February 13, 2023 • 45 mins
EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: We'll get Breaking Balloon News out of the way: four in eight days IS a lot, but our ability to recognize them grew exponentially after the first one, and experts suggest the Pentagon has been flummoxed by unknown aerial craft for years. Meanwhile, Trump's newest Classified Documents crime may seem trivial but is extraordinarily important. Giving docs to a campaign staffer to scan into a laptop and a thumb drive is a textbook violation of 18 US Code 798 (a) "DISCLOSURE OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION." And it raises a peck of new questions: why did CNN identify the staffer in a tweet, then delete the tweet without explanation? What do you mean the staffer they named spent time studying in Russia? Was the laptop attached to the internet? Were the classified documents transferred to ANOTHER computer? What was the thumb drive for? And honestly, couldn't Trump's newest new newer lawyer come up with a better excuse for Trump having the classified documents folder in his bedroom than "he liked to use it to cover the light on his phone that used to interrupt his sleep?"
B-Block (18:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: My gun rights are more important than your physics, said the late gun rights advocate to the MRI staff. Matt Gaetz invites the wrong Vet. And Chris Licht's latest idea to save CNN is: Charles Barkley doing the news. (23:13) IN SPORTS: Not only was the Super Bowl decided on a penalty that they might as well have called "Defensive Sneezing," but those gambling ads are going to make outcomes like this look worse and worse. Plus one of those commercials seems to have purloined my catchphrase; Fox again finds the worst ex-baseball player to join its baseball show; and ESPN - and I - mourn our veteran producer Barry Sacks.
C-Block (32:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Theodore, in St. Louis (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: YOU think the Super Bowl controversy is that lousy holding call with 1:52 left. Today in Washington, the political media thinks the Super Bowl Controversy is the fact that President Biden didn't do an interview with Fox for the Pre-Game Show! As somebody who hosted that show AND a presidential inauguration in a span of thirteen days, I can tell you that the politicos have no clue how unpopular politicians who inject themselves into sportscasts are. I came thisclose to having to do "that" interview in 2009 and I tried to get them to just cancel it. The President who does not a news interview on Super Bowl Sunday but instead puts $100 Million of the nation's money on a series of prop bets and does an interview about THAT will get himself re-elected.
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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 I Heart Radio.
Let's get the balloons stuff out of the way first,
before we get to Trump's new and far more serious
(00:26):
documents crime and his lawyer's amazing claim that Trump did
not steal the classified document. He just did not give
back the classified document folder so he could keep it
in his bedroom to cover the night light on the
phone that was keeping him awake. Diddams good and sweep,
so Diddams used the envelope with the Nuki Nuki secrets
(00:47):
in him. Yes, four downed balloons and a false alarm
is a lot of downed balloons for an eight day span,
But as logic suggests, administration officials are leaking that they
learned a lot from letting that first Chinese spy airship
travel for a while before they shot it down over
(01:08):
the Atlantic. We do not know what, if anything, they
have yet recovered from the debris, but it is clear
our knowledge of what is and is not a foreign
spying device has grown exponentially in the last two weeks.
Put all the parts of the story together, and it's
obvious why the Trump administration did not know there had
been at least three of these over US territory during
(01:30):
its time in charge, Yet the Biden administration could suddenly say, yeah,
there had been Basically the one that took the Grand
tour of the Midwest allowed the Pentagon to say, oh,
that's what those are. Also, as the military expert Tyler
rogue Away from the war Zone at the Drive dot
Com has been writing since at least two thousand seventeen,
(01:52):
this is probably less about more incursions into US airspace
than it is about a greater willingness by the Pentagon
to shoot the damn things down after the Trump administration
completely ignored them, and for the first two years Biden's
Defense Department didn't do much better. Rogue Away also raised
the intriguing possibility that the Pentagon's newfound willingness to discuss UFOs,
(02:17):
the willingness that began about six seven years ago was
partly retrospective stupidity in believing maybe those were nuts by
balloons but UFOs, and partly covered for the reality that
Americans were now beginning to see the drones and balloons
of other countries and we had to say something, and yes,
(02:38):
in this last two weeks, Marjorie Taylor Green, speaking on
Behalf of the Moron Caucus has insisted the balloon was
probably filled with a bioweapon and nukes, and she's also
insisted that we should have blown it up immediately, thus
you know, detonating the nukes and spreading the bioweapons. And
she has also insisted the President acted too slowly. And
(02:59):
she has also insisted the President is acted too quickly.
And she has sworn at the Defense Department and US
during the top secret briefings. And she has then tweeted
about the lack of briefings, even though there had already
been a new briefing scheduled by the time she tweeted.
And yes, she has the intelligence of a mackerel, a
dead one lost behind all this well hot air balloon
(03:26):
juice if you prefer, was another shoe dropping in the
case of the classified documents trump stole, and the other
shoe is this is now the case of the classified
documents trump stole and disseminated, And typically nearly all of
the media missed that other shoe, that word disseminated. They
nearly all reported that Trump's legal team had found and
(03:48):
turned over pages with classified markings discovered in December at
Mari Lago and had also turned over a laptop, a
laptop which itself contained classified documents buried in most of
the accounts. Was the startling to tail from a story
which had seemingly long since lost its ability to startle.
(04:09):
The classified documents, which Trump was not legally allowed to have,
had been turned over to a campaign aid, which anybody
cleared to see them is not legally allowed to do.
And the campaign aid, who was not legally cleared to
see them, duplicated the documents, which she was not legally
allowed to do. And then she apparently duplicated them again,
(04:31):
which she was also not legally allowed to do onto
a thumb drive. Eighteen US Code seven A disclosure of
classified information. Quote. Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits,
or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person such documents
(04:54):
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than ten years, or both unquote. Up until this part
of this story he broke. Trump had the thinnest illegal
grounds to defend himself against charges like, you know, mishandling
of classified information, violation of the Presidential Records Act, espionage.
(05:16):
But once you start disseminating classified information, or, as the
law refers to its disclosure, that thinnest of legal grounds
disappears entirely. The detailment has dripped out is that the
scanned documents were from the classified evening briefings Trump used
to get, and his latest lawyer said, nobody realized were classified.
(05:37):
Must have thought classified was the name of the manufacturer
of the folder. And there was an empty folder mark
classified Evening Briefing in Trump's bedroom, and nobody realized that
would be classified either. And then there is the entire
second question about the computer, the one that the classified
documents were scanned into. Was the computer connected to the
(06:00):
internet at any point was the material scanned and transferred
to yet another computer? If not, what was the point
of the thumb drive? And who had the computer? What
else was the computer used for, who had access to
the computer, and who did the scanning? Well, we think
we know the last answer, but it itself creates yet
(06:21):
a third new problem for Trump. CNN's Caitlin Collins, the
former Daily Caller writer now inexplicably anchoring the network's latest
disastrous morning show, originally tweeted quote the laptop belonged to
Chamberlain Harris, who worked for the Save America pack. Then
Caitlin Collins deleted that tweet without explanation, which is when
(06:42):
the Internet realized it should figure out who Chamberlain Harris
was while she was a coding assistant while in college
at Sunny Albany, and she was acting president of the
campus chapter of Turning Point Us, a little fascism project
founded by Charlie Kirk. She was an intern at the
(07:03):
Heritage Foundation. Man at the White House, she was an intern,
and then she worked on the Trump scams Save America
pack and Trump would also let her post under his
name on truth Social Oh and she studied abroad while
it's Sunny Albany too. She studied abroad in Russia. If
(07:23):
it's her, she's in a world of hurt. If it's
not her, somebody else is in a world of hurt.
Because the best excuse this newest Trump lawyer, Timothy parla
Tour can come up with for the illicit scanning of
the classified documents, and he says she scanned all of
those is that she had no idea. She wasn't supposed
to do that, as if it mattered what she did
(07:46):
or did not know. It's like the receipt of stolen goods.
What matters is if the person who gave them to
you knew they were stolen. And the by now familiar
immediate leap of a Trump lawyer from semi plausible sophistry
to outright absurdity came very quickly in this case. This
new Trump lawyer parlator, I wish they would number the lawyers.
(08:08):
It would be easier, this parlator said, quote. The folder
is one of the more humorous aspects of this whole thing.
This is not a classified folder. It's a Manila folder
that says classified evening summary on it. And it was
in the President's bedroom. He has one of those landline
telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue
(08:29):
light on it and it keeps him up at night.
He took the Manila folder and he put it over
it so it would keep the light down so he
could sleep at night. And when d J found out
about it, they went crazy. They actually gave me a
subpoena to say, give us over this empty folder. That
means nothing. All right, Trump, get another new lawyer. This
(08:53):
one is officially run out of crap already. The only
way to keep the night light on the phone from
keeping Trump awake all night was to cover it with
a Manila folder dread classified Evening summary. Nothing else would
suffice read classified Evening Summary, but couldn't possibly be classified
(09:14):
or mean anything, even though the government has been trying
to get everything classified back from this bastard for two
years and it keeps turning out. Oh, he kept more
stuff than he said and scanned it and gave it
to somebody one of his campaign fundraising scams who spent
time in Russia. Of course, we have this new new
(09:35):
new new lawyer, night light Boy, because apparently all of
Trump's other new lawyers are now witnesses in the Special
Counsel's prosecution of him. Evan Corkeran and Christina Bob have
now each appeared in front of Smith's grand jury, and
the consensus is they are there about the document Corkoran
wrote and Bob signed last June that swore that all
(09:58):
the classified documents Trump had it Mari Lago had been
turned back to the government during the voluntary search. There
does not seem to have been a PostScript on this
document that read, except the classified folder, Donkey uses to
hide his nightlife because nothing else in the world will
do except a one percent official government issue, double thick
classified mintle of folder. The premise here by the Jack
(10:23):
Smith team is to get one or both of the
lawyers Bob and or Corkoran, to testify that they were
told to sign and or write this document by Trump
even though Trump knew he still had boatloads of classified materials,
in which case they have an open and shut obstruction
of justice case against Trump and maybe separate charges of
(10:43):
line to the Department of Justice. And obviously, the deal
here is it's not true. And if Trump didn't order
them to say it's not true, then either Corkran as
the author or Bob as the autographer, they are the
ones who are guilty of obstruction and line. If you
missed the other new amazingly detailed leak. It turns out
(11:04):
Trump's campaign hired a group called the Berkeley Research Group
to study voting results in six states looking for that
fraud that Trump dreamt of, for voting irregularities, dead people,
voting voting machines, malfunctioning, voting by undocumented immigrants, machine tampering,
ballot harvesting votes from vacant addresses, people voting twice, voter
(11:28):
birth and emilies, the undead people voting anything Trump could
hang a claim of a fixed election on, and of
course they found next to nothing. And they told him
that what might be the most interesting is the timing.
This was all done and the results we got nothing
turned over before January six. Then if the timing is
(11:48):
more than a coincidence, it reinforces the idea that the
coup attempt was part of a sequence, but the last
part of a sequence of Trump's extra constitutional attempts to
retain power and end democracy. We also get word from
Maga Haberman and others in the New York Times, what
kind to questions Jack Smith's team has been firing at
witnesses at its grand jury, plenty of Mari Lago document questions,
(12:11):
plenty of January six and fake electors and fundraising questions too,
Did Trump, to quote the New York Times story, consume
detailed information about foreign countries while in office? How extensively
did he seek information about whether voting machines had been
tampered with? Did he indicate he knew he was leaving
(12:31):
when his term ended, and just to tie it all
neatly together. Quote, In addition to the documents and January
six investigations, Mr Smith appears to be pursuing an offshoot
of the January six case examining Save America, a pro
Trump political action committee through which Mr Trump raised millions
(12:52):
of dollars with his false claims of election fraud. That
investigation includes looking into how and why the committee's vendors
were paid. Wait, Save America Political Action Committee? Where have
we heard about them before? Save America pack? Oh? Right
(13:15):
to the tweet Caitlin Collins of CNN deleted without explanation,
quote the laptop belonged to Chamberlin Harris, who worked for
the Save America pack. I'll add this PostScript, who didn't
know she wasn't supposed to scan all those classified evening summaries.
(13:36):
They were only there and loosening the pile because Trump
had emptied the folders. They came in so he could
use one of those folders to cover up the light
on the phone in his bedroom that was keeping him
up at night. Still ahead, it said do not bring
(14:08):
your gun into the m R. I room because the
magnets could pull it off of you and it could
fire accidentally. But he is a gun rights advocate and
he'll be damned if he follows what the man says, well,
he was a gun rights advocate. CNN has its next
great news idea. First it was Gayle King, then the
bill Mark experiment that didn't go too well, and now
(14:30):
no way, no way. There's a football game last night.
And there was actually a mini controversy over the super
Bowl pregame show presidential interview, which if I was not
telling you did not happen, you probably would not have
noticed did not happen. I am the expert on how
politicians completely misunderstand what and how often sports fans think
(14:52):
of them, and the importance of politics and covering politics,
which is not much. The day they said you're gonna
have to do the Super Bowl pregame show interview with
the president because Matt lower can't get to the White
House in time, I said, can't we just cancel it?
Things I promised not to tell coming up, and a
farewell to one of the greats in my alma mater, ESPN.
(15:15):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith
Olberman changing up the order just for today for reasons
(15:35):
that will become evident. The Super Bowl gets decided by
a heavy breathing penalty. Derek Jeter News and a great
loss at ESPN. Ahead first the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and done in Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's
worst persons in the world. The bronze Leandro Matthias de
(15:56):
Novas of Brazil, the pro gun rights attorney, was taking
mom to get an m R I at the Laboratory
O Cora at sal Powell last month. The staff told
him the M in m r I stands for magnetic
do not wear any jewelry or metal objects when you
take your mother inside the facility. But he's a pro
(16:17):
gun rights attorney, or at least he was, so he
kept his god given concealed handgun and his waistband and
hot damn, the magnetic field was strong enough to pull
the gun off of his body. It apparently dropped to
the floor and fired and hit him in the stomach,
and after two weeks of hospitalization, he gone, if I
(16:37):
sound cruel, We began to lose our way the day
we stopped mocking these clowns. The runner up Florida Congressman
Matt Gates, speaking of mockable clowns. As soon as the
Republicans took over the House Judiciary committee. They voted that
everybody in the room would recite the pledge of allegiance
because Republicans behave like fourth graders. Well, Gates got through
(16:57):
select who would receive the honor of leading the first pledge,
and he selected Corey Beakman, a combat veteran of the U. S.
Army National Guard from Pensacola. And Peakman came to Washington
and showed off his purple heart and did not mention
his outstanding accusation of murder against him from two thousand nineteen,
and that whole wacky scanned off with the police thing.
(17:22):
Gates has apologized to the victims family, but he said,
what we were supposed to do a background check for
possible criminal activity on the guy, Yeah, Matt Gates and
his office and a background check for possible criminal activity.
That is pretty absurd, isn't it. But our winner CNN's
Chris Licked, Chairman of Worldwide News or whatever it is
(17:46):
they put on TV on CNN nowadays, Licked has a
prime time problem. They are all headed off the ratings cliff.
But CNN is running fastest. And let's review briefly. First,
lickt canceled Don Lemon's successful primetime show and moved him
into the mornings with two hapless co hosts, making two
holes where there had only been one. Then he tried
(18:06):
to get Jake Tapper to do the nine PM show,
and Jake got no ratings and then said, I need
to go back to my old shift. Then came the
let's have a comedian do the news, and the John
Stewart our Cineo Hall, Trevor Noah Rumor, even though CNN
first approached Stewart about doing the news in two thousand one.
Then like picked up the leftovers from Bill mahers eleven
(18:27):
PM show on HBO and put them on CNN eleven
thirty Friday nights and CNNs ratings went down. And then
he wanted to hire gayl King even though she's on
in the morning and mornings are not the same as
the evenings. And now per Puck News, Leaked has decided
on what quote could be the boldest and potentially most
disruptive programming move. Licked is now in negotiations to bring
(18:51):
Charles Barkley to CNN for a news oriented primetime show Listen.
I am the last person to say you have a
sports guide to a news show, but even if this
were a good idea, Charles Barkley is already on TV
(19:12):
a lot, and he likes his time off. I know
him thirty five years. I can't imagine he knows what
the workload would be like this, even if he is interested,
and there is no particular reason Turner Sports would just say, sure,
take him off our successful network so you can put
him on your failing one. But look, Chris licked. Everything
(19:34):
else you've thought out so far has gone well, hasn't it.
CNN's Chris did I mention that when he and I
worked together at MSN, we see we used to think
he ate paste licked two days worse, Parson and the World.
(20:11):
This is Sports Center, Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith Alberman in sports My Jalen hurts
in the worst possible way. The Super Bowl decided on
a penalty that will go into the books as defensive holding,
(20:32):
but look more like defensive breathing. The Chiefs beat the
Eagles five in one. Had been a spectacular super Bowl
until one minute and fifty two seconds remained. That's when
tied at thirty five, third and eight for Casey at
the Philly fifteen Casey quarterback Pat Mahomes missed receiver Jujuice
Smith Schuster, but the officiating crew called a penalty on
(20:56):
Philadelphia defender James Bradbury covering Kansas City's Smith Schuster and
giving Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City at first down at
the eleven Harrison Butker's field goal a minute forty six
later gave the Chiefs the Crown. Replays showed Philadelphia's Bradberry
was guilty less of a hold and more of a
on smith Schuster. At minimum, even if there actually was
(21:19):
some technical infraction there, it did not slow the receiver down,
nor did it alter his route. It was ridiculous and
especially ridiculous to decide the Super Bowl on and unfortunately,
and no, I am not suggesting there was a fix
or a corrupt official or gambling or anything. But if
the reality of legal gambling as a principal income stream
(21:41):
for the National Football League and all the other sports leagues,
the problem with that was not apparent before it became
really obvious last night. The ads and the really ticky
tacky call that decided the most waged on sporting event
in the country combined to smell just awful sadly this
(22:01):
all suggests that, and no, there was not one last night,
but within a decade there will be an NFL game
fixing or point shaving scandal, more likely point shaving, maybe
even in the Super Bowl, because there are lots of
very low paid NFL employees of all kinds who can
influence the outcome of a game, and they no longer
(22:24):
have to get into the bed with the mob to
influence the outcome of a game. They can do it
themselves and then just go and bet on it themselves.
And if you don't think they have already been Super
Bowl gambling scandals, I refer you as ever to the
best book on football's history ever written, Interference by Dan
Mouldea m O. L. D e. A Interference. As to
(22:49):
the Super Bowl ads, they were really bad. They've been
overrated for years, as you know, try to remember the
best one from which one was it, what was the product,
who was in it? Speaking of smells, I can still
get a whiff of the Caddyshack ones, and that's still
available in my nose right now. Also the good one,
(23:10):
the ram spot about being afraid of buying an electric
truck for fear of premature electrification. Wasn't there Some sportscaster
used to talk about teams or players celebrating to soon
and he used this stupid catch phrase, premature jocularity for
you know, like thirty years on Sports Center, Fox Sports,
(23:31):
and BC Football local news in l A and Boston.
Wasn't there some guy used to do that Before the game.
Fox made a baseball announcement they are adding Derek Jeter
to their pregame show. This is kind of amazing because
one of the points of Derek Jeter's baseball life these
last twenty seven years has been never to say anything
(23:53):
of interest about baseball or anything else in public, so
it'll fit right in on the Fox pregame show. Fox
has been hiring ex superstars since they got baseball in
and none of them has ever said anything. But one
non superstar they put on the pregame show was Steve Lyons,
who I worked with in two thousand when I did
(24:14):
the pregame show and we hated each other, but he
said lots of stuff and although most of it was wrong,
I still did my best to showcase him and one
year I did it too well and he won the
Emmy Award as Best Studio sports analyst, and trust me,
this guy Lions couldn't spell emmy, so now they're gonna
have Derek Jeter saying he looked really good out there. Lastly,
(24:39):
and continuing on the theme of TV sports a terrible
day for almost anybody who ever worked at ESPN. The
first time I ever anchored Sports Center, they broke me
in a couple of nights on the two am edition.
The coordinating producer of that show was a veteran, larger
than life guy in a big black beard and an
even bigger sweater vest and a big voice. And I
(25:01):
would work with him on and off in my first
tenure there, and a end later something almost everybody could say.
He was the big picture guy for the company. He
worked on the late sports centers, the early sports centers,
the weekend sports centers, college basketball shows, hockey shows, football shows,
special shows. And all the producers I worked with, they're
only one of them, did not try to indoctrinate me
(25:24):
on the Bristol way of doing things. Barry Sacks would
wait until his bosses were not around and then ask,
how did you handle something like this in l A
or Kyo? What would you do here? One time there
was a heated exchange over something Laurd knows what. There
were a lot of them and Barry just stood their
(25:45):
arms folded, and when the executive left, he closed the
door and he said, you're right. Actually we're right. I
agree with you, and we're never going to convince him
of that. So how about this, You start doing this
their way. Let me go massage them, give me half
an hour and see how much of your way I
can get them to agree to. Don't get me wrong,
Barry Sacks was an ESPN salesman. What we did mattered,
(26:09):
every show affected the brand. Anything less than the best
was insufficient, and he would come down on you like
a ton of bricks. But to the managers there, Barry
was a manager management guy. To the talent, Barry was
a talent friendly talent guy. To me, Barry seemed to
be the guy who was trying to be right in
(26:32):
whatever the situation called for. He and I understood each
other on that. About three years in we found out
that we had both interned for the same New York
City sportscaster named Bill Maser, and we did it in
consecutive years. Barry was at ESPN for more than three
decades and then he joined the sports journalism faculty at
Quinnipiac College. And Saturday came the terrible news that Barry
(26:55):
Sachs had suffered a massive heart attack, and yesterday came
the worst news that he had died at the age
of sixty three. Barry Sacks was able to be both
that over the top ESPN salesman I mentioned, and also
the guy who knew he was being over the top
and enjoyed letting you in both on the hyperbole and
his self awareness of the hyperbole. And he had one
(27:17):
phrase that he used a lot in the nineties that
summarize that if he wasn't saying it's somebody was quoting
him saying it. This is ESPN. Every day is the
Super Bowl. And Barry Sachs died on the day of
the Super Bowl, still ahead on countdown. I'm sure you
(27:43):
are still furious about the Super Bowl. How could they
possibly not have interviewed the president? I know, I know
you don't care. I don't care, But there is a
city where today that is the story and the only story.
For insulation and self absorption, no one is worse than politicians.
(28:04):
Exce up the people who cover politicians. Things I promised
not to tell about Super Bowl presidential interviews. Next first,
in each addition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day to St.
Louis and Theodore, and with a father named Theodore and
a dog named Ted, you can understand my particular concern this.
(28:25):
Theodore looks to be a shepherd puppy. He's just four
weeks old. He should still be in the care of
his mother. He's not. He's sick parasites mange. How he
got away from her, we don't know, but saving St.
Louis Pats is trying to take care of him. So far,
so good, but he's going to have to be in
a vets care for at least another four weeks, probably longer. Honestly,
(28:46):
they're just trying to raise seven for him on Cuddly.
If you can help, you can find Theodore there or
on my Twitter feed. I thank you, and Theodore thanks
you to the number one story on the Countdown and
(29:06):
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And I'd like to think of myself as expert in
many things, many things more than I am actually expert in.
But there are one, maybe two things in which I
am genuinely the expert of experts, and one of them
is the overlap between sports and politics, in particular about
(29:29):
media and sports and politics. I anchored the inauguration of
Barack Obama as president on January two thousand nine on MSNBC,
and twelve days later, I co anchored the three hours
Super Bowl pregame show on NBC, and I am freshly
reminded of the amazing but hurt delusion of the political
(29:51):
media industrial complex about where it thinks it's personnel, government officials,
political entities, politicians, pundits, reporters, news organizations where they rank
in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to sports officials,
sports team and league entities, sports executives, sports pundits, sports reporters,
(30:14):
sports organizations, or, if you're in Canada, sports organizations. Many
political people are true sports fans and thus have a
truer sense of this comparison, which they largely keep to
themselves for reasons which will become obvious. But countless numbers
of political people believe that, on a scale of one
(30:35):
to a hundred, sports in this country is about a fifty,
I guess, and political stuff is a ninety five. The
reality is sports in this country is about a seventy
and political stuff is about three three and a half.
(30:55):
Nearly all political people enjoy being in politics, and simply
assume that thus everybody else enjoys politics in the same way.
In point of fact, almost nobody not in politics enjoys
politics at all. What the political people think of their
world and it's incandescent attractiveness, and thus their own incandescent
(31:19):
attractiveness is actually what the world of sports is really like.
Virtually everybody in sports wakes up in the morning, at
least most of the time, shouting, yeah, I make a
living in sports, and virtually everybody watching sports wakes up
in the morning shouting, maybe today I'll find a way
to make a living off sports. You will never convince
(31:42):
the non sports people in politics that this is even
remotely true. The day before the Super Bowl, the newsletter
of the website Political lead with for ten paragraphs quote
Biden's Fox News snub. This morning, Political wrote in all
(32:04):
series Business, we have to ask, was that such a
good idea? Biden just passed up a critical opportunity to
speak to millions of Americans who ignored his state of
the Union, But sure as hell won't miss the super
Bowl one that comes ahead of a likely re election
campaign launch. This just in nobody watches the presidential interview
(32:32):
in the super Bowl pregame show. Nobody, not when it
was Biden, not when it was Trump, not when it
was Obama, not when it was Bush. It may be
on in tens of millions of American homes, people may
even not change the channel. But in the world of
(32:53):
places like Politico, the president appears on television, and every viewer,
be he alone or at the largest Super Bowl party imaginable,
every viewer not only goes in demically silent, but hushes
everybody else in the room and says, wait, we have
to have to listen to this. I do not know
of this having ever happened anywhere. He should reliship chance
(33:19):
to spar with his conservative critics. Some Democrats would argue.
This goes on for ten paragraphs later, much later, same newsletter,
the startling news that Trump permitted classified documents to be
uploaded to a campaign staffers laptop and thumb drive, which
would be an entirely new crime that got one sentence
(33:43):
in this same document, the ten paragraphs about the greatest
story of Super Bowl weekend, that there would not be
a Fox interview of Joe Biden, not by Brett Bear,
not by a Fox website with the oxymoronic name Fox Soul,
then linked to an actual thirteen further paragraphs with what
(34:05):
a political writer named Christopher Catalago must have thought was
a funny lead quote, America will have to settle for
the Puppy Bowl. The Puppy Bowl is there for people
who do not want to watch the Super Bowl. I
mean there might be some overlap. Let's put it this way.
(34:26):
At least it's there for people who don't want to
watch the super Bowl pregame show, and it's in the
Super Bowl pregame show where the presidential interview ordinarily runs.
The Puppy Bowl gets somewhere around a million, seven hundred
thousand viewers, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
The whole five hours of Super Bowl pregame averages at
any given moment twenty million viewers. Anyway, I said, I
(34:50):
was the expert on this particular sub subject. When radio
began in this country, it was common for each of
the handful of networks to have lead announcers who were
supposed to be able to do anything ted using broadcast
the World Series for CBS, and the Rose Bowl and
the big growing regattas and major news stories like floods.
(35:14):
He anchored the political conventions, and he did the inauguration
every four years. As TV took over, those jobs became specialized,
and there is still some overlap in one area, the Olympics.
Everybody from Walter Cronkite to Bob Costas to Katie Curic
have hosted the Olympics. I was supposed to do it twice,
but from two thousand six through two thousand nine I
(35:36):
anchored election Nights on MSNBC and Football Night in America
on NBC, and I did five political shows a week
on cable and an hour a day on Dan Patrick's
ESPN radio sports show. I am the overlap. And in fact,
in two thousand nine, when I went right from the
Inauguration to Tampa for the Super Bowl, there was a glitch.
(35:57):
On the afternoon of the Super Bowl game, if I
remember right, Matt Lower was on a stuck train or
a plane that had been grounded at an airport somewhere,
and they were convinced he was not going to get
to the White House in time to interview Barack Obama live.
So said our producer Michael Weisman during the commercial break,
(36:18):
What do you want to ask Obama? Because laur is
not going to make it to the White House, He's
got like five minutes. Assume it's gonna be you. And
I said, I can just ask him everything. I would
have asked him on if he'd been on Countdown Friday night.
But that's not the point. Why don't we take this
opportunity to not do the interview? I mean, you know,
(36:39):
if Lauer can't make it, let's just say lower can't
make it, so we canceled it. Who's gonna notice? Who
listens to this interview? Why do we do it? Doesn't
anybody know that when a politician steps into the middle
of a sporting event, it always hurts him. I was
in the middle of this when Weissman said, Okay, law
just showed up at the White House. Do you need
(37:01):
help getting down from your high horace? Keith? Well, all right,
I might have been on a high horse, but I
was serious. People don't believe when I, of all people say,
I do not like it when sports and politics get mixed.
But what I mean by that is if athletes have
political opinions, or they take political stances. If Colin Kaepernick
Neils or John Carlos and Tommy Smith give a Black
(37:23):
Power salute, or some maga golfer goes all political with
his putts, that's a sports story, you have to cover it.
But politicians or sportscasters. Politicians injecting themselves into sports, sportscasters
injecting themselves into politics, or injecting politics into their sports casts.
(37:47):
This started with Richard Nixon phoning the Kansas City Chiefs
locker room after they won the nineteen seventies Super Bowl,
and it was as cringe worthy then as it is now.
Ronald Reagan advanced it to inviting winning teams to the
White House. Soon it was whoever was president invited any
team in any league to the White House. It is
(38:08):
pure political exploitation and it has never stopped making me flinch.
And in two thousand four we fell into this Super
Bowl interview trap when CBS and Jim Nance inexplicably interviewed
George W. Bush. Trump would not do the interview with
NBC in two thousand eighteen, and to my mind, that
was his greatest act as president, his one selfless decision
(38:34):
and I swear if Joe Biden were any other president,
would record a video saying, Hey, this is the Super Bowl,
no politics today, enjoy the game. It would probably goose
his approval ratings. Forty years ago, when I was with
CNN Sports, they sent me to Washington for the week
(38:57):
because the Locals were playing the Raiders in the Super Bowl.
I covered the celebrations that night when they won, and
then the victory parade outdoors in a driving rainstorm, and
the head tech guy for CNN Washington assigned himself to
run the lights and he got shocked so badly he
had to go sit in the truck for an hour. Anyway,
I also covered the team's flight home to d C.
(39:19):
And I went to the airport and interview players and
went back to the bureau and I edited my story
and we were about to feed my piece to headquarters
in Atlanta when the assignment editor for CNN Washington literally
ran through the studio screaming stop, stop. And when she
got to me, she said, Reagan's plane just landed. We
have ten seconds of him saying go redskins on the tarmact.
(39:41):
I know you'll want to lead with that. And I
just looked at her and said, what sports fan wants
to hear from a politician instead of the winning quarterback.
You would have thought I had slapped her in the face.
She backed away slowly. I told the engineer, just feed
(40:03):
the tape. It's done. All this reminds me of a
Rudy Giuliani memory I had completely suppressed until I started
down the writing route. On this one, I anchored what
must have been an hour from the New York Yankees
clubhouse at Chase Stadium after they won the two thousand
World Series over the New York Mets. I was with
Fox Sports and we had televised the series, and part
(40:25):
of the deal was we got our own little part
of the winning team's clubhouse cordoned off, I mean with
red velvet ropes, like got the oscars and silver stanchions
and three chairs and three cameras, and the players couldn't
go in there unless we let them. Producers would drag
celebrating players over to us. They would have to climb
(40:47):
over the ropes and we'd interview them. And sure enough,
during the first commercial break, I nudged my color analysts
Steve Lyons, and I said, look over there, to the left,
it's Giuliani, and that's his publicist. And they were about
five ft closer to us than they had been when
we started, and then during the first interview they they
moved another five feet closer to us. The minute we
(41:10):
don't have a guest, Rudy is gonna be their line
of sight, I say to Lions. So somebody says, well, hey,
let's get the mayor in here. He's right over here. Well,
as I have alluded to previously, even in two thousand,
I knew Rudy was a self promoting idiot, and I
never ever said let's get the mayor in here. So finally,
forty five minutes after his slow creep towards our camera began,
(41:34):
Rudy dropped any pretense of waiting to be asked. He
had waited forty five minutes, we had not asked, So
he just climbed over the red rope while we're on live,
caught in front of one of the cameras, on the
pretext that he was just congratulating whichever Yankee player Lions
and I were interviewing. I threw to commercial as fast
(41:55):
as I could, and the Baseball executive and the Fox
Sports executive coordinating the broadcast, came in, grabbed Juliani politely
but firmly, and to score ordered him and his PR
person out of the clubhouse. To my mind, the only
politician who has ever successfully inserted himself into a sporting
(42:16):
event was Barack Obama, and that's because he did a
sports thing. Come basketball tournament time, Obama fills out the
same bracket that seventy million other Americans do every year,
and he's got a reason for every team he picks,
and it's really nerdy, and if you don't like college basketball,
you may actually come away from that going I'm not
(42:37):
sure about this guy, but it is both astute politics
and worthwhile TV sports programming, unlike that done by every
other politician ever. So that leads me to my thought
about the Super Bowl presidential interview, if ever it resumes.
The president, whoever it is, should not agree to a
(43:00):
news interview in the super Bowl pregame show. Never he
should sit down with one of these now ubiquitous TV
sports gambling guys. I'm thinking maybe Aaron Paul from Breaking
Bad in our time together on bow Jack Horseman and
explain to him which super Bowl prop bets he was
(43:20):
putting his money on I would watch that. Hell if
Joe Biden or anybody else got onto the Super Bowl
pregame show and explain he was betting a hundred million
dollars of taxpayer money on the visiting quarterback not throwing
the Super Bowl touchdown pass, but catching one, and it
happened that president would guarantee himself re election. Countdown has
(43:59):
come to you from the studios of Overman Broadcasting Empire
World Headquarters in the Sports Capsule Holding in New York.
Thank you for listening. Here are our credits. Most to
the music, including the theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle.
They are the Countdown Musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channelle,
(44:21):
produced by t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman 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 Kenny Mayne. Everything else is pretty
(44:42):
much my fault and again my condolences to the family
and loved ones and friends of Barry Sachs. Let's countdown
for this the seven and sixty ninth day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coop against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Arrest him now while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then on Keith Olberman,
(45:03):
good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
(45:23):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Let's get the balloons stuff out of the way first,
before we get to Trump's new and far more serious
(00:26):
documents crime and his lawyer's amazing claim that Trump did
not steal the classified document. He just did not give
back the classified document folder so he could keep it
in his bedroom to cover the night light on the
phone that was keeping him awake. Diddams good and sweep,
so Diddams used the envelope with the Nuki Nuki secrets
(00:47):
in him. Yes, four downed balloons and a false alarm
is a lot of downed balloons for an eight day span,
But as logic suggests, administration officials are leaking that they
learned a lot from letting that first Chinese spy airship
travel for a while before they shot it down over
(01:08):
the Atlantic. We do not know what, if anything, they
have yet recovered from the debris, but it is clear
our knowledge of what is and is not a foreign
spying device has grown exponentially in the last two weeks.
Put all the parts of the story together, and it's
obvious why the Trump administration did not know there had
been at least three of these over US territory during
(01:30):
its time in charge, Yet the Biden administration could suddenly say, yeah,
there had been Basically the one that took the Grand
tour of the Midwest allowed the Pentagon to say, oh,
that's what those are. Also, as the military expert Tyler
rogue Away from the war Zone at the Drive dot
Com has been writing since at least two thousand seventeen,
(01:52):
this is probably less about more incursions into US airspace
than it is about a greater willingness by the Pentagon
to shoot the damn things down after the Trump administration
completely ignored them, and for the first two years Biden's
Defense Department didn't do much better. Rogue Away also raised
the intriguing possibility that the Pentagon's newfound willingness to discuss UFOs,
(02:17):
the willingness that began about six seven years ago was
partly retrospective stupidity in believing maybe those were nuts by
balloons but UFOs, and partly covered for the reality that
Americans were now beginning to see the drones and balloons
of other countries and we had to say something, and yes,
(02:38):
in this last two weeks, Marjorie Taylor Green, speaking on
Behalf of the Moron Caucus has insisted the balloon was
probably filled with a bioweapon and nukes, and she's also
insisted that we should have blown it up immediately, thus
you know, detonating the nukes and spreading the bioweapons. And
she has also insisted the President acted too slowly. And
(02:59):
she has also insisted the President is acted too quickly.
And she has sworn at the Defense Department and US
during the top secret briefings. And she has then tweeted
about the lack of briefings, even though there had already
been a new briefing scheduled by the time she tweeted.
And yes, she has the intelligence of a mackerel, a
dead one lost behind all this well hot air balloon
(03:26):
juice if you prefer, was another shoe dropping in the
case of the classified documents trump stole, and the other
shoe is this is now the case of the classified
documents trump stole and disseminated, And typically nearly all of
the media missed that other shoe, that word disseminated. They
nearly all reported that Trump's legal team had found and
(03:48):
turned over pages with classified markings discovered in December at
Mari Lago and had also turned over a laptop, a
laptop which itself contained classified documents buried in most of
the accounts. Was the startling to tail from a story
which had seemingly long since lost its ability to startle.
(04:09):
The classified documents, which Trump was not legally allowed to have,
had been turned over to a campaign aid, which anybody
cleared to see them is not legally allowed to do.
And the campaign aid, who was not legally cleared to
see them, duplicated the documents, which she was not legally
allowed to do. And then she apparently duplicated them again,
(04:31):
which she was also not legally allowed to do onto
a thumb drive. Eighteen US Code seven A disclosure of
classified information. Quote. Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits,
or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person such documents
(04:54):
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than ten years, or both unquote. Up until this part
of this story he broke. Trump had the thinnest illegal
grounds to defend himself against charges like, you know, mishandling
of classified information, violation of the Presidential Records Act, espionage.
(05:16):
But once you start disseminating classified information, or, as the
law refers to its disclosure, that thinnest of legal grounds
disappears entirely. The detailment has dripped out is that the
scanned documents were from the classified evening briefings Trump used
to get, and his latest lawyer said, nobody realized were classified.
(05:37):
Must have thought classified was the name of the manufacturer
of the folder. And there was an empty folder mark
classified Evening Briefing in Trump's bedroom, and nobody realized that
would be classified either. And then there is the entire
second question about the computer, the one that the classified
documents were scanned into. Was the computer connected to the
(06:00):
internet at any point was the material scanned and transferred
to yet another computer? If not, what was the point
of the thumb drive? And who had the computer? What
else was the computer used for, who had access to
the computer, and who did the scanning? Well, we think
we know the last answer, but it itself creates yet
(06:21):
a third new problem for Trump. CNN's Caitlin Collins, the
former Daily Caller writer now inexplicably anchoring the network's latest
disastrous morning show, originally tweeted quote the laptop belonged to
Chamberlain Harris, who worked for the Save America pack. Then
Caitlin Collins deleted that tweet without explanation, which is when
(06:42):
the Internet realized it should figure out who Chamberlain Harris
was while she was a coding assistant while in college
at Sunny Albany, and she was acting president of the
campus chapter of Turning Point Us, a little fascism project
founded by Charlie Kirk. She was an intern at the
(07:03):
Heritage Foundation. Man at the White House, she was an intern,
and then she worked on the Trump scams Save America
pack and Trump would also let her post under his
name on truth Social Oh and she studied abroad while
it's Sunny Albany too. She studied abroad in Russia. If
(07:23):
it's her, she's in a world of hurt. If it's
not her, somebody else is in a world of hurt.
Because the best excuse this newest Trump lawyer, Timothy parla
Tour can come up with for the illicit scanning of
the classified documents, and he says she scanned all of
those is that she had no idea. She wasn't supposed
to do that, as if it mattered what she did
(07:46):
or did not know. It's like the receipt of stolen goods.
What matters is if the person who gave them to
you knew they were stolen. And the by now familiar
immediate leap of a Trump lawyer from semi plausible sophistry
to outright absurdity came very quickly in this case. This
new Trump lawyer parlator, I wish they would number the lawyers.
(08:08):
It would be easier, this parlator said, quote. The folder
is one of the more humorous aspects of this whole thing.
This is not a classified folder. It's a Manila folder
that says classified evening summary on it. And it was
in the President's bedroom. He has one of those landline
telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue
(08:29):
light on it and it keeps him up at night.
He took the Manila folder and he put it over
it so it would keep the light down so he
could sleep at night. And when d J found out
about it, they went crazy. They actually gave me a
subpoena to say, give us over this empty folder. That
means nothing. All right, Trump, get another new lawyer. This
(08:53):
one is officially run out of crap already. The only
way to keep the night light on the phone from
keeping Trump awake all night was to cover it with
a Manila folder dread classified Evening summary. Nothing else would
suffice read classified Evening Summary, but couldn't possibly be classified
(09:14):
or mean anything, even though the government has been trying
to get everything classified back from this bastard for two
years and it keeps turning out. Oh, he kept more
stuff than he said and scanned it and gave it
to somebody one of his campaign fundraising scams who spent
time in Russia. Of course, we have this new new
(09:35):
new new lawyer, night light Boy, because apparently all of
Trump's other new lawyers are now witnesses in the Special
Counsel's prosecution of him. Evan Corkeran and Christina Bob have
now each appeared in front of Smith's grand jury, and
the consensus is they are there about the document Corkoran
wrote and Bob signed last June that swore that all
(09:58):
the classified documents Trump had it Mari Lago had been
turned back to the government during the voluntary search. There
does not seem to have been a PostScript on this
document that read, except the classified folder, Donkey uses to
hide his nightlife because nothing else in the world will
do except a one percent official government issue, double thick
classified mintle of folder. The premise here by the Jack
(10:23):
Smith team is to get one or both of the
lawyers Bob and or Corkoran, to testify that they were
told to sign and or write this document by Trump
even though Trump knew he still had boatloads of classified materials,
in which case they have an open and shut obstruction
of justice case against Trump and maybe separate charges of
(10:43):
line to the Department of Justice. And obviously, the deal
here is it's not true. And if Trump didn't order
them to say it's not true, then either Corkran as
the author or Bob as the autographer, they are the
ones who are guilty of obstruction and line. If you
missed the other new amazingly detailed leak. It turns out
(11:04):
Trump's campaign hired a group called the Berkeley Research Group
to study voting results in six states looking for that
fraud that Trump dreamt of, for voting irregularities, dead people,
voting voting machines, malfunctioning, voting by undocumented immigrants, machine tampering,
ballot harvesting votes from vacant addresses, people voting twice, voter
(11:28):
birth and emilies, the undead people voting anything Trump could
hang a claim of a fixed election on, and of
course they found next to nothing. And they told him
that what might be the most interesting is the timing.
This was all done and the results we got nothing
turned over before January six. Then if the timing is
(11:48):
more than a coincidence, it reinforces the idea that the
coup attempt was part of a sequence, but the last
part of a sequence of Trump's extra constitutional attempts to
retain power and end democracy. We also get word from
Maga Haberman and others in the New York Times, what
kind to questions Jack Smith's team has been firing at
witnesses at its grand jury, plenty of Mari Lago document questions,
(12:11):
plenty of January six and fake electors and fundraising questions too,
Did Trump, to quote the New York Times story, consume
detailed information about foreign countries while in office? How extensively
did he seek information about whether voting machines had been
tampered with? Did he indicate he knew he was leaving
(12:31):
when his term ended, and just to tie it all
neatly together. Quote, In addition to the documents and January
six investigations, Mr Smith appears to be pursuing an offshoot
of the January six case examining Save America, a pro
Trump political action committee through which Mr Trump raised millions
(12:52):
of dollars with his false claims of election fraud. That
investigation includes looking into how and why the committee's vendors
were paid. Wait, Save America Political Action Committee? Where have
we heard about them before? Save America pack? Oh? Right
(13:15):
to the tweet Caitlin Collins of CNN deleted without explanation,
quote the laptop belonged to Chamberlin Harris, who worked for
the Save America pack. I'll add this PostScript, who didn't
know she wasn't supposed to scan all those classified evening summaries.
(13:36):
They were only there and loosening the pile because Trump
had emptied the folders. They came in so he could
use one of those folders to cover up the light
on the phone in his bedroom that was keeping him
up at night. Still ahead, it said do not bring
(14:08):
your gun into the m R. I room because the
magnets could pull it off of you and it could
fire accidentally. But he is a gun rights advocate and
he'll be damned if he follows what the man says, well,
he was a gun rights advocate. CNN has its next
great news idea. First it was Gayle King, then the
bill Mark experiment that didn't go too well, and now
(14:30):
no way, no way. There's a football game last night.
And there was actually a mini controversy over the super
Bowl pregame show presidential interview, which if I was not
telling you did not happen, you probably would not have
noticed did not happen. I am the expert on how
politicians completely misunderstand what and how often sports fans think
(14:52):
of them, and the importance of politics and covering politics,
which is not much. The day they said you're gonna
have to do the Super Bowl pregame show interview with
the president because Matt lower can't get to the White
House in time, I said, can't we just cancel it?
Things I promised not to tell coming up, and a
farewell to one of the greats in my alma mater, ESPN.
(15:15):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith
Olberman changing up the order just for today for reasons
(15:35):
that will become evident. The Super Bowl gets decided by
a heavy breathing penalty. Derek Jeter News and a great
loss at ESPN. Ahead first the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and done in Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's
worst persons in the world. The bronze Leandro Matthias de
(15:56):
Novas of Brazil, the pro gun rights attorney, was taking
mom to get an m R I at the Laboratory
O Cora at sal Powell last month. The staff told
him the M in m r I stands for magnetic
do not wear any jewelry or metal objects when you
take your mother inside the facility. But he's a pro
(16:17):
gun rights attorney, or at least he was, so he
kept his god given concealed handgun and his waistband and
hot damn, the magnetic field was strong enough to pull
the gun off of his body. It apparently dropped to
the floor and fired and hit him in the stomach,
and after two weeks of hospitalization, he gone, if I
(16:37):
sound cruel, We began to lose our way the day
we stopped mocking these clowns. The runner up Florida Congressman
Matt Gates, speaking of mockable clowns. As soon as the
Republicans took over the House Judiciary committee. They voted that
everybody in the room would recite the pledge of allegiance
because Republicans behave like fourth graders. Well, Gates got through
(16:57):
select who would receive the honor of leading the first pledge,
and he selected Corey Beakman, a combat veteran of the U. S.
Army National Guard from Pensacola. And Peakman came to Washington
and showed off his purple heart and did not mention
his outstanding accusation of murder against him from two thousand nineteen,
and that whole wacky scanned off with the police thing.
(17:22):
Gates has apologized to the victims family, but he said,
what we were supposed to do a background check for
possible criminal activity on the guy, Yeah, Matt Gates and
his office and a background check for possible criminal activity.
That is pretty absurd, isn't it. But our winner CNN's
Chris Licked, Chairman of Worldwide News or whatever it is
(17:46):
they put on TV on CNN nowadays, Licked has a
prime time problem. They are all headed off the ratings cliff.
But CNN is running fastest. And let's review briefly. First,
lickt canceled Don Lemon's successful primetime show and moved him
into the mornings with two hapless co hosts, making two
holes where there had only been one. Then he tried
(18:06):
to get Jake Tapper to do the nine PM show,
and Jake got no ratings and then said, I need
to go back to my old shift. Then came the
let's have a comedian do the news, and the John
Stewart our Cineo Hall, Trevor Noah Rumor, even though CNN
first approached Stewart about doing the news in two thousand one.
Then like picked up the leftovers from Bill mahers eleven
(18:27):
PM show on HBO and put them on CNN eleven
thirty Friday nights and CNNs ratings went down. And then
he wanted to hire gayl King even though she's on
in the morning and mornings are not the same as
the evenings. And now per Puck News, Leaked has decided
on what quote could be the boldest and potentially most
disruptive programming move. Licked is now in negotiations to bring
(18:51):
Charles Barkley to CNN for a news oriented primetime show Listen.
I am the last person to say you have a
sports guide to a news show, but even if this
were a good idea, Charles Barkley is already on TV
(19:12):
a lot, and he likes his time off. I know
him thirty five years. I can't imagine he knows what
the workload would be like this, even if he is interested,
and there is no particular reason Turner Sports would just say, sure,
take him off our successful network so you can put
him on your failing one. But look, Chris licked. Everything
(19:34):
else you've thought out so far has gone well, hasn't it.
CNN's Chris did I mention that when he and I
worked together at MSN, we see we used to think
he ate paste licked two days worse, Parson and the World.
(20:11):
This is Sports Center, Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith Alberman in sports My Jalen hurts
in the worst possible way. The Super Bowl decided on
a penalty that will go into the books as defensive holding,
(20:32):
but look more like defensive breathing. The Chiefs beat the
Eagles five in one. Had been a spectacular super Bowl
until one minute and fifty two seconds remained. That's when
tied at thirty five, third and eight for Casey at
the Philly fifteen Casey quarterback Pat Mahomes missed receiver Jujuice
Smith Schuster, but the officiating crew called a penalty on
(20:56):
Philadelphia defender James Bradbury covering Kansas City's Smith Schuster and
giving Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City at first down at
the eleven Harrison Butker's field goal a minute forty six
later gave the Chiefs the Crown. Replays showed Philadelphia's Bradberry
was guilty less of a hold and more of a
on smith Schuster. At minimum, even if there actually was
(21:19):
some technical infraction there, it did not slow the receiver down,
nor did it alter his route. It was ridiculous and
especially ridiculous to decide the Super Bowl on and unfortunately,
and no, I am not suggesting there was a fix
or a corrupt official or gambling or anything. But if
the reality of legal gambling as a principal income stream
(21:41):
for the National Football League and all the other sports leagues,
the problem with that was not apparent before it became
really obvious last night. The ads and the really ticky
tacky call that decided the most waged on sporting event
in the country combined to smell just awful sadly this
(22:01):
all suggests that, and no, there was not one last night,
but within a decade there will be an NFL game
fixing or point shaving scandal, more likely point shaving, maybe
even in the Super Bowl, because there are lots of
very low paid NFL employees of all kinds who can
influence the outcome of a game, and they no longer
(22:24):
have to get into the bed with the mob to
influence the outcome of a game. They can do it
themselves and then just go and bet on it themselves.
And if you don't think they have already been Super
Bowl gambling scandals, I refer you as ever to the
best book on football's history ever written, Interference by Dan
Mouldea m O. L. D e. A Interference. As to
(22:49):
the Super Bowl ads, they were really bad. They've been
overrated for years, as you know, try to remember the
best one from which one was it, what was the product,
who was in it? Speaking of smells, I can still
get a whiff of the Caddyshack ones, and that's still
available in my nose right now. Also the good one,
(23:10):
the ram spot about being afraid of buying an electric
truck for fear of premature electrification. Wasn't there Some sportscaster
used to talk about teams or players celebrating to soon
and he used this stupid catch phrase, premature jocularity for
you know, like thirty years on Sports Center, Fox Sports,
(23:31):
and BC Football local news in l A and Boston.
Wasn't there some guy used to do that Before the game.
Fox made a baseball announcement they are adding Derek Jeter
to their pregame show. This is kind of amazing because
one of the points of Derek Jeter's baseball life these
last twenty seven years has been never to say anything
(23:53):
of interest about baseball or anything else in public, so
it'll fit right in on the Fox pregame show. Fox
has been hiring ex superstars since they got baseball in
and none of them has ever said anything. But one
non superstar they put on the pregame show was Steve Lyons,
who I worked with in two thousand when I did
(24:14):
the pregame show and we hated each other, but he
said lots of stuff and although most of it was wrong,
I still did my best to showcase him and one
year I did it too well and he won the
Emmy Award as Best Studio sports analyst, and trust me,
this guy Lions couldn't spell emmy, so now they're gonna
have Derek Jeter saying he looked really good out there. Lastly,
(24:39):
and continuing on the theme of TV sports a terrible
day for almost anybody who ever worked at ESPN. The
first time I ever anchored Sports Center, they broke me
in a couple of nights on the two am edition.
The coordinating producer of that show was a veteran, larger
than life guy in a big black beard and an
even bigger sweater vest and a big voice. And I
(25:01):
would work with him on and off in my first
tenure there, and a end later something almost everybody could say.
He was the big picture guy for the company. He
worked on the late sports centers, the early sports centers,
the weekend sports centers, college basketball shows, hockey shows, football shows,
special shows. And all the producers I worked with, they're
only one of them, did not try to indoctrinate me
(25:24):
on the Bristol way of doing things. Barry Sacks would
wait until his bosses were not around and then ask,
how did you handle something like this in l A
or Kyo? What would you do here? One time there
was a heated exchange over something Laurd knows what. There
were a lot of them and Barry just stood their
(25:45):
arms folded, and when the executive left, he closed the
door and he said, you're right. Actually we're right. I
agree with you, and we're never going to convince him
of that. So how about this, You start doing this
their way. Let me go massage them, give me half
an hour and see how much of your way I
can get them to agree to. Don't get me wrong,
Barry Sacks was an ESPN salesman. What we did mattered,
(26:09):
every show affected the brand. Anything less than the best
was insufficient, and he would come down on you like
a ton of bricks. But to the managers there, Barry
was a manager management guy. To the talent, Barry was
a talent friendly talent guy. To me, Barry seemed to
be the guy who was trying to be right in
(26:32):
whatever the situation called for. He and I understood each
other on that. About three years in we found out
that we had both interned for the same New York
City sportscaster named Bill Maser, and we did it in
consecutive years. Barry was at ESPN for more than three
decades and then he joined the sports journalism faculty at
Quinnipiac College. And Saturday came the terrible news that Barry
(26:55):
Sachs had suffered a massive heart attack, and yesterday came
the worst news that he had died at the age
of sixty three. Barry Sacks was able to be both
that over the top ESPN salesman I mentioned, and also
the guy who knew he was being over the top
and enjoyed letting you in both on the hyperbole and
his self awareness of the hyperbole. And he had one
(27:17):
phrase that he used a lot in the nineties that
summarize that if he wasn't saying it's somebody was quoting
him saying it. This is ESPN. Every day is the
Super Bowl. And Barry Sachs died on the day of
the Super Bowl, still ahead on countdown. I'm sure you
(27:43):
are still furious about the Super Bowl. How could they
possibly not have interviewed the president? I know, I know
you don't care. I don't care, But there is a
city where today that is the story and the only story.
For insulation and self absorption, no one is worse than politicians.
(28:04):
Exce up the people who cover politicians. Things I promised
not to tell about Super Bowl presidential interviews. Next first,
in each addition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day to St.
Louis and Theodore, and with a father named Theodore and
a dog named Ted, you can understand my particular concern this.
(28:25):
Theodore looks to be a shepherd puppy. He's just four
weeks old. He should still be in the care of
his mother. He's not. He's sick parasites mange. How he
got away from her, we don't know, but saving St.
Louis Pats is trying to take care of him. So far,
so good, but he's going to have to be in
a vets care for at least another four weeks, probably longer. Honestly,
(28:46):
they're just trying to raise seven for him on Cuddly.
If you can help, you can find Theodore there or
on my Twitter feed. I thank you, and Theodore thanks
you to the number one story on the Countdown and
(29:06):
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And I'd like to think of myself as expert in
many things, many things more than I am actually expert in.
But there are one, maybe two things in which I
am genuinely the expert of experts, and one of them
is the overlap between sports and politics, in particular about
(29:29):
media and sports and politics. I anchored the inauguration of
Barack Obama as president on January two thousand nine on MSNBC,
and twelve days later, I co anchored the three hours
Super Bowl pregame show on NBC, and I am freshly
reminded of the amazing but hurt delusion of the political
(29:51):
media industrial complex about where it thinks it's personnel, government officials,
political entities, politicians, pundits, reporters, news organizations where they rank
in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to sports officials,
sports team and league entities, sports executives, sports pundits, sports reporters,
(30:14):
sports organizations, or, if you're in Canada, sports organizations. Many
political people are true sports fans and thus have a
truer sense of this comparison, which they largely keep to
themselves for reasons which will become obvious. But countless numbers
of political people believe that, on a scale of one
(30:35):
to a hundred, sports in this country is about a fifty,
I guess, and political stuff is a ninety five. The
reality is sports in this country is about a seventy
and political stuff is about three three and a half.
(30:55):
Nearly all political people enjoy being in politics, and simply
assume that thus everybody else enjoys politics in the same way.
In point of fact, almost nobody not in politics enjoys
politics at all. What the political people think of their
world and it's incandescent attractiveness, and thus their own incandescent
(31:19):
attractiveness is actually what the world of sports is really like.
Virtually everybody in sports wakes up in the morning, at
least most of the time, shouting, yeah, I make a
living in sports, and virtually everybody watching sports wakes up
in the morning shouting, maybe today I'll find a way
to make a living off sports. You will never convince
(31:42):
the non sports people in politics that this is even
remotely true. The day before the Super Bowl, the newsletter
of the website Political lead with for ten paragraphs quote
Biden's Fox News snub. This morning, Political wrote in all
(32:04):
series Business, we have to ask, was that such a
good idea? Biden just passed up a critical opportunity to
speak to millions of Americans who ignored his state of
the Union, But sure as hell won't miss the super
Bowl one that comes ahead of a likely re election
campaign launch. This just in nobody watches the presidential interview
(32:32):
in the super Bowl pregame show. Nobody, not when it
was Biden, not when it was Trump, not when it
was Obama, not when it was Bush. It may be
on in tens of millions of American homes, people may
even not change the channel. But in the world of
(32:53):
places like Politico, the president appears on television, and every viewer,
be he alone or at the largest Super Bowl party imaginable,
every viewer not only goes in demically silent, but hushes
everybody else in the room and says, wait, we have
to have to listen to this. I do not know
of this having ever happened anywhere. He should reliship chance
(33:19):
to spar with his conservative critics. Some Democrats would argue.
This goes on for ten paragraphs later, much later, same newsletter,
the startling news that Trump permitted classified documents to be
uploaded to a campaign staffers laptop and thumb drive, which
would be an entirely new crime that got one sentence
(33:43):
in this same document, the ten paragraphs about the greatest
story of Super Bowl weekend, that there would not be
a Fox interview of Joe Biden, not by Brett Bear,
not by a Fox website with the oxymoronic name Fox Soul,
then linked to an actual thirteen further paragraphs with what
(34:05):
a political writer named Christopher Catalago must have thought was
a funny lead quote, America will have to settle for
the Puppy Bowl. The Puppy Bowl is there for people
who do not want to watch the Super Bowl. I
mean there might be some overlap. Let's put it this way.
(34:26):
At least it's there for people who don't want to
watch the super Bowl pregame show, and it's in the
Super Bowl pregame show where the presidential interview ordinarily runs.
The Puppy Bowl gets somewhere around a million, seven hundred
thousand viewers, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
The whole five hours of Super Bowl pregame averages at
any given moment twenty million viewers. Anyway, I said, I
(34:50):
was the expert on this particular sub subject. When radio
began in this country, it was common for each of
the handful of networks to have lead announcers who were
supposed to be able to do anything ted using broadcast
the World Series for CBS, and the Rose Bowl and
the big growing regattas and major news stories like floods.
(35:14):
He anchored the political conventions, and he did the inauguration
every four years. As TV took over, those jobs became specialized,
and there is still some overlap in one area, the Olympics.
Everybody from Walter Cronkite to Bob Costas to Katie Curic
have hosted the Olympics. I was supposed to do it twice,
but from two thousand six through two thousand nine I
(35:36):
anchored election Nights on MSNBC and Football Night in America
on NBC, and I did five political shows a week
on cable and an hour a day on Dan Patrick's
ESPN radio sports show. I am the overlap. And in fact,
in two thousand nine, when I went right from the
Inauguration to Tampa for the Super Bowl, there was a glitch.
(35:57):
On the afternoon of the Super Bowl game, if I
remember right, Matt Lower was on a stuck train or
a plane that had been grounded at an airport somewhere,
and they were convinced he was not going to get
to the White House in time to interview Barack Obama live.
So said our producer Michael Weisman during the commercial break,
(36:18):
What do you want to ask Obama? Because laur is
not going to make it to the White House, He's
got like five minutes. Assume it's gonna be you. And
I said, I can just ask him everything. I would
have asked him on if he'd been on Countdown Friday night.
But that's not the point. Why don't we take this
opportunity to not do the interview? I mean, you know,
(36:39):
if Lauer can't make it, let's just say lower can't
make it, so we canceled it. Who's gonna notice? Who
listens to this interview? Why do we do it? Doesn't
anybody know that when a politician steps into the middle
of a sporting event, it always hurts him. I was
in the middle of this when Weissman said, Okay, law
just showed up at the White House. Do you need
(37:01):
help getting down from your high horace? Keith? Well, all right,
I might have been on a high horse, but I
was serious. People don't believe when I, of all people say,
I do not like it when sports and politics get mixed.
But what I mean by that is if athletes have
political opinions, or they take political stances. If Colin Kaepernick
Neils or John Carlos and Tommy Smith give a Black
(37:23):
Power salute, or some maga golfer goes all political with
his putts, that's a sports story, you have to cover it.
But politicians or sportscasters. Politicians injecting themselves into sports, sportscasters
injecting themselves into politics, or injecting politics into their sports casts.
(37:47):
This started with Richard Nixon phoning the Kansas City Chiefs
locker room after they won the nineteen seventies Super Bowl,
and it was as cringe worthy then as it is now.
Ronald Reagan advanced it to inviting winning teams to the
White House. Soon it was whoever was president invited any
team in any league to the White House. It is
(38:08):
pure political exploitation and it has never stopped making me flinch.
And in two thousand four we fell into this Super
Bowl interview trap when CBS and Jim Nance inexplicably interviewed
George W. Bush. Trump would not do the interview with
NBC in two thousand eighteen, and to my mind, that
was his greatest act as president, his one selfless decision
(38:34):
and I swear if Joe Biden were any other president,
would record a video saying, Hey, this is the Super Bowl,
no politics today, enjoy the game. It would probably goose
his approval ratings. Forty years ago, when I was with
CNN Sports, they sent me to Washington for the week
(38:57):
because the Locals were playing the Raiders in the Super Bowl.
I covered the celebrations that night when they won, and
then the victory parade outdoors in a driving rainstorm, and
the head tech guy for CNN Washington assigned himself to
run the lights and he got shocked so badly he
had to go sit in the truck for an hour. Anyway,
I also covered the team's flight home to d C.
(39:19):
And I went to the airport and interview players and
went back to the bureau and I edited my story
and we were about to feed my piece to headquarters
in Atlanta when the assignment editor for CNN Washington literally
ran through the studio screaming stop, stop. And when she
got to me, she said, Reagan's plane just landed. We
have ten seconds of him saying go redskins on the tarmact.
(39:41):
I know you'll want to lead with that. And I
just looked at her and said, what sports fan wants
to hear from a politician instead of the winning quarterback.
You would have thought I had slapped her in the face.
She backed away slowly. I told the engineer, just feed
(40:03):
the tape. It's done. All this reminds me of a
Rudy Giuliani memory I had completely suppressed until I started
down the writing route. On this one, I anchored what
must have been an hour from the New York Yankees
clubhouse at Chase Stadium after they won the two thousand
World Series over the New York Mets. I was with
Fox Sports and we had televised the series, and part
(40:25):
of the deal was we got our own little part
of the winning team's clubhouse cordoned off, I mean with
red velvet ropes, like got the oscars and silver stanchions
and three chairs and three cameras, and the players couldn't
go in there unless we let them. Producers would drag
celebrating players over to us. They would have to climb
(40:47):
over the ropes and we'd interview them. And sure enough,
during the first commercial break, I nudged my color analysts
Steve Lyons, and I said, look over there, to the left,
it's Giuliani, and that's his publicist. And they were about
five ft closer to us than they had been when
we started, and then during the first interview they they
moved another five feet closer to us. The minute we
(41:10):
don't have a guest, Rudy is gonna be their line
of sight, I say to Lions. So somebody says, well, hey,
let's get the mayor in here. He's right over here. Well,
as I have alluded to previously, even in two thousand,
I knew Rudy was a self promoting idiot, and I
never ever said let's get the mayor in here. So finally,
forty five minutes after his slow creep towards our camera began,
(41:34):
Rudy dropped any pretense of waiting to be asked. He
had waited forty five minutes, we had not asked, So
he just climbed over the red rope while we're on live,
caught in front of one of the cameras, on the
pretext that he was just congratulating whichever Yankee player Lions
and I were interviewing. I threw to commercial as fast
(41:55):
as I could, and the Baseball executive and the Fox
Sports executive coordinating the broadcast, came in, grabbed Juliani politely
but firmly, and to score ordered him and his PR
person out of the clubhouse. To my mind, the only
politician who has ever successfully inserted himself into a sporting
(42:16):
event was Barack Obama, and that's because he did a
sports thing. Come basketball tournament time, Obama fills out the
same bracket that seventy million other Americans do every year,
and he's got a reason for every team he picks,
and it's really nerdy, and if you don't like college basketball,
you may actually come away from that going I'm not
(42:37):
sure about this guy, but it is both astute politics
and worthwhile TV sports programming, unlike that done by every
other politician ever. So that leads me to my thought
about the Super Bowl presidential interview, if ever it resumes.
The president, whoever it is, should not agree to a
(43:00):
news interview in the super Bowl pregame show. Never he
should sit down with one of these now ubiquitous TV
sports gambling guys. I'm thinking maybe Aaron Paul from Breaking
Bad in our time together on bow Jack Horseman and
explain to him which super Bowl prop bets he was
(43:20):
putting his money on I would watch that. Hell if
Joe Biden or anybody else got onto the Super Bowl
pregame show and explain he was betting a hundred million
dollars of taxpayer money on the visiting quarterback not throwing
the Super Bowl touchdown pass, but catching one, and it
happened that president would guarantee himself re election. Countdown has
(43:59):
come to you from the studios of Overman Broadcasting Empire
World Headquarters in the Sports Capsule Holding in New York.
Thank you for listening. Here are our credits. Most to
the music, including the theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle.
They are the Countdown Musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channelle,
(44:21):
produced by t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman 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 Kenny Mayne. Everything else is pretty
(44:42):
much my fault and again my condolences to the family
and loved ones and friends of Barry Sachs. Let's countdown
for this the seven and sixty ninth day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coop against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Arrest him now while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then on Keith Olberman,
(45:03):
good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
(45:23):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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