June 12, 2023 • 59 mins
EPISODE 225: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT:
Donald Trump has put the lives of tens of thousands of American service men and women at risk – all around the world – by stealing the documents. Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn if American troops live or die. Donald Trump HATES THE TROOPS. And why aren’t we hearing that? Bill Barr, The National Review, Governor Sununu, and The National Review blistered Trump. Scott Jennings, the rabid CNN conservative? Jennings hit a point that in normal times would have been enough for the Republicans to have already thrown Trump overboard, for all time? “If you had a son or a daughter who was serving…in a hostile place and you thought maybe their information was in a document that could have been picked off the friggin floor, do you know how this could impact a military family? The thing is when you’re commander in chief, you have this responsibility to the military and the people who serve. It’s sort of offensive to me actually that we would be so cavalier with the information that could possibly put our people in jeopardy.”
And if there is anything more shocking than the number of anti-Trump statements ESPECIALLY from lawyers and from HIS lawyers – it is the fact that in normal times the Democrats would have taken the essence of Scott Jennings’ point: TRUMP PUT THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN SERVICE MEN AT RISK, and they would have hung that fact around the necks of not just Trump and everybody close to him, but around the necks of EVERY Republican who didn’t condemn him and the Democrats would be screaming “Why does Donald Trump hate the troops?” and “Why does Ron DeSantis hate the troops?” and “Why does Lindsey Graham hate the troops?” and if the POINT ITSELF wasn’t decisive enough, the Democrats could follow it up with the new CBS News poll that asks is there a national security risk if Trump kept nuclear and military documents and the answer was YES, Trump put the National Security at Risk, YES… from 38 percent OF REPUBLICANS.
Why in the chorus of sheep bleating about Trump’s rights and Hillary Clinton this and weaponization that, are virtually ALL the dissenting voices… Republicans? Where are the Democrats? Where are the Democrats talking about the grave risk Trump was and is to National Security? Where are the Democrats demanding that he will be president again only over their dead bodies? Where are the Democrats saying no matter how this trial turns out, Trump definitely put American troops at risk for the sake of his ego, and he may have gotten American troops KILLED, and he may STILL get American troops KILLED? Where is the outrage?
Axios reports the Democratic National Committee asked Democrats in the Committee to no-comment the indictment. The PRESIDENT is no-commenting the indictment. The entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party is staying off-stage because of some kind of nonsensical, 1975-notion that to speak out against Trump’s criminality and treachery and treason is to somehow grasp a third rail, that because if you speak up for truth and honesty and Americanism and you are a politician you have somehow POLITICIZED truth and honesty and Americanism. Mr. President, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, we elected you to stand up for the rule of law, against Trump. Proclaim it and exult in it. Your silence will be mistaken for weakness. Kick him when he's down - and sing the anthem while you do it.
B-Block (20:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How lucky is the Glenn Beck ally who confronted Brittney Griner in an airport? She could've snapped him in half. Conor McGregor TRIED to snap an NBA mascot in half. And Fox and Friends comic relief Brian Kilmeade thinks David Beckham had to learn English when he moved to America. (23:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Join me in celebrating the one year anniversary of Minet.
C-Block (39:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Troubadour in New York (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just last week a new doctor asked me if long ago I had fallen off a cliff or something and I had to explain to him - Yes! While filming a TV commercial! Doesn't everybody do that?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Donald
Trump has put the lives of tens of thousands of
American servicemen and women at risk all around the world
(00:28):
by stealing those documents. Donald Trump does not give a
damn if American troops live or die. Donald Trump hates
the troops. So why aren't we hearing that. It is
not the number of Republicans and Trump cultists who are
prostituting themselves for Trump that shocks. It is the number
(00:50):
who aren't. His Former Attorney General William Barr the quote,
you know, if even half of it is true, then
he's toast. Former US attorney and Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy.
If they can prove half of it, he's toast. I
sense an image theme New Hampshire Governor John Sanunu. If
even half of this stuff is true, he's in real
trouble and it's self inflicted. The National Review the Trump
(01:14):
indictment is damning. It is impossible not to be appalled.
Jonathan Turley Wait, Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Turley. It is an
extremely damning indictment. Tim PARLATORI, who was still a Trump
attorney last month, it appears to be a pretty strong indictment.
Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who were still trump attorney's
(01:35):
last Friday, they quit, and Scott Jennings, the rabid, cartoonish
CNN conservative. I seriously doubt you're going to hear a
serious person say, oh, well, this is fine. And then
Jennings hit a point which in normal times would have
(01:56):
been enough for the Republicans to have already unanimously and
irrevocably thrown Trump overboard for all time. Quote. If you
had a son or a daughter who was serving in
a hostile place and you thought maybe their information was
in a document that could have been picked off the
friggin floor, do you know how this could impact a
(02:18):
military family. The thing is, when you're commander in chief,
you have this responsibility to the military and the people
who serve. It's sort of offensive to me, actually, that
we would be so cavalier with the information that could
possibly put our people in jeopardy. And if there is
(02:38):
anything more shocking than the number of anti Trump statements,
especially from his supporters and from his lawyers, it is
the fact that in normal times the Democrats would have
taken the essence of Scott Jennings's point, Trump put the
lives of thousands of American servicemen and women at risk,
and they would have hung that fact around the next
of not just Trump and everybody close to him, but
(03:00):
around the next of every Republican who did not condemn him,
and the Democrats be screaming, why does Donald Trump hate
the troops? And why does Ron Desantus hate the troops?
And why does Lindsey Graham hate the troops? And if
the point itself were not decisive enough, the Democrats could
follow that up with a new CBS News poll that
asks is there a national security risk if Trump kept
(03:22):
nuclear and military documents? And the answer was yes, Trump
put our national security at risk, Yes, from thirty eight
percent of Republicans. And why aren't we hearing Democrats say that?
Why in the chorus of the sheep bleeding about Trump's
(03:43):
rights to do this and Hillary Clinton that and weaponization everything.
Why are virtually all of the publicly dissenting voices Republicans?
Where are the Democrats? Where are the Democrats talking about
the grave risk Trump was and is to national security
(04:06):
that thirty eight percent of Republicans agree with Democrats on
Where are the Democrats demanding that he will be president
again only over their dead bodies. Where are the Democrats saying, No,
matter how this trial turns out, Trump definitely put American
troops at risk for the sake of his ego, and
he may have gotten American troops killed for all we know,
and he may still get American troops killed tomorrow. Where
(04:28):
is the outrage? Axios is reporting the Democratic National Committee
asked Democrats in the Congress to no comment the indictment.
The president is no commenting the indictment. The entire hierarchy
of the Democratic Party is staying off stage because of
(04:48):
some kind of nonsensical nineteen seventy five alive notion that
to speak out against Trump's criminality and treachery and treason
is to somehow grasp a third rail. That because if
you speak up for truth and honesty and Americanism and
you are a politician, you have somehow politicized truth and
(05:11):
honesty and Americanism. Mister President, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Leadership Democrats.
We elected you to stand up for the rule of law.
We elected you to defeat Trump and destroy Trump and
jail whatever was left of Trump. We expect you to
(05:31):
speak up for justice, and we want you to demonize
the Republicans, and we demand that you cut up Jim
Jordan and a last defenic and Mike Pence and these
other disloyal, opportunistic, amoral bastards, because there are only Republicans
saying anything right now, and all of you Democrats hiding
(05:52):
in the back have completely lost the plot of America.
Somewhere somebody in the White House to whom Joe Biden listens,
thinks that to speak is to authenticate the Republican claim
that this is all just to keep Trump from the
(06:12):
White House. God damn it, it is just to keep
Trump from the White House. Traitors do not belong in
the White House. And if Democrats you somehow think that
your silence is going to make Trump voters or Republican
(06:36):
apologists or anybody else, think, oh we're wrong, this isn't political.
We feel great shame. We must mend our ways. We
must turn the party over to the real future of
the twenty first century. Gop Asa Hutchinson, I have bad
news for you. They are not fleeing from Trump. They
(06:57):
are not going to be reasonable, They are not suddenly
going to negotiate. They are not acting in good faith now,
and they are not going to see your silence is
anything but squalid weakness, and to reinforce to their mob
and their cult that the reason Democrats are silent is
that Democrats know this is all political, and the Democrats'
silence is in fact the Democrats guilt. President Biden, you
(07:19):
are not having a shot with Ronald Reagan and Tip
O'Neil tonight. They are dead. That Republican Party is as
dead as they are, and the people who have seized
the brand name Republican Party now recognize that this is
an existential fight for both the soul of and control
(07:42):
of this nation. Either the Democrats and democracy prevail or
the Republicans and fascism will it cannot be both? And
standing back and hoping that your silence conveys the gravity
of the charges, is it best naive and at worst irresponsible.
(08:02):
Trump has been not to the floor by these indictments,
and you do not need every Republican leader and every
Republican voter to back away from him in order to
defeat the plague that is MAGA. One or two percent
of Republicans breaking with that cult for good is enough
(08:25):
to give the Democrats the House, the Senate, and the
White House again next year. But you are not going
to win them over with dignified quiet scorn. The Republicans
are a party of bullies, consumed by murderous and violent fantasies.
Trump is metaphorically on the ground. Now is the time
to metaphorically destroy his reputation with just enough Republicans, only
(08:49):
just enough Republicans, and to do so by using metaphorical
baseball bats. I had to do a two day deposition
in my lawsuit after al Gore and his business partner
tried to stiff me on the rest of my contract
(09:09):
once they had finally arranged to sell Current TV to
Al Jazeera. My lawyers gave me a thousand pieces of
great advice, but the best of them was this. Their
lawyers are going to ask you to read some of
your own emails out loud, onto the record, and other
statements onto the record. Do not explain them, do not
(09:29):
shrink from them, do not mumble them, do not but them.
Proclaim them as proudly as if they were the greatest
thing you ever did or said. Sure enough, there came
the hour on the second day, I think, where they
handed me one of my one paragraph emails to my agent,
(09:52):
fifty words, perhaps all about Gore's partner, and half of
them obscenities. The nicest part was when I called him
a little jimminy cricket pest bastard. I read that onto
the record like I was reading Shakespeare. Trump is the
(10:13):
worst political figure in American history. Trump is the worst
criminal in American history. Trump is the worst individual threat
to representative government in American history. And now he's been
indicted thirty seven counts, and for all we know, thirty
seven more counts to come about January sixth and thirty
(10:34):
seven more counts to come about, bilking money out of
his cult. We have hundreds of miles to go, but
we have started down this road. Democrats, stop shining from
the reality this scumbag should never live another day free
in his life. Proclaim it, exult in it for once.
It is not just the ethical power that is in
(10:56):
your hands. You have the hammer of justice. Take the
hammer of justice and use it to hit Trump and
everybody who lies for him, and God damn it. Sing
the national anthem while you do it, because this is
where we are. Democrats are being quiet, because that's exactly
(11:20):
the right play during a time in which the only
thing Republicans understand is noise. Politico asked Trump about taking
a plea deal that he said he did not anticipate
doing so, but quote, he left open the possibility of
doing so. Quote where they pay me some damages. That's
(11:42):
what he thinks a plea deal is in this, Trump said,
And you know, this is how he actually thinks that
after the indictment, America went to sleep with tears in
its eyes. And I thought, yeah, tears of laughter. The
only thing missing from this string of illogic with which
he still manages to keep his sucker's hypnotized like cats
(12:05):
jumping at feathers, is the argument that the documents were
secure at marri Lago, because who would ever be willing
to go inside Donald Trump's bathroom? And while the good
guys stay silent, Trump is still dog whistling, still hoping
to push the button of stochastic terrorism about Miami. In
a radio interview with Roger Stone yesterday, quote, we need
(12:28):
strength at this point, and everyone is afraid to do anything.
They're afraid to talk, and they have to go out
and they have to protest peacefully. It sounds as if
he is implying that it's a shame they have to
protest peacefully. Our country has to protest, and he is
dog whistling for somebody to physically attack the special counsel
and his wife. Also to stone quote Jack Smith, he's
(12:51):
a deranged person. His wife hates me more than he does.
The wife hates Trump more than any human being who's
ever lived. Unquote, to which I say, hold my beer.
Three other pieces of business on indictment and arraignment Eve one.
(13:11):
Stuart Rhodes, the Oathkeeper's gun safety instructor who allegedly shot
out his own eye, called into a right wing show
from prison because you can his reaction to the Trump
document indictments. Wait until you see Trump get indicted for
January sixth for the same thing Rhodes and the others
were convicted over for January sixth. Rhodes expects Trump to
(13:34):
be indicted for conspiracy to prevent Congress from discharging its duties,
conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and seditious conspiracy. From
your mouth to God's ears, Elmer two, it ain't a
purp walk, but apparently at the arraignment tomorrow afternoon. This
will be the full criminal experience for Donnie Trump should
(13:56):
be walked through and arraigned in a no frills and
very unfriendly Miami Federal courthouse. He should be fingerprinted, and
he should have a mug shot taken. And three the
photo of the judge assigned to this case. The Trump
appointee will already tried to derail this last year with
the special Master nonsense. The photo of Aileen Cannon in
(14:19):
her glasses and a Team Trump hat and Maga face paint.
That is not Eileen Cannon. That is somebody at a
twenty twenty Trump rally somewhere with similar glasses, not her.
Do not tweet that photo repeating it's not her. So
(14:39):
since we're going to live like this for a while,
Trump indicted, Trump arragned, Trump indicted again, Trump arraigned again,
let's at least enjoy a few jokes as they pop up.
Lauren Windsor, the journalist noted the photo of the boxes
in Trump's bathroom and observed violation of the spon Edge Act,
(15:02):
and from animator Matt Wells, the this parody of the
indictment and the Jack Smith indictment form, and the whole
borderline unbelievable nature of Trump's perfidy. I will quote it
in full, and if you don't get it, I will
not explain it. As they say, if you know, you
know Quote thirty three. On July twenty one, twenty twenty one,
(15:23):
when he was no longer president, Trump gave an interview
in his office at the Bedminster Club to a writer
and a publisher in connection with a then forthcoming book.
In the recorded statement, Trump stated that once reinstated as president,
he had plans to build a freeway through the Los
Angeles neighborhood toon Town by any means, even if it
meant flooding the Burrow with chemical warfare obtained from the
(15:46):
Department of Defense. The toxic substance was, in Trump's words,
the only way to kill a tune, and made up
a combination of turpentine, acetone, and benzene. This dangerous compound
is commonly colloquially referred to by the DoD as the
dip okay. I changed my mind if you did not
(16:13):
recognize that, it's basically the plot of the movie Who
Framed Roger Rabbit. Also of interest today, the Glenn Beck
provocateur who decided to menace and mock basketball as Brittany
Grinder in the Dallas airport. We are missing the leads
story here. She restrained herself, she did not touch him,
(16:33):
and thus he is still alive today. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Old woman slight
(16:54):
format shakeup today postscripts to the news next later. So
I had a physical Friday with a new doctor and
he said, what did you do to yourself years ago?
Did you fall off a cliff or something? And I said,
as I always have to say, yeah, kind of while
I was making a TV commercial, like everybody does things,
I promised not to tell. Coming up first, the Daily
round Up, the Missus grants Moron's undunny Kruger effect specimens
(17:16):
who constitute today's worst persons of the world. I did
not plan this to be all sports. It just turned
out that way. The Bronze to this functioning idiot Alex Stein,
who works for Glenn Beck. This Stein decided to confront
the basketball player Britney Griner as she and her team,
the Phoenix Mercury, walked through the airport in Dallas. She
(17:38):
is still trying to readjust after months in a Russian prison,
as a hostage, so this moron Stein thought it would
be funny to record himself asking her if she thought
the exchange that brought her home in exchange for armsdealer
Victor Boot was fair since she was a killer on
the court, but he was a real killer. And then
he asked if she'd had sex with Vladimir Putin. Now
(17:59):
I appreciate that Glenn Beck is himself still recovering from
his remarkable drug addiction, and that he's an amoral buffoon
to begin with, but honestly, Beck, you have to save
this guy Stein for his own good, Fire him or
educate him, because if Britney Grinder was not a pro
who could and did restrain herself, she could have just
pushed him out of the way and he would be
(18:19):
in a coma right now. Speaking of which, the runner up,
Connor McGregor also not exactly mister stability. McGregor did a
bit during the fourth game of the NBA Finals in
which he was supposed to pretend to fight with the
Miami Heat mascot Bernie, But of course McGregor has no
control over himself, so when it came time to pretend
to throw hands, he knocked Bernie out with one real punch.
(18:44):
They took the guy in the Bernie suit to the er.
After treatment, they say Bernie will be back for Game
five tonight, which could make him the only member of
the Heat to actually show up for all five games
of the NBA Finals. Moving on, but the winner. Brian Kilmead,
who is I guess the comic relief on Fox's morning
show kill Mead has said some amazingly stupid things over
(19:08):
the years. He once tried to criticize interracial marriage by saying,
we keep marrying other species, but honestly, this may be
the worst. He was talking about Lionel Messi, the soccer
star coming to the United States to play in Major
League Soccer here and kill mea bemoaned the fact that
the great Messi does not speak English and does not
seem inclined to learn English, and he compared that to
(19:30):
another famous international star who came to Major League Soccer,
David Beckham two thousand and seven. No, seriously, kill Mead said,
quote one thing about David Beckham. He learned to speak
English for US only with an accent when he came
at thirty two years old. This was not a joke,
This was not a gag. This was not hyperbole. Brian
(19:52):
Kilmead thinks Beckham, born in London in nineteen seventy five,
had to learn English when he came to America. Now
this is already Hall of Fame level stupid. Before you
real that. Before he went to Fox quote news unquote,
Brian Killmead was a sportscaster, and not just a sportscaster.
(20:15):
His job the year before he went to Fox, Brian
Kilmead was a soccer reporter for coverage of games of
Major League Soccer. Brian, Yeah, but when are you gonna
learn English? Brian kill Mead two days worst person in
the English speaking word. Post scripts to the news, some headlines,
(20:53):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline my house. Mine
arrived a year ago yesterday. Now, I know what you're thinking.
He's fine. He's in the other rooms sleeping right now.
Mine is nearly sixteen years old, and late last spring
he was surrendered to American Maltese Association Rescue and my
friend who runs that here texted rhetorically to me, who
(21:15):
is going to adopt a nearly fifteen year old dog
with dementia? My reply was the hand up emoji. I
told you parts of my story with dogs before. I
loved them as a kid, but I was allergic and
Mom was even more allergic, and for forty years the
allergists said that whole hypoallergenic dog thing, it's hit and miss.
A lot of hearts get broken, a lot of dogs
(21:37):
get returned. And then a former girlfriend needed what she
called a puppy fix because her family dog was dying,
and I finally let her talk me into doing something
her dozen predecessors never could to go in with her
to the pet shop, and within minutes I was in love,
and Stevie adopted me, And inside of a month I
was calling all my dog owning friends and saying to them,
(21:59):
why didn't you tell me this was the meaning of life,
and concluding that my first fifty three years on this
earth had been a waste of time. And parenthetically, Stevie
is sitting on the floor at my feet as I
record this. Soon the girlfriend and I got Holly and
Milo for her parents, and then we got Rose so
Stevie would have a sister, and then we split up
(22:20):
and I kept the dog, so that was a win
win win, And one day I met the Maltese rescue
leader in a pet coo here and I volunteered to
become a foster if they needed one, And before I
knew it, she asked me to take a three month
old with a heart so bad that it was not
clear that he would live past ten months. Well, happily,
the bets who said they had never seen what was
(22:41):
wrong with his heart were compensated for in this equation
by the cardiologist at the animal medical center, who said
that was understandable as a diagnosis, but he operated on
this problem like three times a month, and so instead
of heartbreak. Now Ted is five and a half years
old nearly and the biggest issue with him is he
is the most amazing flirt I have ever seen from
(23:03):
any species. Brian Kilmead. If we go to the park
and there are girls on a blanket, he is going in.
It happened four times on the walk day before yesterday. Also,
Ted is also at my feet here sitting next to Stevie.
In twenty twenty one, it was Mishu whose untreatable heart
disease really was untreatable. Michu had an extraordinarily happy life,
(23:26):
but an extraordinarily brief one, and after he died another
litter produced two of his brothers, and I brought them
in one after the other to see if they could
take his place in my brood. And they were nuts,
both of them, great dogs, but absolute alphas. They bit everybody,
including me, And so by summer last year I had
a spot open. I knew I could take care of
(23:47):
four dogs at once. I had done it, And anyway,
I didn't have a dog until I was fifty three.
I'm making up for lost time. Mine was one of
three maltesees whose human was a French teacher. Here mine
is in fact a French word translating as kitty, which
must have caused him considerable confusion. In any event, sometime
(24:08):
after Mine's tenth birthday, his human, who I believe was
around eighty five, began to decline rapidly. For the last
few years, she was usually able to feed the dogs,
but little else. Finally she went to the hospital, having
made no plans for the dogs, and when she did
not come back from the hospital, a caring neighbor did
what he could for the last survivor, Mine. He fed him,
(24:30):
he cleaned him, he walked him now and again. He
made preparations to adopt him. And then he got a
promotion that required frequent travel, and so with great reluctance,
he contacted the rescue organization. And that is how I
came to raise my hand at a year ago. Yesterday,
we met near Central Park and I saw mine, a
gaunt but active, healthy looking dog. One of his eyes
(24:52):
was cloudy, but he had a strong, confident gait and
absolutely no interaction with humans whatsoever. I picked him up
and he flinched. I sat him on my lap and
he jumped off. And understand and almost all dogs either
instinctively warm to human touch or learn its value quickly.
But the Maltese will respond to you sitting down by saying,
(25:13):
I see you have made me a lap. I will
now claim this map forever. The only true conflict I
have ever witnessed among my crowd is the territorial brawl
over me. I have had four Malteses squeeze their way
onto my seated form in such a jigsaw like way
that they can each claim they are sitting in my
(25:34):
lap partially. Mine just wasn't present. He'll just be another
mouth to feed, I was told. I was also told
he was pad trained. This turned out to be correct.
He knows where to go. Sometimes he's standing on the
edge of the pad, pointed the wrong way, but still
not bad all things considered. He was quiet, he was
(25:58):
self contained. This turned out to be too correct. He was,
in fact when he got here a roomba. He walked constantly.
He established one path through the rooms of my place,
and he followed it basically inch by inch, for up
to an hour at a time. He ate well, he
slept well. I never heard a sound out of him.
(26:19):
Mostly he wandered, wandered along that one path. And what
he was looking for I don't know. But that path
ended at one window that went ceiling to floor, and
he stared out that window, and then he would do
that walk again. So I hesitantly I took him out
to the park one night, just me and him, to
(26:40):
see what would happen. And immediately I recognize an extraordinary difference.
Minee was outside and mine was serene, and he was
no longer wandering. He sat in the grass and he
turned his face to the breeze, and it was the
surest sign he was still in there somewhere. Well. My
vet checked him over that week and said, look, his
(27:02):
teeth are uniformly tear. They will probably all have to
come out, but some of them are in such bad
shape that this is urgent. That infection could spread to
his nose, to his brains, anywhere in his body. And
they're so bad. Some of these teeth are going to
come out with just a little anesthetic. I can take
(27:23):
them out right now, she said, and she did, And honestly,
the sound he made was so heartrending. It was the
only time in ten and a half years with dogs
that I could not bear it, and I had to
leave the room. That noise was still ringing in my
ear when Minee woke up about three hours later from
the anesthetic, and he came over and stared at me.
I mean, this was a excuse me, where the hell
(27:45):
am I stare? Within a day, mine was barking at
me when he was hungry, he was sniffing the other dogs.
Within a week, he was joining the group meal at
the regular hours, and knew instinctively when those hours were
it wasn't dementia, it was teeth. Minee got all of
his teeth taken out about a month later, and soon
when we would go outside, he would sit on the
(28:07):
grass or in my arms in complete contentment and walking.
It turned out he was the best walker I have
ever seen, let alone had he knew the entire deal.
If I slowed down, he slowed down. If I began
to stop, he would stop before I did. And if
he started up again and I needed him to stop,
(28:28):
I would just say stop and he would or if
I started up. All I had to do after I
realized his first human must have trained him in French, right,
all I had to do was say sweebe mine, and
off he would go. Every meeting with another dog was
a respectful, silent sniff. He let strange humans pet him,
(28:48):
and now he goes on virtually every walk I take,
because he immediately sinks up with me, or with me
and Stevie, or with me and Rose, or with me
and Ted. It was the teeth. There was so much
infection that basically all he could do was deal with
it and the pain all his tiny body could handle.
Once his teeth were gone, he began to eat his
(29:09):
soft food lustily. In the year he's been here, he's
gone from a two skinny five pounds to a robust eight.
He still eats the hard treats too. A Maltese is
a really strong jaw. He gums them, though he does
prefer them ground up in a blender, and why not.
But about a month after the teeth came out, I
saw him do something that made my jaw drop. And
(29:29):
I've seen him do it since. He took one of
the treats over to his water bowl and he dropped
it in the water bowl, and then he did his
jog around the house. If he's awake, he's moving. And
he came back to the water bowl and he stuck
his face in the water bowl and pulled out the
now saggy treat and he put it in his mouth
and sucked on it like a cough drop. It wasn't dementia,
(29:51):
it was the teeth. Don't get me wrong here. That
saw about a year for a dog is seven years
for a person. Stuff that's nonsense. But at nearly sixteen
minut is about the equivalent of a man who is
somewhere between a ninety years old. He forgets stuff. He accelerates,
like when he's right next to the wall he has
(30:12):
a processing problem. You can be right in front of
him and you can say hello, or you reach out
to pet him, and he will literally stop, spread out
his four legs like he's in a cartoon, and look
behind him. He's also a master of the double take.
But otherwise he is really smart and resourceful. And by
accident I found a bed that he loves, like it
was the womb. And he will sleep twelve hours or
(30:34):
fourteen hours some days and get up and have some water,
come out and pee. But now he will get up
and come out and talk to me in a very
sweet voice for a few moments, and then he'll go
back and nap for another couple of hours. And he
will still bark when he's hungry. And the other day
I gave him a plate of the ground up treats,
and I swear he stopped, he sniffed them, and he said, oh,
(30:55):
just like that, and he happily devoured them bluntly. I
would pay one thousand dollars ten thousand dollars, I don't
know how much to get a full story of Minet's
life before he arrived here. The Manet documentary that understanding
French thing is absolutely legit. On one walk last winter,
(31:16):
we encountered no fewer than three groups of people speaking
fluent French, and he bounded over to them and seemed
to take comfort just hearing the language spoken conversationally. He
does hydrate constantly awake. He is almost never seated and
never still. If he knows he is doing twice the
recommended number of steps for a geriatric dog, I wouldn't
(31:37):
be a bit surprised. He will still flinch now and
again when I pick him up because he can't see
or really hear me coming. But he fell asleep in
my arms the other day. His heart is in great shape,
his metabolism is outstanding. His coat is rich and gorgeous
and soft. He always walks quickly closer to a trot.
He does zoomies. He moves. He eats a lot when
(31:59):
he wants, sometimes twice as much as the other. Sometimes
he'll just have a nibble for a day and outside
walk looking on the grass on the bench. He is
the happiest dog on earth, and with no teeth in
the way, his tongue now hangs out to his left.
And if it's not silly to call the equivalent of
a ninety year old man cute, it is the cutest
thing you have ever seen. And something else happens again
(32:23):
and again, and it happens Saturday. I'm out there with
Mene and Ted, and Ted has found girls on a
blanket and he's flirting with them, and mine is standing
back by me, just enjoying the breeze. And one of
the girls says, are they twins? And I have to
explain that Manee looks nice and young, but in fact
he is old enough to be Ted's great great great
(32:44):
great great great great great great grandfather. And every walk,
every single walk with Manee, ends with me feeling as
if it were the first time I had thought this,
And it ends with me saying to him out loud,
it is a privilege to walk with you. Less sentimentally,
(33:04):
he is a walking set of instructions. First off, dog
people do not be afraid of taking in a senior dog,
even one who may not seem to have much time left.
You might be surprised. They're also the instructions for dogs
and man alike. Keep moving, stay hydrated, don't eat if
(33:25):
you don't feel like it, keep trying to make yourself better.
That thing about you can't teach an old dog new tricks,
that's nonsense. Learn a second language. And most importantly, if
you have a dog and you think you understand the
importance of dental care. You do not. I did not.
After this thing with me, Nay, I brought the others
(33:46):
in for checkups. Turned out Rose had advanced periodontal disease.
We didn't know that there were no symptoms. They took
out eighteen teeth. When she recovered, all her allergies vanished. Hell.
After all this, I went to my dentist. I told
him Minet's story, and I said, can you take a
few of my teeth out? I'd like to be about
twenty five percent smarter. Unfortunately, I had had a one
(34:09):
hundred percent healthy check up for the first time in
my life. Happy anniversary Miday, thanks for finding me just
(34:33):
ahead the things we do for art or for money.
I had to explain this to a new doctor just
last Friday. Yeah, yeah, I did fall off a cliff
while a high rock, just like you do while making
a TV commercial. Things I promise not to tell next. First,
in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. Back
(34:55):
to the New York Pound and the Everlasting Nightmare. There
they found Troubadore wandering in Morningside Park, and Lord knows
what his story was. He's seven. He does not like
having his legs and back touched, and this suggests abuse
or something. But he still loves people, and he loves walks,
and while he does not interact well with other dogs,
he will do what you want in exchange for food
(35:17):
and some gentle affection. And of course, who's going to
adopt a seven year old, sixty pound dog. So he's
on the kill lists, so we need to get a
rescue to save him. So we need pledges to help
them do that, because you never know what joy each
dog might still enjoy and might still bring. You. Look
for Troubadour on my Twitter feeds and help if you
can with a pledge or a retweet. I thank you,
(35:40):
and Troubadour thanks you to the number one story on
the Countdown. And my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell. And it was this time of
year in nineteen ninety six when my agent called me
(36:02):
at ESPN. There's an ad agency in Santa Monica. They
just called me, would you like to do two commercials
for Boston Market? I answered, with profound indifference, Okay, would
you like to do two commercials for Boston Market? For
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I believe my next
words were, well, I can't do them today, but sure.
(36:23):
They faxed me the scripts. They're actually pretty funny, very
well done. I think you'll like them. I believe my
next next words were, if I don't have to kill
anybody in them, call them back and say yes and
get the money. Since the idea was these ads would
run on sports telecasts, most of them on ESPN, My
yes got back to management at ESPN pretty quickly. You
(36:44):
can't do these, one of the executives explained, dismissively. We
don't let anybody do commercials. I laughed. Every one of
us has done this is Sports center commercials. Some of
us have written that this is Sports center commercials. You
don't even give us days off for making them, let
alone give us money. This is money I don't have
to ask you for. The executive shook his head. Those
(37:06):
aren't commercials. Those are promotional announcements. They're in your contract.
Nobody here does commercials, I said. Chris Berman has done
a beer commercial in three out of the last five
Super Bowls. My commercial is just for food. Well, he's Berman,
I pointed out. I went to high school with him
and I was the star of their most popular program,
(37:28):
a little thing called Sports Center. TV guy had just
named US one of the top ten shows on TV
shows not sports shows. US and Seinfeld. Sorry, well, now
I got a little angry, which never happened to me
at ESPN, and I went to my ace in the hole.
My contract expires in like ten months, and you know
I intend to leave, and during those ten months, you're
(37:51):
going to pay me about two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So Boston Market is going to pay me two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars for two days work instead of
ten months work. Plus they're going to take me out
first class to LA for a couple of time, and
they're probably going to do some radio spots. And I'll
make another twenty five grant. So you're giving me a choice,
(38:11):
make say, two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in
like five days for them, or make two hundred and
sixty thousand dollars here between now and next September when
I'm planning and leaving. Anyway, if you make me choose
between those two, which do you expect me to choose?
The executive coughed, we'll get back to you. An hour later,
(38:32):
he got back to me by phone. Okay, we see
your point, but there's still two problems. We can't just
let everybody do commercials. I said, well, you know, why
don't you just let anybody who went to the high
school that Berman and I went to do commercials. He
did not laugh at that. Well, how about only your
regular weekday sports center anchors get to do commercials? There
was a grunt and a maybe. Then we got to
(38:55):
the gist of the real problem. Here's the real problem.
People on your show. They'll be resentful. And I said,
why will there be resisful? Because the production assistants are
expecting that they're going to get their own commercials too.
And I said, how about this, the day I'm out
there actually shooting the commercial, I will get Boston Market
(39:15):
to like cater dinner for the show staff, even if
I have to pay for it myself. There was a
long silence. Would management be included in that? And can
we get all the side dishes too? I swear to God,
so off I flew at the beginning of December, during
a winter that had gone frigid in October in Bristol, Connecticut,
(39:39):
and the next thing I knew I was on the
beach in Malibu at Leo Correo State Park. The crew
is complaining because it is raining lightly and only about
fifty five degrees. To me, fresh from the hinterlands and
having not been back to la since I had moved
out in nineteen ninety two, It's like I'm in Taiti.
(39:59):
And my agent was right. The scripts were funny and original.
They were as send up of the old Calvin klon
I Obsession perfume commercials. There are two extremely thin models
and they are filmed writhing in frustration on the beach
on the big rock outcroppings at Leo Corrio State Park.
She is supposed to say, emptiness, How can I fill
(40:21):
this empty void of emptiness? They are in black and white,
but I emerge from behind a rock or wherever I'm
in color. They are in black and white, and I
say when they say, don't know what to do about
this emptiness, I say, eat something. I then sell the sandwich.
Then it cuts to a shot of me walking them
(40:41):
down the beach with my arm over each of their shoulders,
telling them eating is a good thing. And who's wearing
cologne or who likes sports or other stupid things like
that for a quarter of a million dollars. Well, we
start this at eight am, and the producer and the
director John say to me and the two models and
the crew, look, this rain is just going to get
(41:03):
heavier as the day goes on. So what we want
to do is not take a break for lunch. We'll
just shoot until like two pm, and then you can
have lunch, or you can take your lunch with you,
and you'll all get paid for a full day. And
everybody agrees. The actress agrees, and she swears as she agrees.
The actress is named Una. Una is from Chicago, and
it will soon prove Una swears more than a long shoreman.
(41:28):
This blanking colt can blank my blanking blank. To be fair,
Una and the guy are dressed in Calvin Klein rags,
and they are there and they are from there, and
they are freezing while I am wearing a production company
brand new suit and shoes, and to me it feels
like it's Tahiti. We take a couple of hours where
(41:49):
we do all the shots where I emerge from behind
the rocks, or go around the rocks or over the rocks,
or I look over the rocks, and the director finally says, okay,
we got five good options. Let's set up for the
walk down the beach with your arms around each other's shoulders.
Now it's noon or twelve thirty, and as they move
the cameras and the rain starts to move from a
(42:10):
mist to like a light rain, two prop guys bring
out rakes and I'm sitting with the crew and I've
been asking them questions all morning in between takes about
how this is all being arranged and made and lit.
And I say, rakes, what do you need rakes for
in a commercial? And they say you'll see. And then
each time me and Una and the guy walk down
(42:32):
the beach and the director says, cut, we go back
to the starting point. Now out come two stage hands
with rakes and they rake the sand on the beach smooth,
and I say, oh, footprints. So each time I walk
down this damp beach with the rain just a little
harder than it was the take before, in my brand
(42:53):
new dress shoes, what I'm basically doing is polishing the
soles of these brand new shoes on damp sand. I mean,
by the time the director John says we are done,
these soles of the These shoes are so shiny. I
could go ice skating in these shoes. And John comes
over and he says, listen, we got another half an hour.
Can we go back and try a new way for
(43:14):
you to appear on the rocks? I mean, can you?
Can you climb rocks at all? And I say, yeah, actually,
I'm surprisingly good at it. You wouldn't think so, but
I can climb rocks. And he points to one rock
out cropping on the beach. Maybe it's eighteen twenty feet high,
and he says, try to climb up that and go
as high as you can. If there's nothing that'll support you,
we'll forget it. And I try, and sure enough I
(43:36):
get up near the top and there is a perfect
little shelf in the rock that I can comfortably stand on.
And the director points the camera up and he says, oh, damn,
the angle's too tough. I can't swing the camera down
fast enough for when you say eat something, so I
refocus on the models. It won't work. Is there anything
lower on the rock where you could stand? Can you
(43:56):
come down at all? And I said I think so.
I think I can come down a little bit. Well,
little did I know? Sure enough, maybe nine ten feet
from the beach. Up in the sky, there is another
little foothold on this rock outcropping. It is not big
enough for me to put both my feet on it.
(44:17):
But I say, if you don't mind me holding onto
the rock as I say, eat something, I can do
it from here. And the director says, okay, let's try it.
And I climb down the rock and he's moving the
camera and I put my left foot on this flat part,
which is nine or ten feet up from the beach,
and for a couple of seconds everything is fine. I'm good.
(44:38):
And that's when I feel that my left shoe, my
brand new left shoe, straight from the floor, shine catalog,
bright and shiny, and now having been polished by four
hours of walking up and down on a wet beach,
complete with two guys there to rake the beach and
make sure it is as shiny as it possibly can be,
(45:00):
my left shoe slipperier than a diamond is, and now
moving of its own accord. I'm holding. I'm doing a
good rock climbing job, but the shoe, the shoe is
not holding. Hey, I say, with some alarm, I'm about
to fall off. I hit the sand no more than
(45:22):
five seconds later, So that's about a sixteen foot drop
from my head to the beach. And for weeks, for
years still to this day, it has amazed me more
than anything else that happened. It has amazed me how
much went through my mind before I crash. In fact,
before I actually fell, I know, I did a quick
(45:44):
height calculation. Yeah, fifteen sixteen feet. I recognized that the
outcropping was so vertical that I was unlikely to hit
any of the rock on the way down. But just
the same I remember that the rocks continued under the sand. See.
I took two years of geology, and this was going
to be a hard landing. More amazingly than all that,
(46:07):
Though I had taken judo as a kid, I hated
every minute of judo. Nineteen sixty five nineteen sixty six,
so twenty six and twenty seven years before we shot
this commercial, I was in the studio, the Judo studio
in White Plains, New York, the day of the nineteen
(46:27):
sixty five Northeast blackout, and the only happy memory of
the entire Judo experience I had was one our instructor,
Bob Durocher, locked us in the dojo that had been
converted from a store that had a front door that
was set in several feet from the streets so they
could put display cases up. And now it's pitch black.
(46:48):
So he went out and got his Volkswagen Carmen Gia,
drove it up over the sidewalk into that set in
entryway of this converted storefront. He put his high beams on.
He flooded the dojo with enough light that we kids
could change out of our judo stuff and back into
our regular clothes and wait for our parents to come
get us. He did a great job. I didn't like
(47:10):
the judo so much, but his blackout operations practice was superb.
So now with all of this having gone through my
head in a second, I began to fall, and everything
else from that year of once a week judo classes
comes back to me. Relax. As you drop, the more
of your body that hits, the less you'll get hurt.
(47:31):
Hands protect the head. Drop like a sack of sand.
I did not hit the sand, per se. I kind
of splattered on my left side swap as I rolled
over onto my back and took a breath and sat up.
Of all people, Una was the first to race over
to me. You want some blank and tea? I said, no, thanks,
(47:54):
let me see if I'm dead. The grips tried to
help me to my feet, but I felt some very
sharp pain that which suggested we should slow down. The
problem was, though, even if I needed an ambulance, there
was no way to get one down to where we
were shooting. As that rock out cropping that I had
just fallen from suggested, I like to call it a
(48:14):
cliff every now and again. Leo Correo State Park had
a real cliff in it and a flight of stairs,
I mean one hundred steps two hundred steps up to
the Pacific Coast Highway and a park. Sure enough, I
was able to stand, but I couldn't move easily. Everything hurt.
So the two biggest members of the crew let me
drape my arms over their shoulders, exactly the way I
(48:37):
had draped my arms over their shoulders of the models
during the beach shot. I stopped for a second. Heya,
you sure you don't want to Frankin carry me up
the stairs, she said, with genuine sincerity. Now that's blank
and funny. Seemed to me like it took about a
(48:59):
month to get up those stairs. I assumed there would
be an ambulance waiting by this point. Instead was a
park ranger. This is a state park. I have to
see you first, then I have to call the fire department.
I said, well, this pain on my side here, this
feels like fire, but I don't think it's actually fire.
He called the fire department. They showed up, They assessed me.
(49:19):
They called the ambulance. At some point, probably when I
was being half dragged up the steps, something happened on
the impact side. If I now tried to lower my
left arm from way above my head, I got severe shooting,
burning pain from my left arm pit to about my
left knee. Cleverly I figured out not to do that.
(49:44):
Keep your left arm above your head and it won't hurt.
I use the restroom in the ranger station. There was
no blood, so no kidney damage. I'm okay. It does, however,
hurt and something could be broken. Now I go back outside,
my arm above my head like I'm signaling for a
cab on the ste eats of New York City. And
(50:06):
the ambulance shows up and the amts tell me to
get on there gurney, and I said, I can't. I
can't lower my arm unless I want excruciating pain. I
can't move my arm. I have to stay in this position,
looking like a flamenco dancer. But I said, listen, can
you lock the wheels on this gurney? And they said, sure,
(50:28):
we can, of course we can. And I said, just
lock the wheels and I'll just back up onto the
end of it and I'll fall backwards. And it worked,
and so with my left arm still extended over my head,
they loaded me into the ambulance. Apparently, when I fell
from that rock or cliff as I call it, it
looked like I had been shot. Fifty sixty people on
(50:50):
a commercial crew. The shooting day is over. They have
missed lunch. There is a very nice catered lunch sitting there.
And they told me later that everybody was so disturbed
by what happened to me that only three people even
took something to go and know. The director was not
filming as I fell. Sadly, so we hit every pothole
(51:12):
on Pacific Coast Highway on the trip from the beach
to the hospital. Oh ah, ooh, I call my agent
from my cell phone, she laughed. I called ESPN. Actually
to check on the catered dinner. Oh what's new? Oh,
I fell off a cliff shooting the commercial, they laughed.
And I'm lying there in the emergency room waiting for
X rays when my cell phone rings again and I
(51:34):
reach into my left pocket and I had the phone
halfway to my ear when I realized, my left side
does not hurt anymore at all. It does not hurt
at all. Well, that was a quick recovery. I sat up.
My left side felt fine, In fact, it felt great,
and a nurse came over and suggested I should lie
back down again. I said, why. Somehow I got better
(51:57):
on the trip from all the potholes and just lying here.
In fact, I feel great. Did you guys remove my
left leg while I wasn't looking. Did you replace it
with the left leg that I had when I was twelve?
Because I could hop back to Connecticut on my left leg.
Right now, just cancel the flight, she laughed. She said, no.
What I was feeling would be the morphine they gave
me so they could twist me around and take the
(52:18):
X rays they needed. And I said, please never ever
give me any more of that ever again. Thank you.
My Judo flashback as it turned out had done the job.
I had broken nothing. The er doctor complimented me on
my fall and he said I probably had six or
eight different sprains on my left side. It would hurt,
(52:39):
but it would keep getting better and I'd be able
to make my flight home the day after next. He
was completely right, although I now I found twenty five
years later that it's beginning to hurt like I just
fell off the cliff. Anyway, I went back to the hotel.
I ate well, I slept well, I managed to walk
around with the help of a cane, and I went
back for day two of the commercial shoot. This one
(53:00):
is in a mansion in Pasadena, a room teeming full
of UNA's lying on the floor. They're photographed through chandeliers.
They're lazy, rich kids who also need to be told
to eat something. I arrived and walked into applause from
the crew, and I delivered a well rehearsed line. And
now for my next trick, which is when the director
(53:22):
John came over and apologized, and he said he thought
this entry into shot for me would be way easier.
What I had to do is lie on the floor,
then sit up and deliver the line eat something. If
you can sit up, he said, that is, if you can't,
we can do something else. Can you sit up? And
I thought about it, and I rubbed my lower back,
(53:42):
and I said, based on the day so far, yeah,
I could, but probably only six or seven times. And
I said, while I can sit up, it's clear to
me one of those bad sprains was in the muscles
somewhere of my lower back. And if I try to
lay back down, I lose control. I'll just crash back
to the floor. That actually happened getting out of bed
(54:04):
this morning. So after each take, the same two guys
who had walked me up the stairs after I fell
at the beach gently held my arms and shoulders and
lowered me back to lying on the floor. We got
what we needed. I went back to the hotel. I
had dinner with some friends. The next day. I was
(54:24):
a little sore, but perfectly fine to get back on
the plane east, and sure enough, only time ever, I
had a west to east tailwind. The flight from lax
to Newark took three hours and forty eight minutes. We
traversed the country like a dart shot from a gun
or an Ulderman falling from a rock out cropping. Oh,
by the way, the commercial was an immediate success, unlike
(54:48):
any that Boston Market had ever done before. In those days,
they were packed each night for dinner at every location,
selling half chickens and full meals with potatoes and salads,
and they were getting an average of twelve dollars out
of every customer the day the place was empty. The
idea behind my commercials. They were designed to bring in
(55:10):
a lunch crowd a sandwich and a soda and a
bag of chips for four dollars. Soon they were swamped
at lunchtime. Boston Market ordered three more commercials, these to
be shot in a studio in New York. They offered
me fifty grand a day. An entire new career vista
was opening in front of me. I was, for a
week or two in early nineteen ninety seven the most
(55:33):
successful male commercial actor in the country. We shot those
three spots. I interrupted a grunge concert to shout eat
something at the band, and then I got carried off
by the crowd in a mosh pit. And I interrupted
a Romeo soap opera surgeon coming on to his nurse
by rising from the operating table to shout eat something.
(55:55):
And then we did something with ballplayers at the stadium
on Randall's Island, and I remember nothing of that because,
unlike the first two, they never edited the film, because
that's when it happened, their equivalent of falling off the cliff.
I will confess it had not occurred to me. Then again,
I did not own Boston Market. I did not work
(56:17):
for their marketing department. I did not run the ad
agency they employed. But none of them anticipated it either.
After the first few weeks of giddy glee about the
lunch crowds I had brought them, somebody noticed something unfortunate
and unexpected. Basically, for every four dollar lunch they were
now selling, they were selling one fewer twelve dollars dinner.
(56:39):
They had not gained any new customers. They had just
managed to get their customers to each spend eight dollars less.
These very well made, very memorable commercials worked very very well.
And the problem with that was each time they did work,
it cost Boston Market eight dollars. By the end of
(57:00):
nineteen ninety seven, Boston Market was something like nine hundred
million dollars in debt. It had filed for bankruptcy and
had been taken over by McDonald's. On the other hand,
I got my money, and in the twenty five years
plus since Boston Market has not once used a celebrity
endorser to try to sell their food. Oh and there
(57:22):
was one other positive outcome. I'm actually very proud of this.
The ad agency got the award in question. I did not,
so I don't know which group gave it to us,
but that eat Something campaign actually won an award because
somehow my shouting eat something at una and the other
(57:42):
way thin models, somehow that cut through to at least
some victims of eating disorders. The Boston Market Eat Something
ad campaign for which I fell off a cliff, okay,
a rock out cropping for which I fell off a
rock outcropping got an award from a national Bolimia association.
(58:17):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studio at
the world headquarters of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillips Shanelle guitarist based on drums by Brian Ray,
(58:37):
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad.
Everything else is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for
(58:59):
this the eight hundred and eighty eighth day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elect to government
of the United States. Don't forget. We're on a roll.
Keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Arraignment Day tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(59:31):
with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Donald
Trump has put the lives of tens of thousands of
American servicemen and women at risk all around the world
(00:28):
by stealing those documents. Donald Trump does not give a
damn if American troops live or die. Donald Trump hates
the troops. So why aren't we hearing that. It is
not the number of Republicans and Trump cultists who are
prostituting themselves for Trump that shocks. It is the number
(00:50):
who aren't. His Former Attorney General William Barr the quote,
you know, if even half of it is true, then
he's toast. Former US attorney and Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy.
If they can prove half of it, he's toast. I
sense an image theme New Hampshire Governor John Sanunu. If
even half of this stuff is true, he's in real
trouble and it's self inflicted. The National Review the Trump
(01:14):
indictment is damning. It is impossible not to be appalled.
Jonathan Turley Wait, Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Turley. It is an
extremely damning indictment. Tim PARLATORI, who was still a Trump
attorney last month, it appears to be a pretty strong indictment.
Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who were still trump attorney's
(01:35):
last Friday, they quit, and Scott Jennings, the rabid, cartoonish
CNN conservative. I seriously doubt you're going to hear a
serious person say, oh, well, this is fine. And then
Jennings hit a point which in normal times would have
(01:56):
been enough for the Republicans to have already unanimously and
irrevocably thrown Trump overboard for all time. Quote. If you
had a son or a daughter who was serving in
a hostile place and you thought maybe their information was
in a document that could have been picked off the
friggin floor, do you know how this could impact a
(02:18):
military family. The thing is, when you're commander in chief,
you have this responsibility to the military and the people
who serve. It's sort of offensive to me, actually, that
we would be so cavalier with the information that could
possibly put our people in jeopardy. And if there is
(02:38):
anything more shocking than the number of anti Trump statements,
especially from his supporters and from his lawyers, it is
the fact that in normal times the Democrats would have
taken the essence of Scott Jennings's point, Trump put the
lives of thousands of American servicemen and women at risk,
and they would have hung that fact around the next
of not just Trump and everybody close to him, but
(03:00):
around the next of every Republican who did not condemn him,
and the Democrats be screaming, why does Donald Trump hate
the troops? And why does Ron Desantus hate the troops?
And why does Lindsey Graham hate the troops? And if
the point itself were not decisive enough, the Democrats could
follow that up with a new CBS News poll that
asks is there a national security risk if Trump kept
(03:22):
nuclear and military documents? And the answer was yes, Trump
put our national security at risk, Yes, from thirty eight
percent of Republicans. And why aren't we hearing Democrats say that?
Why in the chorus of the sheep bleeding about Trump's
(03:43):
rights to do this and Hillary Clinton that and weaponization everything.
Why are virtually all of the publicly dissenting voices Republicans?
Where are the Democrats? Where are the Democrats talking about
the grave risk Trump was and is to national security
(04:06):
that thirty eight percent of Republicans agree with Democrats on
Where are the Democrats demanding that he will be president
again only over their dead bodies. Where are the Democrats saying, No,
matter how this trial turns out, Trump definitely put American
troops at risk for the sake of his ego, and
he may have gotten American troops killed for all we know,
and he may still get American troops killed tomorrow. Where
(04:28):
is the outrage? Axios is reporting the Democratic National Committee
asked Democrats in the Congress to no comment the indictment.
The president is no commenting the indictment. The entire hierarchy
of the Democratic Party is staying off stage because of
(04:48):
some kind of nonsensical nineteen seventy five alive notion that
to speak out against Trump's criminality and treachery and treason
is to somehow grasp a third rail. That because if
you speak up for truth and honesty and Americanism and
you are a politician, you have somehow politicized truth and
(05:11):
honesty and Americanism. Mister President, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Leadership Democrats.
We elected you to stand up for the rule of law.
We elected you to defeat Trump and destroy Trump and
jail whatever was left of Trump. We expect you to
(05:31):
speak up for justice, and we want you to demonize
the Republicans, and we demand that you cut up Jim
Jordan and a last defenic and Mike Pence and these
other disloyal, opportunistic, amoral bastards, because there are only Republicans
saying anything right now, and all of you Democrats hiding
(05:52):
in the back have completely lost the plot of America.
Somewhere somebody in the White House to whom Joe Biden listens,
thinks that to speak is to authenticate the Republican claim
that this is all just to keep Trump from the
(06:12):
White House. God damn it, it is just to keep
Trump from the White House. Traitors do not belong in
the White House. And if Democrats you somehow think that
your silence is going to make Trump voters or Republican
(06:36):
apologists or anybody else, think, oh we're wrong, this isn't political.
We feel great shame. We must mend our ways. We
must turn the party over to the real future of
the twenty first century. Gop Asa Hutchinson, I have bad
news for you. They are not fleeing from Trump. They
(06:57):
are not going to be reasonable, They are not suddenly
going to negotiate. They are not acting in good faith now,
and they are not going to see your silence is
anything but squalid weakness, and to reinforce to their mob
and their cult that the reason Democrats are silent is
that Democrats know this is all political, and the Democrats'
silence is in fact the Democrats guilt. President Biden, you
(07:19):
are not having a shot with Ronald Reagan and Tip
O'Neil tonight. They are dead. That Republican Party is as
dead as they are, and the people who have seized
the brand name Republican Party now recognize that this is
an existential fight for both the soul of and control
(07:42):
of this nation. Either the Democrats and democracy prevail or
the Republicans and fascism will it cannot be both? And
standing back and hoping that your silence conveys the gravity
of the charges, is it best naive and at worst irresponsible.
(08:02):
Trump has been not to the floor by these indictments,
and you do not need every Republican leader and every
Republican voter to back away from him in order to
defeat the plague that is MAGA. One or two percent
of Republicans breaking with that cult for good is enough
(08:25):
to give the Democrats the House, the Senate, and the
White House again next year. But you are not going
to win them over with dignified quiet scorn. The Republicans
are a party of bullies, consumed by murderous and violent fantasies.
Trump is metaphorically on the ground. Now is the time
to metaphorically destroy his reputation with just enough Republicans, only
(08:49):
just enough Republicans, and to do so by using metaphorical
baseball bats. I had to do a two day deposition
in my lawsuit after al Gore and his business partner
tried to stiff me on the rest of my contract
(09:09):
once they had finally arranged to sell Current TV to
Al Jazeera. My lawyers gave me a thousand pieces of
great advice, but the best of them was this. Their
lawyers are going to ask you to read some of
your own emails out loud, onto the record, and other
statements onto the record. Do not explain them, do not
(09:29):
shrink from them, do not mumble them, do not but them.
Proclaim them as proudly as if they were the greatest
thing you ever did or said. Sure enough, there came
the hour on the second day, I think, where they
handed me one of my one paragraph emails to my agent,
(09:52):
fifty words, perhaps all about Gore's partner, and half of
them obscenities. The nicest part was when I called him
a little jimminy cricket pest bastard. I read that onto
the record like I was reading Shakespeare. Trump is the
(10:13):
worst political figure in American history. Trump is the worst
criminal in American history. Trump is the worst individual threat
to representative government in American history. And now he's been
indicted thirty seven counts, and for all we know, thirty
seven more counts to come about January sixth and thirty
(10:34):
seven more counts to come about, bilking money out of
his cult. We have hundreds of miles to go, but
we have started down this road. Democrats, stop shining from
the reality this scumbag should never live another day free
in his life. Proclaim it, exult in it for once.
It is not just the ethical power that is in
(10:56):
your hands. You have the hammer of justice. Take the
hammer of justice and use it to hit Trump and
everybody who lies for him, and God damn it. Sing
the national anthem while you do it, because this is
where we are. Democrats are being quiet, because that's exactly
(11:20):
the right play during a time in which the only
thing Republicans understand is noise. Politico asked Trump about taking
a plea deal that he said he did not anticipate
doing so, but quote, he left open the possibility of
doing so. Quote where they pay me some damages. That's
(11:42):
what he thinks a plea deal is in this, Trump said,
And you know, this is how he actually thinks that
after the indictment, America went to sleep with tears in
its eyes. And I thought, yeah, tears of laughter. The
only thing missing from this string of illogic with which
he still manages to keep his sucker's hypnotized like cats
(12:05):
jumping at feathers, is the argument that the documents were
secure at marri Lago, because who would ever be willing
to go inside Donald Trump's bathroom? And while the good
guys stay silent, Trump is still dog whistling, still hoping
to push the button of stochastic terrorism about Miami. In
a radio interview with Roger Stone yesterday, quote, we need
(12:28):
strength at this point, and everyone is afraid to do anything.
They're afraid to talk, and they have to go out
and they have to protest peacefully. It sounds as if
he is implying that it's a shame they have to
protest peacefully. Our country has to protest, and he is
dog whistling for somebody to physically attack the special counsel
and his wife. Also to stone quote Jack Smith, he's
(12:51):
a deranged person. His wife hates me more than he does.
The wife hates Trump more than any human being who's
ever lived. Unquote, to which I say, hold my beer.
Three other pieces of business on indictment and arraignment Eve one.
(13:11):
Stuart Rhodes, the Oathkeeper's gun safety instructor who allegedly shot
out his own eye, called into a right wing show
from prison because you can his reaction to the Trump
document indictments. Wait until you see Trump get indicted for
January sixth for the same thing Rhodes and the others
were convicted over for January sixth. Rhodes expects Trump to
(13:34):
be indicted for conspiracy to prevent Congress from discharging its duties,
conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and seditious conspiracy. From
your mouth to God's ears, Elmer two, it ain't a
purp walk, but apparently at the arraignment tomorrow afternoon. This
will be the full criminal experience for Donnie Trump should
(13:56):
be walked through and arraigned in a no frills and
very unfriendly Miami Federal courthouse. He should be fingerprinted, and
he should have a mug shot taken. And three the
photo of the judge assigned to this case. The Trump
appointee will already tried to derail this last year with
the special Master nonsense. The photo of Aileen Cannon in
(14:19):
her glasses and a Team Trump hat and Maga face paint.
That is not Eileen Cannon. That is somebody at a
twenty twenty Trump rally somewhere with similar glasses, not her.
Do not tweet that photo repeating it's not her. So
(14:39):
since we're going to live like this for a while,
Trump indicted, Trump arragned, Trump indicted again, Trump arraigned again,
let's at least enjoy a few jokes as they pop up.
Lauren Windsor, the journalist noted the photo of the boxes
in Trump's bathroom and observed violation of the spon Edge Act,
(15:02):
and from animator Matt Wells, the this parody of the
indictment and the Jack Smith indictment form, and the whole
borderline unbelievable nature of Trump's perfidy. I will quote it
in full, and if you don't get it, I will
not explain it. As they say, if you know, you
know Quote thirty three. On July twenty one, twenty twenty one,
(15:23):
when he was no longer president, Trump gave an interview
in his office at the Bedminster Club to a writer
and a publisher in connection with a then forthcoming book.
In the recorded statement, Trump stated that once reinstated as president,
he had plans to build a freeway through the Los
Angeles neighborhood toon Town by any means, even if it
meant flooding the Burrow with chemical warfare obtained from the
(15:46):
Department of Defense. The toxic substance was, in Trump's words,
the only way to kill a tune, and made up
a combination of turpentine, acetone, and benzene. This dangerous compound
is commonly colloquially referred to by the DoD as the
dip okay. I changed my mind if you did not
(16:13):
recognize that, it's basically the plot of the movie Who
Framed Roger Rabbit. Also of interest today, the Glenn Beck
provocateur who decided to menace and mock basketball as Brittany
Grinder in the Dallas airport. We are missing the leads
story here. She restrained herself, she did not touch him,
(16:33):
and thus he is still alive today. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Old woman slight
(16:54):
format shakeup today postscripts to the news next later. So
I had a physical Friday with a new doctor and
he said, what did you do to yourself years ago?
Did you fall off a cliff or something? And I said,
as I always have to say, yeah, kind of while
I was making a TV commercial, like everybody does things,
I promised not to tell. Coming up first, the Daily
round Up, the Missus grants Moron's undunny Kruger effect specimens
(17:16):
who constitute today's worst persons of the world. I did
not plan this to be all sports. It just turned
out that way. The Bronze to this functioning idiot Alex Stein,
who works for Glenn Beck. This Stein decided to confront
the basketball player Britney Griner as she and her team,
the Phoenix Mercury, walked through the airport in Dallas. She
(17:38):
is still trying to readjust after months in a Russian prison,
as a hostage, so this moron Stein thought it would
be funny to record himself asking her if she thought
the exchange that brought her home in exchange for armsdealer
Victor Boot was fair since she was a killer on
the court, but he was a real killer. And then
he asked if she'd had sex with Vladimir Putin. Now
(17:59):
I appreciate that Glenn Beck is himself still recovering from
his remarkable drug addiction, and that he's an amoral buffoon
to begin with, but honestly, Beck, you have to save
this guy Stein for his own good, Fire him or
educate him, because if Britney Grinder was not a pro
who could and did restrain herself, she could have just
pushed him out of the way and he would be
(18:19):
in a coma right now. Speaking of which, the runner up,
Connor McGregor also not exactly mister stability. McGregor did a
bit during the fourth game of the NBA Finals in
which he was supposed to pretend to fight with the
Miami Heat mascot Bernie, But of course McGregor has no
control over himself, so when it came time to pretend
to throw hands, he knocked Bernie out with one real punch.
(18:44):
They took the guy in the Bernie suit to the er.
After treatment, they say Bernie will be back for Game
five tonight, which could make him the only member of
the Heat to actually show up for all five games
of the NBA Finals. Moving on, but the winner. Brian Kilmead,
who is I guess the comic relief on Fox's morning
show kill Mead has said some amazingly stupid things over
(19:08):
the years. He once tried to criticize interracial marriage by saying,
we keep marrying other species, but honestly, this may be
the worst. He was talking about Lionel Messi, the soccer
star coming to the United States to play in Major
League Soccer here and kill mea bemoaned the fact that
the great Messi does not speak English and does not
seem inclined to learn English, and he compared that to
(19:30):
another famous international star who came to Major League Soccer,
David Beckham two thousand and seven. No, seriously, kill Mead said,
quote one thing about David Beckham. He learned to speak
English for US only with an accent when he came
at thirty two years old. This was not a joke,
This was not a gag. This was not hyperbole. Brian
(19:52):
Kilmead thinks Beckham, born in London in nineteen seventy five,
had to learn English when he came to America. Now
this is already Hall of Fame level stupid. Before you
real that. Before he went to Fox quote news unquote,
Brian Killmead was a sportscaster, and not just a sportscaster.
(20:15):
His job the year before he went to Fox, Brian
Kilmead was a soccer reporter for coverage of games of
Major League Soccer. Brian, Yeah, but when are you gonna
learn English? Brian kill Mead two days worst person in
the English speaking word. Post scripts to the news, some headlines,
(20:53):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline my house. Mine
arrived a year ago yesterday. Now, I know what you're thinking.
He's fine. He's in the other rooms sleeping right now.
Mine is nearly sixteen years old, and late last spring
he was surrendered to American Maltese Association Rescue and my
friend who runs that here texted rhetorically to me, who
(21:15):
is going to adopt a nearly fifteen year old dog
with dementia? My reply was the hand up emoji. I
told you parts of my story with dogs before. I
loved them as a kid, but I was allergic and
Mom was even more allergic, and for forty years the
allergists said that whole hypoallergenic dog thing, it's hit and miss.
A lot of hearts get broken, a lot of dogs
(21:37):
get returned. And then a former girlfriend needed what she
called a puppy fix because her family dog was dying,
and I finally let her talk me into doing something
her dozen predecessors never could to go in with her
to the pet shop, and within minutes I was in love,
and Stevie adopted me, And inside of a month I
was calling all my dog owning friends and saying to them,
(21:59):
why didn't you tell me this was the meaning of life,
and concluding that my first fifty three years on this
earth had been a waste of time. And parenthetically, Stevie
is sitting on the floor at my feet as I
record this. Soon the girlfriend and I got Holly and
Milo for her parents, and then we got Rose so
Stevie would have a sister, and then we split up
(22:20):
and I kept the dog, so that was a win
win win, And one day I met the Maltese rescue
leader in a pet coo here and I volunteered to
become a foster if they needed one, And before I
knew it, she asked me to take a three month
old with a heart so bad that it was not
clear that he would live past ten months. Well, happily,
the bets who said they had never seen what was
(22:41):
wrong with his heart were compensated for in this equation
by the cardiologist at the animal medical center, who said
that was understandable as a diagnosis, but he operated on
this problem like three times a month, and so instead
of heartbreak. Now Ted is five and a half years
old nearly and the biggest issue with him is he
is the most amazing flirt I have ever seen from
(23:03):
any species. Brian Kilmead. If we go to the park
and there are girls on a blanket, he is going in.
It happened four times on the walk day before yesterday. Also,
Ted is also at my feet here sitting next to Stevie.
In twenty twenty one, it was Mishu whose untreatable heart
disease really was untreatable. Michu had an extraordinarily happy life,
(23:26):
but an extraordinarily brief one, and after he died another
litter produced two of his brothers, and I brought them
in one after the other to see if they could
take his place in my brood. And they were nuts,
both of them, great dogs, but absolute alphas. They bit everybody,
including me, And so by summer last year I had
a spot open. I knew I could take care of
(23:47):
four dogs at once. I had done it, And anyway,
I didn't have a dog until I was fifty three.
I'm making up for lost time. Mine was one of
three maltesees whose human was a French teacher. Here mine
is in fact a French word translating as kitty, which
must have caused him considerable confusion. In any event, sometime
(24:08):
after Mine's tenth birthday, his human, who I believe was
around eighty five, began to decline rapidly. For the last
few years, she was usually able to feed the dogs,
but little else. Finally she went to the hospital, having
made no plans for the dogs, and when she did
not come back from the hospital, a caring neighbor did
what he could for the last survivor, Mine. He fed him,
(24:30):
he cleaned him, he walked him now and again. He
made preparations to adopt him. And then he got a
promotion that required frequent travel, and so with great reluctance,
he contacted the rescue organization. And that is how I
came to raise my hand at a year ago. Yesterday,
we met near Central Park and I saw mine, a
gaunt but active, healthy looking dog. One of his eyes
(24:52):
was cloudy, but he had a strong, confident gait and
absolutely no interaction with humans whatsoever. I picked him up
and he flinched. I sat him on my lap and
he jumped off. And understand and almost all dogs either
instinctively warm to human touch or learn its value quickly.
But the Maltese will respond to you sitting down by saying,
(25:13):
I see you have made me a lap. I will
now claim this map forever. The only true conflict I
have ever witnessed among my crowd is the territorial brawl
over me. I have had four Malteses squeeze their way
onto my seated form in such a jigsaw like way
that they can each claim they are sitting in my
(25:34):
lap partially. Mine just wasn't present. He'll just be another
mouth to feed, I was told. I was also told
he was pad trained. This turned out to be correct.
He knows where to go. Sometimes he's standing on the
edge of the pad, pointed the wrong way, but still
not bad all things considered. He was quiet, he was
(25:58):
self contained. This turned out to be too correct. He was,
in fact when he got here a roomba. He walked constantly.
He established one path through the rooms of my place,
and he followed it basically inch by inch, for up
to an hour at a time. He ate well, he
slept well. I never heard a sound out of him.
(26:19):
Mostly he wandered, wandered along that one path. And what
he was looking for I don't know. But that path
ended at one window that went ceiling to floor, and
he stared out that window, and then he would do
that walk again. So I hesitantly I took him out
to the park one night, just me and him, to
(26:40):
see what would happen. And immediately I recognize an extraordinary difference.
Minee was outside and mine was serene, and he was
no longer wandering. He sat in the grass and he
turned his face to the breeze, and it was the
surest sign he was still in there somewhere. Well. My
vet checked him over that week and said, look, his
(27:02):
teeth are uniformly tear. They will probably all have to
come out, but some of them are in such bad
shape that this is urgent. That infection could spread to
his nose, to his brains, anywhere in his body. And
they're so bad. Some of these teeth are going to
come out with just a little anesthetic. I can take
(27:23):
them out right now, she said, and she did, And honestly,
the sound he made was so heartrending. It was the
only time in ten and a half years with dogs
that I could not bear it, and I had to
leave the room. That noise was still ringing in my
ear when Minee woke up about three hours later from
the anesthetic, and he came over and stared at me.
I mean, this was a excuse me, where the hell
(27:45):
am I stare? Within a day, mine was barking at
me when he was hungry, he was sniffing the other dogs.
Within a week, he was joining the group meal at
the regular hours, and knew instinctively when those hours were
it wasn't dementia, it was teeth. Minee got all of
his teeth taken out about a month later, and soon
when we would go outside, he would sit on the
(28:07):
grass or in my arms in complete contentment and walking.
It turned out he was the best walker I have
ever seen, let alone had he knew the entire deal.
If I slowed down, he slowed down. If I began
to stop, he would stop before I did. And if
he started up again and I needed him to stop,
(28:28):
I would just say stop and he would or if
I started up. All I had to do after I
realized his first human must have trained him in French, right,
all I had to do was say sweebe mine, and
off he would go. Every meeting with another dog was
a respectful, silent sniff. He let strange humans pet him,
(28:48):
and now he goes on virtually every walk I take,
because he immediately sinks up with me, or with me
and Stevie, or with me and Rose, or with me
and Ted. It was the teeth. There was so much
infection that basically all he could do was deal with
it and the pain all his tiny body could handle.
Once his teeth were gone, he began to eat his
(29:09):
soft food lustily. In the year he's been here, he's
gone from a two skinny five pounds to a robust eight.
He still eats the hard treats too. A Maltese is
a really strong jaw. He gums them, though he does
prefer them ground up in a blender, and why not.
But about a month after the teeth came out, I
saw him do something that made my jaw drop. And
(29:29):
I've seen him do it since. He took one of
the treats over to his water bowl and he dropped
it in the water bowl, and then he did his
jog around the house. If he's awake, he's moving. And
he came back to the water bowl and he stuck
his face in the water bowl and pulled out the
now saggy treat and he put it in his mouth
and sucked on it like a cough drop. It wasn't dementia,
(29:51):
it was the teeth. Don't get me wrong here. That
saw about a year for a dog is seven years
for a person. Stuff that's nonsense. But at nearly sixteen
minut is about the equivalent of a man who is
somewhere between a ninety years old. He forgets stuff. He accelerates,
like when he's right next to the wall he has
(30:12):
a processing problem. You can be right in front of
him and you can say hello, or you reach out
to pet him, and he will literally stop, spread out
his four legs like he's in a cartoon, and look
behind him. He's also a master of the double take.
But otherwise he is really smart and resourceful. And by
accident I found a bed that he loves, like it
was the womb. And he will sleep twelve hours or
(30:34):
fourteen hours some days and get up and have some water,
come out and pee. But now he will get up
and come out and talk to me in a very
sweet voice for a few moments, and then he'll go
back and nap for another couple of hours. And he
will still bark when he's hungry. And the other day
I gave him a plate of the ground up treats,
and I swear he stopped, he sniffed them, and he said, oh,
(30:55):
just like that, and he happily devoured them bluntly. I
would pay one thousand dollars ten thousand dollars, I don't
know how much to get a full story of Minet's
life before he arrived here. The Manet documentary that understanding
French thing is absolutely legit. On one walk last winter,
(31:16):
we encountered no fewer than three groups of people speaking
fluent French, and he bounded over to them and seemed
to take comfort just hearing the language spoken conversationally. He
does hydrate constantly awake. He is almost never seated and
never still. If he knows he is doing twice the
recommended number of steps for a geriatric dog, I wouldn't
(31:37):
be a bit surprised. He will still flinch now and
again when I pick him up because he can't see
or really hear me coming. But he fell asleep in
my arms the other day. His heart is in great shape,
his metabolism is outstanding. His coat is rich and gorgeous
and soft. He always walks quickly closer to a trot.
He does zoomies. He moves. He eats a lot when
(31:59):
he wants, sometimes twice as much as the other. Sometimes
he'll just have a nibble for a day and outside
walk looking on the grass on the bench. He is
the happiest dog on earth, and with no teeth in
the way, his tongue now hangs out to his left.
And if it's not silly to call the equivalent of
a ninety year old man cute, it is the cutest
thing you have ever seen. And something else happens again
(32:23):
and again, and it happens Saturday. I'm out there with
Mene and Ted, and Ted has found girls on a
blanket and he's flirting with them, and mine is standing
back by me, just enjoying the breeze. And one of
the girls says, are they twins? And I have to
explain that Manee looks nice and young, but in fact
he is old enough to be Ted's great great great
(32:44):
great great great great great great grandfather. And every walk,
every single walk with Manee, ends with me feeling as
if it were the first time I had thought this,
And it ends with me saying to him out loud,
it is a privilege to walk with you. Less sentimentally,
(33:04):
he is a walking set of instructions. First off, dog
people do not be afraid of taking in a senior dog,
even one who may not seem to have much time left.
You might be surprised. They're also the instructions for dogs
and man alike. Keep moving, stay hydrated, don't eat if
(33:25):
you don't feel like it, keep trying to make yourself better.
That thing about you can't teach an old dog new tricks,
that's nonsense. Learn a second language. And most importantly, if
you have a dog and you think you understand the
importance of dental care. You do not. I did not.
After this thing with me, Nay, I brought the others
(33:46):
in for checkups. Turned out Rose had advanced periodontal disease.
We didn't know that there were no symptoms. They took
out eighteen teeth. When she recovered, all her allergies vanished. Hell.
After all this, I went to my dentist. I told
him Minet's story, and I said, can you take a
few of my teeth out? I'd like to be about
twenty five percent smarter. Unfortunately, I had had a one
(34:09):
hundred percent healthy check up for the first time in
my life. Happy anniversary Miday, thanks for finding me just
(34:33):
ahead the things we do for art or for money.
I had to explain this to a new doctor just
last Friday. Yeah, yeah, I did fall off a cliff
while a high rock, just like you do while making
a TV commercial. Things I promise not to tell next. First,
in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. Back
(34:55):
to the New York Pound and the Everlasting Nightmare. There
they found Troubadore wandering in Morningside Park, and Lord knows
what his story was. He's seven. He does not like
having his legs and back touched, and this suggests abuse
or something. But he still loves people, and he loves walks,
and while he does not interact well with other dogs,
he will do what you want in exchange for food
(35:17):
and some gentle affection. And of course, who's going to
adopt a seven year old, sixty pound dog. So he's
on the kill lists, so we need to get a
rescue to save him. So we need pledges to help
them do that, because you never know what joy each
dog might still enjoy and might still bring. You. Look
for Troubadour on my Twitter feeds and help if you
can with a pledge or a retweet. I thank you,
(35:40):
and Troubadour thanks you to the number one story on
the Countdown. And my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell. And it was this time of
year in nineteen ninety six when my agent called me
(36:02):
at ESPN. There's an ad agency in Santa Monica. They
just called me, would you like to do two commercials
for Boston Market? I answered, with profound indifference, Okay, would
you like to do two commercials for Boston Market? For
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I believe my next
words were, well, I can't do them today, but sure.
(36:23):
They faxed me the scripts. They're actually pretty funny, very
well done. I think you'll like them. I believe my
next next words were, if I don't have to kill
anybody in them, call them back and say yes and
get the money. Since the idea was these ads would
run on sports telecasts, most of them on ESPN, My
yes got back to management at ESPN pretty quickly. You
(36:44):
can't do these, one of the executives explained, dismissively. We
don't let anybody do commercials. I laughed. Every one of
us has done this is Sports center commercials. Some of
us have written that this is Sports center commercials. You
don't even give us days off for making them, let
alone give us money. This is money I don't have
to ask you for. The executive shook his head. Those
(37:06):
aren't commercials. Those are promotional announcements. They're in your contract.
Nobody here does commercials, I said. Chris Berman has done
a beer commercial in three out of the last five
Super Bowls. My commercial is just for food. Well, he's Berman,
I pointed out. I went to high school with him
and I was the star of their most popular program,
(37:28):
a little thing called Sports Center. TV guy had just
named US one of the top ten shows on TV
shows not sports shows. US and Seinfeld. Sorry, well, now
I got a little angry, which never happened to me
at ESPN, and I went to my ace in the hole.
My contract expires in like ten months, and you know
I intend to leave, and during those ten months, you're
(37:51):
going to pay me about two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So Boston Market is going to pay me two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars for two days work instead of
ten months work. Plus they're going to take me out
first class to LA for a couple of time, and
they're probably going to do some radio spots. And I'll
make another twenty five grant. So you're giving me a choice,
(38:11):
make say, two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in
like five days for them, or make two hundred and
sixty thousand dollars here between now and next September when
I'm planning and leaving. Anyway, if you make me choose
between those two, which do you expect me to choose?
The executive coughed, we'll get back to you. An hour later,
(38:32):
he got back to me by phone. Okay, we see
your point, but there's still two problems. We can't just
let everybody do commercials. I said, well, you know, why
don't you just let anybody who went to the high
school that Berman and I went to do commercials. He
did not laugh at that. Well, how about only your
regular weekday sports center anchors get to do commercials? There
was a grunt and a maybe. Then we got to
(38:55):
the gist of the real problem. Here's the real problem.
People on your show. They'll be resentful. And I said,
why will there be resisful? Because the production assistants are
expecting that they're going to get their own commercials too.
And I said, how about this, the day I'm out
there actually shooting the commercial, I will get Boston Market
(39:15):
to like cater dinner for the show staff, even if
I have to pay for it myself. There was a
long silence. Would management be included in that? And can
we get all the side dishes too? I swear to God,
so off I flew at the beginning of December, during
a winter that had gone frigid in October in Bristol, Connecticut,
(39:39):
and the next thing I knew I was on the
beach in Malibu at Leo Correo State Park. The crew
is complaining because it is raining lightly and only about
fifty five degrees. To me, fresh from the hinterlands and
having not been back to la since I had moved
out in nineteen ninety two, It's like I'm in Taiti.
(39:59):
And my agent was right. The scripts were funny and original.
They were as send up of the old Calvin klon
I Obsession perfume commercials. There are two extremely thin models
and they are filmed writhing in frustration on the beach
on the big rock outcroppings at Leo Corrio State Park.
She is supposed to say, emptiness, How can I fill
(40:21):
this empty void of emptiness? They are in black and white,
but I emerge from behind a rock or wherever I'm
in color. They are in black and white, and I
say when they say, don't know what to do about
this emptiness, I say, eat something. I then sell the sandwich.
Then it cuts to a shot of me walking them
(40:41):
down the beach with my arm over each of their shoulders,
telling them eating is a good thing. And who's wearing
cologne or who likes sports or other stupid things like
that for a quarter of a million dollars. Well, we
start this at eight am, and the producer and the
director John say to me and the two models and
the crew, look, this rain is just going to get
(41:03):
heavier as the day goes on. So what we want
to do is not take a break for lunch. We'll
just shoot until like two pm, and then you can
have lunch, or you can take your lunch with you,
and you'll all get paid for a full day. And
everybody agrees. The actress agrees, and she swears as she agrees.
The actress is named Una. Una is from Chicago, and
it will soon prove Una swears more than a long shoreman.
(41:28):
This blanking colt can blank my blanking blank. To be fair,
Una and the guy are dressed in Calvin Klein rags,
and they are there and they are from there, and
they are freezing while I am wearing a production company
brand new suit and shoes, and to me it feels
like it's Tahiti. We take a couple of hours where
(41:49):
we do all the shots where I emerge from behind
the rocks, or go around the rocks or over the rocks,
or I look over the rocks, and the director finally says, okay,
we got five good options. Let's set up for the
walk down the beach with your arms around each other's shoulders.
Now it's noon or twelve thirty, and as they move
the cameras and the rain starts to move from a
(42:10):
mist to like a light rain, two prop guys bring
out rakes and I'm sitting with the crew and I've
been asking them questions all morning in between takes about
how this is all being arranged and made and lit.
And I say, rakes, what do you need rakes for
in a commercial? And they say you'll see. And then
each time me and Una and the guy walk down
(42:32):
the beach and the director says, cut, we go back
to the starting point. Now out come two stage hands
with rakes and they rake the sand on the beach smooth,
and I say, oh, footprints. So each time I walk
down this damp beach with the rain just a little
harder than it was the take before, in my brand
(42:53):
new dress shoes, what I'm basically doing is polishing the
soles of these brand new shoes on damp sand. I mean,
by the time the director John says we are done,
these soles of the These shoes are so shiny. I
could go ice skating in these shoes. And John comes
over and he says, listen, we got another half an hour.
Can we go back and try a new way for
(43:14):
you to appear on the rocks? I mean, can you?
Can you climb rocks at all? And I say, yeah, actually,
I'm surprisingly good at it. You wouldn't think so, but
I can climb rocks. And he points to one rock
out cropping on the beach. Maybe it's eighteen twenty feet high,
and he says, try to climb up that and go
as high as you can. If there's nothing that'll support you,
we'll forget it. And I try, and sure enough I
(43:36):
get up near the top and there is a perfect
little shelf in the rock that I can comfortably stand on.
And the director points the camera up and he says, oh, damn,
the angle's too tough. I can't swing the camera down
fast enough for when you say eat something, so I
refocus on the models. It won't work. Is there anything
lower on the rock where you could stand? Can you
(43:56):
come down at all? And I said I think so.
I think I can come down a little bit. Well,
little did I know? Sure enough, maybe nine ten feet
from the beach. Up in the sky, there is another
little foothold on this rock outcropping. It is not big
enough for me to put both my feet on it.
(44:17):
But I say, if you don't mind me holding onto
the rock as I say, eat something, I can do
it from here. And the director says, okay, let's try it.
And I climb down the rock and he's moving the
camera and I put my left foot on this flat part,
which is nine or ten feet up from the beach,
and for a couple of seconds everything is fine. I'm good.
(44:38):
And that's when I feel that my left shoe, my
brand new left shoe, straight from the floor, shine catalog,
bright and shiny, and now having been polished by four
hours of walking up and down on a wet beach,
complete with two guys there to rake the beach and
make sure it is as shiny as it possibly can be,
(45:00):
my left shoe slipperier than a diamond is, and now
moving of its own accord. I'm holding. I'm doing a
good rock climbing job, but the shoe, the shoe is
not holding. Hey, I say, with some alarm, I'm about
to fall off. I hit the sand no more than
(45:22):
five seconds later, So that's about a sixteen foot drop
from my head to the beach. And for weeks, for
years still to this day, it has amazed me more
than anything else that happened. It has amazed me how
much went through my mind before I crash. In fact,
before I actually fell, I know, I did a quick
(45:44):
height calculation. Yeah, fifteen sixteen feet. I recognized that the
outcropping was so vertical that I was unlikely to hit
any of the rock on the way down. But just
the same I remember that the rocks continued under the sand. See.
I took two years of geology, and this was going
to be a hard landing. More amazingly than all that,
(46:07):
Though I had taken judo as a kid, I hated
every minute of judo. Nineteen sixty five nineteen sixty six,
so twenty six and twenty seven years before we shot
this commercial, I was in the studio, the Judo studio
in White Plains, New York, the day of the nineteen
(46:27):
sixty five Northeast blackout, and the only happy memory of
the entire Judo experience I had was one our instructor,
Bob Durocher, locked us in the dojo that had been
converted from a store that had a front door that
was set in several feet from the streets so they
could put display cases up. And now it's pitch black.
(46:48):
So he went out and got his Volkswagen Carmen Gia,
drove it up over the sidewalk into that set in
entryway of this converted storefront. He put his high beams on.
He flooded the dojo with enough light that we kids
could change out of our judo stuff and back into
our regular clothes and wait for our parents to come
get us. He did a great job. I didn't like
(47:10):
the judo so much, but his blackout operations practice was superb.
So now with all of this having gone through my
head in a second, I began to fall, and everything
else from that year of once a week judo classes
comes back to me. Relax. As you drop, the more
of your body that hits, the less you'll get hurt.
(47:31):
Hands protect the head. Drop like a sack of sand.
I did not hit the sand, per se. I kind
of splattered on my left side swap as I rolled
over onto my back and took a breath and sat up.
Of all people, Una was the first to race over
to me. You want some blank and tea? I said, no, thanks,
(47:54):
let me see if I'm dead. The grips tried to
help me to my feet, but I felt some very
sharp pain that which suggested we should slow down. The
problem was, though, even if I needed an ambulance, there
was no way to get one down to where we
were shooting. As that rock out cropping that I had
just fallen from suggested, I like to call it a
(48:14):
cliff every now and again. Leo Correo State Park had
a real cliff in it and a flight of stairs,
I mean one hundred steps two hundred steps up to
the Pacific Coast Highway and a park. Sure enough, I
was able to stand, but I couldn't move easily. Everything hurt.
So the two biggest members of the crew let me
drape my arms over their shoulders, exactly the way I
(48:37):
had draped my arms over their shoulders of the models
during the beach shot. I stopped for a second. Heya,
you sure you don't want to Frankin carry me up
the stairs, she said, with genuine sincerity. Now that's blank
and funny. Seemed to me like it took about a
(48:59):
month to get up those stairs. I assumed there would
be an ambulance waiting by this point. Instead was a
park ranger. This is a state park. I have to
see you first, then I have to call the fire department.
I said, well, this pain on my side here, this
feels like fire, but I don't think it's actually fire.
He called the fire department. They showed up, They assessed me.
(49:19):
They called the ambulance. At some point, probably when I
was being half dragged up the steps, something happened on
the impact side. If I now tried to lower my
left arm from way above my head, I got severe shooting,
burning pain from my left arm pit to about my
left knee. Cleverly I figured out not to do that.
(49:44):
Keep your left arm above your head and it won't hurt.
I use the restroom in the ranger station. There was
no blood, so no kidney damage. I'm okay. It does, however,
hurt and something could be broken. Now I go back outside,
my arm above my head like I'm signaling for a
cab on the ste eats of New York City. And
(50:06):
the ambulance shows up and the amts tell me to
get on there gurney, and I said, I can't. I
can't lower my arm unless I want excruciating pain. I
can't move my arm. I have to stay in this position,
looking like a flamenco dancer. But I said, listen, can
you lock the wheels on this gurney? And they said, sure,
(50:28):
we can, of course we can. And I said, just
lock the wheels and I'll just back up onto the
end of it and I'll fall backwards. And it worked,
and so with my left arm still extended over my head,
they loaded me into the ambulance. Apparently, when I fell
from that rock or cliff as I call it, it
looked like I had been shot. Fifty sixty people on
(50:50):
a commercial crew. The shooting day is over. They have
missed lunch. There is a very nice catered lunch sitting there.
And they told me later that everybody was so disturbed
by what happened to me that only three people even
took something to go and know. The director was not
filming as I fell. Sadly, so we hit every pothole
(51:12):
on Pacific Coast Highway on the trip from the beach
to the hospital. Oh ah, ooh, I call my agent
from my cell phone, she laughed. I called ESPN. Actually
to check on the catered dinner. Oh what's new? Oh,
I fell off a cliff shooting the commercial, they laughed.
And I'm lying there in the emergency room waiting for
X rays when my cell phone rings again and I
(51:34):
reach into my left pocket and I had the phone
halfway to my ear when I realized, my left side
does not hurt anymore at all. It does not hurt
at all. Well, that was a quick recovery. I sat up.
My left side felt fine, In fact, it felt great,
and a nurse came over and suggested I should lie
back down again. I said, why. Somehow I got better
(51:57):
on the trip from all the potholes and just lying here.
In fact, I feel great. Did you guys remove my
left leg while I wasn't looking. Did you replace it
with the left leg that I had when I was twelve?
Because I could hop back to Connecticut on my left leg.
Right now, just cancel the flight, she laughed. She said, no.
What I was feeling would be the morphine they gave
me so they could twist me around and take the
(52:18):
X rays they needed. And I said, please never ever
give me any more of that ever again. Thank you.
My Judo flashback as it turned out had done the job.
I had broken nothing. The er doctor complimented me on
my fall and he said I probably had six or
eight different sprains on my left side. It would hurt,
(52:39):
but it would keep getting better and I'd be able
to make my flight home the day after next. He
was completely right, although I now I found twenty five
years later that it's beginning to hurt like I just
fell off the cliff. Anyway, I went back to the hotel.
I ate well, I slept well, I managed to walk
around with the help of a cane, and I went
back for day two of the commercial shoot. This one
(53:00):
is in a mansion in Pasadena, a room teeming full
of UNA's lying on the floor. They're photographed through chandeliers.
They're lazy, rich kids who also need to be told
to eat something. I arrived and walked into applause from
the crew, and I delivered a well rehearsed line. And
now for my next trick, which is when the director
(53:22):
John came over and apologized, and he said he thought
this entry into shot for me would be way easier.
What I had to do is lie on the floor,
then sit up and deliver the line eat something. If
you can sit up, he said, that is, if you can't,
we can do something else. Can you sit up? And
I thought about it, and I rubbed my lower back,
(53:42):
and I said, based on the day so far, yeah,
I could, but probably only six or seven times. And
I said, while I can sit up, it's clear to
me one of those bad sprains was in the muscles
somewhere of my lower back. And if I try to
lay back down, I lose control. I'll just crash back
to the floor. That actually happened getting out of bed
(54:04):
this morning. So after each take, the same two guys
who had walked me up the stairs after I fell
at the beach gently held my arms and shoulders and
lowered me back to lying on the floor. We got
what we needed. I went back to the hotel. I
had dinner with some friends. The next day. I was
(54:24):
a little sore, but perfectly fine to get back on
the plane east, and sure enough, only time ever, I
had a west to east tailwind. The flight from lax
to Newark took three hours and forty eight minutes. We
traversed the country like a dart shot from a gun
or an Ulderman falling from a rock out cropping. Oh,
by the way, the commercial was an immediate success, unlike
(54:48):
any that Boston Market had ever done before. In those days,
they were packed each night for dinner at every location,
selling half chickens and full meals with potatoes and salads,
and they were getting an average of twelve dollars out
of every customer the day the place was empty. The
idea behind my commercials. They were designed to bring in
(55:10):
a lunch crowd a sandwich and a soda and a
bag of chips for four dollars. Soon they were swamped
at lunchtime. Boston Market ordered three more commercials, these to
be shot in a studio in New York. They offered
me fifty grand a day. An entire new career vista
was opening in front of me. I was, for a
week or two in early nineteen ninety seven the most
(55:33):
successful male commercial actor in the country. We shot those
three spots. I interrupted a grunge concert to shout eat
something at the band, and then I got carried off
by the crowd in a mosh pit. And I interrupted
a Romeo soap opera surgeon coming on to his nurse
by rising from the operating table to shout eat something.
(55:55):
And then we did something with ballplayers at the stadium
on Randall's Island, and I remember nothing of that because,
unlike the first two, they never edited the film, because
that's when it happened, their equivalent of falling off the cliff.
I will confess it had not occurred to me. Then again,
I did not own Boston Market. I did not work
(56:17):
for their marketing department. I did not run the ad
agency they employed. But none of them anticipated it either.
After the first few weeks of giddy glee about the
lunch crowds I had brought them, somebody noticed something unfortunate
and unexpected. Basically, for every four dollar lunch they were
now selling, they were selling one fewer twelve dollars dinner.
(56:39):
They had not gained any new customers. They had just
managed to get their customers to each spend eight dollars less.
These very well made, very memorable commercials worked very very well.
And the problem with that was each time they did work,
it cost Boston Market eight dollars. By the end of
(57:00):
nineteen ninety seven, Boston Market was something like nine hundred
million dollars in debt. It had filed for bankruptcy and
had been taken over by McDonald's. On the other hand,
I got my money, and in the twenty five years
plus since Boston Market has not once used a celebrity
endorser to try to sell their food. Oh and there
(57:22):
was one other positive outcome. I'm actually very proud of this.
The ad agency got the award in question. I did not,
so I don't know which group gave it to us,
but that eat Something campaign actually won an award because
somehow my shouting eat something at una and the other
(57:42):
way thin models, somehow that cut through to at least
some victims of eating disorders. The Boston Market Eat Something
ad campaign for which I fell off a cliff, okay,
a rock out cropping for which I fell off a
rock outcropping got an award from a national Bolimia association.
(58:17):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studio at
the world headquarters of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillips Shanelle guitarist based on drums by Brian Ray,
(58:37):
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad.
Everything else is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for
(58:59):
this the eight hundred and eighty eighth day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elect to government
of the United States. Don't forget. We're on a roll.
Keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Arraignment Day tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(59:31):
with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
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