DEMOCRATS KICK MAGA'S ASS - BIDEN'S GOOD POLL #S - 11.8.23 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey
guess what good news everyone? Democracy just kicked Maga's ass.

(00:29):
See now these polls matter and count Democracy wins in Ohio,
in Virginia, Senate and House, in Kentucky, in New Jersey,
in Pennsylvania, Andy Basher for president, Skyler van Valkenberg for president.
Actually Joe Biden for president. There is extraordinarily good polling

(00:50):
for him, just in that you have not heard about anywhere,
and a way to sell his accomplishments and kick Trump's
ass in the same ads, because what, after all, is
Biden's greatest accomplishment? But first on the scoreboard clean sweep,
down goes Mega, down goes Mega, and Virginia Democrats just

(01:13):
knocked the down out of Glen Youngkin the human red
vest start there. The Republicans actually expected they would retain
the House and flip the Senate, and they got nothing.
The Democrats retained the Virginia State Senate with a margin
of at least two votes, maybe three and at eleven
oh four eastern prevailing local time. Michael Feggins was projected

(01:39):
as the winner in District ninety seven, and thus the
worst they could do would be a fifty one to
forty nine Democratic majority in the Virginia House of Delegates,
with several seats still undecided. An hour earlier, Schuyler van Valkenberg,
he two owns a vest, He's just a teacher, won

(02:00):
the sixteenth District, clinching the tie and absolutely eviscerating the
Republican Party of Virginia. As the Dems now control both houses.
There now this brief promotional message available at deep discounts.
Carload lots of Youngkin twenty twenty four baseball caps any
offer accepted. In Ohio last night, it may have finally

(02:22):
dawned on Republicans that their success in stealing the Supreme
Court and overturning Roe v. Wade has transformed them into
a version of the myth of Sisiphus, forever pushing the
same rock up the same hill to reach the top,
only to see the rock roll right back down, rolling
over them and crushing them in the process. The issue

(02:45):
is obviously far more than the politics. It is human
rights and forced birthing and the cutting edge of the
repression of women back towards eighteenth and nineteenth century standards,
and maybe even a future handmaid's tail society. But politically,
abortion rights are a goddamn that will continue to roll

(03:06):
over the Republicans for the foreseeable future. Insisting you are
going to ban abortion is a winner for energizing your base.
Actually banning abortion is a winner for energizing your opponent
and converting a surprisingly large part of your base. Ohio

(03:30):
Issue one, putting abortion rights into the state constitution not
only one, but it won by at least fifty seven
to forty three. And by the way, Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee and Act Blue and the Biden reelection campaign and
everybody else shared Brown is up for reelection next year.

(03:52):
Maybe you want to put some money into his campaign now.
Maybe you want to put more money for the Biden
Ohio campaign now, because that rock is ready to roll
back down over sisyphus the goddamn Republican again, isn't it.
In Kentucky meantime, Daniel Cameron started the night as the prospective,
less crazy African American face of the Republican Party. By

(04:16):
nine thirty, he had conceded with no obvious political future.
In line, Democratic Governor Andy Basher kicked his ass by
at least fifty two to forty seven, four years ago,
Basher had won election over the incumbent Republican by just
four thousand votes, by just zero point two percent. What

(04:37):
was that incumbent's name? Again? I can't remember what was
the name of the guy Bashir beat last night? I
can't remember him either, And just rub it in a
little bit more. Republicans in Pennsylvania lost a seat on
the Supreme Court they thought they might get. It was
four to two Democrats, and there was the death of
a Democratic member, and the Democrats regained it last night,

(04:58):
and again that Supreme Court is five to two Democrat.
New Jersey may have been slightly high on wompgas when
Republicans murmured this, but they really thought they might flip
the State Assembly there. Instead, they will lose seats in
New Jersey, including the safest reddest district in the state,
where assemblyman ned, could I have a more whitebread name?

(05:20):
Thompson lost to Abby Schnall by like six percent. A
Republican disaster one hundred percent Democratic victories. That was what
the night was in whole. An absolute disaster and an
absolute reminder of many things one. Polls are guidance and

(05:42):
often useful guidance, but only elections count. Two Republicans continued
to lose virtually all toss up elections and are now
beginning to lose some of the safe ones as well. Three.
Under Trump, the state level GOP has gone backwards, and
it's not just the nut jobs who are being wiped
out by his diseased mind. And four, our broken, embittered

(06:09):
traditional news media may not be salvageable. David Shalien is
the CNN political director who bought into hyped and then
defended the indefensible live felating of Trump on CNN last spring.
David Shaleen was one of those political reporters who then

(06:29):
violated all precepts of independence and of maintaining the appearance
that you cannot be compromised by having dinner with three
Trump campaigners, including Jason Miller, the night before the first
Republican debate in Milwaukee, and as the Democrats as Democracy
kicked Republican ass last night, David Shalien, CNN political director,

(06:52):
got on his network and announced, quote, what we're seeing
tonight is the Democratic brand isn't in trouble here. Joe
Biden is in trouble here, and then segued off the
astonishing Democratic sweep to stop covering it and instead to
go back to hyping their own polling released earlier in

(07:14):
the day, which I'll go into detail on later, with
this clown Shalien then emphasizing only those numbers that were
not positive for President Biden. David Shaleen is a whore,
the worst of the both sidest access reporters who understand
only the sounds of words and not their meanings. If

(07:37):
CNN wants to come back from its deathbed, it needs
to fire David Shaleen and start reporting reality again. See
what is before you and just say it on. By
the way, the poll from yesterday to watch was not
David Shaleen's at CNN. It was from a company called Signal.
Because what we saw last night was the Democratic brand

(08:00):
isn't in trouble here. Mainstream political reporting and especially CNN
is in trouble here. Meanwhile, Dementia Jay Trump has managed
to go both crazy and stochastic in the same online post.
It's the Elmer J. Fudd stuff again about the New

(08:22):
York fraud trial that resumes today with Girl Junior testifying.
He begins with quote, I am worth billions of dollars
more than what is on my financial statements, and then
ends with Lord only knows what number rhetorical question about
ridding him of the turbulent priests. It is a mockery
of our judicial and legal system. Something must be done

(08:42):
to stop the fascists. Parts of the Capitol briefly went
into many lockdowns yesterday as a twenty one year old
Atlantaman carrying a weapon variously described as a long gun,
a rifle, and an AR fifteen was subdued by DC
Capitol police constant Trump drum beat up, something must be
done and a guy walks around the Capitol with a rifle. Coincidence,

(09:05):
no doubt. Back to the New York case, in America's
leading parking lot legal scholar says that they will be
making a series of post trial motions based in large
part on her claim that Judge Ngern wouldn't let Trump
talk enough in court. Oh, they let him talk enough.
That's how he confessed. Quoting Alena Habba, there should be

(09:28):
a mistrial and she will be filing for one because
of all the ethical issues she and Trump have been
gagged over, which implies she means there should be a
mistrial because of Judge Engern's clerk, who they have decided
to scapegoat and slander because she once took a selfie
with Chuck Schumer. There is a judicial code of ethics.

(09:51):
Elena Habbas says, those ethics extended the entire courtroom. She
then threatened to go after the judge's bar license and
kept repeating the word ethics. And her lesson on ethics
came in a with Larry Cudlow, who was Trump's director
of the National Economic Council. But it's perfectly ethical for
him to be on television interviewing Trump's ambulance chaser about

(10:14):
how wronged Trump has been in court. There was a
minor but important note out of the election subversion case
in DC. One of the endless Trump motions to delay,
to delay, what you got anything. It would have pushed
a series of free trial motions back from tomorrow to
February ninth, three months, and that would have almost certainly

(10:38):
delayed the trial start by weeks, if not by a
month or more. She says, three months. Bite it, You'll
get two weeks and you'll like it. Trial still starts
March fourth. Be there aloha. Back in New York. Haba's
mention of a movement to disbarred Judge Engern is ironic
in a way because the bland, banal, mediocre face of

(10:58):
Trump's dream of military dictatorship. Jeffrey, that's why we have
an insurrection Act. Clark is finally going to face a
disciplinary hearing from the District of Columbia bar and it
will start January ninth. He's managed to delay the thing
by just under a year, but that changed yesterday. Of course.
Nowhere is it written that you have to have a

(11:19):
legal license to be the attorney general in an avowedly militaristic,
vengeful Department of Justice, and Clark could very well be
that if Trump against his power. The two biggest pivot
points from representative government to authoritarianism were underscored Sunday in
that Washington Post piece I keep telling you to take

(11:41):
door to door, which I would like to make every
American read. Just call me Johnny Apple Post. Those two
points would be firstly, the more or less permanent invoking
of the Insurrection Act so that the military could be
used to shoot civilians at basically any public political assembly.
And remember that military would remain under then of the

(12:06):
president as commander in chief. And Secondly, the unapologetic politicizing
of the Department of Justice, which Jeff Clark, of course
tried to make happen after Trump lost, and even after
the January sixth coup failed. There would be no failure
this time, and it would be the trivial men, the boring, little,

(12:27):
unkempt mediocrites like Jeff Clark, who would happily erase the
freedoms and count the dead bodies and convince themselves it
was patriotic constitutionalism. If your nightmares on this front are
not fedid enough. The Posts followed up last night with
an analysis of some of the stuff they left out

(12:48):
on Sunday, which others have reported. They put a really
stupid headline on it. I'll get back to that in
worse Persons. But they added to the list of the
aspects of a Trump dictatorship the way that he could
wipe out entire autonomous federal agencies and even newter Kung
by simply declaring that entities like the Federal Trade Commission

(13:09):
or the FCC or even the Federal Reserve were now
under the direct control of the president. And what are
you going to do about it? If he wants to
try a little harder. To not make it look like
a monarchy, he could simply invoke the plan to fire
anybody deemed disloyal at any agency and replace them with
a member of the Trump Nazi Party, then insist by

(13:31):
executive order that all agencies submit any planned actions to
the White House for review and approval first, and just
to wind it all up, the Post happily notes he
quote could refuse to spend money on programs Congress funds,
but he doesn't favor even the Post has not stated

(13:52):
it yet. I don't think anybody will. But while they
are doing such a good job depicting doomsday, we might
as well address the elephant in the room, well, one
of the eight hundred or so elephants. There is no
doubt at all that if Trump regains power, he will
not give it up voluntarily. And the point of the

(14:13):
Jeffrey Clarks and the John Eastmans and the Kenneth Chesbros.
And the other night crawlers and anti democracy vampires is
to polish the third that is Trump and make it
look legal. And thus the first dictatorial move by a
restored Trump would be an excuse for him to violate
the twenty second Amendment and run for a third term,

(14:36):
or hearkening back to his complaints of four and five
years ago, to simply be given a third term because
he was so falsely accused of all those crimes that
he actually committed and his conspiracy with Russia that didn't happen,
ohyah did, or even more simply really simplify this by
simply canceling that pesky twenty twenty eight election or the

(14:59):
ones after it, based on let's see, they already made
up some they call presidential immunity. What about presidential do overs? Then,
on that unhappy note, here's something unexpectedly happy. There is

(15:20):
new polling showing unexpected growth for President Biden. Not the
poll from CNN last night, but the one from Signal
Signal Cygnal. Who let me do the CNN one first,
because it makes the Signal poll all the sweeter, especially

(15:41):
when it turns out that Signal lands center right on
the political spectrum and they have the good news for
President Biden. The CNN poll again centers on the useless
general national voter poll that it's forty nine to forty
five Trump, And as I have been saying since I
started in this in nineteen ninety seven, this particular number
is useless, and I do not know why we produce

(16:03):
this number or do polling on it, because Americans collectively
do not elect the president. Americans in the individual states do,
and not even them sometimes, if you believe Eastman, so,
only state by state opinion polling is of any real value.
And even then they are polls, as the one in

(16:26):
the time Sunday, and they are polls from a year out,
and virtually every incumbent president a year out has looked
like absolute flaming crap. There are two interesting and useful
interior numbers in the CNN poll. Latino voters are only
fifty to forty six Biden, and that confirms a lot

(16:46):
of other polling. And I do think a little money
spent on Trump's glittering history of hating all Latinos, particularly Mexicans,
would push that much closer to the thirty three points
by which Biden won that demo in twenty twenty. Apart
from that, there is also the Adamantine number. CNN's poll

(17:09):
finds fifty one percent of voters saying there is no
chance at all that they would vote for Joe Biden.
Forty eight percent say there is no chance at all
that they would vote for dementia j Trump ominous, to
be sure, except that the mirror image number is reversed.
Only two percent who do not currently support Trump say
they would consider supporting Trump. Double that, four percent who

(17:33):
don't currently support Biden say they would consider supporting Biden.
In a field in which one patch of tiny crocuses
sprouting valiantly upwards constitutes a bumper crop, this is the
only sign of any opportunity for growth for anybody, and
it's Biden's and it's a year out. And as if

(17:56):
to underscore this, there was this other poll yesterday that
shows unexpected improvements for Joe Biden. This is from the
polster called Signal, which I had never heard of and
has largely done state polls and is largely considered right wing,
but not crazy right wing, more centrists, one that the
Republican campaigns actually turned to when they want to know

(18:18):
the real numbers, not the ones they're telling everybody else.
You can usually find out a lot about these companies
and where their prejudices might lie with minimal research, and
now there are scorecards everywhere, and most impressively to me,
Signal pretty much nailed the Republican's underperformance in the congressional

(18:39):
races last year in two late polls before election day,
even though it is a right leaning service and it
gets an A rating at a ninety four percent correct
score from five point thirty eight. Before you go, oh,
christ Nate Silver again, A, you don't have to tell
me about Nate Silver. It's my fault. I was the
first guy to put them on TV to talk about

(19:01):
anything more complicated than baseball stats. Be anyway, ABC gutted
five thirty eight last spring. But see whatever it has
lacked in common sense, five thirty eight has been really
good at evaluating other polsters. All right, anyway, Signal is
showing Biden growth. Not only does Signal have the meaningless

(19:25):
national number, but it has it at forty seven forty
five Biden as of November first. But it concludes Joe
Biden's image noticeably improved since last month. It says he
was at forty five favorable fifty three unfavorable in October,
but is now forty seven favorable fifty unfavorable. That's a

(19:48):
five point improvement in one month. The polster concludes, somewhat
against the conventional wisdom, that this growth for Joe Biden
likely owes to the Israel Gaza war. There's also something
else funky in this Signal poll. A month ago, those
voters who said that one of their top priorities was

(20:09):
national security were breaking for Trump fifty nine to thirty five.
Now it's fifty three to thirty eight Trump, and that
is a nine point bump for Biden in one month plus.
It's more than that the number of those who put
national security among their top priorities doubled to ten percent.

(20:31):
And one more flashback to math class, which I would
still be in or like the forty third consecutive year
if it hadn't been for mister Murphy giving me a
pass when we got to trigonometry. For two years per
this Signal poll, one topic has dominated that list of
voter priorities. It was more than double any other concern

(20:57):
all that time. As recently as last December, it was
at forty two percent, when nothing else was at more
than twelve percent. All summer, this one subject was at
the thirty five to thirty six percent range, and then
it hit its peak and began to drop, and it
is as of the first of this month, down to

(21:19):
thirty point nine percent was forty two percent, is under
thirty one percent in a couple of months. And the
topic is inflation, and bluntly, if inflation continues to drop
or it doesn't, and just voters concerns about inflation continues

(21:41):
to drop, everything else, from Biden's age to the intractability
of the Trump cult will also drop in importance. All
of which makes for an interesting backdrop to another story.
A Politico report yesterday that the Biden team now has
enough data to assess its first advertising campaign, the one

(22:01):
that began in August, the one positively emphasizing his success
and the serious issues seven million dollars worth of those ads,
and deemphasizing Trump one hundred thousand dollars worth of those ads.
And it hasn't worked. They were counting on Trump's rivals

(22:26):
to attack Trump for them, they could stay above the
frame and guess what. Trump's rivals largely have not attacked Trump,
although with tonight's latest Republican debate officially signaling the start
of desperation season, they might yet. Still, there is a

(22:48):
lesson in here, and there is plenty of time to
learn it and use it. Politico reports it, while lots
of Biden adjacent strategists and advocates, and you know, just
anybody who likes not living in a fascist state. While
they have been telling the campaign to go full dark
brand and spend a lot of money on tearing Trump
to shreds, the campaign is still quoted as saying there

(23:11):
have been no changes to the strategy and there will
not be and just read our memo. And yet, in
the entirety of his presidency, when has Joe Biden seemed
the most vivid to you? When has he seemed the
most presidential? When has he seemed the youngest? When has

(23:36):
he seemed the realist? To me? I have no doubt.
It was last year September one, twenty twenty two, the
Defense of Democracy speech, the Battle for the Soul of
the Nation speech in Philadelphia. Joe Biden's greatest accomplishment, after all,

(23:57):
is and would remain even if he knocked inflation down
to zero point one percent and solved Gaza by giving
every everybody exactly what they wanted and distributed a free
iPhone to everybody over the age of twelve. His greatest accomplishment,
his true brand, the thing that should be the centerpiece
of his success. In the advertising about his success. His

(24:20):
legacy is beating Trump. Run with it. I have said
it here before. I will always love Joe Biden. Of
all the politicians I have ever met, he is the
closest to an ordinary American human being. And if beating

(24:43):
Trump means he's the candidate, he's the candidate. If beating
Trump means Rachel Maddow is the candidate, she's the candidate.
I don't care. I didn't care if it was Obama
or Hillary in two thousand and eight, when the nation

(25:04):
had to be the Republicans, I didn't pick a side.
Until Hillary started running those Republican like ads. I did
not care. I don't care now. But there should be
in the heart of all of us who want to
defeat Trump and the Trump cult and in fact understand

(25:28):
the existential necessity of beating them, there should be the
consideration that the Soggi Biden poll numbers and the concerns
about his age may not in fact reflect support for Trump.
They may reflect disappointment that the thing we will always

(25:49):
cherish about Joe Biden, that hopefully they will build statues
of Biden for that thing he's not running on he
beat Trump? Did you beat Trump? Did I beat Trump. Hell, no,

(26:11):
Joe Biden beat Trump. The lack of excitement now, the
lack of enthusiasm the middle of the night doubts. They
may not, as so many of my friends fear, and
sometimes I fear. They may not be an expression of
America morally broken and unfixable. They may not show actual

(26:31):
support for Trump. They may simply be recognitions of what
is demonstrably true. Trump is a master at filling up
all the space in the room of exciting both those
who obey him and those who hate him. Joe, you
beat him. You're the only one who has. We need

(26:53):
you to do it again, and we need you to
tell everybody that not only why he and the evil
he personifies and spreads must be defeated, but bluntly, Joe,
you have to tell everybody again that you did it
before and you will do it again, that you are

(27:17):
the man to beat the ever loving shit out of
Donald Trump. Also of interest here, one of the leaders
of the move to censure congresswoman to leave for hateful
speech is an Ohio congressman and former Trump administration flying monkey,

(27:38):
who a month ago said that quote we were going
to turn Gaza into a quote parking lot. Because, of course,
hate by non trumpists should be censured and punished, but
hate by trumpists is a Okay, that's next. This is
an all new edition of Countdown.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Ulberman in sports Dateline, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Hello sold you. Yesterday,
Craig Council had jumped from manager of the Milwaukee Brewers
to manager of the Chicago Cubs, more than doubling his
salary in the process and basically doubling the all time
record for highest paid baseball manager ever. And in nine

(28:47):
years as a baseball manager, he has lost five of
the six playoff series he's gone to. So who knows
now comes the blowback? At Craig Council Park, home of
the Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Little League, somebody has defaced the sign,
spray painting the word ass over the name Craig Council

(29:08):
any suspects Well. Brewer His owner, Mark Attanasio had a
surprisingly harsh response to Council's departure, saying at his news
conference yesterday, quote, we're all here today because we lost Craig,
but I've reflected on this. Craig has lost us and
he's lost our community also in Wisconsin. Those are swear words. Dateline,

(29:35):
Mexico City. You think baseball managers don't matter? The President
of Mexico Andres, Manuel Lopez Obrador, at a news conference
rough translation, the San Diego Padres owners are looking for
a new manager, he said. Benji Gill led us to
third place in the World Baseball Classic. He's top class

(29:58):
and Dateline Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters of Diamonds Sports Group. The
outfit that took over is Bally's TV sports operation went bankrupt.
I mentioned that the infrastructure supporting American sports leagues ever
increasing revenues from TV. That infrastructure is disintegrating before our
eyes with immediate impact. The network carrying those San Diego

(30:19):
Padres that the President of Mexico mentioned went under last spring.
The Padres basically made no money off their TV broadcasts
this year. By September, they needed to take a fifty
million dollar loan just to make payroll. In October, they
let their high priced manager leave for another job in
San Francisco. Now the Padres are shopping some of their

(30:40):
high priced players. You will not convince me this is
not all because of the TV revenue loss. Next, the
National Basketball Association. Diamond Sports yesterday announced an agreement with
the NBA by which it will continue to televise the
games of fifteen different basketball teams through this season, and

(31:01):
then the rights will revert to the league and the team.
Diamond Sports also says it intends to make a similar
deal with the National Hockey League. It'll broadcast those eleven
teams games this season and then audios. Sounds all like
a business deal. In fact, it's bad news. I mean,
we're talking about the LA Clippers and the Dallas Mavericks.

(31:23):
And the last word was Diamond was interested in continuing
with some teams on a team by team basis if
they were willing to take twenty percent less since sports
salaries don't go down. They have not gone down in
baseball since the Federal League folded, and that was in
nineteen sixteen, and owners never accept a lack of profit.

(31:48):
Guests from whom the owners and the players intend to
find that twenty percent the television isn't going to give
them anymore. Hmmm. I wonder who they have in mind

(32:22):
still ahead on this all new edition of countdown. I
swear this is true. I swear it's true. The New
York Marathon, the road race was Sunday. Today is Wednesday, yes,
and still on the streets of New York, I am
walking past people who ran the marathon and are still
wearing their gold medals around their necks, indicating that they

(32:46):
ran the marathon. Once the New York City Marathon was
so trivial that the head of the race called me
up and begged me to do a preview of it
on CNN, And frankly, there were more people running in
the marathon than watching CNN at that point, which I
guess is the situation now too. Anyway, things promised not
to tell a brand new edition coming up first time

(33:07):
for the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worse persons in
the world worse the Washington Post on Sunday. The Post did,
and I repeated the highlights here yesterday, an excellent and
chilling piece on Trump's plan for dictatorship. If this nation
is insane enough to put him back in the White House,

(33:28):
you know, politicizing the Department of Justice and calling out
the troops to shoot peaceful protesters on the streets. Yesterday,
The Post followed this up with an analysis of its
own piece. It was a good analysis by Aaron Blake,
but the headline that some idiots slapped atop the Blake
analysis is everything that is wrong with American journalism and

(33:49):
indeed with America. It is the both sidesest weasel wording
that may yet put Trump back in power because it
does not recognize that this is not the way it
is supposed to be in this country. The headline on
this post and analysis of an imminent dystopian trumpe in America.
Five ways Trump and allies plan for a more authoritarian

(34:13):
second term, which is the exact template, the exact structural
phrasing of every Washington Post travel piece. Five places to
see on your way to Colonial Williamsburg, or even five
recipes for pumpkins spice you can prepare at home, or
five ways Trump plans to destroy the country and the world.

(34:35):
You can't sugarcoat these stories anymore. Posts. Democracy does not
die in darkness, It dies in a Trump victory. Say it.
It'll be your last chance to worser. Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson speaking of the guys are going to destroy
the country again with Mike Johnson. This is the shady

(34:58):
finances part of the scandals. The new claim is, oh,
he does too have a checking account. It's not in
his financial accountability report because it isn't paying him any interest,
so he doesn't have to report it. But now Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington CREWE reports Johnson also
has a mortgage and a person alone and a home

(35:20):
equity line of credit, and quoting Jason Libowitz of CREWE,
where did that money go? Well, I'm thinking the answer
to that is obvious. Johnson is a creationist, believes the
earth was formed in one moment six thousand years ago.
He represented a museum that had its own Noah's Arc
again that was damaged by flooding. Where did all his

(35:43):
money go? This guy must have pet dinosaurs to feed.
But our worst Republican congresson Max Miller of Ohio, I
do not have much use for what Congresswoman to Leave
is saying about the guys of war. But to hear
Miller get on the House floor yesterday and tell everybody
about how wrong and damaging hate is and how guilty

(36:04):
she is of it when after the attacks, he went
on Fox and announced that the future of the Gaza
strip was quote, We're going to turn that into a
parking lot on quote. This is the essence of being
a twenty first century maga asshole. Congressman, Max, your racist

(36:24):
fantasies of mass murder should get you expelled. My racist
fantasies of mass murder should get me reelected. Miller two
days worst person and to the number one story on

(36:52):
the countdown and things I promised not to tell, obviously
focused on my favorite topic me and I swear this
is true. New York's marathon was Sunday. The joke goes that,
you know the marathon, it's your worst neighbor. It occupies
all the streets all day. You can't get in, you
can't get out. Sometimes you can't even get in anywhere

(37:12):
by foot. But that's apart from the main issue here.
It's now several days later, after the marathon was concluded,
and on the streets of New York once again, yesterday
I saw people walking around still wearing their medals from
having run the marathon, the New York City Marathon. I

(37:33):
have nothing against the New York City Marathon, but I
will say this, it's extraordinary to have seen the thing
grow as it has since my earliest days as a reporter.
In the late seventies and early eighties, when I was
at CNN, I got a phone call one day from
a guy claiming to be the publicist for the New

(37:54):
York Marathon, which was a big thing. Ten or fifteen
thousand people would run it every year, but in some
places they had to dodge traffic because police would not
shut down all the streets for the early years of
the New York City Marathon. And the publicist said, look,
if you'd like to talk to our founder, Fred Libo,
who invented this and got it off the ground as

(38:14):
a rival to the Boston Marathon, or if you'd like
to talk to Bill Rogers, who's running in it and
is internationally famous as a runner, or several other internationally
famous American runners. We can arrange this for you. If
you'd like to just call us in the office when
you have time to come talk to us. We'll make
it happen. And I called and I got this answer, Hello,

(38:38):
New York City Marathon. I said, yes, Hi, Fred Libo's office, please,
And the man said, speaking the head of the New
York City Marathon was answering the switchboard, and it soon
proved that Fred Libo was the same guy who had
posed as the publicist. He was, in fact the entirety

(38:58):
of the management structure of the New York City Marathon
as of nineteen eighty two. I guess the first time
I would have covered the race. And when I said
CNN was interested in doing a preview of the New
York Marathon, Oh, that's great, he said, in a rather
thick European accent, that's great. When would you like us
to meet you? And I said, well, don't you have

(39:19):
a set press time or schedule? No, no, we'll we'll
arrange it for you. When can you be here? It
was literally one of those things, what time do you
want to do this? When can you be here? And
I said, well, it looks like I can get the
crew at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Great, and I said okay,
And then Fred Liebo said where would you like us

(39:39):
to be? That's where the New York City Marathon was
forty years ago compared to today, when they shut down
my block and make it impossible for anybody who does
not have identification showing that they live there to walk
through without a special pass. Congratulations on doing that. There's
another story from CNN days. It actually precedes my story.

(40:01):
It's one of the first big events that CNN tried
to cover live and again. Now the rights to carry
the New York Marathon on television live costs millions of
dollars and are sold exclusively to whoever. I can't imagine
anybody actually watching people run as a sporting event, but
there it is, certainly not in a marathon format. It

(40:22):
takes a little long. But in those days, if you
wanted to put the New York City Marathon on television,
all you had to do was point a camera at it.
And so the CNN idea was, let's get the start
of the marathon from the Verizanto Narrows Bridge, Let's put
it on live, and let's actually try to do something

(40:42):
that has never been done before. Let's move our truck
and show not just the start of the marathon, but
we'll be several hundred yards ahead of the front runners,
and we'll show that marathon live for forty five seconds
or a minute until our signal gives way, until we
are no longer able to be live. That was the thinking.

(41:04):
So they did this and were surprised, and I'm sure
this was nineteen eighty, right after CNN signed on, And
sure enough, they drove the truck and pointed the camera
outside the back window and they got the start of
the marathon and the gun going off in this scene
of people running towards the truck, and then suddenly the
signal was lost and there was this sound heard before

(41:29):
the signal was lost. Oh shut, And that was it.
What had happened was in those days to do a
live signal from a moving truck, you couldn't just stick
up a little antenna, which you can do now. You
had to have a whole essentially arm sticking up a
six foot tall mast that had to stick up above
the truck like well, you know when the electricity company

(41:52):
comes to repair your down power lines one of those things.
It didn't have a cage at the top of it
for somebody to stand in, but it would have supported
somebody easily. A six foot tall, probably one or two
foot diameter mast, and they were driving along the Verizona
Narrows Bridge with it and didn't realize that there were

(42:12):
low lying overpasses on the Verizona Narrows Bridge for maintenance
and painting and whatnot, and sure enough they drove right
into one and the damn thing snapped in half. For
many years thereafter, Mary Alice Williams, who was the main
CNN anchor in New York and also the vice president
of the company and also the bureau chief of CNN

(42:34):
in New York, had framed on her wall what looked
to be something left over from a drain at somebody's house.
It was a bent piece of metal with a damage
mark in the middle. She had it framed on her wall,
and I once asked her what it was, And that's
how I know this story, because what it was was
the CNN Live truck mast that got snapped in half

(42:58):
while they were covering the nineteen eighty New York City
Marathon live. The New York Marathon, of course, was also
the home home of Rosie Ruiz, who later claimed to
have been the winner of the Boston Marathon. She'd gotten
into the Boston Marathon by claiming she had run in
the New York City Marathon, and then it turned out
in both races. The reason she had done so well

(43:18):
when she was not internationally known nor ranked nor known
to have run a race in less than three hours.
Rosie Ruiz, in both the New York City Marathon and
the Boston Marathon of the eighties, solved the problem that
faces so many many runners, that was dead spots when
you hit the so called wall. She got around the

(43:38):
wall by traveling part of the route by a subway.
In fact, she met up intentionally, obviously with one of
the reporters who covered her as she was being given
the laurels for winning one of the marathons, and one
of the reporters said, wait a minute, I saw that
woman on the subway on my way over here. And

(43:59):
that's how the whole Rosy Ruiz story unraveled. Later efforts
to promote the New York Marathon introduced me to a
man I have mentioned here before, Abel Kiviat. Abel Kiviat
was one of the top milers in American track and
field in the early years of the twentieth century, I
mean nineteen ten. He was a guy from Queen's with

(44:20):
a remarkable accent, and his ninetieth birthday coincided with a
day they wanted to publicize the New York Marathon, so
the publicity for this was at the Guggenheim Museum, which
was only half as old as Abel was. And Abel
came down and talked with his remarkable queen's accent, and
he was telling us stories about how he won a

(44:40):
race in Waltham, Massachusetts in nineteen ten, and he still
had the clock that they gave him, the watch they
gave him for winning the race, and he said, run
to damn sight better than I do. And then we
went outside and my producer had this great idea that
we get able to run a couple of steps down
Fifth Avenue, and we put that in the piece, and
of course Abel, who was still running for health reasons,

(45:02):
Abel decided that he would show us exactly what a
ninety year old man could do while running. And he
shot past the cameraman and we had to ask him
to do it again because he was about fifty four
times faster than the cameraman mentioned or thought was going
to happen. And Able Kiviat the most interesting part of this,
and I wish I had gone even into more detail
with him than I did back in those days. In

(45:24):
nineteen eighty two, when I got to interview him, Abel
Kiviat revealed he had been Jim Thorpe's roommate at the
nineteen twelve Olympics. I've told the story in great depth,
and I won't do so here. But he said, basically
that Jim Thorpe could do anything you could do better
than you could do it, and all he needed was
to watch you do it two or three times. He said, literally,

(45:46):
he could take that microphone out of your hands, and
a couple of days from now he'd be better at
it than you would be. And I said, well, I
don't doubt that, but give me a better example of it.
And he told the story of how one night all
the English and the American athletes were trying to jump
up and touch the bottom prong of a chandelier, or,
as he said it very endearingly, just like both of

(46:06):
my Bronx New York grandparents, the chandalier, the bottom of
the chandelier. He said. They were all having a nice
time on board the ship in which they lived at
the nineteen twelve Olympics, and Thorpe was out drinking on
the town somewhere back on the mainland, and he came
out on a boat and back to their boat that
they were occupying the ship they were all living on

(46:28):
and all night, all of the great athletes of the world,
including all the high jumpers, tried to reach up and
grab the bottom of this chandelier, just touch it. And
now there was a pool of perhaps several hundred dollars
sitting in a hat on the floor. Thorpe, he says,
staggers in, looks up at the scene and goes, what's
going on? Fellas they explain it to him, and he goes, oh, okay.

(46:50):
He takes off his jacket. He does not take off
his vest. He unbuttons it and simply steps back three steps.
And as Abel described it, he doesn't even do a
run and start. He just reaches up and grabs the
bottom piece of the chandelier and hangs on to it,
and we think the whole damn thing's coming down on

(47:11):
top of us. He lets go after a few seconds,
and in one sweeping gesture, he reaches down, takes the hat,
turns it over, grabs all the bills as they fall,
stuffs them in his pocket, puts his own hat back
on his head, and says, have a good night, gentlemen.
That was who Jim Taupe was, all right, So that's
the new York Marathon. And if I think of the
New York Marathon, I necessarily think of the Los Angeles Marathon,

(47:34):
which started when I was a sportscaster in LA and
I was working for the radio station that somehow got
the rights. I suspect we were paid to do this,
got the rights to do radio play by play of
a marathon. Now, think about this. Once in high school,
I once tried to do radio play by play of
a swim meet, which is really problematic if you lose

(47:58):
your indications of who is in which lane because the
swimmers go underwater. Try to do eight or ten hours
of live coverage of a marathon on a news radio station.
That's what we did, and since I was the sportscaster,
they made me co anchor with the lead newscaster, and
we set up in front of a gas station. That's

(48:23):
what it was, a gas station near the start line
of the Los Angeles Marathon, right next to the coliseum
in downtown LA. And at just the beginning of the race,
two minutes beforehand, they said, by the way, we want you, Keith,
We want you to do the play by play of
the race starting. And I said from where They said,

(48:45):
from right here, and I said, I can't even see
the starting line from here. We're going to see them
all run past us. But we're I don't know, a
thousand yards from the start of the race. I mean,
I can see them all down there. What do you
want me to say? They said, okay, no, we thought
of that. We have a solution to it. And one
of the engineers produced for me to stay and on

(49:06):
a folding metal chair that lifted me oh two and
a half feet off the ground, and by the way,
it wasn't even steady. And they said, call it from there.
And I did not have the heart to tell my
producers at CANX radio in Los Angeles that I couldn't
see a damn thing. I just made it up as
we went along. But for the next year's race, they

(49:28):
had thought about this and remembered the problem that it represented.
So they got a wireless mic and they gave it
to me, and they said, about ten minutes before the
race is supposed to start, we want you to go
out onto that island that is on the other side
of the intersection where the marathon starts, so you'll be

(49:51):
thirty yards away from the marathon start line. You'll be
facing it, and then we will throw it out to
you in thirty or forty seconds before the gun goes off,
and you can describe what that looks like. And I
can describe what it looks like, because because I have
had this nightmare once a month since the first time
we did this in I think nineteen eighty seven, with

(50:12):
me out in the island twenty or thirty yards away
from the front line of the LA marathon, which was
at that point maybe eighteen or twenty thousand people. A
gun goes off, You are standing by yourself, you are
three inches off the pavement, and suddenly eighteen or twenty
thousand people start running at high speed directly towards you.

(50:40):
Think about that one for a while, and you can
understand some of the problems that I have had in
my life and my career ever since. Persecution, problems, paranoia,
if you want them, go stand in front of the
traffic island twenty thirty yards in front of a marathon
starting and let eighteen thousand people run at you, even
if you were normal to begin with. And I'm making

(51:01):
no claims about that that will change you in a hurry.
Marathons I have survived by Keith Olberman things I promised
not to tell, still wearing their medals, four people at

(51:30):
least on the streets of New York three days after
the race. We get it. I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown has
come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the
Old Women Broadcasting Empire in New York. And think about
doing eight hours of live coverage of a marathon on radio.

(51:52):
And here's when they come and there they go. Couwntown
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel Arrange produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitar based on drums,
and it was all produced by TKO Brothers. I mean,
I would always stay up almost all night Saturday night

(52:13):
for the Sunday morning marathon start worried about what the
hell I was going to talk about. Other music, including
other Beethoven tunes, arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call
it the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball

(52:36):
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Stevie
van Zant. Everything else was pretty much my fault. You know.
One thing I do remember about the LA Marathon, I
think the third year we did it on radio, was
I did get a privilege. At one point they brought
over a guest for me to interview about sports in
general and Los Angeles in particular, and even running. And

(52:57):
his name was Muhammad Ali. I'm not sure it was
the last interview he was able to give, but his
voice was already so closed down by the injuries to
his head that I literally had to repeat his answers
even though he was talking into my microphone face to face.
A very moving and very sad experience, and yet Ali

(53:17):
somehow made it special anyway. Enough, that's countdown for this
the thirty seventh day since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till then
I'm Keith Oldraman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and

(53:38):
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(54:03):
or wherever you get your podcast ASTs.

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