DE-FUND THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP - 10.27.25 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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 Breaking News.
Donald Trump does not own the White House. Donald Trump

(00:28):
does not own the United States of America. Donald Trump
does not own the world. Nothing Trump has done in
sending in thugs and military to attack people that did
not vote for him in cities and states that do
not support him is legal. Nothing Trump has done in
having his nosferatu Stephen Miller threatened Governor Pritzker of Illinois
with seditious conspiracy is legal. Nothing Trump has done in

(00:52):
his attempt to begin ethnic cleansing of Hispanics in this
country Gestapo like raids, kidnappings, deportations is legal. Nothing Trump
has done in sending so called election monitors to interfere
in the voting in California and Jersey on behalf of
the MAGA is legal. Nothing Trump has done to enable

(01:13):
the passive self neutering of the House and Senate is legal.
Nothing Trump has done to let him say, supposedly jokingly
for The New York Times yesterday, I'm the Speaker and
the President is legal. Nothing Trump has done in his
demolition against destruction of attack on the East Wing of

(01:34):
the White House is legal. Nothing Trump has done in
murdering citizens of other nations in international waters without evidence
and without a declaration of war, without any congressional oversight.
None of that is legal. Nothing he has done to
send battleships to Latin America is legal. Nothing he has
done to accept money from international sources for himself and

(01:56):
his family is legal. Nothing he has done to try
to buy the election for the fascist Malay in Argentina
is legal. Nothing Trump has done in selling one hundred
and thirty million dollars worth of influence in the army
to someone aptly described as a weirdo Nepo baby is legal.
Almost nothing about the Trump administration, about his presidency, about

(02:21):
his forming unilateral dictatorship, is legal, and thus it is
time to cut him off financially, to take the one
measure that will force an end to this trumpion madness
for the Blue States to follow up on Governor Newsom's suggestion,
on the suggestion of others including me in this forum,

(02:45):
and stop transmitting federal taxes from the States to the
National Treasury until Trump resigns as president period. We must
have a state led tax payment boycott, and it must

(03:06):
be led by governors and other state officials, so that
there can be no attempt by Trump or his enablers
and flunkies and whorees to prosecute or further threaten democracy
loving civilians. For more than our two hundred and fifty
years as a nation, we have proudly recited the phrase
no taxation without representation, and it is pastime to apply

(03:29):
it here. And it is essential that governors like Newsom
and Pritzker and Hokel and others in the majority states
protect their citizens who are being subject to taxation without
representation and without democracy, and for them the governors to
take responsibility for these acts. The state of California must

(03:51):
refuse to send any funds it can control to Washington.
The state of Illinois must refuse to send any funds
it can control to Washington. The state of New York
must refuse to send any funds it can control to Washington.
And if it wrecks the world economy, so be it.
That will be better than what we have now and

(04:11):
what is coming under Trump. Donald Trump is now a
rogue dictator. He is almost completely and fully outside the law.
He is engorging himself with public funds. He is insisting
the government fix the twenty twenty election when it was

(04:32):
his government and everybody he has demanded be prosecuted for it,
except as FBI director was not in the government in
twenty twenty. That's how effing crazy this ass whole is.
He is destroying not just government buildings without any legal authorization,
He is destroying symbols of the American nation without any

(04:54):
legal authorization. He is deranging our public discourse. He is
destroying our public safety. He is threatening the lives of
everyone in this country and the only that works in America.
Right now, money used as a weapon must be used
to freeze him where he stands so that this nation

(05:15):
can roll back the years and decades of damage he
has done. Now now, now dfund Donald Trump. That quote

(05:48):
I mentioned from the New York Times story yesterday, quote,
I'm the speaker and the president, mister Trump has joked.
According to two people who heard the remark, that may
be the least surprising news item of the year. But
seeing Maga go on the record in that Time story,
Steve Bannon is quoted. Representatives Kylie and Van Dine are

(06:09):
quoted seeing him go on the record to carve up
Mike tiny flaccid Johnson suggests Trump is not only forcing
this impotent Johnson to do all the dirty work, but
then blaming him for the inevitable results. I have no
sympathy for Johnson. This is the hell he has created
for himself. It's just interesting, as in, He's going to

(06:33):
throw Johnson overboard soon, isn't he. We're going to go
through all that again with the Speaker of the House. Now,
the headline today should not be that. It should be
this story that Trump is sending election observers to New
Jersey and California. It's straight up Jim Crow Southern voter intimidation.

(06:53):
But I can understand and give a pass to the
fact that it's difficult to pick out the headline from
this kaleidoscope of shit Trump drops on us all every day.
I'm beginning to suspect the video was not AI hell,
I didn't lead with the election observers. Plus, it is
tough when you realize Trump announces he's building an arc

(07:19):
the election observers in a moment, let's let's let's let's
talk arc. I don't know if he's crazy enough to
think he's building Noah's arc. I don't know if he's
crazy enough to think he's building a space arc like
Musk wants. I don't know if he's crazy enough to
think the word arch A R C H, common everyday

(07:43):
English word like the thing he wants to build to
march troops through in DC. The arc to Trump, I
don't know which crazy it is. He thinks it's arc
as in French, but it's arch. But he says he's

(08:04):
building an R and he's going to illegally spend some
of the illegal money for the illegal ballroom on this
illegal arc. You think I'm exaggerating.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know, we're building the arc, and maybe we use
it for the arc. Looks like we might. You know,
we're going to be building the arc now. We've raised
a lot of money for the ballroom, so maybe we'll
But the ARC is going to be incredible for Washington, DCA,
so maybe we use it for the arc.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
So you're building an arc, hi, buddy? Okay, how many
things a week does Trump say that we get anybody
else in this country forcibly committed. Then there is the
latest on the ballroom and the destruction of part of
the White House. You know, Trump bringing to fruition the

(08:52):
nine to eleven terrorist plot of Osama bin Laden the
new ballroom and airplane hangar. It's going to cost two
hundred million. Oh no, t oh no, three hundred Oh,
I said three hundred and fifty. But it's privately funded
with corporate bribes, meaning it's fine because it's privately funded.

(09:13):
But of course No Kings is a communist plot because
some of the logistics for it were privately funded. Privately
funded communism. Plus, what is the problem about how much
it's gonna cost? A woman named Cheryl Cassone on Fox,

(09:36):
who once was an actual CNBC business reporter and is
now at the I'll say anything to stay in the
TV business stage, emitted this perfectly symmetrical sophistry in defense
of what are certain to be endless cost overruns on
the only building big enough to house Trump's ego quote

(10:00):
that going after him about the cost. Initially he said
it was going to be two hundred million. Now it's
like three hundred million. Oh no, construction cost, You're higher
than what the original budget or quote was shocking. Let's
call the National Guard in give me a break unquote
national Guard, you say, miss Cassone. Interesting reference. Trump does

(10:21):
call in the National Guard for everything else. Why isn't
he calling in the National Guard here? It's only fifty
seventy five percent over the cost Social Security has been
cut passive aggressively. Starting in January, the cost of living
adjustment will be two point eight percent. The average annual

(10:42):
increase in the last decade had been three point one percent,
so it's ten percent less and with inflation at three percent,
Trump has just made seventy one million Americans ten percent poor.
Seventeen million Americans will pay thirty percent more for the
Trump version of Obamacare. He makes billionss arches and ballrooms.

(11:09):
We pay thousands. We sent twenty billion to try to
save Milay of Argentina without even getting a guarantee that
he's going to get a grown up haircut, one that
would make him not look like the late great comedian
Marty Allen. Google Marty Allen. It'll be worth it. Oh yeah,
and he's declared he can kill people at whim, murder them,

(11:32):
but happily they're just foreigners right now. Anyway, if you
are declaring war against these cartels, and Congress is likely
to approve of that process, why not just ask for
a declaration of war.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well, I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for
a declaration of war. I think we're just going to
kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay,
we're going to kill them.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
You know, they're going to be like dead. He can't.
By the way, those will be war crimes. All the
next president has to do is turn him over to
the International Court. I really would like to see one
of the hopefuls on the democratic side swear right now
that they will turn him over to the international Court.

(12:21):
This whole idea about moderation and don't run against Trump
is bullshit. It is deliberately designed by people whose money
depends on the infrastructure of politics continuing unchanged. Doesn't matter
if we're fascist, communist, democratic, doesn't matter who's in charge,
just as long as all of their jobs at the

(12:43):
Washington Post still exists or at the State Department. There
is a deep state. It is not nefarious. It is
simply self preserving. Do not say, oh, we need to
be moderate Democrats, don't run against Trump. The guy who
says I will put Trump behind bars, come hell or

(13:06):
high water is the one who gets the nomination. And
I'm using guy generally. Man, woman, I don't care. Speaking
of which, there's Harmeit Dillon, who also should be turned
over to the International Court. One of the worst of
the Trumpsts, a tenth rate lawyer used to represent Tulsey

(13:27):
skunk Air Gabbard is now in charge of civil rights
at the DOJ that would be protecting white people from
laws the civil rights It's her department that will be
asked to monitor polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey,
and five California counties La, Orange, Kern, Riverside, and Fresno

(13:49):
to quote insure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law.
In other words, those counties that did not vote Republican
and Trump wants monitors there will they be accompanied by
the National Guard, and the monitors and whoever is with
them will intimidate Democratic voters. Just a coincidence that California

(14:13):
will be voting on redrawing the election map. In recent elections,
we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that
we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to
participate in the election or their confidence in the announced
results of the election, writes the MAGA GOP chairwoman Korn
Rankin of California. I'll translate that from MAGA to English.

(14:37):
The irregularities are Republicans can't win in those counties. There
aren't enough of them. This is how voting works. You
have more votes, you win. So the translation is we
can't win, so we have to fix the election. You
want to send election observers into New Jersey to find
out why the Republicans keep running candidates even worse than

(14:58):
the Democrats find in New Jersey, I'll listen to that intervention.
As to California, korn Rankin, shove it up up your ass.
One note from twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four.
The DOJ wanted to send monitors to actual troubled voting areas.
They were prevented prevented by local officials local Republican officials

(15:21):
in Missouri and Florida. As to California and Jersey, governor's
Newsom and Murphy should get on the jump here, call
out the National Guard in their states and arrest the
quote election observers as soon as they get off the plane,
or if they're not going by plane, climb out of
the closest HARMEI Dylan Sewer in a totally different kind

(15:47):
of election observation Here is my observation about the main
Senate election. Graham Plattner had to drop out last week.
He did not. He has to drop out even more
this week. Yes, he has a Nazi tattoo. He's covered
it up. Now, the Nazi tattoo did not bother as
many many people as I thought it was gonna. I
had to admit surprise there. I'm not easily surprised anymore.

(16:12):
But how about this? Does this bother anybody? It looks
like he lied about not knowing it was a Nazi
symbol in his tattoo on his body. Get out. His
supporters renounced him, including Bernie Sanders, renounce Graham Plattner. Graham

(16:34):
Platner has no judgment, no hesitation to lie his way
out of a problem. We already have enough people like that.
CNN reported that he knew about it more than a
decade ago, talked about it, wrote about it online. I'll
just read the k file report quote. Jewish Insider first
reported about the former acquaintance who recalled Platner referring to

(16:57):
the image as my totin cough unquote in a joking way.
More than a decade ago. CNN spoke with that same
acquaintance who reiterated the recollection. CNN also spoke with an
acquaintance of Platner for more than a decade ago, who
said Platner spoke about his tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.
A second person told CNN that they learned of the

(17:19):
tattoo years ago from the acquaintance, who told them that
Platner had described it as a Nazi style design. CNN
also reviewed a text chain between the acquaintance and another
person discussing Platner's Nazi liank tattoo several months ago before
the story became public, using to continue the CNN report

(17:44):
his longtime Reddit handle p Hustle. The former Marine infantryryman
and future Democratic Senate hopeful, also argued in a twenty
twenty online discussion that SS lightning bolt tattoos were a
culture marker within Marine Scout sniper units, not an expression
of white supremacist ideology. When commenters in the twenty twenty

(18:07):
thread described the lightning bolts as a Nazi or racist symbol,
Platnir dismissed the criticism, writing that outsiders quote have no
idea what they're talking about, and added I will be
sure to inform the black guys I know with bolts
that they're Nazis now, so the symbol he didn't know
was believed to be was interpreted as was a Nazi

(18:30):
symbol he was denying was a Nazi symbol five years
ago and making reference to the word Nazi. If somehow
you still don't think this is disqualifying or that there's
some kind of other explanation, let me ask you this.
The guy's response to the story breaking was to cover

(18:51):
it up figuratively first then literally, So what's the next story,
and what's he going to do about that story? And
who knows that story? Right now? Who knows that story
and is just saving it so it can be used
at the right moment to give us another six years

(19:12):
of Susan fing Collins Now another edition of It's called
a news medium because it's neither rare nor well done.
Bill Maher, Olivia newsy Comcast, Cheryl Hines, Brett Bhar, Brett
Behar first to CBS to do the CBS Evening News,

(19:36):
the latest ratings at Fox for the Brett Baer News
Propaganda caston eight hundred and sixty two thousand viewers. Latest
CBS Evening News viewership three million, six hundred and sixty
one thousand. If there is one move to make to
kill off the CBS Evening News before the end of

(19:56):
the year, maybe it is to alienate the audience which
agrees with its producers, whether or not you or I do.
Aliena the audience which agrees with its producers that the
CBS Evening News is a good and politically accurate or
politically neutral newscast. Alienate them by putting on someone scene
as a right wing nutjob who is quoted in the

(20:20):
lawsuits which Fox had to settle for umpteen million dollars
as an unapologetic, utterly biased right wing propagandist. TV executives
experienced TV executives, not the dozens of Barry Weiss's who
have been put in charge only to fail almost immediately,
the ones who come and go every eighteen months or so.

(20:42):
Somewhere in television. They have always believed that an audience
can be picked up and moved from one network to
the other without losing any viewers. It's madness. This is
why they hired Megan Kelly at NBC. Look at all
those viewers will get years before they'd hired Rita from

(21:06):
Fox News on the weekends and said, look at her
numbers on the weekends. They're bigger than our numbers on
the week We'll put her on MSNBC and she'll get
those numbers. She didn't get those numbers because she was
any good. She got those numbers because she was on Fox.
It is madness. We're gonna move that audience from one
network to another. We're gonna move Brett Beher's audience to CBS.

(21:28):
It's like deciding you're gonna move a river by picking
up the water in the palms of your hands. Thirty
years ago, when ESPN launched ESPN two, the thought was
all the younger viewers in America, all the sports fans
under say thirty five, they're gonna go watch the new
hip ESPN two. You can tell it's hip, it has

(21:50):
two in it. Well, just before we launched ESPN two,
the executive who postulated this, who, by the way, was
not originally television. He was a newspaper and magazine guy.
He had many good eydea is, but probably ninety seven
out of one hundred of them were disasters. The other
three put them in the Hall of fame. But this

(22:11):
executive postulated that it would be a great idea that
we should start a network for fans under thirty five.
He asked me if I knew which program in all
of television Hall already had that audience. Which program, he
asked me, in all of television has the audience with
the highest percentage of its viewers who are under thirty five.

(22:33):
I said, I assumed that had to be some show
on MTV, and the executive laughed and proudly said, No,
it's your show, the eleven PM SportsCenter. I thought for
a second, and then I said, wait, that's the show
you're taking me off to go do this You already have.

(22:54):
We already have the audience under the age of thirty five,
and they're watching me on the show I'm doing now.
They live at SportsCenter, and you're going to start at
ESPN two, and you're kicking them out of SportsCenter and
kicking me out of SportsCenter and expecting us to go
watch this new thing. Most of them don't even get
on their cable systems. You already have these viewers, and

(23:18):
you just told them to get lost, and you just
paid me more money to go do this other show
to get the audience we already have. He paused, and
then a blank look crossed his face, which was pretty
blank to begin with, and he said, hmm, I have

(23:39):
to go make a few phone calls. I was back
on SportsCenter seven months later. I know Bret Bhar a
little bit. He's not a journalist. He thinks he's a journalist.
He might be tempted to go anchor the CBS Evening
News because Cronkite did, unless he thinks about it. And

(24:01):
while he is not a journalist, he's also not a moron.
I am not convinced I can say that about Barry
Weiss and the people who just took over CBS News, who,
if they put a right wing ideologue in the anchor chair,
will be able to lose even more money more quickly
than anybody believes possible. Meanwhile, over at NBC, Comcast has

(24:22):
been identified as one of the firms playing for Trump's
ballroom and memorial airplane hangar, paying and playing, but playing
that makes NBC News and MSNBC and CNBC and all
the rest untrustworthy. That is what Bob Eiger bought for

(24:45):
ABC News. Then he swerved away somewhat anyway over the
Kimmel and Disney plus subscriptions disaster. He may have avoided
the acts CBS has not. It already went there irretrievably.
But the question is comcast in. They're right on the precipice.

(25:08):
Does a company, especially a company that does news for
money in many different venues, does it have the right
to pay a bribe in order to avoid unjustifiable and
retaliatory prosecution. I'm not sure the answer is no. If
there is no other way to save yourself from getting shot,

(25:28):
do you give the hold up man the money? The
key is, is there no other way? Bill Maher In
the New York Mayor's race, my old college frenemie has
endorsed the sheep in sheep's clothing. Andrew Cuomo may not

(25:49):
be that exciting, mar said, and that inspirational, but for
a party that said we want to go back to normal,
he's kind of normal. Yeah, yeah, Bill, You hear the
word normal a lot when people mention Cuomo. Guests then
pointed out that Cuomo resigned as governor of New York.
A federal investigation concluded that he had been a sex

(26:10):
pest or worse to at least thirteen female staffers. Plus
there were all those dead people in the nursing homes.
That's not normal for a governor. Bill mar said, Oh no,
I did my own research before having Cuomo on his show.
Quote a lot of it's kind of bullshit. I mean,

(26:31):
maybe he was a little too handsy, a little too Italian,
a little too touchy. You know. Why would Bill Maher
defend Cuomo and dismiss all of that and those thirteen
women with the phrase maybe he was a little too handsy. Well,

(26:53):
take a guess. Also, it's time to confess for the
last six or seven years that I would go to
LA to appear on Bill Mahers show, like the yearsenty
ten to twenty seventeen, I did it. I did it because,
as many of my fellow guests would admit to one another,

(27:14):
but only out of earshot. Maybe we're in the parking
lot going to have a smoke or something. We went
because because they spent money, they would fly us round
trip from the East Coast first class. Hell. I used
to plan my business trips and vacations around it. I'm sorry. Plus,

(27:36):
back to the hands the part when I went on
his old ABC show. An acquaintance who was one of
the producers who had called me and asked me to
be on it, told me, whatever I did, do not
shake Bill's hand before we taped. He's he's probably uh.
Took her a long time to get the rest of

(27:57):
her remark out. He he's probably uh just warmed up,
if you get my meaning. But they flew us first
class on the same subject and not the airplane part.

(28:17):
How do insane confidence men and alleged on camera masturbators
like Robert Kennedy Junior survive? Let alone succeed because a
thousand people on the fringes do nothing about him. One
of those people is Cheryl Hines. She went on the
podcast of the Almost as Strange, wife of Stephen Miller

(28:39):
Katie Miller, who asked her about quote rumors or speculation
about her marriage. Miller was asking about how much her
husband f surround.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Ms.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Hines, who I do not know, answered in perfect Stepford
wife manner. I think you always have to consider the source, right,
So that's where I start. Then Miller asked about my
ex Olivia. The denial doubled quote. Bobby had been running
for president and it was an exhausting year and a
half of headlines and rumors and articles in chaos, and
at that time I thought, Okay, this is more chaos

(29:16):
and more rumors, and it was a lot. I don't
know this person, don't know their intentions. I could guess,
but I won't, but you can if you want. Cheryl
doesn't matter if you know her. It matters that Kennedy

(29:36):
knows her and how he knows her. How close to
the Biblical knows is this? And consider the source. You're
married to Bobby Kennedy Junior, possibly the worst source in
America next to Trump. But consider the source. I don't.

(30:01):
I think perhaps I've noted here that I'm not attacking
my ex, but I'm certainly not carrying water for her.
But consider the there's a publisher putting out her book.
The publisher can be sued if any of her allegations
are untrue, and she is going to go into the
whole Kennedy thing. And then there's her more recent ex

(30:24):
whom she did sue, who she tried to get arrested,
and then something happened and suddenly she wasn't suing him,
and she was quote leaving her job, and oh, the
FBI was no longer involved, and we all know what
that something had happened had to have been to get
her to drop all the theatrics. That's something that had

(30:44):
to have happened that provided all those exquisite details and
quotes about her interactions with Kennedy and all the I
want to impregnate you stuff and the other stuff that
led me to say, I'm still grossed out. And I
lived with her for three years. Somebody has a transcript

(31:10):
of or more likely a recording of them on on
FaceTime or some part of the body time. Hey, you

(31:33):
also of interest here, Anna Paulina Luna? Could she be
the dumbest Republican congresswoman? What do your rankings look like?
How is your bracket? Could she really be dimmer than McCain,
McLain that was a Freudian slip, Bobert Green and the others?

(31:55):
Could she be dumber than them combined? Let's ask the
California congressman with whom Anna Paulina Luna had an online
fight over the funds for No Kings. All right, we
can't ask the California congressman with whom she had an
online fight over the funding for No Kings Because, unbeknownst
to Anna Paulina Luna, the California congressman with whom she

(32:16):
had an online fight over the funding for No Kings,
does not actually exist. He's a satirical character and she
doesn't know this. That's next. This is Countdown. This is
Countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead on this episode of Countdown.

(32:57):
The anniversary was last week, in fact, the twenty fifth anniversary,
and it was during the World Series. And today this
is still during the World Series. And after a number
of years in which this saga had cooled in importance,
it seems to have reasserted itself as a part of baseball.
Loar that I was in the middle of the night

(33:19):
Roger Clemens of the New York Yankees, through Mike Piazza
of the New York Mets, broken bat at Mike Piazza
during the World Series, or didn't throw it at him,
or threw it at me in the Yankee dugout. And
it all ends with Mike Piazza threatening to sue me.

(33:40):
And next in Things I promised not to tell but
so long that I will start it immediately after the
end of Worse Persons, Then there'll be a commercial and
then part two. First Believe it or Not there are
still more new idiots to talk about the roundup of
the miscreants, morons and Dunn Kruger effects specimens who constitute

(34:01):
two Day's other worst persons in the world World. We
have a tie at bronze for worse Ice in DC
with Oh no, you want details. American Isis arrested a
man named Sam O'Hara in a raid in DC at

(34:21):
Logan Circle. He was arrested for playing Darth Vader's theme music.
The Imperial March arrested. The ACLU has sued on his
behalf because guess what, satire is still legal. Also, if
you're wearing masks, how do we know you're not members

(34:44):
of the Imperial thing? From Star Wars. But it's what
they wrote about Ice that I'm quoting here point four.
The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort
a long time ago in a galaxy far far away,
but in the here and now, the First Amendment bars
of government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, et cetera,

(35:06):
et cetera. I just like the formal use of the
only part of Star Wars I stayed to see. Yes,
you're looking at the guy who walked out in nineteen
seventy seven. I'm not saying I was physically triggered. I
just didn't really. It did give me a headache. I
just didn't like it. But I still find the reference
to it in illegal Action reassuringly funny. We may all

(35:29):
be making our jokes inside concentration camps where the guards
where logos with Donald Trump's face on them, but at
least we'll still be having fun. That's tied with somebody
who'll be there in her little Ilsis she Wolf of
the SS outfit? Kaylee mcinaney smiling all the way through.

(35:53):
Kaylee macinaney, one of Trump's lying, lying lawyer and laying
things gefflingen Flungen Kaylee macinaney, one of Trump's lying liars
from the first time around. No, I'm not doing a
second take on this, smiling all the way through as

(36:14):
she always does, because Jesus saydist This is the reaction
to Trump trashing the economy, particularly the economy for food,
particularly the economy for lower income television viewers and the
elderly people like my age and older who watch a
lot of Fox News. Not that I do, but they do,

(36:36):
and smiling all the way through this I cannot possibly
even if I played this clip and risked a lawsuit
from Fox in playing it, I could not possibly possibly
convey to you Kayley mcinnaney's desperate smile all the way
through this everything sign they have a gun of my work.

(36:56):
They're gonna shoot. They're gonna put me in the concentration
crip too, Kaylee mcinnaney quote one tried and true brand
is making a big comeback as consumers tighten their wallets.
Hamburger Helper, the mix of mac and cheese and ground

(37:17):
beef is seeing a surge in sales. Isn't that great?
People are starving to death already. Isn't that great? And
you helped Daily mcahaney the runner up, the priceless Anna
Paulina Luna, who, if she did not exist, would have
to be created. This may be the dumbest person in America.

(37:41):
I know. I keep going back and forth among the
various members of the House of Representatives, in the Republican Caucus,
in the House, in the Senate, and I keep saying, no, no, Ultimately,
it's still Bobert, No, No, It's it's McLean from Michigan,
who once demonstrated in the past week the idea that
there were protesters. She demonstrated this by moving her arm arms.

(38:05):
She bawled up her fists and did her little arm march.
Lisa McClean absolute IQ none detected but the original one maybe,
Anna Paulina my Hoff Luna. Anna Paulina posted this at Rep.

(38:26):
Jack Kimball asked me for receipts, but blocked me before
I could respond. Weird flex So here are the receipts.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Jack.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Anna Paulina Luna posted that there were receipts showing the
No King's protests were backed by dollars signed two hundred
and ninety four million by the Sarrows Foundation buffet. I
presume Jimmy Aclu indivisible and planned parenthood. This wasn't grassroots,

(38:58):
It was a billionaire funded. She doesn't say what it was.
She just has a picture of herself grabbing my mind
and looking intently like her car is on fire in
the parking lot. And this Rep. Jack Kimball of the
fifty fourth District of California wrote, this is large. Anna
Paulina has foung proof that No Kings marchers were paid

(39:19):
nearly forty two cents each for participating. So she reposted
all of this a screenshot of what Jack Kimball wrote
in response to hers and just turned it into a
fight and said that Jack Kimball asked her for receipts,
which he did not. But the most interesting part, of course,

(39:40):
is there is no representative Jack Kimball. The giveaway is, Anna,
you never met him, and he's supposedly a Republican and
he's from the fifty fourth district of California. And I
know for people like Anna Paulina Luna, the number fifty
four is might as well be the same as two
hundred and ninety four million. It's an inestimably large number.

(40:04):
It's double or triple her IQ fifty four the fifty fourth.
There is no fifty fourth congressional district. Jack Kimball is
one of the oldest satirical accounts on Twitter x and
she fell for it. But a screenshot is forever Congratulations
on reclaiming your crown. Here's your crown, moron, but our

(40:28):
winner as always Cuomo. I'm sure you heard something about this.
Andrew Cuomo's self defenestration campaign continues apace, right down to
election day. He's going to make sure that nobody in
the city of New York, other than possibly in Staten Island,
thinks well of him. Ever again, he will bring down

(40:51):
his brother, who is already pretty much down as it is.
He will bring down his late father's name. There will
be a bid to remove his late father's name from
what is actually the tap and Z Bridge connecting Terrytown,
New York, and Rockland County across the Hudson. They will
do it. He is destroying the Cuomo family name, and
his father was actually a very good governor Andrew Cuomo.

(41:14):
According to reporter Nick Garber, talking to conservative radio host
sid Rosenberg this morning, sid Rosenberg, you may have seen
has the darkest ten of anybody who was not injured
in some sort of radiation accident. Cuomo asked this in
an interview about the man who's going to defeat him
in the mayoral election, as he defeated him in the

(41:35):
mayoral primary. Zoraon Mamdani quote, God forbid another nine to eleven.
Can you imagine ma'm donni in the seat, sid Rosenberg,
scumbag looks like a burn victim. Sid Rosenberg replies, he'd
be cheering. Cuomo paused and chuckled before saying that's another problem.

(42:03):
I was here on nine to eleven, and I was
here in the months after nine to eleven, and I
have been here, in fact in this city. I got
back from Los Angeles in late June or the beginning
of July of two thousand and one, and I have
lived here ever since without interruption. I don't think I've
been away for more than three weeks at a span
since then. And the one thing that has not happened

(42:23):
in this city since then has been problems created by
people of the Muslim faith of all the religions in
this city that have done the most to try to
outreach to other groups, to try to heal the wounds,
and practically speaking, to invest their money in the areas
that were blighted after nine to eleven. Members of the

(42:45):
Islamic faith. I just I don't get the enmity. It's
probably from people who were not adults on nine to eleven,
who have now conflated everything because of scumbags like Trump
and scumbags like Andrew Cromo. Andrew Como is not a Democrat.

(43:06):
I don't know if he's a Republican. I don't know
if he has any convictions whatsoever. Though I think he
should have been convicted of something. I just think to
say this about somebody who is likely to be the
next mayor of New York indicates a total lack of
responsibility or interest in anybody alive except himself. I think
he should go to hell. All I know for sure

(43:29):
about his convictions and how you would describe Andrew Cuomo
is the following. He is Andrew Cuomo two Day's worst
person in the world. Before the World Series ends, I

(43:52):
have to tell this thing I promise not to tell,
because by the time of the next one of these segments,
no matter how long it lasts, the World Series will
be over. So here is our number one story things
I promise not to tell my favorite topic me and
the series will be over, which is more than I
can say for this story, which is chronologically and in
terms of storytelling time, the longest one of these I

(44:14):
can not only imagine having told, but ever telling. It
started on the night of October twenty second, two thousand
and it ended well. I'll let you know if and
when it ever ends. I was enjoying the second night
of one of my childhood dreams come true. I was
the host, not just of the telecast of the World Series.

(44:35):
But it was an all New York City series, a
Mets versus Yankee series, a subway series. I'd literally dreamt
of it since nineteen sixty seven. The manager of the
Yankees had been the first person I ever interviewed on TV.
Fifteen years earlier, I had worked with him in TV.
He was a friend of mine. I had just covered

(44:55):
the Mets through their playoff run and knew all of
their players. My face had been on an advertisement in
dead center field in the Mets Stadium for the entirety
of the year before, and the players all knew me
my name. Where we were that night, Yankee Stadium was
not only where I saw my first baseball game, but
was about seven eighths of a mile from the hospital
in which I had been born, and my first home

(45:18):
was four subway stops away. The night before this event,
as I hosted the start of the first game of
this Keith of palooza, I was supposed to introduce the
public address announcer of Yankee Stadium, Bob Sheppard, whose voice
I had heard nearly every day since I was eight
years old, so he could then introduce the players and
this epic World Series would begin, and it dawned on

(45:41):
me in the seconds before I was supposed to do
this that I literally had the power to stop the
two thousand World Series from ever happening if I just
kept talking and never actually said, here is Bob Shephard. Well,
I could delay it briefly until they cut my mic
off and then fired me on the spot. Anyway, this
was Game two, and now that our pregame show was over,

(46:03):
and I had waved to my mother, who had seen
her first game at Yankee Stadium just ooh sixty six
years previously, and she was seated in the family seats
that were just nine rows up from our on field set.
I had crawled into the position I would assume for
the entire game as the dugout reporter. I was hunched
over on a stool, squeezed between the far end of

(46:24):
the Yankee dugout and our Fox Sports first base camera.
A thin chicken wire fence separated me from the dugout himself.
In fact, it was a formality. I was more or
less in the dugout players, coaches, and that night, as
I settled in, my friend, the Yankee manager, all came
over to say hello. Roger Clemens of the Yankees, who
I had also known since we were both rookies in

(46:45):
Boston Sports in nineteen eighty four. He lasted, I didn't
Roger Clemens had struck out the first two Mets hitters.
Clemens was a strange man about whom I had heard
a strange tale of teammates in a college summer baseball
league who were all wearing their wallets in their uniform
pants back pockets during a game because one of them

(47:07):
explained to a friend of mine, we have this crazy
kid Clemens from Texas on this team, and we don't
trust him. In Boston, I had found him a little nervous,
little standoffish, but doing his best to be professional. But
by now there were rumors swirling around Roger Clemens about
amphetamines and performance enhancing drugs, and you knew not to

(47:27):
talk to him before or after a game unless you
had to, and if you had to, you chose your
words very carefully, then made sure that whatever you did,
you had to start with something mundane, like the score
of the game, and if you could let him bring
up anything controversial or complex, he would then probably do it.

(47:48):
So now, as this game continued, after two batters had
struck out, Lee Mazzilli, the former Mets star now Yankees coach,
another friend of mine, was on the other side of
a little fence, and as Mets superstar Mike Piazza stepped
in as the third batter of the game, Mozilly leaned
in and said, conspiratorily, let's see if Roger flips him again.
In Midsummer two thousand, Roger Clemens had beamed Mike Piazza

(48:10):
with a fastball. There was a hospital visit involved. Nobody
was convinced it had not been intentional, or that Clemens
would not do it again, even though it was the
World Series. Mozilli and I leaned forward. Piazza was a
deeply complicated guy too. During the playoffs, he had walked
up to me and asked me if it was true
I was from New York, and then he quizzed me
about the relative merits of the suburbs, and then he

(48:31):
wanted to know if I had really taken up residence
in his favorite southern California hotel, and we talked for
fifteen minutes about that. The next night I saw him smiled,
said heloon, and he looked at me like I had
just sworn a vendetta against his family. For a long
time I thought it was me until about ten years later,
the great Vin Scully said that Piazza was with the Dodgers,

(48:53):
and when they were both together there in Los Angeles,
Vin had had the identical experience with Piazza. Best friends
on the team bus one day, and then no indication
Piazza remembered even meeting him the next I mean that
was Ben Sculley. Clemens, as it turned out, did not
throw a baseball at Piazza, but instead pitched him inside
in on his hands, and Piazza tried to stop a

(49:15):
swing that was half self defense, but instead the odd
angle and the force of the pitch shattered Piazza's bat.
The ball veered to the right, describing a circle into
foul territory. The head of the bat shot out towards
Clemens on the mound. A second piece flew briefly into
the infield. Piazza was left holding just the handle, and
it looked as foolish as that sounds. But lost in

(49:37):
this description is the fact that all happened at once,
and even from our signe angle in the Yankee dugout
it looked to Mozillion me as if Piazza's bat had
simply exploded, like it was a trick device of some sort.
I saw Clemens reach for the baseball. I thought it
was the baseball right in front of him, and then
just as quickly he and I at the same moment,

(49:58):
realized it was not the baseball. It was the barrel
of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just a little
darker than a baseball, but could in the heat of
an instant following a bat explosion, it could be mistaken
for a ball. So far, so good. But right then Clemens,
realizing it was part of a bat and not a ball,
promptly threw that part of the bat at me. Jesus Mas,

(50:22):
I said to Mizilly, why did Clemens throw that bat
barrel at me? The Yankee coach looked incredulously at me.
He didn't throw it you. He threw it at me.
That's what it looked like. We were lined up perfectly.
Roger Clemens had thrown the barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say,
one hundred and twenty feet instead of just six or
seven feet, he would have hit either me or Lee

(50:44):
Mozilly in the Yankee dugout as it was, since nobody
knew exactly what was happening. Piazza had started to run
down to first base in case the ball was fair.
He didn't know where the ball was either. For that
initial split second, you really couldn't tell which flying object
was the ball, and also whether the ball was fair

(51:05):
or foul. So Roger Clemens's throw certainly looked like it
was aimed at Piazza as Piazza went down the first
baseline and as Piazza took umbrage, and there was another
split second of confusion when it looked like Piazza might
charge out to the mound to try to sock Clemens
for this and for the Midsummer beating. I said to Missilly, wait,
did he throw that bat at Piazza? Miszilly just shook

(51:29):
his head. I don't think so. Whun hell knows. He's
been here two years. I haven't figured out anything he's
done so far. As the umpires then got involved, Clemens
repeatedly tapped his own chest, and not in a bragging way,
but in a kind of what looked like that's on
me way. Two bat boys collected the three main pieces
of the bat and a bunch of smaller shards, some

(51:51):
of them smaller than a toothpick. The Fox play by
play man threw it to me in the dugout well,
I said, I can tell you the Yankee dugout doesn't
know what happened or why. Joe Missilly laughed quietly and
then hit me in the arm. While I was on
the air, I postulated that Clemens was looking for a
ball hit back to him, instead found the piece of
the bat, and then discarded that piece of the bats

(52:12):
so he could keep looking for the ball. That he discarded,
it kind of where Piazza was running, might have been delivered,
might have been a coincidence. I do remember suggesting that
if Clemens had really aimed the bat at Piazza, that
from that distance, with the strength and accuracy of a
major league pitcher, he clearly would have hit him with it.
Piazza then promptly grounded out to end the inning, and

(52:34):
as Clemens came back towards the Yankee dugout where Mozilly
and I were, he again stopped to talk to the umpire,
who was Charlie Reliford. Over the noise of fifty six
thousand fans, at Yankee Stadium. I couldn't hear a damn thing,
but it sure looked like Clemens was again saying that
was on me. I asked Mizillly if he could find
out if that's what Clemens was doing, And half an
inning later, Missilly reported that Clemens indeed thought for a

(52:57):
second it was the ball, and that he threw it,
and that it was on him, and that it was
not intentional and it was not directed at Piazza. Now
I did something kind of stupid. I suggested to my
bosses that I should go ask the commissioner Baseball, who
in a World Series game had the power to eject
any player for any reason, although that power had not
actually been used since nineteen thirty four. What he thought

(53:20):
of all this? The producer said yes, And I thought
me and my big mouth, I now had to crawl
out of that little space between camera and dugout, and
I mean literally crawl hands and knees to exit back
into the seats via where the groundskeepers kept all the
extra dirt. I knew where in the stands the commissioner

(53:42):
was sitting. I went there. I got to him, I
asked him. He assured me there was no discipline coming
for Clemens, and they'd look at the tape of the
game again that night or in the morning. But he
really didn't think Clemens had tried to hit Piazza with
the bat. Well, they would look at the tape and
they decided both that Clemens did not try to hit
Piazza with the bat and that he should be fined
fifty thousand dollars for I don't know, not trying to

(54:05):
hit him with the bat. So I made it back
to the dugout, reversing my crawl like I was recreating
the movie The Great Escape. As it turned out, Piazza's
little squib shot that caused all the trouble with the
exploding bat was about the hardest thing they hit off
Clemens all night. Over eight innings, he struck out nine

(54:25):
Mets batters, he walked none, he gave up only two hits,
and he only hit one batter. And then, incredibly, after
Clemens left the game, the Yankees almost blew a six
to nothing lead. In the ninth inning, a Met outfielder
named Jay Payton hit a three run homer off future
Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the Mets had a
chance to tie the game or go ahead off Rivera

(54:47):
in the top of the ninth and then he got
out of it, and the final score was six to
five Yankees. And with the game over now it was
Keith interviews Clemens' time. I went to the pre arranged
spot at the other end of the Yankee dugout, where
another friend of mine, the Yankees PR director, had guaranteed
me he would go in get Clemens and they would
emerge after Clemens left the clubhouse to do what was

(55:09):
a contractually obligated interview with Fox and me. Apparently, Roger
Clemens started making his way towards me the moment the
Yankees finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment,
security closed the only runway from the Yankee dugout to
the clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as

(55:29):
an exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader. And while
Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every
one of its stations in the country, even on the
West Coast, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver kept showing
replays again and again, and promising my interview with Roger Clemens,

(55:53):
Rudy Giuliani took his goddamn time leaving the field. His
idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I
half expected him to eat it. Instead, he stuffed it
in his jacket pockets. Giuliani now waited for his entire entourage,
one of his wives, some of his I guess they
were friends, assorted political riff raff, and as my producer

(56:15):
screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani waited until
they were all together on the field, and finally he
marched them down into the dugout and up through the runway.
And after all this delay, Clemens came out and finally
I could ask him about throwing the bat shard at
or near piazza. And at that moment I remembered what

(56:35):
I had learned about Clemens in Boston. If you started
an interview with something controversial, he might very well walk away. If,
on the other hand, you did the boring game outcome question,
he would answer anything you asked, and he might even
bring up anything controversial himself. But you had to do
the stupid game stuff first, So which was harder work. Roger,

(56:56):
I asked eight innings of two hit ball or watching
the Mets nearly tie it in the ninth. His answer
was not bad, but he did not bring up the bat.
So I asked another question about what he thought of
his performance in that game. Well, that did it. He
started talking about having to overcome his emotions in the
first inning, and now I could say, well, since you
brought up the emotions the bat throwing incident, did you

(57:19):
throw that piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza. There
is a freeze frame from that interview in which Roger
Clemens eyes are bugged wide open. Well, Glemons basically confirmed
what the guys in the dugout had told me. He
had told them. You can believe him or not, but
he thought the thing he grabbed was the ball, and
when it wasn't, he threw it away just in case

(57:40):
the ball was somewhere else near him and he had
to have a free hand with which to pick it up.
He explained the chest taps he was indeed saying to
the umpire Umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his
apologies to the umps for throwing the bat. He said
he didn't even know where Piazza was at the point
he threw the bat. It was as straight and nonpartisan
and frankly, as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile,

(58:05):
everybody else in that stadium, everybody else in that city,
everybody else in the Tri State area, was convinced of
one of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to
impale Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat,
or the Mets were crybabies who could not tell that
Clemens obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza with

(58:26):
his own bat. There was no middle ground. I found
this out specifically the next day when the TV sports
columnist of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who was
a friend of mine, called to interview me about the interview.
Why didn't you ask him about the bat first? Nobody
cared about how he pitched he threw a bat Piazza.
I said, you're a Met fan, and I explained the

(58:48):
theory of not making Clemens end an interview before he
said what you needed to know. I went through the
whole thing I just recited here. It was amazing to
see those few days, how every sports reporter and columnist
in New York self identified as either a Met fan
or ex Met fan, or a Yankee fan or ex
Yankee fan. And you can still see it today as

(59:08):
this story from twenty two years ago is recollected by others.
They wrote what they felt as kids Clemens was the victim,
or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazza like he was
a dracula, and they had the wooden steak to go
through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently from Joe Torri,

(59:31):
the Yankee manager, another one of my friends, that they
all hid something from us that night, the thing about emotions.
After the incident in the first inning, Roger Clemens went
back to the Yankee clubhouse and started to cry. This
might have had something to do with embarrassment or grief.
But since he had noted that he had had to
check his emotions, I always thought, well, he might have

(59:53):
been a little overamped for that game, naturally or otherwise.
All right, So before I present anything else out of
chronological order, let me go back to the I thanked
Roger Clemens for the interview and threw it back to
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the Fox booth because
this is when the real trouble started. They were pretty

(01:00:14):
much done for the night, but I had another two
hours to go in a live postgame show on Fox's
cable Sports network. We had about four minutes until that
show started, and it suddenly occurred to me that although
this was not the most important event in the history
of the World Series, the bat would become part of
the iconography of baseball. I had been at Yankee Stadium
often enough over the years to know the two kids

(01:00:36):
who ran the visiting clubhouse, and right then they were
still packing up the Mets bats and equipment, and the
Mets dugout, so I ran over and asked the senior
of them what happened to the pieces of the Piazza bat.
The answer to that question has haunted me for twenty
two years. It resulted in me being threatened with a

(01:00:57):
lawsuit by Mike Piazza. The owner of the Boston Red
Sox said he was threatened by Piazza over the same bat.
And then came the moment during that World Series that
Mike Piazza confronted me and we talked about restaurants. The
rest of this crazy story after this, So back to

(01:01:21):
our number one story on the countdown and the saga
of the night in the two thousand World Series and
all the nights since, when the bat of Mike Piazza
of the Mets shattered should be and Roger Clemens of
the Yankees picked up the barrel of that bat and
tossed it at him, or just tossed it away having
mistaken it for a baseball, or made up a story

(01:01:42):
that he had mistaken it for a baseball. And I
was in the Yankee dugout as the reporter, and I
was hosting the game for Fox, and I interviewed Clemens afterwards,
and then before our two hour postgame show on Cable,
I went over to the Met dugout and asked the
clubhouse attendant there what happened to the pieces of Piazza's bat. Well.
The guy explained that Bobby Valentine, the Mets manager, had

(01:02:04):
asked that one of the pieces go to a friend
of his in the stands, and he, the clubhouse attendant,
had handed it to the guy. A second piece he
believed was kept by the Yankees. He wasn't sure about that.
The third piece, the handle was where was it. Where
is it? He asked the other attendant. It's here in
the garbage, the kid said. I did a double take

(01:02:25):
the garbage. Yeah, the kid said, under the dugout bench,
and there it was, stuffed in amid all the empty
bags of sunflower seeds and the crushed gatorade cuffs. I said,
what happens to it? Now? Gets thrown out? They clean
out the dugouts first, so I said, look, can I
borrow it? This would make a great prop for our
postgame show? And the attendant says sure, and he pulls

(01:02:47):
it out of the pile and hands it to him,
just about seven inches of a baseball bat, and all
there is is Piazza's uniform number thirty one written in
magic marker on the bottom. Listen. I said, I won't
be able to bring this back to you for like
two hours. We're on for two hours. Will you still
be in the clubhouse? And he said, are you kidding?
We have to be here at eight. He and I'll
be out of here in ten minutes. And I said,

(01:03:08):
you want me to bring it back to you for
game three? And he says, garbage. You're going to bring
back garbage? Throw it out, keep it whatever, what do
I care? So I use the bat fragment as a
prop in the show repeatedly, and I stuck it in
my shoulder bag, and I thought, I'm not a scrounger,
but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia and I'd

(01:03:29):
like to keep it. So either I'll auction it off
for charity and bid against myself or something, or I'll
make a donation to a baseball charity and I'll keep it.
And that was it. And two days later, as the
World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shay Stadium, I
got a phone call from one of the PR guys
at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And I said, no,
not yet. And he says, Piazza told the guy from

(01:03:51):
Newsday that you stole his bat and he wants it back.
And I said, what if I hadn't asked about it, it
would be on a garbage scale right now, being towed
out to be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean. And he says,
maybe so, but Piazza told this John Hayman, He's going
to sue you to get it back. So now I
go to the ballpark with extra excitement on my plate.

(01:04:13):
I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell me he's going
to sue me. So I go out onto the field.
I'm wondering how long it's going to be before I run
into Piazza, And like two minutes after I step on
the field, I turn around and he's walking towards me.
He looks at me and he says, hey, Keith wild
One the other night, huh say listen, when you lived
at Shutters, did you ever eat at Ivy at the
Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat. We're talking

(01:04:35):
about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah,
but did you ever eat at Shae Jay's. And a
big smile from Piazza, Oh, man, I love Shade Jay's.
I love Jay. Give me your number this winter when
I'm home, Let's go eat at Shaye Jay's. And I said,
I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs.
Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand
dabs at a restaurant. And then he says, hey, sorry,

(01:04:56):
I gotta go ahead, have a good show. That was it.
He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see
each other on on the field. He starts the conversation.
No mention of suing me, not one word. Next day
in the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's going
to sue me for stealing his bat. Next night, Game

(01:05:16):
four of the World Series, we're just about to go
on the air with the pregame show, and now Piazza
comes over again, coming in from the outfield to the dugout,
and he says, hey, this must be really cool to
do what you guys are doing. Have a great show.
And by now the only thing I can think of.
He does not know I'm the same Keith Olberman. He
keeps threatening to sue. So the World Series ends and
the Yankees beat the Mets, and if you look for it,

(01:05:39):
there's this photo of the traditional postgame awarding of the
World Series Trophy and the Most Valuable Player award and
its commissioner, Bud Selig and Derek Jeter, the Yankees and me,
and just before it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner
of the Yankees. He's crying, leans in and I give
him a hug and reassure him. And he asked me
if my mother went to the game, and I said,

(01:05:59):
you know, my mother she'd never come to Shay Stadium.
She hates it more than you do. And he says,
I love her more than ever before. Now, So the
series ends, and it's not been that greatest series, but
it's been exciting and it was the dream from my childhood.
And the Yankees have won and my friends are happy.
And I've not heard another word about this lawsuit, nothing

(01:06:21):
from Mike Piazza. And I told the Fox people, well,
if I'm not going to hear anything more from them,
it's easy. I'm going to keep the bat and I'm
going to donate twenty five thousand dollars to this charity,
the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex ball players in
financial need, because A I'm not a scrounger. B it's
a great cause. C that's actually much more than the

(01:06:41):
bat handle would be worth on the open market. And
D the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team is bat
bat and that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat, you get it.
And then nothing for a month, whereupon Fox gets another
letter now from Piazza's agent fellow named Manzan and he
threatens to sue again, and that's the end of it.

(01:07:04):
Never heard from him again. So now it's the next year,
two thousand and one, and I'm back in New York
working for CNN doing the news, and I go to
a Mets game and I see Piazza and I give
him a big smile and I offer my hand and
I say, still all of those sand dabs from shayj
And he just stares at me and walks right past me.
And I see a cop I know who works next
to the Mets dugout, and the cop says, Mike has

(01:07:25):
been asking him about me? Is that Keith Olderman the
one who stole my bat? So now I'm not just
keeping the bat. I want to sue Mike Piazza for
being a pain in the ass. And then nine to
eleven happens, and ball players are doing charity things, and
sportscasters and newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well,

(01:07:49):
this is the time when the baseball season resumes. I
throw the bat handle in my bag and I go
out to a Mets game and I go up to
Piazza's locker before the game, and I pull the bat
chart out and I say, take this, Mike, auction it
off for charity. Let's do some good with this, or
if it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll
auction it off. We can leave my name out of it,
whatever you want, however you want to do it. And

(01:08:10):
he looks at me like I've just insulted his mother
and says, no, it's too complicated, and he turns away,
and I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete
I have ever met. And just before the season ends,
I go to another Mets game. Now this time it's
one of his teammates who takes me aside and says,
you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his

(01:08:32):
bat from the Clemens game last year. He says, he
still wants to sue you. Didn't you try to give
him the bat back in the clubhouse to auction off.
Didn't I see that? And I say, yeah, I did,
and he refused to take it. And the guy laughs
and he says, great player, excellent catcher. I love him,
strangest player I have ever met. Comes two thousand and two,

(01:08:53):
nothing happens. See Piazza at several Mets games. Nothing happens.
Two thousand and three, nothing happens. Now I can't pin
the year down on this. It's one of the Red
Sox Yankees' playoffs series either too thousand and three. We're
two thousand and four and I'm leaving the field as
they're clearing the media off just before the game starts,
and I'm going out through the Red Sox dugout, literally
at the same spot where the kid handed me Piazza's

(01:09:16):
bat handle three or four years earlier, where the trouble
all began. And I see the new owner of the
Red Sox team approaching from the other end of the dugout,
Keith John Henry, Nice to meet you. Have you got
a minute? And I said, well, yeah, they're kicking the
media off the field, so and he laughs and he
says I can take care of that. And he yells
at the plane clothes coop and he says he's with

(01:09:37):
me and the cop nods and John Henry, the owner
of the Red Sox, and I sit down on the
Red Sox bench before the start of a Red Sox
Yankees playoff game, and there are no other reporters out there,
and I think, Okay, what did I say about the
Red Sox? What is he pissed off about? Instead? John
Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza And

(01:09:58):
I laugh and I say, sure, what about him? And
he says, you have part of his bat from the
World Series with Clemens right, And I say yeah, and
he says, tell me the whole story. So I do
what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's what
I was told, Thank you, huh. I thought it was me.

(01:10:19):
So that other piece of the bat that was handed
to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game, that
friend is a great friend of mine. And after nine
to eleven he said, wouldn't it be great to get
Mike Piazza to sign this and then we can auction
it off for the victims' families or the cops or
some other charity. And he gives me the bat and
I call the Mets and they approach Mike and they
call me and they say, Mike loves the idea and
I should come to one of the spring training games

(01:10:39):
and he'll sign it. So the next March, I go
to one of the Mets spring training games and I
go up to him in the clubhouse and I introduce
myself and he looks at me like I'm from Mars
and I say, well, I brought the bat and he
says what bat? And I explained that we had arranged
to have him sign the bat from the World Series
for a nine to eleven charity and he erupts at me,
I'm not signing that bat? Sure for charity? You think

(01:11:01):
I was born yesterday? And say something to John Henry,
owner of the Red Sox, like welcome to the club.
Did he threaten to sue you too? And he laughs
and says yes. That's the next part of the story.
So while we're trying to straighten that out, his agent
calls me and asks if I will give them the
bat to auction off for charity, and I say sure,

(01:11:23):
and I go to another Mets game and I go
to the clubhouse and I have the bat again. Now
Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because of
pending litigation, but if I want him to, he'll sign
it for me. All I have to do is come
back a couple of weeks later. So this is what
I wanted to ask Keith. Is he the strangest ballplayer

(01:11:43):
you've ever met? Or is it just me? There's one
more part to this. Flash forward to twenty fourteen, I
still have the Piazza batthandle the one I unsuccessfully tried
to give back to Piazza. The middle portion, the one
John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza, has
been sold, with the proce going to charity. So where

(01:12:07):
is the third piece, the barrel of the bat, the
part that Clemens through at Piazza if you're a Met
fan or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza if
you're not a Met fan? And the answer finally arrives
in a sports memorabilia auction catalog that year. While one
of the visiting bat boys was handing the middle part
of the bat to a friend of Bobby Valentine and
John Henry's in the stands, the barrel, which landed near

(01:12:30):
the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the Yankee bat boy,
who put it in the pile of Yankee broken bats.
And as it turned out, right at that point, the
Yankee strengthen conditioning coach Jeff Mangold, who was on the bench, said,
wait a minute, that's the pile of broken bats they're
going to throw out. They shouldn't throw it out. It's history.
And he grabs that part of the Piazza bat and

(01:12:51):
puts it up in his home office. And now it's
fourteen years later and he wants to auction it off
for charity. So he auctions it off, and I think, well, hell,
it should be alongside the other piece of the bat.
My other piece of the bat, the handle, win the auction.
There it is on my wall, complete with a baseball
card showing Roger Clemens about to throw the barrel. Reasons

(01:13:13):
left to your imagination, two thirds of the famous bat.
I'll sell it someday, I'm sure, but I'll always have
the memories, my memories and John Henry's memories. And if
you're wondering, No, unlike John Henry and I, that Yankee
strength coach Jeff Mangold never tried to give it back
to Piazza, or get it signed by Piazza, or auctioned

(01:13:34):
off for charity with Piazza, which means that, on top
of everything else, Jeff Mangold is smarter than John Henry
and I put together. Yes, the story took three hours,

(01:13:58):
but I think you'll agree it was worth it. Hello. Hello,
you're still there. Hello, HELLI I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Our musical directors have Countdown
and it was produced by TKO Brothers. Mister Ray was
on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chaneale handled orchestration

(01:14:20):
and keyboards. Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by
my friend and the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The Olderman theme from ESPN two written by Mitch Warren
Davis Pier's Curtisy of ESPN, Inc. And it's the sports music.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today, keeping with the baseball theme was Tony Kornheiser.

(01:14:42):
Everything else was as always my fault. That's countdown for today.
Day two hundred and eighty one of America held hostage again,
just eighty two days until the scheduled end of his
lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed
sooner by Maga and Epstein, or that patch of pavement
on his hand, or a stuck escalator or a kopathy

(01:15:05):
test or tail and all, or his jet made out
of poop, or the arc he's building. He's building an arc.
He thinks he's pronounced arc. He thinks arch is arc.
Now he's fine, He's fine. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.
Until then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,

(01:15:26):
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

(01:15:48):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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DE-FUND THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP - 10.27.25

Episode Transcript

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Keith Olbermann

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