind of have to be on the panel. Went
all right, it's still a free flight and a free
hotel room. Okay, fine. The panels are terrible. The panel
guests are terrible. They're usually c list at best. When
(22:32):
I was on the Panels, I was terrible to cut through.
To use Bill's word, the bullshit here. What Bill Maher
is doing right now is as always putting himself first
and then finding some rationalization to do so. This is
about saving his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief HBO boss
(22:54):
David Zaslab, the one who says HBO is a bad name,
so he changed it to Max David's as Lab is
the evil villain at the heart of this strike that
the studio's forced and the Hollywood media machine, much to
his surprise, is drying up and dying, and he is
being blamed every day of the week. The writers and
the actors have been amazingly solid and courageous except for
(23:19):
Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher, and the studios are losing
these strikes. So Bill is going to help the studios
by being a scab, by siding with the corporations over
the writers and the actors who are on a legal
and justified strike. Which is especially funny because, as I'll
(23:40):
get to in a moment, the day I met Bill Maher,
he called me a quote corporate sellout, which is what
he is now, a corporate sellout and a scab and
a reminder, by the way, particularly to liberals, but to
in fact anybody contemplating going on Real Time now or
when the writers and actors win the strike. If you
(24:01):
go on real Time on HBO, too, will be a scab.
This will be a particularly bad look. Democrats and lists
will be kept bill. By the way, without writers, the
new Scab edition of Real Time with Bill Maher will
be about eighty three seconds long, not counting all the
(24:22):
time that mar leaves so he can laugh at his
own jokes in a desperate attempt to make them seem
funny rather than just stupid mar scab two days. Worst
person in the world, and he's a scab. Sometime in
(24:52):
nineteen eighty five or nineteen eighty six I saw a
movie on cable called DC Cab. There was a character,
and it clearly the actor portraying him was talented and funny,
but for some reason I felt like I knew him
from so and I really didn't like him. I remember
the feeling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. His
(25:13):
name was Bill Maher mah er Well. I had a
teacher named Bill Mayer, but his name had a y
in it. He was my advisor in high school. Now
it wasn't him, but I knew three things. He was talented,
I didn't like him, and I knew him from somewhere.
This is pre Internet, of course, so no way to
(25:33):
find out where I knew him from. Hallowell's annual film
Guide would be my best bet. Maybe he'd be in
the new one coming out. Checked calendar just eight or
nine months from now. Eventually I found out Bill Maher
was in the year ahead of mine at Cornell University.
He was not at my radio station. He was not
in my college. Maybe I knew him from a class somewhere.
(25:56):
I could never nail it down. I like to say
I have a photographic memory, but it's all polaroids and
I haven't always bothered to label them. Almost everything that
ever happened is stuck inside this big empty head of mine.
But often key details like who, what, when and where
are just missing. Never wrote him down, and honestly, in
(26:18):
this case, it was not worth the effort. I knew
I was was the right word. The word was aware
of him when we were both in college. Occasionally, especially
after I went from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen ninety seven.
A writer would note the coincidence of university and years
and ask me about it, and I would say just
that I don't remember if he was in a class
(26:39):
with me or I knew him somehow, but I was
aware of Bill Maher. And then twenty two years ago,
this month, November twenty third, two thousand, I went on
his old show, Politically Incorrect, used to be the late
night show on ABC. This was when I was doing
sports for Fox in LA and it was an all
sports episode. Lennox Lewis, the boxer, Mark Cuban, the owner
(27:02):
of the Dallas Mavericks, Todd Zeald the first basement of
the New York Mets, and me from Fox Sports. When
I met Bill Maher before the show, I asked him
about Cornell and whether or not we ran into each other.
I didn't know anybody there. I didn't see anybody. I
didn't go comedy anywhere. I didn't talk to anybody. I
didn't meet you. Okay, excuse me. That settles it. Except
(27:22):
during the recording of the show, when Mark contradicted me
on some point, I got angry at him, and there
was no reason to get angry at him, so I
dismissed the anger, and I dismissed the moment, except on
the way home, I kept thinking, I know him from
school somehow, no matter what he says, and I know
(27:44):
I didn't like him in school. In the next decade,
Bill switched to his weekly HBO political show, and I
went back and turned MSNBC into a political network. And
the Internet happened so that Cornell juxtaposition became easier for
reporters to stumble over, so I would tell them the
same thing. I can't remember the detail, but for twenty
(28:05):
nine years now I have been convinced I was aware
of Bill Maher at Cornell. Finally came the day March twentieth,
two thousand and nine, when they asked me to go
on Real Time and Bill Maher Cornell University seventy eight
asked me Cornell University seventy nine something about colleges, and
I said, well, as you know, we overlapped at Cornell,
(28:27):
and I don't know if we met, but I was
aware of you there, and he interrupted and said, no,
you weren't, and I just went back and answered his question. Now,
after every episode of his program, mar has or at
least had a little party backstage, I mean catered with booze,
and with more guests than there are people in the
studio audience, and usually a bunch of models having done
(28:50):
that show four times, where they will fly you in
first class and put you up for the weekend in
LA just to do their show, and there's a party.
I began to suspect that, like many of the guests,
Bill Maher does the show just so he can have
the party. Anyway. Not long after it started, it overcomes
(29:10):
mar and he's mad at me. And mind you, even
if his allegation that he is five feet eight is correct,
I'm just under six ' four, So he's giving up
a lot of height during an argument, and he starts
yapping about how I should stop saying I was a
way heir of him at Cornell, and I'm just trying
to get publicity off something that never happened. And who
could remember that kind of crap anyway? And he never
(29:31):
talked to anybody in four years in college because quote
except for the Ethica high school students I sold drugs
to unquote. And I notice he's getting heated, and this
is just triggering that core belief of mine that I
was aware of him in college, and I didn't like him,
And now it becomes clear to me he didn't like
(29:53):
me either. He's getting loud enough and he's swinging his
arms around now and it looks kind of funny, but
apparently it happens in the office sometimes. And this is
when Scott Carter, who was the executive producer whom I
definitely did know since like nineteen ninety two when he
worked at Comedy Central with my friend Alan Havy, Scott
Carter comes over to defuse the situation. Scott was a
(30:18):
three piece suit kind of guy with a thumbs tuck
in the vest, who would call a group of men fellows,
as in say fellows. So Scott comes over and says,
say fellows with your Cornell alumni reunion here, And of
course this makes Bill Maher even angrier. Let me ask
you something. I used to drive down from Hobart to
(30:38):
see concerts at Cornell to say, I think Cornell was
the leading concert school in the nation back in our day.
And now Scott starts the list who he saw in
concert at Cornell. Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead
concert at Cornell at Barton Hall. He was there and
I say, I went to Springsteen, and Mar mumbles something
about Loggins and Messina, and I know what Carter's doing here.
(31:01):
He's diffusing. And we do a couple of rounds of
who you saw which Cornell concert, and finally I say,
I can top both of you comic geniuses. I saw
Robert Kleine in concert at Cornell. Now it is criminal,
but there's an excellent chance you may not know who
Robert Kline is, suffice to say, as prominent a comedian
(31:25):
in the sixties, seventies eighties as George Carlin or Richard
pryor HBO. Itself was built on annual George Carlin concerts
and annual Robert Klein concerts and everybody else. And Robert
Kline wasn't quite as deep or eternal as George Carlin,
but he was really on the money during Watergate and
during Reagan. So I say, I saw Robert Klein in
(31:48):
concert at Cornell, and Mar looks at me funny and
not angrily, and says quietly, I was at that too.
I saw Robert Klein too, And I don't really register
that Mar's mood has now utterly changed. He's not angry,
he's confused. Well, I say, I can still top you,
(32:08):
because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill
Maher starts to squint, and he looks at me, and
he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back at me,
and he says, wait, I interviewed Kleine after that concert too.
And I'm smiling through all this and smiling and smiling
(32:29):
and smiling, and then suddenly, simultaneously it hits Bill Maher
and me at the same moment, in the same fullness
of detail, and I stop smiling, and I shout at
Bill Maher, you and he pulls his arms in towards
his stomach and kind of bends forward at the waist
and covers his face with his hands, and he says,
oh God, I'm so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry,
(32:50):
I'm sorry. And while the anger wells up inside me
so powerfully, I can almost see it in my own eyeballs.
Bill Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say, fellows,
did I miss something? Did I have a brief stroke
or episode? And I say, Bill, and I just remember
(33:12):
it how I happened to be aware of him in
school and Mar still has got his hands over his
face and people are looking at us, and Bill is
shouting apologies, and I say, you want to tell him?
Or should I? And mar just shakes his body no
and mumbles, oh God, you do it. I can't, I can't,
(33:32):
I can't, And it all came back to me. For years,
I would tell people the story of the Robert Klein
concert at Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight. Our radio
station co sponsored his appearance along with the Cornell Concert Commission,
and in the contract we specified that a couple of
us real comedy nerds at the radio station would get
(33:54):
to go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or
fifteen minute interview with Robert Klein. Basically, we paid him
not much, but we paid him to do an interview.
And when my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage
to talk to Robert Klein, and we have our two
microphones and two mike stands and three tape recorders, there
is this guy, this short guy, and he's yelling at
(34:18):
the chief of the Corneill Concert Commission, and he's yelling
at Robert Clein's manager, and he's demanding that he should
get to interview Robert Clin because like Klein, this kid
says he is a stand up comedian and he publishes
the Corneill Humor magazine. And he points at me and
he says he should get priority over these quote corporate
sellouts from the Cornell radio station. I hated him on site.
(34:44):
Oh wait, I say to him in nineteen seventy eight.
And he's small and he's got dirty streaming hair and
he's loud, and I say, you are the publisher of
the Cornell humor magazine, the Cornell Widow. And he snorts
and says I would get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout,
Cornell Widow. And so I say, oh so, then that
it means you're the publisher of the Cornell Alternative humor magazine,
(35:07):
the Not So Big Red or whatever it is they
call it. He says, no way, they are corporate sellouts.
I publish this, and he pulls out a stack of
mimeographed pages stapled together and there's like a drawing on
the front of a naked girl and handwritten it says
it's his comedy magazine. And I look at Robert Klein's
(35:30):
manager and I say so it's ten o'clock and if
you leave now while this idiot is screwing this up,
the limo can still get mister Klein to Elaine's in
the city before it closes, right, And the manager is
wildly impressed, you know of Elaine's. And I said yes,
and I felt like an adult. And I also said,
(35:50):
if we give this guy five minutes of our time
right now while we're setting up our tape recorders, can
we still have ten minutes with mister Klein. And the
manager says, good plan. I like the way you think,
and he points to the kid and gestures for him
to come along. No, the kid shouts, I want half
an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing. And now I'm
getting angry. I say, buddy, so far all the corporations
(36:15):
in the world have paid me about one hundred bucks.
So I threaten him. Now, mind you, I believe this
is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven, when I was
eight years old, I have started two fistfights two in
fifty five years. I am a man of peace. I
am loud, but I am a man of peace. But
(36:36):
I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you in
the face, and he runs to where client's manager is
still gesturing towards him, and he screams corporate sell out,
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade mimeograph ten or twelve page
(37:00):
humor publication, and I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened, because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mahr's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher. And now back in
(37:27):
well technically this is correct, back in real time, at
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand and nine,
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame, and I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes,
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
(37:49):
And he mumbles no. And he says, if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
just call and he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and by the way, Bill Maher, if Bill
Maher's comedy magazine, by Bill, are you a corporate sellout?
And he says kind And that's how I was aware
(38:13):
of Bill Maher in college. I have argued before that
James Thurber is the greatest American humorist. And it dawns
on me that the argument is not unlike the idea
(38:34):
that Shohei Otani of the Los Angeles Angels is almost
automatically the most valuable player in baseball each year because
he is an All Star hitter and an All Star
pitcher in the same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer,
and in his spare time, he was an equally brilliant,
almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple
(38:56):
drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations.
His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
so I'll just read and I will read you now
in this episode, what is probably his most famous story
from my life in hard times, The night the bed
(39:17):
fell James Thurber I suppose that the high water mark
of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the
bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
it five or six times, than it does a piece
of writing, For it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
(39:41):
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat
incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened then
that my father had decided to sleep in the attic
one night, to be away where he could think. My
(40:02):
mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the old
wooden bed up there was unsafe, It was wobbly, and
the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in
case the bed fell and kill him. There was no
dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he
closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow,
twisting stairs. We later heard I'm in his creakings as
(40:25):
he crawled into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the
attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some
days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone six
or eight days, and returned growling and out of temper
with the news that the Federal Union was run by
a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of the
Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch.
(40:49):
We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first
cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he
was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It
was his feeling that if he were not awakened every
hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He
had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring
at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this.
(41:13):
He slept in my room, and I told him that
I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit
breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly.
He tested me the first night, which I had suspected
he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing
had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however,
and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears
(41:37):
a little but he took the precaution of putting a
glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at
the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse
him until he was almost gone. He said he would
sniff the camphor. A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the
only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old
(41:57):
Aunt Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with
two fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that
she was destined to die on South High Street because
she had been born on South High Street and married
on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Chauf,
who never went to bed at night without the fear
that a burglar was going to get in and blow
(42:19):
chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity,
for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of
losing her household goods, she always piled her money, silverware,
and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom,
with a note reading, this is all I have. Please
take it and do not use your chloroform, as this
(42:40):
is all I have. Aunt Gracie's Chauf also had a
burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She
was confident that burglars had been getting into her house
every night for forty years. The fact that she never
missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary,
She always claimed that she scared them off before they
could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When
(43:05):
she went to bed, she piled where she could get
at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house.
Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she
would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband,
who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long
ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep
(43:26):
or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he
would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that
presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly,
and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction,
and its mate down the hall in the other direction.
Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a
(43:46):
couple of pear. But I am straying from the remarkable
incidents that took place during the night that the bed
fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed.
The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their
occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred.
In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom,
(44:09):
where my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang
in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers,
briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one.
My brother Roy was in a room across the hall
from ours. Our bull terrier Wrecks slept in the hall.
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs
(44:31):
which were made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only
by putting up flat, with the middle section the two sides,
which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop
leaf table. When these sides are up, it is perilous
to roll too far toward the edge, for then the
cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole
(44:51):
bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This,
in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in
the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene,
later first referred to it as the night the bed
fell on your father. Always a deep sleeper and slow
to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at
(45:14):
first unconscious of what had happened when the iron coot
rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on me.
It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for
the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence I
did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness
and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother
in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion
(45:37):
that her worst dread was realized. The big wooden bed
upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed, let's go
to your poor father. It was this shout, rather than
the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in
the same room with her, he thought that mother had become,
for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, mama, he shouted,
(45:59):
trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for
perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father, and
you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this time
I was conscious of what was going on in a
vague way, but did not yet realize that I was
under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in
(46:24):
the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came
to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and that
we were all trying to bring him out. With a
low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at the
head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, he
poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor. Ugh
(46:45):
ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had
almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of
pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward
the open window, but he came up against one that
was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in
(47:08):
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn that the whole uproar was being made
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out
of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I
had the night marrish belief that I was entombed in
(47:30):
a mine global gas. Briggs, floundering in his camphor by
this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting,
was trying to open the door to the attic in
order to go up and get my father's body out
of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would
(47:52):
not yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to
the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were
now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father
farthest away and sound sleeper of all, had by this
time been awakened by the battering on the attic door.
He decided that the house was on fire. I'm coming, ok,
(48:16):
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right,
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right, He still
(48:38):
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear
(49:00):
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked Father. The situation was finally put
(49:25):
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(49:56):
Thank you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shaneil, who are the countdown musical director. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Scheneil, Guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven's elections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and
(50:20):
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and eighty third 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
(50:43):
next scheduled countdown is Monday or Tuesday. I gotta tell
I gotta shake this throat thing. So if there's no
real news over the weekend, I'm just gonna take Monday off. Okay,
one way or the other. Your subscription will notify you
and bulletins as the news warrants anyway, because me, I'm
(51:06):
your local neighborhood Masochist. Till then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Bill maher is
a Scab Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(51:36):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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