June 6, 2023 • 46 mins
EPISODE 219: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) BULLETIN: Trump is again attempting to foment a violent coup against the government of the United States and in so doing confirming that he is about to be indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith and whatever charges Smith has ready he should bring them before his Grand Jury now and urge a judge to detain Trump without bail. “It’s about Election Interference” Trump wrote at the start of a social media post at 8:12 Eastern Time this morning, which ends “They are using the DOJ and FBI against me to Rigg the 2024 election. They’ll hit Hunter with something small to make their strike on me look fair. Nothing about these fascists is fair or honest. FIGHT!” The word “fight” is in capital letters and followed by an exclamation point and it is clearly not directed at his attorneys. He followed up two minutes later with quote “Election Interference. Don’t let it happen.”
Again – that instruction to prevent his indictment or arrest was not directed to attorneys or family members or anybody else. It was directed to his mob – just as it was directed to his mob on January 6th. It is not political speech, it is not dissent, it is not protest, it is not free speech, it is stochastic terrorism.
And the word that elevates this from Trump’s usual psychopathic communications is quote “fight” unquote. It should send cold chills down your spine because he used that word in its various forms SIXTEEN TIMES in that incendiary speech from the ellipse that sent the gang into the Capitol and sent democracy teetering on the edge of destruction. “We fight,” he shouted. “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.” And now, in literally the days before his indictment for stealing this country’s – and other countries’ - nuclear secrets and our military’s war plans for attacking Iran, he has used his social media account to again attempt to incite insurrection – and more immediately to somehow prevent the Department of Justice from indicting him for mishandling classified documents, for obstructing justice, possibly for destruction of evidence, suborning of perjury, and – though they won’t do this – for these posts today.
(7:40) The remainder of this podcast is the original June 6 2023 edition as originally posted. SPECIAL COMMENT: The whiny visit of Trump lawyers to beg Jack Smith not to indict their client so he wouldn't yell at them again turns out to have actually confirmed ONE important fact. We can't be sure Smith has already decided to indict Trump on the stolen documents. But we CAN be sure he has NOT decided NOT to indict him - otherwise there would've been no need for the meeting. Others are thinking that way too: Trump's lawyers, trump, The Times, The Post, The WSJ, and CNN all think we are at the end game.
And - a leak about leaking water? Isn't this where we came in with Trump? From draining the swamp to draining the pool, Jack Smith has been pressing the guy who helped move the classified document boxes about how he drained the Mar-a-Lago club pool and managed to flood the room where all the security video logs were kept. If that isn't a callback to about a dozen other plot points I don't know what is!
B-Block (20:04) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How can you apologize and make it worse? Ask Chris Licht! By lying during the apology, getting support only from those at other networks, and finally being accused by a tabloid of fudging the only feel-good part of your story. The weight loss wasn't 5 AM workouts: it was Ozempic. (29:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Nebraska lawyer wasted taxpayer money trying to silence a state legislator on an anti-trans bill because the legislator has a trans child. Elon Musk's newest conspiracy theory: the advertisers are out to get him. Can't we take Twitter away from him? And Congressman James Comer's whistleblower and informant and secret FBI document? They are all just a rehash of the Rudy Giuliani crap that didn't even fool Bill Barr in 2019.
C-Block (35:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lilou, in the Bahamas, needs neurological help (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The most fun moment in one of those old "SportsCenter" Commercials? The Alexi Lalas one, where I got to pretend I was John Belushi, smashing a guitar in "Animal House."
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. Donald
Trump is again attempting to foment a violent coup against
the government of the United States, and in so doing
confirming that he is about to be indicted by the
Special Council Jack Smith, and whatever charges Smith has ready now,
(00:28):
he should bring them before his grand jury today and
arrest Trump immediately, and insists that this stochastic terrorist be
detained without bail indefinitely, insomuch as he is a clear
and present danger to the safety of this country and
its citizens, and we have the scars of January sixth
to prove that. Quote. It's about election interference, Trump wrote
(00:51):
at the start of a social media post at a
twelve Eastern time this morning. It ends they are using
the DOJ and FBI against me to rig the twenty
twenty four election. They'll hit Hunter with some something small
to make their strike on me look fair. Nothing about
these fascists is fair or honest. Fight unquote. The word
(01:14):
fight is in capital letters and followed by an exclamation point,
and it is clearly not directed at his attorneys. Trump
followed up two minutes later with quote election interference, don't
let it happen again. That instruction to prevent his indictment
or arrest was not directed to attorneys or the government,
or family members or anybody else. It was directed to
(01:35):
his mob, just as it was directed to his mob
on January sixth, twenty twenty one. It is not political speech,
It is not dissent, it is not protest, it is
not free speech. It is stochastic terrorism. And the word
that elevates this from Trump's usual psychopathic communications is quote
fight unquote. That should send cold chills down your spine,
(02:00):
because he used that exact word in its various forms
sixteen times in that incendiary speech from the Ellipse that
sent the gang into the Capitol and sent democracy teetering
to the edge of destruction. We fight, he shouted that day.
We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country anymore. And now, literally,
(02:22):
in the days before his indictment for stealing this country's
and other countries nuclear secrets and our militaries war plans,
for attacking Iran, and lord knows what else, he has
now used his social media account to again attempt to
incite insurrection, and more immediately to somehow prevent by violence
(02:42):
the Department of Justice from indicting him, from mishandling classified
documents for obstructing justice, possibly for destruction of evidence, suborning
of perjury. And though they will not do this for
these violent inspirational posts today, because this time this nation
can take no chances with this active recidivist terrorists, this
(03:04):
madman whose perception of the entire world is himself and
his needs, and whose perception of this country and everybody
living in it is not a people with their own lives,
but of furniture that can make itself move and either
do things that help him or do things that hurt him,
(03:25):
and none of them have any more meaning to him
than that. This is a creature whose base includes violent militias,
masked gangs, white supremacists, and gun fetishizing lunatics in every
part of this country and in many parts of this government.
Jack Smith, caught by NBC News this morning as he
entered his offices across from the Justice Department headquarters on
(03:48):
Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, said nothing about indictments or anything else,
did not make a sound, But he needs to act
now and to use Trump's stochastic terrorism to get a
judge to detain Trump immediately and indefinitely until trial. Today,
Trump changed his endless, bottomless ability to complain and whine
(04:11):
and bleach into another direct call for political violence in
this country against anybody he perceives as an enemy or
an opponent, or a Democrat or a liberal, or anybody
his crazed cultists perceives as an enemy. And on the
anniversary of D Day, no less patriotism on display Trump style.
(04:37):
Arrest him now. The rest of this podcast is the Tuesday,
June sixth episode of Countdown as originally posted. If you've
heard it already, no need to continue, but it goes
into details about the conclusions we can draw from this
sequence of facts. That the Special Council was willing to
meet with Trump's lawyers yesterday, that within minutes of the
end of that meeting, Trump exploded on social media with
(05:00):
rhetorical questions about how the DOJ could possibly indict him.
That sequel events now extends to these dog whistles this morning,
and the inevitable conclusion that he is about to be indicted,
And again those quotes, nothing about these fascists is fair
or honest fight quote, election interference don't let it happen,
(05:24):
Jack Smith, don't let this happen again. Trump's lawyers think
we are at the endgame, and Trump thinks we are
(05:46):
at the endgame, and the New York Times, the Washington Post,
the Wall Street Journal, and CNN all think we are
at the endgame. And I sure as hell think we
are at the endgame. And the real headline from where
we all sit in Jack Smith's waiting room kind of
implies we are at the endgame. And it was noted
by the former District of Columbia federal prosecutor and now
(06:09):
TV legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. The headline is this, we
actually now know one thing for certain. There clearly has
been no decision by the Special Counsel or the Attorney
General to not charge Trump for the theft of the
classified documents. If all of this wrapping up of testimony
(06:31):
and investigations and grand jury recalls had led to a
conclusion not to indict Trump, there would have been no
reason for Smith and an unidentified DOJ career official to
have had that meeting with Trump attorneys Jim Trusty, John Rowley,
and Lindsay Halligan yesterday. And it's not just proving the negative.
(06:52):
It's not a no, and it's pretty certainly not an undecided,
which leaves UH with me a yes quote. The last
thing federal prosecutors often do before indicting is to meet
the target's defense team and give them an opportunity to
present any evidence or arguments they want to offer. The
(07:17):
Washington Post presented the same thought. It is not uncommon
in high profile cases for defense lawyers to get such
a meeting with Justice Department officials towards the end of
an investigation. And there is a second fact, a new one.
Jack Smith has had another grand jury working on the
document's case in Florida, in the West Palm area, in
(07:40):
the jurisdiction covering Mari Lago itself. I had heard this
last week but couldn't confirm it. The Wall Street Journal
confirmed it first. The New York Times says there is
at least one more witness going to testify to that
Florida grand jury later this week, like everybody else, though
the Times writers confess it is not clear why a
(08:01):
second grand jury is taking testimony in Florida, because it isn't,
although some legal analysts suggested it gives Smith the flexibility
to try the case in Washington or West Palm, depending
on how the juris land. We can also infer a
third fact from the least likely and usually least reliable source.
(08:22):
Trump himself, literally just minutes after his latest lawyers left
the department headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue between ninth and tenth Northwest,
Trump erupted on social media and gave away what he
was still hoping for, is still hoping for, must remain
hoping for, because his world of self delusion depends on
this that for some reason they will not indict him
(08:47):
just cuz quote, how can doj possibly charge me who
did nothing wrong? When no other presidents were charged? When
blah blah blah blah blah, And then the usual psychotic
meanderings through Biden this and Hillary's emails that and which hunt,
which hunt? Which hunt? I think we can reconstruct yesterday's meeting.
(09:10):
Smith there, but Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General
Monacote not there. The Trump team goes in complains, as
instructed by their client, about the rare piercing of attorney
client privilege in the case of Evan Corcoran gets nowhere,
stretches it out for two hours according to most reports,
ninety minutes according to at least one other report, and
(09:32):
then leaves and then, presumably trust he gets the pleasure
of calling Trump and telling him, no, you know what,
he wouldn't promise not to indicte you, or call you
innocent publicly, or accept your offer to become attorney general
in twenty twenty five. And then Trump loses his fragile
self control because again, deep down, he believes he is
immortal and untouchable. ABC News did provide a valuable sidelight
(09:57):
on that meeting and on why it would have taken
ninety minutes to two hours reporting to the meeting. Quote
focused mostly on Pross and very little on the legal
matters central to the document's probe. Trump's lawyer's got no
indication of any potential charges or timing associated with any
possible indictment end quote. The word process here would be
(10:19):
that whole attorney client thing and the other prosecutorial anomalies
real or imagined, the standard technicalities and loopholes. Trump has
spent his life wriggling through, around, and under like a
bulbous but surprisingly nimble limbo dancer. The bigger picture continues
to be Yeah, We're at the endgame. The Times. The
(10:41):
visit came amid indications that prosecutors in the Special Council's
Office were approaching the end of their documents inquiry. It
also came at a time when mister Trump's advisors have
concluded that there might not be much more time to
stave off charges. Trump expects to face charges, The Times Rights,
according to people who have spoken to him, although that
(11:02):
does not mean he has been assured that charges are pending.
From the Post. Two Trump advisors briefed on Monday's meetings
said they continue to believe Smith will finalize a charging
decision in coming weeks. The advisors said they are preparing
for a potential indictment of the former president, and the
meeting did not change their expectations. The Journal's second sentence,
(11:25):
the meeting is the latest indication that Smith has all
but wrapped up his investigation. CNN's second sentence, it appears
to be nearing its final stage. There did not seem
to be anything new on the reported reconvening of the
grand jury this week, nor what it would be reconvening.
(11:46):
For nearly every report contained a useful reminder, though for
all of us that whatever happens on this document's case,
and whenever it happens, Jack Smith will then pivot to
focusing particularly on January sixth, And as we've discussed previously,
the easier to prove elements of fraude funds for a
stolen election Trump knew wasn't stolen. So if we are
(12:09):
expecting indictments, we are expecting them in stages. On the
twelfth day of Christmas. There is a solid joke about
the damaged marri A Lago security video story that came
out yesterday. Jack Smith isn't leaking, but Trump's pool is,
And so we turn to a leak about leaking, which,
(12:33):
if I remember correctly, was one of the very first
things we all tried to get Trump investigated over in
twenty sixteen. Think about it. We may have an answer
as to what that second grand jury is looking at
in Florida, and we probably have the answer as to
why the Special Council seems so obsessed with not just
(12:56):
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room
at mari A Lago, and not just security video of
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage but
vaguely worded hints about glitches on the security video. And finally,
the hilarious report that the marri A Lago staffer who
helped Walt Naouda with the heavy lifting actually went to
(13:17):
the IT guy at Mary Lago and asked him how
soon before the CCTV system would delete video of say,
just as a hypothetical name himself quote, an employee at
Donald Trump's Mary Lago Residents drained the resort's swimming pool
(13:39):
last October and ended up flooding a room where computer
servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. What are the
odds against that? The punchline of courses that CNN identifies
the guy who drained the pool as the same guy
who helped Walt Naota move the boxes, coincidence, no doubt.
(14:05):
CNN reports at least one grand jury witness has been
asked about the washout. It is not clear if it
was accidental or deliberate. It seems to be clear that
the IT equipment in that room was not damaged, but
the whole thing is obviously focused on weather. Like the
eighteen and a half minute gap on one of Nixon's
Watergate tapes, somebody had deliberately tried to destroy evidence by
(14:27):
destroying recordings by draining a swimming pool, and there are
all the seeming cosmic callbacks in this idea that the
draining of a country club swimming pool might be of
critical importance in the revelation of the crimes of a president.
The Watergate break in itself was uncovered in progress because
(14:51):
of what first looked like trivial routine building maintenance. When
the burglars used duct tape to keep a stairwell door
from locking behind them. The night watchman, Frank Wills, removed
the tape, but the next time he passed that same door,
he saw more tape had been applied to cover the lock.
That's when he called the cops. More recently, we have
(15:14):
seen Trump move from drain the swamp to drain the pool,
and of course, draining a swimming pool at a country
club well, that's also a callback for yes, right out
of the script for the movie Caddyshack, Where's that Baby
Ruth Candy Bar? And of course there is the ultimate
Trump callback. To paraphrase what Frank Lesser writes on Twitter,
(15:39):
how this won't be the first time Trump denies causing
water damage at a hotel. Also of note today, I
may have been the first person with any kind of
national platform to suggest that Chris lickt was going to
(15:59):
destroy CNN, and I must tell you I really did
hope it was just my inability to override my vivid
memories of seeing his worminess up close and personal when
we were at MSNBC. But even I am beginning to
wonder if defenestrating him then going downstairs and bringing him
back upstairs and defenestrating him again, is you know, really
(16:23):
fair too? Am I kidding? Let's go down and get
him again. Licht's apology to his staff yesterday has only
made things worse. It earned him praise not from his
own people, but from only a couple of horrible human
beings who work at MSNBC and the one remaining kind
(16:45):
of feel good part of that whole nightmarish magazine story.
In The Atlantic, lickts dedication to working out and getting
healthy with a trainer that was blown up yesterday by
one tabloid headline quote say an ND boss Chris lick
bragged about taking ozeb for weight loss. Side effects of
(17:07):
oz I'm pick, including nausea, diarrhea, and loss of any
remaining credibility as a newsman. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olbern. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Date line,
CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. I believe the Simpsons
(17:31):
meme applies here. Stop stop, He's already dead. Yesterday began
with CNN's Chris Licked being raked over the coals because
having destroyed most of the network in the live Trump
CNN town Hall moderated by the hopelessly outmatched Caitlin Collins,
he had pretty much finished off the self destruction job
(17:52):
during the live Nikki Haley CNN town Hall on Sunday night,
in which Jake Tapper, apparently too bored or too burned
out to give a damn, never pushed back when Haley,
who is a genuinely stupid person with no principles she
would not sell out for money or power, actually tried
to blame suicides by teenaged girls in this country on
(18:14):
the idea that they might have to deal with transgendered
girls in the bathroom or on the sports field, something
of which the number of reported examples is approximately more
or less zero. That repeat in miniature of the blowback
against Lickt after the Trump Hindenburg disaster was still in
(18:36):
progress when Chris Lickt got onto the CNN nine am
internal conference call and tried to apologize to everybody, and
by ten am all the quotes were all over the place. First,
Lickt praised the Haley town hall debacle, then went off
on a monologue that did almost as much damage to
himself and his network as the piece by Tim Alberta
(18:58):
in The Atlantic did. To begin with, let me quote
and translate as we go along, all right, quoting Licked.
I know these past few days have been very hard
for this group unquote wait days. Since Lickt took over
CNN a year ago, the network has been a real
life version of the legend of Sisiphus, Only it's the
(19:19):
actual journalists there who've had to try to push the
damn rock back up the hill every day, while it's Licked,
who has then deliberately rolled it back down every night days.
Try month's pace, boy, quoting Licked again. I fully recognize
that this news cycle and my role in it, overshadowed
the incredible week of reporting that we just had and
(19:42):
distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization,
and for that, I'm sorry. Unquote. First of all, he's
not sorry, he's sorry, he's getting criticized. The reporting he's
talking about is CNN's continuing breaking of Trump's Special Council
stories like the flooding of the IT room I mentioned. Remember,
(20:05):
Chris lick was hired by David Zaslav and John Malone
so he would overshadow bad stories about Trump and Republicans,
overshadow them or keep them off the CNN air. Quote.
As I read that article, I found myself thinking, CNN
is not about me. I should not be in the
(20:26):
news unless it's taking arrows for you. Your work is
what should be written about. Unquote. Well, that's the biggest
bullspit in this vast pile of bullspit. That is Chris Licked.
He has always metaphorically jumped in front of somebody else's
camera shot Joe Scarborough publicity licked, made sure he was
(20:48):
in it too, Gail King publicity, Gail King and licked.
Stephen Colbert saved by Chris LICKT. The new, old, old
new whatever it is CNN. Remember you can't spell CNN
without Chris SLICKT. I mean the publicity generation of Chris
(21:09):
Licht is so institutionalized now that maybe before the CNN
nine am call yesterday was even over, Joe Scarborough the
most despicable scumbag I have ever worked with, and I've
worked with Chris Myers. Joe Scarborough was already reading those
quotes from another network's internal phone call and defending his
(21:33):
former producer live on MSNBC, and one of Scarborough's on
air sickophants on MSNBC, the ridiculous Donnie Deutsch, said I
would never bet against Chris Licht, even though it was
reportedly Chris Lickt who told Deutsch when he was filling
in as an MSNBC anchor years ago, that a good
(21:53):
idea for a show would be to criticize me on
the air. I mean, I never even heard about it
until after management came in and apologized and told me
Deutsch had been suspended and would not be anchoring again.
And if anything defines the seriousness of Licht's series of
disasters better than that, I don't know what it could be.
(22:13):
Daintily vilified by CNN's Christian I'm on poor flacidly badly
defended by Anderson Cooper of CNN shot fall holes by
dozens of off the record CNN people. Chris Lickts only
on the record defense in the entire television industry has
now come from two guys on one of the networks
(22:36):
he is supposed to be destroying. One more quote from
the apology tour, to those whose trust I've lost, I
will fight like hell to win it back, because you
deserve a leader who will be in the trenches unquote.
He'll be in the trenches, all right, and then metaphorically
(22:57):
they will bury him in the trenches because Warner Bros.
Discovery may not actually fire Chris Lickt, but he will
not be running CNN by autumn at the latest. And
the second half of that last quote, in the trenches,
fighting to ensure CNN remains the world's most trusted name
in news unquote, most trusted, least watched. So let's see
(23:23):
how Licht's pretend humility played out there in the real world,
shall we? Off the record quotes to the first guy
Lickt fired for liberaling while broadcasting Brian Stelter quote, he's
over quote there's no coming back from that profile. Quote.
If he's so concerned with the CNN brand, what is
the point of saying any of this stuff publicly? And
(23:46):
somebody else said Lickt told him to fight like hell quote,
but added I've got nothing to lose now, which just
shows Lickt is still delusional. He's got a lot to
lose now. To the Washington Post, a CNN anchor added,
this just seems unsustainable unquote. Also, the Post article had
(24:06):
one more quote from that Licked apology on the conference call,
which doesn't need much amplification or explanation. They say, he said, quote,
this experience has been tremendously humbling. I bet it has. So.
That seemed to be it for day twenty seven of
Chris Licked in crisis, and then came the moment when
(24:29):
it was obvious that everybody Chris Licked ever tried to
damage or hurt or interfere with they were going to
get in one last shot while he was still breathing.
The saddest truth about the piece in the Atlantic, the
one moment when some of us had a moment of pity, empathy,
(24:53):
felt bad about feeling so good reading it. That saddest
truth was that, basically the only person who would go
on the record to the Atlantic writer praising Chris Licked
was his personal trainer, though the fact that Licked looked
so desperate that he would left magazine writer watch his
five am workouts, and when he finished a bunch of
(25:16):
squats while he was humping a rope or whatever it was,
he shouted, Jeff Zucker couldn't do this spit. He had
at least managed to lose fifty pounds and get in shape.
This was a guy who had a brain problem. Stay
in shape, Stay in shape while destroying your television network.
(25:37):
And then it comes from the London tabloid rag, The
Daily Mail and The Daily Beast had this story too,
They just didn't get it published fast enough. Headline exclusive
CNN boss Chris Licked bragged about taking Ozempic for weight loss.
Oh quote. Multiple sources tell dailymail dot com that the
(26:03):
self proclaimed meal skipping machine actually bragged about using the
diabetes drug turned weight loss miracle ozempic before it became
popular among a listers earlier this year. I heard about
ozempic from Chris, a close friend of lickt told dailymail
dot Com when he was at Colbert. He explained that
he was a huge fan of it and he'd been
(26:25):
using it to get his weight under control. This was
back in twenty twenty one, so I was shocked when
I read the Atlantic story and he was claiming it
was due to a trainer and cutting meals. Paul Lees
he told me point blank he uses it unquote. Oh
god ozempic. Jeff Zucker couldn't do that spit either, Still
(27:02):
ahead on countdown. All I had to do in the
mershall was stride over into the newsroom, grabbed the guy's
guitar and smash it against a room divider. The trick was,
we didn't tell anybody in the newsroom first, and a
mighty roar went up from the crowd. Coming up first
the daily rout up with the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
(27:23):
the world. Lebronze. David Begley an attorney in Omaha who
did not like the fact that Nebraska State Senator Meghan
Hunt voted against the creeping meatballism in his state, in
this case, Legislative Bill five seventy four, which would have
further restricted gender affirming care in Nebraska. So he filed
(27:44):
a conflict of interest complaint against Senator Hunt. Why because
Senator Hunt has a transgender son. And even though Medicaid
doesn't pay for transgender care, David Begley said her family
might get money someday from Medicaid because of it, and
she should have had to disclose this before the vote,
even though her side lost and her chances of getting
Medicaid for this or about as big as this worm.
(28:06):
Begley now growing a soul. The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure
Commission began an investigation into this Begley guy's attempt to
stop legislators from voting unless they agree with him. They've
now dismissed his complaint. They spent taxpayer money on this. Frankly,
they should charge Begley because this was intimidation and transphobia
(28:29):
and it was funded by the taxpayers of Nebraska. And
you have Begley's offices in the phone book. The runner
up Space Karen again Elmo muskrat joined in a Space's
conversation by the decaying remains of Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
The good news is the thing did not crash this
time like I did with DeSantis. The bad news Elmo
(28:51):
yesterday pushed yet another conspiracy theory in this one, the
conspiracy is against him. Musk said half of advertising disappeared
from Twitter overnight because we're insisting on free speech and
they're literal. He's trying to drive Twitter bankrupt. And when
he says they, of course, he means I'm driving Twitter
bankrupt because I have no idea how life works when
(29:13):
somebody take this goddamn thing away from me, and he
might as well say, go anti woke, go broke. By
the way, is there a way we could do that?
Is there some legal construction in which Twitter, being online
and using public bandwidth and such is declared a public
communications medium, and you could take it away from this
idiot Musk the way the FCC could take a local
(29:36):
TV station away from inappropriate owners. Just a thought, but
our winner, good old Congressman Jamie Comer of Kentucky, Chairman
of the House Committee for Wasting Time. I think that's
the title of it, the one pursuing the Biden whistleblower
complaint that turns out to actually have originated with Rudy Giuliani.
(29:56):
Rudy Giuliani is the guy at the heart of this
whole whistleblower crap. This is the memo, Republicans say is
more important than whether or not anything alleged in the
memo is true. Well, yesterday the FBI briefed Jamie and
Jamie Comber and the ranking Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin, and
the two emerged from the briefing and Comer had the
gall to say the allegation quote has not been disproven,
(30:20):
and Raskin just looked at him and said, yad had quote.
The FBI, the Department of Justice team under William Barr
and Brady terminated the investigation. They said there were no
grounds for further investigative steps. Can we please just start
calling this what it is? This partner abuse allegation, skating yokel.
(30:40):
Comer is making this crap up as he goes along,
and he should be treated as the semi sentient fire
hydrant that he is representative. Jamie, you know what else
has not been disproven? Your college girlfriend's allegation that you
hit her and took her to her abortion and threatened
to kill her. Comber two days worst person in the world,
(31:14):
still ahead of Heir on countdown. Somebody asked me about
the old This is Sports Center commercials the other day,
and if I had a favorite, and I had three,
and they all have great stories, but the Alexei Lallis
guitar story is probably the best of them. Things I
promise not to tell next. First, in each tradition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day. This is about Lee Lou and
(31:37):
Powty Cake Rescue, which saves dogs in the Bahamas. Powty
Cake Rescue had to close recently because it has to
change buildings, but try explaining that to dogs in trouble.
The woman in charge of Pottycake saw Leelu and knew
she really needed help. She was hiding in a school,
just the white mutt, with ears as big as her
face and clearly some kind of neurological problem. She was
(31:59):
having trouble standing and keeping standing, so if she fell
while trying to across the road, she would never make
it to the other side. So they rescue her and
they're trying to raise funds to get her treated and
placed in a foster home. They've set up a giving
grid page and you can find her on there. Leelu Llou,
and you can find her on my Twitter feeds. If
you can donate, please do and your retweet will also help.
(32:23):
I thank you, and Leelu, thanks you. Nineteen ninety four
World Cup did not really do that much for American soccer,
which as you know, is the sport of the future
in this country and always will be. It did make
(32:47):
a lot of Americans into fans, but fans of European clubs,
especially the British clubs. But for a while, Alexey Lalis,
with his shoulder length reddish blonde hair and his billy
goat beard and his anti establishment vibe, he was on
the front burners of American sports. Really, ESPN wanted him
for the surrealist fake documentary commercials called this his Sports Center,
(33:10):
and sure enough he came to Bristol and they devised
a bit in which Gary Miller John Luca Polyuca's Gary
Miller would be sitting at a desk in the sports
Center newsroom. As atop the adjoining desk, Lalas sat cross legged,
philosophizing on relaxation and vibes, and finally playing Michael Row
the boat Ashore on his guitar. At that point the
(33:33):
commercial turned into one of the classic scenes from John
Belushi's Animal House film. Another sportscaster was to storm into
the newsroom, pull the guitar out of Lalas's hands, and
then smash it against a cubicle wall with the greatest
grunt he could achieve, and then hand Lallas back whatever
was left of the guitar, and like Belushi, say sorry. Well,
(33:59):
they asked me to be the other sportscaster who smashes
the guitar. So picture that in your mind as I
play what it sounded like for twenty seconds or so.
And then I have what I think is a really
good backstory about the filming of this one. And I'm
talking to you all afternoon about the tension, about the darkness.
(34:21):
We got to do something about that, Michael sEH. For
time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it. So the backstory,
(34:44):
and it's out of chronological order. The guitar that Alexei
Laois was playing was not the one I smashed. There
was an exact duplicate that had been bought. It had
been taken apart, it had been sawed, and basically it
was put back together with scotch tape. It would hold
together long enough for him to scrum a few sour
notes on it, and then for me to and smash it.
(35:06):
They were confident it would not fly apart until I
hit the cubicle wall with it, but they still told
me to simply grab it, not yanked out of his hands,
or I might be left holding the neck of the
guitar and Alexe holding the rest of it. This was
especially problematic because we only had the one prop guitar.
(35:27):
That's right, we made the business end of that commercial
in one take. This is SportsCenter campaign. Not only Freaquly
achieved something approaching genius levels of originality and creativity, but
they were all done cheaper than local news promos. In Burlington,
Vermont in nineteen eighty two. We often shot three of
(35:47):
these commercials in one day, and it wasn't until the
second series of ads did the Sports Center anchors who
starred in one, or two or three even get credit
for a day off. In one of them, Charlie Sneiner
is trying to get his tape of highlights back from
the Harlem Globe trotter who are passing it around like
a basketball, and he says, can He's a little help.
(36:09):
Then I'm typing away at my computer and I say sure, Charlie,
and I don't even look at him, let alone stop typing,
let alone give any help. And that's done. Because the
commercial was shot in the area right behind my desk,
because nobody was working there that day except me, and
it was around five PM, and I was, in fact
sitting at my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script,
(36:32):
and the original commercial script did not call for me
to even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly
the writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. By the way, Charlie did the
commercial around five o'clock or so and then went and
anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we
(36:55):
did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up while
I am trying to read through a script also shot
at my desk, also on a day I was anchoring
the show, and that was my real script. Anyway, back
to Alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we only
had the one prop guitar, and so we only had
the one take, and we were shooting it in the
(37:15):
actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they were
remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of the
new ESPN News network. So this was the temporary even
more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and the
producer and the writer and I walked through how they
thought it would work best, since I would have to
weave past people who were really doing their jobs and
(37:38):
going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here. The producer said that would make a great shot.
(38:00):
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
to do that since we couldn't even practice this, and
he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe that
was the other salient part of the backstory, since we
only had the one take and we wouldn't even be
doing a dry run because they didn't want the guitar
to fall apart in my hands. I would say less
(38:20):
than half the people crowded into the temporary newsroom had
any idea that when I came in i was in
the commercial let alone, that I was going to actually
and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it against a
low cubicle wall. Even if the guitar has been pre
broken and taped back together, as that one was, it
(38:41):
is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait.
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, your little devil? Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
(39:03):
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then
about no, no, No, fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and
Gary were still sitting. My target for exactly where I
should hit the guitar was clearly marked on the cubicle wall,
and they even put marks on the carpet of where
a couple of practice walks had shown would give me
(39:23):
the best chance at a solid stance when I swung
the guitar and sent it el kabonging to its doom,
and nobody ever said quiet or roll or here we go.
They told people in the room that they were just
shooting some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people
could say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to
(39:46):
just a long they didn't get away the cameras. Then
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Bulushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake so venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
(40:07):
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the
nearly neutered prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I
took my strides, I hit the marks, I grabbed the
(40:28):
guitar by the neck with my right hand, and simultaneously
Alexey let go, and then with both hands, I swung
the guitar back over my head and smashed it right
on the mark. As you heard Michael Shale. The Sports
(40:54):
Center newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The reaction
was identical to what it would have been had there
been no commercial being made and no cameras present. And
I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar, which
I guess a lot of people expect that I might
do someday, because even a lot of the people who
were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the skinny
(41:18):
research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial, which
is on YouTube, for a second far left, just staring
at me, like, yeah, well, we always knew Keys would
do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar, and
I have to say, I did it really well. I
kept moving for the plan until I walked back through
the swinging doors and out of shot. The director shouted cut.
(41:41):
I walked back in, and the crew gave me a
round of applause, and a couple of them were cheering
out of all proportion, even if I had done is
good of a job as I thought, Come here, Come here.
The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra camera on
the floor. They backed the videotape up from it, and
they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
(42:02):
the fret board, the actual wood and metal piece on
the neck flew off and not only landed near the
third camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and
it stuck there. They were as happy as if they
were engineers imploding a building for the first time and
it had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus, they
showed me the playback from the first camera, and there
(42:25):
was an assignment desk editor with her back to the
action on the phone, completely unaware of what was happening
or even that they were rolling film and videotape, and
she literally jumped several inches out of her seat of
her chair. But to me, the best part of this
thing is Gary Miller. Even if you know a loud
(42:45):
noise is coming, it is quite the effort to not
flinch a little when it happens basically right over your shoulder.
I mean, ask the little kid in the movie north
By Northwest where Iva Marie Saint shoots Carry Grant and
he sticks his fingers in his ears because it's take
thirty seve and he knows the noise is coming. I mean,
(43:08):
you're aware of it just for the possibility that somebody
will screw it up like me and debris will fly
into the back of your head. But if you watch
Gary Miller in this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink,
just a little dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What
also amazes me is that we got all this done
(43:29):
in twenty four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on
about negativity. They have to do something about it. He
plays enough of the song that you recognize it. You
got a shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of
the background. I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash
the guitar while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the
neck of the thing. The only thing missing is that
shot from the fret bar flying into camera three. They
(43:50):
explained they didn't have the extra two seconds scene. I
remember enjoying doing this so much that I asked them
for the front of the body of the guitar, and
I had Alexi sign it to me on the spot.
It hung framed in my various offices for about fifteen years.
In twenty fourteen, I was leaving the recording of Stephen
(44:12):
Colbert's final episode for Comedy Central. I was one of
one hundred guests, and I went out onto the street
to find a cab home and I got one, and
in getting into it, I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas,
who was one of the other one hundred guests. I laughed,
He laughed, and he said, and I don't even have
my guitar with me. And one last note, I doubt
this will be of any practical use to you, but
(44:35):
I must say as somebody who was accorded this rare privilege,
not only of doing this, but of doing this with impunity,
and doing this to applause. If you are trying to
HEALTHI event any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing
a guitar against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as
(44:58):
satisfying as you would expect it would be. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Countdown has come
to you from the Vin Scully Studio at the world
(45:19):
Headquarters of the Old Women Broadcasting Empire Sports Capsule Building,
New York. Here are the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanel. The countdown musical directors, all orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
(45:40):
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
for this the eight hundred and eighty second day since
(46:01):
Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Oulraman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production
(46:25):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Donald
Trump is again attempting to foment a violent coup against
the government of the United States, and in so doing
confirming that he is about to be indicted by the
Special Council Jack Smith, and whatever charges Smith has ready now,
(00:28):
he should bring them before his grand jury today and
arrest Trump immediately, and insists that this stochastic terrorist be
detained without bail indefinitely, insomuch as he is a clear
and present danger to the safety of this country and
its citizens, and we have the scars of January sixth
to prove that. Quote. It's about election interference, Trump wrote
(00:51):
at the start of a social media post at a
twelve Eastern time this morning. It ends they are using
the DOJ and FBI against me to rig the twenty
twenty four election. They'll hit Hunter with some something small
to make their strike on me look fair. Nothing about
these fascists is fair or honest. Fight unquote. The word
(01:14):
fight is in capital letters and followed by an exclamation point,
and it is clearly not directed at his attorneys. Trump
followed up two minutes later with quote election interference, don't
let it happen again. That instruction to prevent his indictment
or arrest was not directed to attorneys or the government,
or family members or anybody else. It was directed to
(01:35):
his mob, just as it was directed to his mob
on January sixth, twenty twenty one. It is not political speech,
It is not dissent, it is not protest, it is
not free speech. It is stochastic terrorism. And the word
that elevates this from Trump's usual psychopathic communications is quote
fight unquote. That should send cold chills down your spine,
(02:00):
because he used that exact word in its various forms
sixteen times in that incendiary speech from the Ellipse that
sent the gang into the Capitol and sent democracy teetering
to the edge of destruction. We fight, he shouted that day.
We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country anymore. And now, literally,
(02:22):
in the days before his indictment for stealing this country's
and other countries nuclear secrets and our militaries war plans,
for attacking Iran, and lord knows what else, he has
now used his social media account to again attempt to
incite insurrection, and more immediately to somehow prevent by violence
(02:42):
the Department of Justice from indicting him, from mishandling classified
documents for obstructing justice, possibly for destruction of evidence, suborning
of perjury. And though they will not do this for
these violent inspirational posts today, because this time this nation
can take no chances with this active recidivist terrorists, this
(03:04):
madman whose perception of the entire world is himself and
his needs, and whose perception of this country and everybody
living in it is not a people with their own lives,
but of furniture that can make itself move and either
do things that help him or do things that hurt him,
(03:25):
and none of them have any more meaning to him
than that. This is a creature whose base includes violent militias,
masked gangs, white supremacists, and gun fetishizing lunatics in every
part of this country and in many parts of this government.
Jack Smith, caught by NBC News this morning as he
entered his offices across from the Justice Department headquarters on
(03:48):
Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, said nothing about indictments or anything else,
did not make a sound, But he needs to act
now and to use Trump's stochastic terrorism to get a
judge to detain Trump immediately and indefinitely until trial. Today,
Trump changed his endless, bottomless ability to complain and whine
(04:11):
and bleach into another direct call for political violence in
this country against anybody he perceives as an enemy or
an opponent, or a Democrat or a liberal, or anybody
his crazed cultists perceives as an enemy. And on the
anniversary of D Day, no less patriotism on display Trump style.
(04:37):
Arrest him now. The rest of this podcast is the Tuesday,
June sixth episode of Countdown as originally posted. If you've
heard it already, no need to continue, but it goes
into details about the conclusions we can draw from this
sequence of facts. That the Special Council was willing to
meet with Trump's lawyers yesterday, that within minutes of the
end of that meeting, Trump exploded on social media with
(05:00):
rhetorical questions about how the DOJ could possibly indict him.
That sequel events now extends to these dog whistles this morning,
and the inevitable conclusion that he is about to be indicted,
And again those quotes, nothing about these fascists is fair
or honest fight quote, election interference don't let it happen,
(05:24):
Jack Smith, don't let this happen again. Trump's lawyers think
we are at the endgame, and Trump thinks we are
(05:46):
at the endgame, and the New York Times, the Washington Post,
the Wall Street Journal, and CNN all think we are
at the endgame. And I sure as hell think we
are at the endgame. And the real headline from where
we all sit in Jack Smith's waiting room kind of
implies we are at the endgame. And it was noted
by the former District of Columbia federal prosecutor and now
(06:09):
TV legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. The headline is this, we
actually now know one thing for certain. There clearly has
been no decision by the Special Counsel or the Attorney
General to not charge Trump for the theft of the
classified documents. If all of this wrapping up of testimony
(06:31):
and investigations and grand jury recalls had led to a
conclusion not to indict Trump, there would have been no
reason for Smith and an unidentified DOJ career official to
have had that meeting with Trump attorneys Jim Trusty, John Rowley,
and Lindsay Halligan yesterday. And it's not just proving the negative.
(06:52):
It's not a no, and it's pretty certainly not an undecided,
which leaves UH with me a yes quote. The last
thing federal prosecutors often do before indicting is to meet
the target's defense team and give them an opportunity to
present any evidence or arguments they want to offer. The
(07:17):
Washington Post presented the same thought. It is not uncommon
in high profile cases for defense lawyers to get such
a meeting with Justice Department officials towards the end of
an investigation. And there is a second fact, a new one.
Jack Smith has had another grand jury working on the
document's case in Florida, in the West Palm area, in
(07:40):
the jurisdiction covering Mari Lago itself. I had heard this
last week but couldn't confirm it. The Wall Street Journal
confirmed it first. The New York Times says there is
at least one more witness going to testify to that
Florida grand jury later this week, like everybody else, though
the Times writers confess it is not clear why a
(08:01):
second grand jury is taking testimony in Florida, because it isn't,
although some legal analysts suggested it gives Smith the flexibility
to try the case in Washington or West Palm, depending
on how the juris land. We can also infer a
third fact from the least likely and usually least reliable source.
(08:22):
Trump himself, literally just minutes after his latest lawyers left
the department headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue between ninth and tenth Northwest,
Trump erupted on social media and gave away what he
was still hoping for, is still hoping for, must remain
hoping for, because his world of self delusion depends on
this that for some reason they will not indict him
(08:47):
just cuz quote, how can doj possibly charge me who
did nothing wrong? When no other presidents were charged? When
blah blah blah blah blah, And then the usual psychotic
meanderings through Biden this and Hillary's emails that and which hunt,
which hunt? Which hunt? I think we can reconstruct yesterday's meeting.
(09:10):
Smith there, but Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General
Monacote not there. The Trump team goes in complains, as
instructed by their client, about the rare piercing of attorney
client privilege in the case of Evan Corcoran gets nowhere,
stretches it out for two hours according to most reports,
ninety minutes according to at least one other report, and
(09:32):
then leaves and then, presumably trust he gets the pleasure
of calling Trump and telling him, no, you know what,
he wouldn't promise not to indicte you, or call you
innocent publicly, or accept your offer to become attorney general
in twenty twenty five. And then Trump loses his fragile
self control because again, deep down, he believes he is
immortal and untouchable. ABC News did provide a valuable sidelight
(09:57):
on that meeting and on why it would have taken
ninety minutes to two hours reporting to the meeting. Quote
focused mostly on Pross and very little on the legal
matters central to the document's probe. Trump's lawyer's got no
indication of any potential charges or timing associated with any
possible indictment end quote. The word process here would be
(10:19):
that whole attorney client thing and the other prosecutorial anomalies
real or imagined, the standard technicalities and loopholes. Trump has
spent his life wriggling through, around, and under like a
bulbous but surprisingly nimble limbo dancer. The bigger picture continues
to be Yeah, We're at the endgame. The Times. The
(10:41):
visit came amid indications that prosecutors in the Special Council's
Office were approaching the end of their documents inquiry. It
also came at a time when mister Trump's advisors have
concluded that there might not be much more time to
stave off charges. Trump expects to face charges, The Times Rights,
according to people who have spoken to him, although that
(11:02):
does not mean he has been assured that charges are pending.
From the Post. Two Trump advisors briefed on Monday's meetings
said they continue to believe Smith will finalize a charging
decision in coming weeks. The advisors said they are preparing
for a potential indictment of the former president, and the
meeting did not change their expectations. The Journal's second sentence,
(11:25):
the meeting is the latest indication that Smith has all
but wrapped up his investigation. CNN's second sentence, it appears
to be nearing its final stage. There did not seem
to be anything new on the reported reconvening of the
grand jury this week, nor what it would be reconvening.
(11:46):
For nearly every report contained a useful reminder, though for
all of us that whatever happens on this document's case,
and whenever it happens, Jack Smith will then pivot to
focusing particularly on January sixth, And as we've discussed previously,
the easier to prove elements of fraude funds for a
stolen election Trump knew wasn't stolen. So if we are
(12:09):
expecting indictments, we are expecting them in stages. On the
twelfth day of Christmas. There is a solid joke about
the damaged marri A Lago security video story that came
out yesterday. Jack Smith isn't leaking, but Trump's pool is,
And so we turn to a leak about leaking, which,
(12:33):
if I remember correctly, was one of the very first
things we all tried to get Trump investigated over in
twenty sixteen. Think about it. We may have an answer
as to what that second grand jury is looking at
in Florida, and we probably have the answer as to
why the Special Council seems so obsessed with not just
(12:56):
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room
at mari A Lago, and not just security video of
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage but
vaguely worded hints about glitches on the security video. And finally,
the hilarious report that the marri A Lago staffer who
helped Walt Naouda with the heavy lifting actually went to
(13:17):
the IT guy at Mary Lago and asked him how
soon before the CCTV system would delete video of say,
just as a hypothetical name himself quote, an employee at
Donald Trump's Mary Lago Residents drained the resort's swimming pool
(13:39):
last October and ended up flooding a room where computer
servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. What are the
odds against that? The punchline of courses that CNN identifies
the guy who drained the pool as the same guy
who helped Walt Naota move the boxes, coincidence, no doubt.
(14:05):
CNN reports at least one grand jury witness has been
asked about the washout. It is not clear if it
was accidental or deliberate. It seems to be clear that
the IT equipment in that room was not damaged, but
the whole thing is obviously focused on weather. Like the
eighteen and a half minute gap on one of Nixon's
Watergate tapes, somebody had deliberately tried to destroy evidence by
(14:27):
destroying recordings by draining a swimming pool, and there are
all the seeming cosmic callbacks in this idea that the
draining of a country club swimming pool might be of
critical importance in the revelation of the crimes of a president.
The Watergate break in itself was uncovered in progress because
(14:51):
of what first looked like trivial routine building maintenance. When
the burglars used duct tape to keep a stairwell door
from locking behind them. The night watchman, Frank Wills, removed
the tape, but the next time he passed that same door,
he saw more tape had been applied to cover the lock.
That's when he called the cops. More recently, we have
(15:14):
seen Trump move from drain the swamp to drain the pool,
and of course, draining a swimming pool at a country
club well, that's also a callback for yes, right out
of the script for the movie Caddyshack, Where's that Baby
Ruth Candy Bar? And of course there is the ultimate
Trump callback. To paraphrase what Frank Lesser writes on Twitter,
(15:39):
how this won't be the first time Trump denies causing
water damage at a hotel. Also of note today, I
may have been the first person with any kind of
national platform to suggest that Chris lickt was going to
(15:59):
destroy CNN, and I must tell you I really did
hope it was just my inability to override my vivid
memories of seeing his worminess up close and personal when
we were at MSNBC. But even I am beginning to
wonder if defenestrating him then going downstairs and bringing him
back upstairs and defenestrating him again, is you know, really
(16:23):
fair too? Am I kidding? Let's go down and get
him again. Licht's apology to his staff yesterday has only
made things worse. It earned him praise not from his
own people, but from only a couple of horrible human
beings who work at MSNBC and the one remaining kind
(16:45):
of feel good part of that whole nightmarish magazine story.
In The Atlantic, lickts dedication to working out and getting
healthy with a trainer that was blown up yesterday by
one tabloid headline quote say an ND boss Chris lick
bragged about taking ozeb for weight loss. Side effects of
(17:07):
oz I'm pick, including nausea, diarrhea, and loss of any
remaining credibility as a newsman. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olbern. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Date line,
CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. I believe the Simpsons
(17:31):
meme applies here. Stop stop, He's already dead. Yesterday began
with CNN's Chris Licked being raked over the coals because
having destroyed most of the network in the live Trump
CNN town Hall moderated by the hopelessly outmatched Caitlin Collins,
he had pretty much finished off the self destruction job
(17:52):
during the live Nikki Haley CNN town Hall on Sunday night,
in which Jake Tapper, apparently too bored or too burned
out to give a damn, never pushed back when Haley,
who is a genuinely stupid person with no principles she
would not sell out for money or power, actually tried
to blame suicides by teenaged girls in this country on
(18:14):
the idea that they might have to deal with transgendered
girls in the bathroom or on the sports field, something
of which the number of reported examples is approximately more
or less zero. That repeat in miniature of the blowback
against Lickt after the Trump Hindenburg disaster was still in
(18:36):
progress when Chris Lickt got onto the CNN nine am
internal conference call and tried to apologize to everybody, and
by ten am all the quotes were all over the place. First,
Lickt praised the Haley town hall debacle, then went off
on a monologue that did almost as much damage to
himself and his network as the piece by Tim Alberta
(18:58):
in The Atlantic did. To begin with, let me quote
and translate as we go along, all right, quoting Licked.
I know these past few days have been very hard
for this group unquote wait days. Since Lickt took over
CNN a year ago, the network has been a real
life version of the legend of Sisiphus, Only it's the
(19:19):
actual journalists there who've had to try to push the
damn rock back up the hill every day, while it's Licked,
who has then deliberately rolled it back down every night days.
Try month's pace, boy, quoting Licked again. I fully recognize
that this news cycle and my role in it, overshadowed
the incredible week of reporting that we just had and
(19:42):
distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization,
and for that, I'm sorry. Unquote. First of all, he's
not sorry, he's sorry, he's getting criticized. The reporting he's
talking about is CNN's continuing breaking of Trump's Special Council
stories like the flooding of the IT room I mentioned. Remember,
(20:05):
Chris lick was hired by David Zaslav and John Malone
so he would overshadow bad stories about Trump and Republicans,
overshadow them or keep them off the CNN air. Quote.
As I read that article, I found myself thinking, CNN
is not about me. I should not be in the
(20:26):
news unless it's taking arrows for you. Your work is
what should be written about. Unquote. Well, that's the biggest
bullspit in this vast pile of bullspit. That is Chris Licked.
He has always metaphorically jumped in front of somebody else's
camera shot Joe Scarborough publicity licked, made sure he was
(20:48):
in it too, Gail King publicity, Gail King and licked.
Stephen Colbert saved by Chris LICKT. The new, old, old
new whatever it is CNN. Remember you can't spell CNN
without Chris SLICKT. I mean the publicity generation of Chris
(21:09):
Licht is so institutionalized now that maybe before the CNN
nine am call yesterday was even over, Joe Scarborough the
most despicable scumbag I have ever worked with, and I've
worked with Chris Myers. Joe Scarborough was already reading those
quotes from another network's internal phone call and defending his
(21:33):
former producer live on MSNBC, and one of Scarborough's on
air sickophants on MSNBC, the ridiculous Donnie Deutsch, said I
would never bet against Chris Licht, even though it was
reportedly Chris Lickt who told Deutsch when he was filling
in as an MSNBC anchor years ago, that a good
(21:53):
idea for a show would be to criticize me on
the air. I mean, I never even heard about it
until after management came in and apologized and told me
Deutsch had been suspended and would not be anchoring again.
And if anything defines the seriousness of Licht's series of
disasters better than that, I don't know what it could be.
(22:13):
Daintily vilified by CNN's Christian I'm on poor flacidly badly
defended by Anderson Cooper of CNN shot fall holes by
dozens of off the record CNN people. Chris Lickts only
on the record defense in the entire television industry has
now come from two guys on one of the networks
(22:36):
he is supposed to be destroying. One more quote from
the apology tour, to those whose trust I've lost, I
will fight like hell to win it back, because you
deserve a leader who will be in the trenches unquote.
He'll be in the trenches, all right, and then metaphorically
(22:57):
they will bury him in the trenches because Warner Bros.
Discovery may not actually fire Chris Lickt, but he will
not be running CNN by autumn at the latest. And
the second half of that last quote, in the trenches,
fighting to ensure CNN remains the world's most trusted name
in news unquote, most trusted, least watched. So let's see
(23:23):
how Licht's pretend humility played out there in the real world,
shall we? Off the record quotes to the first guy
Lickt fired for liberaling while broadcasting Brian Stelter quote, he's
over quote there's no coming back from that profile. Quote.
If he's so concerned with the CNN brand, what is
the point of saying any of this stuff publicly? And
(23:46):
somebody else said Lickt told him to fight like hell quote,
but added I've got nothing to lose now, which just
shows Lickt is still delusional. He's got a lot to
lose now. To the Washington Post, a CNN anchor added,
this just seems unsustainable unquote. Also, the Post article had
(24:06):
one more quote from that Licked apology on the conference call,
which doesn't need much amplification or explanation. They say, he said, quote,
this experience has been tremendously humbling. I bet it has. So.
That seemed to be it for day twenty seven of
Chris Licked in crisis, and then came the moment when
(24:29):
it was obvious that everybody Chris Licked ever tried to
damage or hurt or interfere with they were going to
get in one last shot while he was still breathing.
The saddest truth about the piece in the Atlantic, the
one moment when some of us had a moment of pity, empathy,
(24:53):
felt bad about feeling so good reading it. That saddest
truth was that, basically the only person who would go
on the record to the Atlantic writer praising Chris Licked
was his personal trainer, though the fact that Licked looked
so desperate that he would left magazine writer watch his
five am workouts, and when he finished a bunch of
(25:16):
squats while he was humping a rope or whatever it was,
he shouted, Jeff Zucker couldn't do this spit. He had
at least managed to lose fifty pounds and get in shape.
This was a guy who had a brain problem. Stay
in shape, Stay in shape while destroying your television network.
(25:37):
And then it comes from the London tabloid rag, The
Daily Mail and The Daily Beast had this story too,
They just didn't get it published fast enough. Headline exclusive
CNN boss Chris Licked bragged about taking Ozempic for weight loss.
Oh quote. Multiple sources tell dailymail dot com that the
(26:03):
self proclaimed meal skipping machine actually bragged about using the
diabetes drug turned weight loss miracle ozempic before it became
popular among a listers earlier this year. I heard about
ozempic from Chris, a close friend of lickt told dailymail
dot Com when he was at Colbert. He explained that
he was a huge fan of it and he'd been
(26:25):
using it to get his weight under control. This was
back in twenty twenty one, so I was shocked when
I read the Atlantic story and he was claiming it
was due to a trainer and cutting meals. Paul Lees
he told me point blank he uses it unquote. Oh
god ozempic. Jeff Zucker couldn't do that spit either, Still
(27:02):
ahead on countdown. All I had to do in the
mershall was stride over into the newsroom, grabbed the guy's
guitar and smash it against a room divider. The trick was,
we didn't tell anybody in the newsroom first, and a
mighty roar went up from the crowd. Coming up first
the daily rout up with the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
(27:23):
the world. Lebronze. David Begley an attorney in Omaha who
did not like the fact that Nebraska State Senator Meghan
Hunt voted against the creeping meatballism in his state, in
this case, Legislative Bill five seventy four, which would have
further restricted gender affirming care in Nebraska. So he filed
(27:44):
a conflict of interest complaint against Senator Hunt. Why because
Senator Hunt has a transgender son. And even though Medicaid
doesn't pay for transgender care, David Begley said her family
might get money someday from Medicaid because of it, and
she should have had to disclose this before the vote,
even though her side lost and her chances of getting
Medicaid for this or about as big as this worm.
(28:06):
Begley now growing a soul. The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure
Commission began an investigation into this Begley guy's attempt to
stop legislators from voting unless they agree with him. They've
now dismissed his complaint. They spent taxpayer money on this. Frankly,
they should charge Begley because this was intimidation and transphobia
(28:29):
and it was funded by the taxpayers of Nebraska. And
you have Begley's offices in the phone book. The runner
up Space Karen again Elmo muskrat joined in a Space's
conversation by the decaying remains of Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
The good news is the thing did not crash this
time like I did with DeSantis. The bad news Elmo
(28:51):
yesterday pushed yet another conspiracy theory in this one, the
conspiracy is against him. Musk said half of advertising disappeared
from Twitter overnight because we're insisting on free speech and
they're literal. He's trying to drive Twitter bankrupt. And when
he says they, of course, he means I'm driving Twitter
bankrupt because I have no idea how life works when
(29:13):
somebody take this goddamn thing away from me, and he
might as well say, go anti woke, go broke. By
the way, is there a way we could do that?
Is there some legal construction in which Twitter, being online
and using public bandwidth and such is declared a public
communications medium, and you could take it away from this
idiot Musk the way the FCC could take a local
(29:36):
TV station away from inappropriate owners. Just a thought, but
our winner, good old Congressman Jamie Comer of Kentucky, Chairman
of the House Committee for Wasting Time. I think that's
the title of it, the one pursuing the Biden whistleblower
complaint that turns out to actually have originated with Rudy Giuliani.
(29:56):
Rudy Giuliani is the guy at the heart of this
whole whistleblower crap. This is the memo, Republicans say is
more important than whether or not anything alleged in the
memo is true. Well, yesterday the FBI briefed Jamie and
Jamie Comber and the ranking Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin, and
the two emerged from the briefing and Comer had the
gall to say the allegation quote has not been disproven,
(30:20):
and Raskin just looked at him and said, yad had quote.
The FBI, the Department of Justice team under William Barr
and Brady terminated the investigation. They said there were no
grounds for further investigative steps. Can we please just start
calling this what it is? This partner abuse allegation, skating yokel.
(30:40):
Comer is making this crap up as he goes along,
and he should be treated as the semi sentient fire
hydrant that he is representative. Jamie, you know what else
has not been disproven? Your college girlfriend's allegation that you
hit her and took her to her abortion and threatened
to kill her. Comber two days worst person in the world,
(31:14):
still ahead of Heir on countdown. Somebody asked me about
the old This is Sports Center commercials the other day,
and if I had a favorite, and I had three,
and they all have great stories, but the Alexei Lallis
guitar story is probably the best of them. Things I
promise not to tell next. First, in each tradition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day. This is about Lee Lou and
(31:37):
Powty Cake Rescue, which saves dogs in the Bahamas. Powty
Cake Rescue had to close recently because it has to
change buildings, but try explaining that to dogs in trouble.
The woman in charge of Pottycake saw Leelu and knew
she really needed help. She was hiding in a school,
just the white mutt, with ears as big as her
face and clearly some kind of neurological problem. She was
(31:59):
having trouble standing and keeping standing, so if she fell
while trying to across the road, she would never make
it to the other side. So they rescue her and
they're trying to raise funds to get her treated and
placed in a foster home. They've set up a giving
grid page and you can find her on there. Leelu Llou,
and you can find her on my Twitter feeds. If
you can donate, please do and your retweet will also help.
(32:23):
I thank you, and Leelu, thanks you. Nineteen ninety four
World Cup did not really do that much for American soccer,
which as you know, is the sport of the future
in this country and always will be. It did make
(32:47):
a lot of Americans into fans, but fans of European clubs,
especially the British clubs. But for a while, Alexey Lalis,
with his shoulder length reddish blonde hair and his billy
goat beard and his anti establishment vibe, he was on
the front burners of American sports. Really, ESPN wanted him
for the surrealist fake documentary commercials called this his Sports Center,
(33:10):
and sure enough he came to Bristol and they devised
a bit in which Gary Miller John Luca Polyuca's Gary
Miller would be sitting at a desk in the sports
Center newsroom. As atop the adjoining desk, Lalas sat cross legged,
philosophizing on relaxation and vibes, and finally playing Michael Row
the boat Ashore on his guitar. At that point the
(33:33):
commercial turned into one of the classic scenes from John
Belushi's Animal House film. Another sportscaster was to storm into
the newsroom, pull the guitar out of Lalas's hands, and
then smash it against a cubicle wall with the greatest
grunt he could achieve, and then hand Lallas back whatever
was left of the guitar, and like Belushi, say sorry. Well,
(33:59):
they asked me to be the other sportscaster who smashes
the guitar. So picture that in your mind as I
play what it sounded like for twenty seconds or so.
And then I have what I think is a really
good backstory about the filming of this one. And I'm
talking to you all afternoon about the tension, about the darkness.
(34:21):
We got to do something about that, Michael sEH. For
time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it. So the backstory,
(34:44):
and it's out of chronological order. The guitar that Alexei
Laois was playing was not the one I smashed. There
was an exact duplicate that had been bought. It had
been taken apart, it had been sawed, and basically it
was put back together with scotch tape. It would hold
together long enough for him to scrum a few sour
notes on it, and then for me to and smash it.
(35:06):
They were confident it would not fly apart until I
hit the cubicle wall with it, but they still told
me to simply grab it, not yanked out of his hands,
or I might be left holding the neck of the
guitar and Alexe holding the rest of it. This was
especially problematic because we only had the one prop guitar.
(35:27):
That's right, we made the business end of that commercial
in one take. This is SportsCenter campaign. Not only Freaquly
achieved something approaching genius levels of originality and creativity, but
they were all done cheaper than local news promos. In Burlington,
Vermont in nineteen eighty two. We often shot three of
(35:47):
these commercials in one day, and it wasn't until the
second series of ads did the Sports Center anchors who
starred in one, or two or three even get credit
for a day off. In one of them, Charlie Sneiner
is trying to get his tape of highlights back from
the Harlem Globe trotter who are passing it around like
a basketball, and he says, can He's a little help.
(36:09):
Then I'm typing away at my computer and I say sure, Charlie,
and I don't even look at him, let alone stop typing,
let alone give any help. And that's done. Because the
commercial was shot in the area right behind my desk,
because nobody was working there that day except me, and
it was around five PM, and I was, in fact
sitting at my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script,
(36:32):
and the original commercial script did not call for me
to even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly
the writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. By the way, Charlie did the
commercial around five o'clock or so and then went and
anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we
(36:55):
did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up while
I am trying to read through a script also shot
at my desk, also on a day I was anchoring
the show, and that was my real script. Anyway, back
to Alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we only
had the one prop guitar, and so we only had
the one take, and we were shooting it in the
(37:15):
actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they were
remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of the
new ESPN News network. So this was the temporary even
more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and the
producer and the writer and I walked through how they
thought it would work best, since I would have to
weave past people who were really doing their jobs and
(37:38):
going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here. The producer said that would make a great shot.
(38:00):
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
to do that since we couldn't even practice this, and
he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe that
was the other salient part of the backstory, since we
only had the one take and we wouldn't even be
doing a dry run because they didn't want the guitar
to fall apart in my hands. I would say less
(38:20):
than half the people crowded into the temporary newsroom had
any idea that when I came in i was in
the commercial let alone, that I was going to actually
and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it against a
low cubicle wall. Even if the guitar has been pre
broken and taped back together, as that one was, it
(38:41):
is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait.
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, your little devil? Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
(39:03):
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then
about no, no, No, fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and
Gary were still sitting. My target for exactly where I
should hit the guitar was clearly marked on the cubicle wall,
and they even put marks on the carpet of where
a couple of practice walks had shown would give me
(39:23):
the best chance at a solid stance when I swung
the guitar and sent it el kabonging to its doom,
and nobody ever said quiet or roll or here we go.
They told people in the room that they were just
shooting some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people
could say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to
(39:46):
just a long they didn't get away the cameras. Then
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Bulushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake so venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
(40:07):
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the
nearly neutered prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I
took my strides, I hit the marks, I grabbed the
(40:28):
guitar by the neck with my right hand, and simultaneously
Alexey let go, and then with both hands, I swung
the guitar back over my head and smashed it right
on the mark. As you heard Michael Shale. The Sports
(40:54):
Center newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The reaction
was identical to what it would have been had there
been no commercial being made and no cameras present. And
I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar, which
I guess a lot of people expect that I might
do someday, because even a lot of the people who
were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the skinny
(41:18):
research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial, which
is on YouTube, for a second far left, just staring
at me, like, yeah, well, we always knew Keys would
do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar, and
I have to say, I did it really well. I
kept moving for the plan until I walked back through
the swinging doors and out of shot. The director shouted cut.
(41:41):
I walked back in, and the crew gave me a
round of applause, and a couple of them were cheering
out of all proportion, even if I had done is
good of a job as I thought, Come here, Come here.
The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra camera on
the floor. They backed the videotape up from it, and
they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
(42:02):
the fret board, the actual wood and metal piece on
the neck flew off and not only landed near the
third camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and
it stuck there. They were as happy as if they
were engineers imploding a building for the first time and
it had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus, they
showed me the playback from the first camera, and there
(42:25):
was an assignment desk editor with her back to the
action on the phone, completely unaware of what was happening
or even that they were rolling film and videotape, and
she literally jumped several inches out of her seat of
her chair. But to me, the best part of this
thing is Gary Miller. Even if you know a loud
(42:45):
noise is coming, it is quite the effort to not
flinch a little when it happens basically right over your shoulder.
I mean, ask the little kid in the movie north
By Northwest where Iva Marie Saint shoots Carry Grant and
he sticks his fingers in his ears because it's take
thirty seve and he knows the noise is coming. I mean,
(43:08):
you're aware of it just for the possibility that somebody
will screw it up like me and debris will fly
into the back of your head. But if you watch
Gary Miller in this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink,
just a little dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What
also amazes me is that we got all this done
(43:29):
in twenty four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on
about negativity. They have to do something about it. He
plays enough of the song that you recognize it. You
got a shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of
the background. I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash
the guitar while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the
neck of the thing. The only thing missing is that
shot from the fret bar flying into camera three. They
(43:50):
explained they didn't have the extra two seconds scene. I
remember enjoying doing this so much that I asked them
for the front of the body of the guitar, and
I had Alexi sign it to me on the spot.
It hung framed in my various offices for about fifteen years.
In twenty fourteen, I was leaving the recording of Stephen
(44:12):
Colbert's final episode for Comedy Central. I was one of
one hundred guests, and I went out onto the street
to find a cab home and I got one, and
in getting into it, I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas,
who was one of the other one hundred guests. I laughed,
He laughed, and he said, and I don't even have
my guitar with me. And one last note, I doubt
this will be of any practical use to you, but
(44:35):
I must say as somebody who was accorded this rare privilege,
not only of doing this, but of doing this with impunity,
and doing this to applause. If you are trying to
HEALTHI event any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing
a guitar against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as
(44:58):
satisfying as you would expect it would be. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Countdown has come
to you from the Vin Scully Studio at the world
(45:19):
Headquarters of the Old Women Broadcasting Empire Sports Capsule Building,
New York. Here are the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanel. The countdown musical directors, all orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
(45:40):
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
for this the eight hundred and eighty second day since
(46:01):
Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Oulraman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production
(46:25):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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