July 17, 2025 • 22 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 146: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BULLETIN
"I never wrote a picture in my life," Trump told The Wall Street Journal, with his typical cognitive confusion, as he denied its bombshell report tonight that he contributed a bawdy letter and drawing of a naked woman to a special bound '50th Birthday Book' for Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
Within minutes, literally dozens of pictures wrote (or as we'd call it, "drawn") by Trump appeared online - most of them auctioned for charity. Trump was immediately defended by others like JD Vance who said was written in the book (compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell) didn't sound like him. Which him? The "Grab 'Em" him or the "I never wrote a picture in my life" him? Vance also asks why WSJ hasn't produced the letter. And Laura Loomer says Trump never types letters, he writes notes. I have a fan letter from Trump - from 2014 - typed by him or somebody for him.
The denials aren't relevant to the existence of the letter or what it says about Trump's relationship with Epstein at this perilous moment in Trump's presidency. And the denials didn't survive an hour. And they didn't deal with the most ominous part, the content of the letter, which includes Epstein and Trump "talking" to each other and concludes with Trump "saying" "Happy birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret."
Another wonderful secret? What in the HELL could that mean?
ALSO: in addition to the Trump Epstein cover-up there is the Trump Health cover-up and parts of the story about his acutely swollen ankles don't hold up. And the only thing swollen about Stephen Colbert is his ego. CBS has tonight cancelled his show, effective next May. The man is untrustworthy and rarely funny but his platform was consistently anti-dictatorship so the forum will be missed even if he will not.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown special bulletin. I'm Keith Olderman. Inside the
outline of the Naked Woman was a typewritten note styled
(00:27):
as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, written
in the third person. According to the Wall Street Journal
bombshell story on Thursday night, quoting again voice over, there
must be more to life than having everything, the note began, Donald, Yes,
(00:47):
there is, but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey,
nor will I since I also know what it is. Donald.
We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Yes, we do,
come to think of it, Donald, Enigma's age. Have you
noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was
(01:09):
clear to me the last time I saw you, Trump,
a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may
every day be another wonderful secret. This story is the
story of the Trump Epstein connection and that phrase wonderful secret?
(01:32):
What in the hell is Trump talking about? The Wall
Street Journal put this story out at about sunset on
Thursday night. It was immediately denied in the strangest way
of all of the denials of all of the Trump stories,
of all of the Trump sex stories in the last
decade or more, since long before he became a would
(01:55):
be dictator. At the risk of reading the entire Wall
Street Journal paywalled story, there are parts that I would
like to quote for batim. The headline, for instance, Jeffrey
Epstein's friends sent him body letters for a fiftieth birthday album.
One was from Donald Trump. The subhead the leatherbound book
(02:18):
was compiled by Gallaine Maxwell. The president says the letter
is a fake thing. What may live out of this
story is not the letter, which is not by any
means conclusive of about anything at all other than a
relationship between Epstein and Trump. And we all know about that.
(02:39):
And Trump's efforts to separate himself from Epstein have been
pro forma at best and pathetic at worst. What may
linger are the denials Trump seems to be journalistically doing
the equivalent of perjury here again and again, needless, stupid,
(03:00):
easily disproved perjury in a journalistic sense. There is no
such thing as lying to a newspaper being some kind
of legal offense. The story begins thusly. It was Epstein's
fiftieth birthday, and Maxwell was preparing a special gift to
mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein's family and friends,
One of them was Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump
(03:22):
and dozens of Epstein's other associates for a two thousand
and three birthday album. According to documents reviewed by The
Wall Street Journal, So put this back in its timing,
this would have been twelve years before Trump ran for president.
This is not ancient history. This is not something that
predates his political aspirations, which we know began certainly no
(03:44):
later than twenty eleven and had been festering inside that
semi brain of his since the twentieth century. The letter
bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is
body like others in the album. It contains several lines
of typewritten text, framed by the outline of a naked woman,
which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker.
(04:07):
A pair of small arcs denotes the women's women's breasts,
and the future president's signature is a squiggly donald below
her waist, mimicking pubic hair. One thing above all else
about the forty fifth and forty seventh president of the
United States is all class. The denial from Trump is
(04:28):
the most interesting part of the story. Quote to the journal,
this is not me. This is a fake thing. It's
a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a
picture in my life. I never wrote a picture in
my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not
my language, it's not my words. I'm gonna sue the
(04:50):
Wall Street Journal, just like I sued everyone else. This,
of course, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I never
wrote a picture in my life. Stand by forgive my language,
writes jd Vance, who is Renfield to the Dracula in
this equation? But this story is completed, utter bullshit. The
(05:10):
WSJ should be a shamed for publishing it. Where is
this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never
showed it to us before publishing it. Does anybody honestly
believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Well it doesn't have
to sound like Donald Trump. Somebody else would have composed
it for him, and he would have paid them less
than he promised. To my goodness, he actually could in
(05:31):
two thousand and three write things that made sense, that
seemed to be in English, that did not seem to
be coming from a brain damaged individual. I received a
letter from him in twenty fourteen that was a suck
up letter, a fan letter, a disingenuous fan letter, and
what I'm sure he'd like to destroy. I'll get to
that in a moment. But this phrase I never wrote
(05:53):
a picture in my life was disproven within an hour
of the Wall Street Journal printing the denial. Within an hour,
no fewer than online copies of at least two dozen
Donald Trump drawings that had been publicly sold doodles, pictures
often sold at charity events, almost invariably of skylines, all
(06:17):
carrying his crazy signature, all resembling his crazy, ironically enough
heartbeat kind of signature, at least two dozen, one that
sold for two hundred dollars in Iowa, if I remembering
it correctly. And then this story about a doodle by
Donald Trump of the Manhattan Skyline has sold an auction
(06:37):
for a grand total of twenty nine and eighty four dollars,
placed on the market early this week by the Los
Angeles based Nate D. Sanders Auctions. The drawing is typical Trump,
featuring the Trump Tower right at its center and the
president's nightmarish signature scrawled below it in gold marker the
dates to obviously the first term. It's an otherwise nondescript
(07:01):
and childlike portrayal of New York City with unadorned bill
bildings lined up in a row like tetris blocks topped
with triangle roofs. I think they're actually being kind of
unkind to him. There is a certain well, there's a
certain charm to this thing. But more importantly, I think
it's impossible to look at the drawing that Trump did
(07:21):
and not see what this really is. There are at
least four buildings that look like erect penises, and all
the other drawings are the same thing. I don't know
that anyone has yet produced a Trump took a picture
of a naked woman with his signature as her hair.
But we have this denial from Laura Lumer also already disproved.
(07:44):
I'm calling bullshit on this Trump birthday letter to Epstein.
It's totally fake. Everyone who actually knows President Trump knows
he doesn't type letters. He writes notes in big black sharpie.
Trust me, I would know he doesn't use email and
he doesn't type write. Lumer, who is a genius prince
type write as two words. He writes messages in big
(08:06):
black sharpie. This is not true. I have and I
have retained it, despite what are clearly subconscious efforts on
my part to destroy the damn thing by putting it
in file cabinets full of garbage. I still have from
twenty fourteen the fan letter he wrote me about my
ESPN two show, particularly a commentary I did about Ted Turner.
(08:30):
It is typed. It doesn't have to be typed by him,
It's typed by somebody else. He, however, dictated it. It
is his language, and it has a few notations and
marks on it with a big black sharpie, and of
course he's crazy ass signature. We've also seen him draw
on things like, you know, hurricane maps. It is fascinating
(08:54):
that his typing and his drawing and his writing habits
are denied here, and not the implications of sexual perversion,
nor the cover up of the Epstein crimes by Trump,
nor the connection between Trump and Epstein. That is not
what his defenders or even what Trump are denying. They
are denying that he draws pictures, And suddenly two dozen
(09:18):
pictures appear already online. Jay d Vance says, why haven't
they shown us the picture? Where is this picture? What
if the picture now turns up, and of course the
ridiculous idea that Trump would have to personally type a
typewritten note himself or it doesn't count somewhere. That's what
happens when you get a millennial, and not a particularly
(09:39):
bright one, trying to figure out what a typewritten letter
is and who has to use the typewriter when they
type it. Also, the only negative here that I see
in the short term is it gives those wavering in
their support of Trump over Epstein, particularly those he called,
you know, weaklings and idiots and former supporters. It gives
(10:02):
them something to rally a against and kind of walk
back towards his side, even if it is the Murdoch
Wall Street Journal against which they are rallying. It may
work to his advantage in this respect, but in a
larger sense it underscores this. This story will stay alive
into a third work week, and very few Trump scandals
(10:24):
have lasted that long. We will now be in the
mode in which the remaining news organizations in this country
begin to look for something else. Also, this story, as
mild as it is comparatively, drove Trump nuts and raged.
Trump attempted to kill the story from Status by the
(10:44):
reporter Oliver Darcy, formerly of CNN. Trump is said to
have personally called Emma Tucker, the journal's editor in chief,
to voice his objections. The specifics of the call remain unclear,
but it's hard to imagine Trump voiced anything but outrage.
There's a slightly different version of that in Breaker by
Lachlan Cartwright. There had been it's in recent days from
(11:05):
the White House to have the story killed, including a
phone call to Journal editor Emma Tucker from White House
Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, where Trump was on the line.
Breaker has learned, Oh no, how could you handle a
call from Caroline Levitt? The Division three softball center fielder.
But one thing I can't get past happy birthday? And
(11:29):
may every day be another wonderful secret? What in God's
name could that mean? And do any of us want
to know another wonderful secret? It fits all of the
(11:49):
cliches and all of the assumptions about Epstein, and particularly
about whatever Trump's relationship to Epstein really was. That's the
main thing. It's a vibe, as the kids say, and
the denials have already been disproved. The lead story on
the Murdoch owned Fox News Channel shows Tonight, Hunter Biden
(12:12):
something something Laura Ingram insisting Trump shouldn't fall into the
special prosecutor trap about Epstein. If it weren't for special
prosecutors like Ken Starr, Laura would never have a TV career.
She had followed her mother and she'd be waitressing into
her seventies. Let me rephrase that that's an honorable career.
Her mother had not like what Laura is doing now.
There was, apparently late in Laura Ingram's program, a reference
(12:34):
to something about the Wall Street Journal story coming up
after the break, And when the break happened and ended
and we went back to Laura, she said nothing about it.
All we saw is that attempt to make her face
smile after all that work. Also of note as to
Trump's health cover up, you will have noticed Trump's terrifyingly
(12:54):
swollen ankles you would go to the hospital, and his
obvious use of makeup over an area of his hand
that clearly shows there's been an IV attached there perhaps
or electrode patches put there, or that his hands have
had profound bruises in the area, and makeup used to
cover those bruises. The area seems to be about the
(13:18):
size of a silver dollar. The White House says he
has now been tested. There is no deep vein thrombosis,
no heart problems, but he has had swelling in his legs.
That's what they checked him out for. And they say
he has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency or venous insufficiency,
(13:38):
which occurs when leg veins fail to pump blood to
the heart, causing the blood to pool in the lower limbs,
which can then become swollen. They say this is minor,
and we have long since learned never to trust the
White House Press Office about anything, but especially his health.
They are this close to sodom husseining him. They are
(14:00):
this close to announcing that, like Sodom Hussein used to
claim to the people of Iraq, he's had a magic
stone implanted in his chest and is therefore immortal and
cannot be shot or killed. But this insufficiency in the
veins may be legit because they have never before cited
an actual disease Trump has, especially one which may have
(14:22):
implications for travel, for flying. And the ankles have looked
like he was wearing winter boots. This is a real
problem and it may be a real and treatable problem.
But that leads to the second half of the story,
which is even on thinner ice than the first half.
Is it's the stuff about his hands. Those aren't bruises
(14:43):
or leftovers from patches or ivs or electrodes. Oh no,
says the White House. They are from shaking too many
hands while taking aspirin to treat the chronic venous insufficiency,
which is I believe this is a medical term. Bullshit.
They are claiming it is not serious, that it's the
(15:04):
result of the disease, which isn't serious, even though it
blew up his ankles. And sure, everybody has swelling in
their legs and they only need aspirin to cure it.
But if you take the aspirin, the thing causing the
swelling in your legs will then cause bruising on your hand,
bad enough to require makeup on your hand. This does
(15:26):
not add up. Trump, simply put, is in worse physical
shape now than Joe Biden got within a million miles
of but he can still instinctively talk fast and loudly.
So Jake Tapper isn't writing a goddamned book about it.
His clarity, though, is clearly descending about half a point
a week. That quote to the Wall Street Journal is
(15:48):
nonsensical or nearly such. I never wrote a picture in
my life. Oh good. I never wrote a picture in
my life either. Holy crap. And it didn't even turn
out to be true. There's one other note to mention
in this bulletin. CBS has tonight canceled the Late Show
with Stephen Colbert. It will linger on in ever less
(16:11):
supported lame duckness until May of next year, which is
utterly bizarre. But I have to assume they are refusing
to just give him any money to go away. Right now.
They are citing economics CBS is, and I believe that
there is some legitimacy to that. Nothing in television is paying,
certainly nothing as expensive as a late night talk show.
(16:32):
But of course that was also what they cited when
they denuded the CBS Evening News, and what they presumably
will cite when they cut the nuts off sixty minutes.
I'm going to do my reaction to this out of order.
I'm going to do the unpopular part first. I have
alluded to this before my experience with Stephen Colbert, which
dates back I believe to his fourth show on Comedy
(16:56):
Central in two thousand and seven eight when I did
a favor to Jonathan Alter, one of our regular guests
on Countdown, whose wife was the guest booker on a
show nobody wanted to go on with called the Colbert Rapport.
My experience with Stephen Colbert over all that time is
(17:17):
one hundred percent negative. I'm doing him a favor. When
he goes to CBS once again, missus, Alter asks me
to come on and be a guest for the demo show,
like the second time they tried to do a Stephen
Colbert late night CBS show in front of an audience,
and I come on and give up my time, which
isn't that valuable, But I shaved and I come on
(17:40):
and he asks me what I'm going to do now
that my ESPN two show has been canceled, and I said,
I don't know. There are a couple of possibilities, but
I legitimately don't know. And he responds, tell me, when
you were on Countdown and somebody gave you a bullshit
answer like that, what did you do? What I thought
of doing, since we weren't actually on TV, was getting
(18:01):
up and spitting in his face and walking off. I
happened to be telling him the literal truth. I didn't
know what I was going to do. There was an
offer from CNN, there was an offer from MSNBC, there
were two sports offers. I didn't know what I was
going to do. Ultimately, I didn't do any of those things.
I'm doing this guy a favor, and he's saying I'm lying. Later,
after they got the CBS show on the air, I
(18:23):
pre recorded for him again, it's just my time. It
wasn't some sort of I didn't cancel some sort of
vacation to go do it for him. It was within
walking distance, but they asked me to come over one
morning and record a very unfunny bit about Alex Rodriguez
of the New York Yankees. The intro that Stephen Colbert
(18:43):
read while I was in the studio standing not twenty
feet from him, was here's the man who's had more
jobs than you had hot dinners. Then I go home
to watch to see if the thing was any funnier
on TV than it was live, and he has re
recorded it. It's no longer the man who's had more
jobs than you've had hot dinners. It's become the man
who's been fired more times than you've had hot dinners.
(19:05):
That is as cheesy a thing as I have ever
heard in the entirety of my fifty years in the
entertainment and information media business. That's Stephen Colbert. And if
it wasn't his idea, it was the idea of his
executive producer at the time, Chris I will later kill
CNN licked. Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker, He
(19:28):
is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of
your trust. And the more I reflect on it, the
more I think there was something to the old conservative
theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not
some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really
dumb bill O'Reilly who kept stepping on rakes, That he
was a conservative pretending to be a stupid conservative so
(19:51):
he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space
and counter more importantly things like reality and facts and
democrats and worst of all, when they can anseled the
David Letterman Show. When they eased David Letterman out, Colbert
and the people working for him were brutal to the
(20:12):
Letterman people, going to the extent of ripping up everything
in the Ed Sullivan Theater that had any connection to
David Letterman and throwing it away the morning after the
last show. No auctions for charity, no farewell items for
the staffers, nothing, a blood letting to make sure that
everybody forgot David Letterman and thought only of Stephen Colbert.
(20:36):
And now Stephen Colbert is finished and everybody thinks remember
David Letterman. So to hell with him. I hope he
never works again. The platform, however, will be missed. His
stuff became reliably anti Trump, meaning anti dictatorship. Occasionally it
was funny. CBS, of course, jumped the shark with the
(20:56):
deal that Sherry Redstone's been making with Trump, that bribe
dressed up as a settlement of the ludicrous lawsuit over
the editing of the Kamala Harris interview. The question now
is will these a moral cash whorees who are taking
over CBS paramount also fire John Stewart, who, after a
bad both sides this start to his return on Comedy Central,
(21:20):
has gotten closer to his old form and was about
one hundred times more valuable in the political space than
Colbert ever was at his best. In any event, This
has been a Countdown bulletin podcast. The next regularly scheduled
full edition is Monday, dropping at midnight Eastern Sunday night.
Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. I never wrote a picture
(21:42):
in my life other than these two or three hundred,
and let me close by just saying, may every day
be another wonderful secret. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
(22:05):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown special bulletin. I'm Keith Olderman. Inside the
outline of the Naked Woman was a typewritten note styled
(00:27):
as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, written
in the third person. According to the Wall Street Journal
bombshell story on Thursday night, quoting again voice over, there
must be more to life than having everything, the note began, Donald, Yes,
(00:47):
there is, but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey,
nor will I since I also know what it is. Donald.
We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Yes, we do,
come to think of it, Donald, Enigma's age. Have you
noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was
(01:09):
clear to me the last time I saw you, Trump,
a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may
every day be another wonderful secret. This story is the
story of the Trump Epstein connection and that phrase wonderful secret?
(01:32):
What in the hell is Trump talking about? The Wall
Street Journal put this story out at about sunset on
Thursday night. It was immediately denied in the strangest way
of all of the denials of all of the Trump stories,
of all of the Trump sex stories in the last
decade or more, since long before he became a would
(01:55):
be dictator. At the risk of reading the entire Wall
Street Journal paywalled story, there are parts that I would
like to quote for batim. The headline, for instance, Jeffrey
Epstein's friends sent him body letters for a fiftieth birthday album.
One was from Donald Trump. The subhead the leatherbound book
(02:18):
was compiled by Gallaine Maxwell. The president says the letter
is a fake thing. What may live out of this
story is not the letter, which is not by any
means conclusive of about anything at all other than a
relationship between Epstein and Trump. And we all know about that.
(02:39):
And Trump's efforts to separate himself from Epstein have been
pro forma at best and pathetic at worst. What may
linger are the denials Trump seems to be journalistically doing
the equivalent of perjury here again and again, needless, stupid,
(03:00):
easily disproved perjury in a journalistic sense. There is no
such thing as lying to a newspaper being some kind
of legal offense. The story begins thusly. It was Epstein's
fiftieth birthday, and Maxwell was preparing a special gift to
mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein's family and friends,
One of them was Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump
(03:22):
and dozens of Epstein's other associates for a two thousand
and three birthday album. According to documents reviewed by The
Wall Street Journal, So put this back in its timing,
this would have been twelve years before Trump ran for president.
This is not ancient history. This is not something that
predates his political aspirations, which we know began certainly no
(03:44):
later than twenty eleven and had been festering inside that
semi brain of his since the twentieth century. The letter
bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is
body like others in the album. It contains several lines
of typewritten text, framed by the outline of a naked woman,
which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker.
(04:07):
A pair of small arcs denotes the women's women's breasts,
and the future president's signature is a squiggly donald below
her waist, mimicking pubic hair. One thing above all else
about the forty fifth and forty seventh president of the
United States is all class. The denial from Trump is
(04:28):
the most interesting part of the story. Quote to the journal,
this is not me. This is a fake thing. It's
a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a
picture in my life. I never wrote a picture in
my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not
my language, it's not my words. I'm gonna sue the
(04:50):
Wall Street Journal, just like I sued everyone else. This,
of course, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I never
wrote a picture in my life. Stand by forgive my language,
writes jd Vance, who is Renfield to the Dracula in
this equation? But this story is completed, utter bullshit. The
(05:10):
WSJ should be a shamed for publishing it. Where is
this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never
showed it to us before publishing it. Does anybody honestly
believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Well it doesn't have
to sound like Donald Trump. Somebody else would have composed
it for him, and he would have paid them less
than he promised. To my goodness, he actually could in
(05:31):
two thousand and three write things that made sense, that
seemed to be in English, that did not seem to
be coming from a brain damaged individual. I received a
letter from him in twenty fourteen that was a suck
up letter, a fan letter, a disingenuous fan letter, and
what I'm sure he'd like to destroy. I'll get to
that in a moment. But this phrase I never wrote
(05:53):
a picture in my life was disproven within an hour
of the Wall Street Journal printing the denial. Within an hour,
no fewer than online copies of at least two dozen
Donald Trump drawings that had been publicly sold doodles, pictures
often sold at charity events, almost invariably of skylines, all
(06:17):
carrying his crazy signature, all resembling his crazy, ironically enough
heartbeat kind of signature, at least two dozen, one that
sold for two hundred dollars in Iowa, if I remembering
it correctly. And then this story about a doodle by
Donald Trump of the Manhattan Skyline has sold an auction
(06:37):
for a grand total of twenty nine and eighty four dollars,
placed on the market early this week by the Los
Angeles based Nate D. Sanders Auctions. The drawing is typical Trump,
featuring the Trump Tower right at its center and the
president's nightmarish signature scrawled below it in gold marker the
dates to obviously the first term. It's an otherwise nondescript
(07:01):
and childlike portrayal of New York City with unadorned bill
bildings lined up in a row like tetris blocks topped
with triangle roofs. I think they're actually being kind of
unkind to him. There is a certain well, there's a
certain charm to this thing. But more importantly, I think
it's impossible to look at the drawing that Trump did
(07:21):
and not see what this really is. There are at
least four buildings that look like erect penises, and all
the other drawings are the same thing. I don't know
that anyone has yet produced a Trump took a picture
of a naked woman with his signature as her hair.
But we have this denial from Laura Lumer also already disproved.
(07:44):
I'm calling bullshit on this Trump birthday letter to Epstein.
It's totally fake. Everyone who actually knows President Trump knows
he doesn't type letters. He writes notes in big black sharpie.
Trust me, I would know he doesn't use email and
he doesn't type write. Lumer, who is a genius prince
type write as two words. He writes messages in big
(08:06):
black sharpie. This is not true. I have and I
have retained it, despite what are clearly subconscious efforts on
my part to destroy the damn thing by putting it
in file cabinets full of garbage. I still have from
twenty fourteen the fan letter he wrote me about my
ESPN two show, particularly a commentary I did about Ted Turner.
(08:30):
It is typed. It doesn't have to be typed by him,
It's typed by somebody else. He, however, dictated it. It
is his language, and it has a few notations and
marks on it with a big black sharpie, and of
course he's crazy ass signature. We've also seen him draw
on things like, you know, hurricane maps. It is fascinating
(08:54):
that his typing and his drawing and his writing habits
are denied here, and not the implications of sexual perversion,
nor the cover up of the Epstein crimes by Trump,
nor the connection between Trump and Epstein. That is not
what his defenders or even what Trump are denying. They
are denying that he draws pictures, And suddenly two dozen
(09:18):
pictures appear already online. Jay d Vance says, why haven't
they shown us the picture? Where is this picture? What
if the picture now turns up, and of course the
ridiculous idea that Trump would have to personally type a
typewritten note himself or it doesn't count somewhere. That's what
happens when you get a millennial, and not a particularly
(09:39):
bright one, trying to figure out what a typewritten letter
is and who has to use the typewriter when they
type it. Also, the only negative here that I see
in the short term is it gives those wavering in
their support of Trump over Epstein, particularly those he called,
you know, weaklings and idiots and former supporters. It gives
(10:02):
them something to rally a against and kind of walk
back towards his side, even if it is the Murdoch
Wall Street Journal against which they are rallying. It may
work to his advantage in this respect, but in a
larger sense it underscores this. This story will stay alive
into a third work week, and very few Trump scandals
(10:24):
have lasted that long. We will now be in the
mode in which the remaining news organizations in this country
begin to look for something else. Also, this story, as
mild as it is comparatively, drove Trump nuts and raged.
Trump attempted to kill the story from Status by the
(10:44):
reporter Oliver Darcy, formerly of CNN. Trump is said to
have personally called Emma Tucker, the journal's editor in chief,
to voice his objections. The specifics of the call remain unclear,
but it's hard to imagine Trump voiced anything but outrage.
There's a slightly different version of that in Breaker by
Lachlan Cartwright. There had been it's in recent days from
(11:05):
the White House to have the story killed, including a
phone call to Journal editor Emma Tucker from White House
Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, where Trump was on the line.
Breaker has learned, Oh no, how could you handle a
call from Caroline Levitt? The Division three softball center fielder.
But one thing I can't get past happy birthday? And
(11:29):
may every day be another wonderful secret? What in God's
name could that mean? And do any of us want
to know another wonderful secret? It fits all of the
(11:49):
cliches and all of the assumptions about Epstein, and particularly
about whatever Trump's relationship to Epstein really was. That's the
main thing. It's a vibe, as the kids say, and
the denials have already been disproved. The lead story on
the Murdoch owned Fox News Channel shows Tonight, Hunter Biden
(12:12):
something something Laura Ingram insisting Trump shouldn't fall into the
special prosecutor trap about Epstein. If it weren't for special
prosecutors like Ken Starr, Laura would never have a TV career.
She had followed her mother and she'd be waitressing into
her seventies. Let me rephrase that that's an honorable career.
Her mother had not like what Laura is doing now.
There was, apparently late in Laura Ingram's program, a reference
(12:34):
to something about the Wall Street Journal story coming up
after the break, And when the break happened and ended
and we went back to Laura, she said nothing about it.
All we saw is that attempt to make her face
smile after all that work. Also of note as to
Trump's health cover up, you will have noticed Trump's terrifyingly
(12:54):
swollen ankles you would go to the hospital, and his
obvious use of makeup over an area of his hand
that clearly shows there's been an IV attached there perhaps
or electrode patches put there, or that his hands have
had profound bruises in the area, and makeup used to
cover those bruises. The area seems to be about the
(13:18):
size of a silver dollar. The White House says he
has now been tested. There is no deep vein thrombosis,
no heart problems, but he has had swelling in his legs.
That's what they checked him out for. And they say
he has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency or venous insufficiency,
(13:38):
which occurs when leg veins fail to pump blood to
the heart, causing the blood to pool in the lower limbs,
which can then become swollen. They say this is minor,
and we have long since learned never to trust the
White House Press Office about anything, but especially his health.
They are this close to sodom husseining him. They are
(14:00):
this close to announcing that, like Sodom Hussein used to
claim to the people of Iraq, he's had a magic
stone implanted in his chest and is therefore immortal and
cannot be shot or killed. But this insufficiency in the
veins may be legit because they have never before cited
an actual disease Trump has, especially one which may have
(14:22):
implications for travel, for flying. And the ankles have looked
like he was wearing winter boots. This is a real
problem and it may be a real and treatable problem.
But that leads to the second half of the story,
which is even on thinner ice than the first half.
Is it's the stuff about his hands. Those aren't bruises
(14:43):
or leftovers from patches or ivs or electrodes. Oh no,
says the White House. They are from shaking too many
hands while taking aspirin to treat the chronic venous insufficiency,
which is I believe this is a medical term. Bullshit.
They are claiming it is not serious, that it's the
(15:04):
result of the disease, which isn't serious, even though it
blew up his ankles. And sure, everybody has swelling in
their legs and they only need aspirin to cure it.
But if you take the aspirin, the thing causing the
swelling in your legs will then cause bruising on your hand,
bad enough to require makeup on your hand. This does
(15:26):
not add up. Trump, simply put, is in worse physical
shape now than Joe Biden got within a million miles
of but he can still instinctively talk fast and loudly.
So Jake Tapper isn't writing a goddamned book about it.
His clarity, though, is clearly descending about half a point
a week. That quote to the Wall Street Journal is
(15:48):
nonsensical or nearly such. I never wrote a picture in
my life. Oh good. I never wrote a picture in
my life either. Holy crap. And it didn't even turn
out to be true. There's one other note to mention
in this bulletin. CBS has tonight canceled the Late Show
with Stephen Colbert. It will linger on in ever less
(16:11):
supported lame duckness until May of next year, which is
utterly bizarre. But I have to assume they are refusing
to just give him any money to go away. Right now.
They are citing economics CBS is, and I believe that
there is some legitimacy to that. Nothing in television is paying,
certainly nothing as expensive as a late night talk show.
(16:32):
But of course that was also what they cited when
they denuded the CBS Evening News, and what they presumably
will cite when they cut the nuts off sixty minutes.
I'm going to do my reaction to this out of order.
I'm going to do the unpopular part first. I have
alluded to this before my experience with Stephen Colbert, which
dates back I believe to his fourth show on Comedy
(16:56):
Central in two thousand and seven eight when I did
a favor to Jonathan Alter, one of our regular guests
on Countdown, whose wife was the guest booker on a
show nobody wanted to go on with called the Colbert Rapport.
My experience with Stephen Colbert over all that time is
(17:17):
one hundred percent negative. I'm doing him a favor. When
he goes to CBS once again, missus, Alter asks me
to come on and be a guest for the demo show,
like the second time they tried to do a Stephen
Colbert late night CBS show in front of an audience,
and I come on and give up my time, which
isn't that valuable, But I shaved and I come on
(17:40):
and he asks me what I'm going to do now
that my ESPN two show has been canceled, and I said,
I don't know. There are a couple of possibilities, but
I legitimately don't know. And he responds, tell me, when
you were on Countdown and somebody gave you a bullshit
answer like that, what did you do? What I thought
of doing, since we weren't actually on TV, was getting
(18:01):
up and spitting in his face and walking off. I
happened to be telling him the literal truth. I didn't
know what I was going to do. There was an
offer from CNN, there was an offer from MSNBC, there
were two sports offers. I didn't know what I was
going to do. Ultimately, I didn't do any of those things.
I'm doing this guy a favor, and he's saying I'm lying. Later,
after they got the CBS show on the air, I
(18:23):
pre recorded for him again, it's just my time. It
wasn't some sort of I didn't cancel some sort of
vacation to go do it for him. It was within
walking distance, but they asked me to come over one
morning and record a very unfunny bit about Alex Rodriguez
of the New York Yankees. The intro that Stephen Colbert
(18:43):
read while I was in the studio standing not twenty
feet from him, was here's the man who's had more
jobs than you had hot dinners. Then I go home
to watch to see if the thing was any funnier
on TV than it was live, and he has re
recorded it. It's no longer the man who's had more
jobs than you've had hot dinners. It's become the man
who's been fired more times than you've had hot dinners.
(19:05):
That is as cheesy a thing as I have ever
heard in the entirety of my fifty years in the
entertainment and information media business. That's Stephen Colbert. And if
it wasn't his idea, it was the idea of his
executive producer at the time, Chris I will later kill
CNN licked. Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker, He
(19:28):
is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of
your trust. And the more I reflect on it, the
more I think there was something to the old conservative
theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not
some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really
dumb bill O'Reilly who kept stepping on rakes, That he
was a conservative pretending to be a stupid conservative so
(19:51):
he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space
and counter more importantly things like reality and facts and
democrats and worst of all, when they can anseled the
David Letterman Show. When they eased David Letterman out, Colbert
and the people working for him were brutal to the
(20:12):
Letterman people, going to the extent of ripping up everything
in the Ed Sullivan Theater that had any connection to
David Letterman and throwing it away the morning after the
last show. No auctions for charity, no farewell items for
the staffers, nothing, a blood letting to make sure that
everybody forgot David Letterman and thought only of Stephen Colbert.
(20:36):
And now Stephen Colbert is finished and everybody thinks remember
David Letterman. So to hell with him. I hope he
never works again. The platform, however, will be missed. His
stuff became reliably anti Trump, meaning anti dictatorship. Occasionally it
was funny. CBS, of course, jumped the shark with the
(20:56):
deal that Sherry Redstone's been making with Trump, that bribe
dressed up as a settlement of the ludicrous lawsuit over
the editing of the Kamala Harris interview. The question now
is will these a moral cash whorees who are taking
over CBS paramount also fire John Stewart, who, after a
bad both sides this start to his return on Comedy Central,
(21:20):
has gotten closer to his old form and was about
one hundred times more valuable in the political space than
Colbert ever was at his best. In any event, This
has been a Countdown bulletin podcast. The next regularly scheduled
full edition is Monday, dropping at midnight Eastern Sunday night.
Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. I never wrote a picture
(21:42):
in my life other than these two or three hundred,
and let me close by just saying, may every day
be another wonderful secret. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
(22:05):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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