July 13, 2023 • 43 mins
EPISODE 245: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Groups of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of Gal Luft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, investigations by the House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by the House Select Committee on China, and by the House Oversight Committee. investigations into the obvious security breaches and the potential national security threat. But if the questions are about quote “security breaches,” quote “our national interests and those of our allies” quote “national security” then the investigation needs to be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence because while the big red rotating, blaring siren may be Luft. But he isn’t a sitting member of the House or the Senate and this nation needs to know immediately to what degree if any, Congressman James Comer, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Senator Ron Johnson and other Republicans, have been compromised by China, or have been targets FOR compromise by China.
TRUMP’S STOCHASTIC TERRORIST who went to kill Obama after Trump doxxed Obama, WILL stay in jail until trail. Judge Zia Faruqui has ordered him held indefinitely, saying the quote “temperature is way too high in our political discussions” unquote and adding that the consequences could be quote “catastrophic” if Taranto were released and was free to do the things he thought elected officials were telling him to do. Translation: Faraqui believes Taranto could still be a Trump stochastic terrorist, and could easily still head to Obama’s home or anywhere and do anything he thought would please Trump.
RAY EPPS is suing Fox and Tucker Carlson for defamation and is using the same local lawyer Dominion Voting Systems used and based on the filing it looks like Ray Epps will wind up OWNING Tucker Carlson and maybe Fox as well, possibly just because of one 100-word paragraph Carlson belched on March 11 of this year: “A lot of this was clearly influenced by federal agents or informants. It was, ok? But I did not want to suggest someone was a federal agent or informant unless I knew for a fact, because you really could get someone in trouble. Right? If you’re like, THIS was the guy and like, we don’t know. I DO know for – I mean it’s very clear – something very strange is going on with Ray Epps. We’ve named him repeatedly, we’ve invited him on the show repeatedly. I mean don’t lie to my face, the Ray Epps thing isn’t, isn’t organic, sorry."
If Tucker Carlson WASN’T trying to tell his audience that Ray Epps was a Federal Agent and Informant who influenced the events of January 6th…what the hell ELSE could Carlson have possibly been TRYING to SAY?
B-Block (23:38) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Miles Taylor, launching a new podcast today on whistleblowers within the Trump Administration, says he and his boss talked Trump out of headlining the 2018 State of the Union by announcing he would invoke The Insurrection Act to allow troops to remove or menace migrants. The BBC Presenter story finally goes public even though everybody knew it was newscaster Huw Edwards because all the other reporters kept saying "Huw is it" instead of "Who is it." And oh by the way he wasn't guilty of anything (29:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A pollster reminds us that though inflation in June was remarkably better, prices are still higher than in 2021. Clarence Thomas's aide accepted Venmo; and Barry Bonds really thinks he should now get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
C-Block (34:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Because my bosses decided that the night before was the right moment to teach me how to drink, I found myself atop a mountain at the 1980 Olympic Ski Medal Runs without an audio cassette. There was but one other radio reporter there and though nobody would've ever known, he refused to loan me a spare. His name was Jack Briggs. This is his story (and as a bonus: I've attached a report I did FROM the Olympic skiing days earlier, and a two-minute commentary on how I thought we could make Luge the next big sport in America.
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. Groups
of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of
(00:26):
Galllooft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, Investigations by the
House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
by the House Select Committee on China, and by the
House Oversight Committee. Investigations into the obvious security breaches and
the potential national security threat of relying on somebody who
(00:46):
may be a spy for China. Ray Epps is suing
Fox and Tucker Carlson for defamation and is using the
same local lawyer dominion voting systems used and based on
the filing, it looks like ray Apps will wind up
owning Tucker Carlson and maybe Fox as well, and Trump
stochastic terrorist who went to kill Obama after Trump doxed
(01:09):
Obama will stay in jail until trial. Let us start
with gall Luft and overside Chairman James Comer, and whether
Comer and his fellow travelers are Looft's minders or inventors,
or programmers or marionettes or what It is not quite
(01:29):
the full throated investigation of Jamie Comer and Ron Johnson
and Nancy Mace and Jim Jordan and all the others
who are figuratively in bed with a Chinese agent who
also works for Iran and is also an international fugitive
from justice, which I called for here yesterday. However, the
ranking Democrat on the scandal factory that Comer has turned
(01:51):
the Oversight Committee into is Jamie Raskin, and Jamie Raskin
and Congressman Dan Goldman have written to Comer quote, calling
for an investigation into whether Committee Republicans may have relied
on false statements or misinformation provided by Gallloft. Just as importantly,
Rascin and Goldman note that Comer and the Republicans have
(02:13):
refused to share any documents from or about Gallloft, or
any information provided by gall Looft with Democrats on the
same committee. Rascin and Goldman ad quote, given Chairman Comber's
own public endorsements of mister Luft's information, there is no
plausible basis for Republicans to withhold from Committee Democrats any
(02:35):
and all information un quote that Looft has provided, including
quote any information that led Committee Republicans to conclude that
Looft is a quote very credible witness despite being under
indictment and a fugitive from justice unquote, if the rascin
Goldman demand for an investigation into Looft and his influence
(02:59):
over Comer and the others is not sufficient evidence that
Comer has crawled out onto the very end of the
limb and then sawed it off behind him, Florida Congressman
Jared Moskowitz has asked how Select Committee on China Chair
Mike Gallagher to launch an investigation into Luft, who, as
Moscowitz wrote, Rogers is now quote charged with arms trafficking,
(03:21):
sanctions violations, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China.
Moskowitz just barely touched the charge that Loof bribed a
member of the transition team for the then President elect Trump,
widely reported to be the former CIA director James Woolsey. Quote.
Despite this damning eight count indictment, members of the majority
(03:44):
on the Oversight Committee are still trying to obtain mister
Loot's testimony to validate their conspiracy theories about the Biden family.
The lengths to which Chairman Comer and other members are
willing to go to sell these theories to the American
people and influence the twenty twenty four presidential election extend
(04:06):
into a dangerous realm, one that may jeopardize national security. Unquote,
and of course Congressman Marskowitz is goddamned right and what
he says cannot be repeated too often. Galllooft is credibly
accused of acting as an unregistered agent. Spy may not
(04:30):
be too strong a term for China. Key Republicans, including
the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, are relying for information,
whether the information is true, partially true, or utter contemptible
fiction that has been provided by a Chinese agent. As
Moskowitz writes to Gallagher, enabling a Chinese backed Iranian arms
(04:54):
supplier and making him a centerpiece of oversight investigations calls
into question whether the Chinese Communist Party has tainted the
Oversight Committee and its work. In his choice of the
word tainted, Representative Moscowitz is I feel being conservative and polite.
(05:14):
This is no longer about the corrupt, dishonest, shameful, sleezy
lies and defamation spread by this jackass comer and his
fellow jackass Republicans who will literally stop at nothing to
promote their own jackass careers and damage a present and
damage this country. This is beyond that. Now, this is
(05:37):
national security. This is the open question of what other
influence Gollloft and his Chinese interests, the ones he represents
have wielded on Comer and the others, if other representations
there may be. Jamie Comer is now doing exactly what
(05:57):
the Chinese would want him to do. Ron Johnson is
now doing exactly what the Chinese would want want him
to do. Nancy Mace is now doing exactly what the
Chinese would want her to do. Jim Jordan is now
doing exactly what the Chinese would want him to do.
(06:20):
Jared Moskowitz is clearly as pissed off about this as
you and I are. He has also asked Armed Services
Committee Chair Rogers and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair McFall to
conduct congressional briefings about goll Luft, quoting again on their own,
mister Luf's interactions with Iran and on behalf of the
(06:41):
People's Republic of China seriously threaten our national interests and
those of our allies. However, he continues, this individual has
been embraced and elevated by the chairman of the House
Oversight Committee, which I believe increases the risk to our
national security that mister Loof presents, as well as the
integrity of the committee. I ask that you hold a
(07:03):
briefing to examine the im pact of mister Luft's dealing
with Iran and China and any security breaches resulting from
his actions. Unquote. Moskowitz and Raskin and Goldman in tandem
are right on the money here, but these are only
first steps. This is now about James Comer and the
(07:25):
House Oversight Committee and what influence Chinese interests have over both.
This certainly needs to be examined within the non insane
parts of the House Republican Caucus, but it is too
important to be left in any venue in which amoral, irresponsible,
disloyal Republican political acts have a say or a vote.
(07:48):
If the questions are indeed about quote security breaches, quote
our national interests and those of our allies quote national security.
If those are the stakes, then the investigation needs to
be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and the
Office of the Director drive National Intelligence. Because while the
big red, rotating blaring siren may be this man Gollloft,
(08:13):
he is not a sitting member of the House or
the Senate, and this nation needs to know immediately to
what degree if any Congressman Comber, Congressman Jordan, Congresswoman Mace,
Senator Johnson, and other Republicans may have been compromised by
China or may have been targets for compromise by China.
(08:35):
There is, It turns out, as the Republicans have been saying,
a foreign influenced scandal inside the government of the United States,
and it exists at this hour, and the smell is
coming from inside the offices of the House Committee on
Oversight and Accountability James Comer, Chairman. And now to the
(09:02):
unexpected good news from the Trump bid to get somebody
to attack Barack Obama or his family or just his
home by remote control. Taylor Taranto will now be held
without bail until trial. You will recall this terrifying timeline.
Sometime in late May or early June, Taylor Taranto, a
(09:24):
January sixth defendant not yet arrested, had begun living in
a van near the Washington Jail, where many conspirators, either
convicted or awaiting trial were serving their time. On Thursday,
June twenty eighth, Trump, who has refined the process of
terrorism by proxy to a science posted on social media
(09:48):
what he said was Barack Obama's home address. Taylor Toronto
reposted Trump's unspoken call for his cultists to go there
and added quote, we got those losers surrounded. See you
in hell, Podesta's and Obama's. Years later, Taylor Toronto began
to live stream from the Obama neighborhood, saying he had
(10:10):
quote control en quote of a block that he was
searching for quote entrance points and the quote tunnels underneath
their houses and was looking for quote a good angle
on a shot. Police arrested Taylor Toronto on the outstanding
January sixth warrants, and they found in his truck which
(10:32):
he was living in, two of the twenty guns registered
in his name, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Prosecutors understandably asked US Badgistrate Judge Zia Ferruki to detain
Toronto indefinitely. And that's when one of the creaking corners
of the law which Trump has so magnificently manipulated these
long eight years, seemed to come to his proxy's aid,
(10:56):
because Toronto had been arrested only on those January sixth
charges the only argument US attorneys could make for detaining
him without was this profoundly disturbed and clearly potentially violent
man's relative likelihood as a flight risk. Judge Faruki quite
reasonably asked what he was supposed to do about this
(11:18):
man if he was to find that Taranto was in
fact not a flight risk. Happily, Farruki found a way out.
He adjourned for nearly a week a hearing in which
Taranto's public defender demanded his release on bond, and yesterday
Farruki ordered the man held indefinitely while prosecutors develop other
(11:39):
charges against him. Faruki said, the quote temperature is way
too high in our political discussions unquote. He added that
the consequences could be quote catastrophic if Taranto were released
and was free to do the things that he thought
in his warped mind that elected officials were telling him
to do. Translation. Faraki believes Taranto could still be a
(12:03):
trump stochastic terrorist and could still easily head to Obama's
house or anywhere to do anything he thought would please Trump.
It is Dracula and Renfield all over again. The judge
said the nation had failed Taranto by not getting him
the help he needed for his PTSD after service INTERAQ.
(12:24):
And that is true, and frankly, unfortunately right now that
is irrelevant to the national safety. But without naming names,
the judge made it clear he thought others were morally
responsible for this nightmare. Quote where are the people telling
you do things? He asked, Taranto, where are they? They're
not here unquote. I'll take that question, judge. The leader
(12:50):
of them is in Florida. He is poisoning other minds
as we speak, and also as we speak, he is
trying to steal again the ultimate power of this nation.
And as I reported to you two days ago, Ray Epps,
hardly innocent but clearly a bystander, has indeed sued Fox
(13:13):
News for defamation and false light characterization. And he has
sued them in the same jurisdiction in Delaware using the
same local attorney Dominion used when Dominion won an eight
hundred million dollars settlement just before that trial was to begin,
and his lawsuit is peppered with references to the lies
Tucker Carlson told about him that the suit claims destroyed
(13:36):
the lives of Epps and his wife and forced them
to flee their home and go live in an RV
in an undisclosed location. I have detailed the EPP's case
here Before the day Fox fired the vermin Tucker Carlson,
Tucker Carlson was ready to do yet another segment, his
(13:57):
eighteenth or nineteenth or twentieth on how Ray Epps, a
staunch conservative, a true believer the election had been stolen
from Trump, had the night of January fifth and early
on the day of January sixth urge protesters, including the
infamous Moron Baked, Alaska, to go to the US capital
(14:18):
on the sixth, But when they got there and violence erupted,
Epps suddenly turned away. He never himself entered the capital.
He tried to stop the violence he encountered. Unlike literally
one thousand others, Ray Epps was not arrested, not yet Anyway,
Carlson and others on foxlaw Ingram did it at least
(14:39):
once concluded, fabricated that there was only one possible explanation
for this behavior, that they could not understand, that Epps
must be a provocateur, that he was planted by the FBI. Yeah,
the FBI, He was planted by the FBI to foment
an insurrection to make Trump look bad. In the diseased, vengeful,
(15:06):
racist mind of Tucker Carlson, two simple facts never broke
through the clutter. The FBI was under Donald Trump's control
at the time, and since there was no evidence, none
of anybody but Trump fomenting the coup attempt, that was
on his behalf. A logical person not filled with insane
(15:31):
rage like Tucker Carlson, would have recognized that Epps had
simply believed he was heading to a peaceful protest and
was appalled by the destruction and the violence and recoiled
like a responsible human being, the kind of person Tucker
Carlson deplores and mocks on an hourly basis. The EPP's
(15:51):
lawsuit is hardly a slam dunk, but it is filled
with things Carlson or his guests said that will be
nearly impossible for Fox to defend. Just six months ago,
Carlson again emphasized that Epps had not yet been charged.
Quote why is that, Well, let's just stop lying at
this point. It's pretty obvious why that is. In other
(16:14):
shows over an eighteen month span, Carlson and his guests
hammered Ray Epps again and again with no evidence, and
called him the quote stage manager of January sixth, the
quote smoking gun of the entire fed surrection. And then
there is one paragraph that is the most problematic for
(16:38):
Fox and for Carlson, and one wonders how or if
Epps will amend his lawsuit if Carlson picks this up
on his Twitter program, which I believe is called the
law of diminishing returns. During the last gasp of Tucker
Carlson on Fox, his big reveal of the unseen video
(16:58):
from January sixth that was personally handed to him by
the speaker weasel of the House, Kevin McCarthy, the review
that turned out to be so underwhelming, so boring, so
meaningless that Carlson only showed a few minutes of it,
and some of that two and three times per clip.
In that last gasp, Tucker Carlson and Fox News figuratively
(17:21):
hanged themselves in terms of this lawsuit. On March eleventh,
twenty twenty three, Tucker Carlson showed video that showed pretty
much nothing, but then he said that this video proved
the January sixth coup attempt was a false flag, quoting
the fired host that night March eleven. A lot of
(17:43):
this was clearly influenced by federal agents or informants. It
was okay, but I did not want to suggest someone
was a federal agent or informant unless I knew for
a fact, because you could really get someone in trouble,
right if you're like, this was the guy, and like,
we don't know, I do know for I mean, it's
(18:04):
very clear something very strange is going on with ray Epps.
We've named him repeatedly, We've invited him on the show repeatedly.
I mean, don't lie to my face. The ray Epps
thing isn't isn't organic sorry unquote amid Carlson's paranoia and
(18:27):
his condescension, and his trumpy and technique of dancing right
up to a legally actionable slander and then never actually
finishing the sentence, there is one larger issue in that quotation.
I just read that Fox will either have to bet
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that no jury
(18:49):
will notice, or it will have to pay those same
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to ray Epps.
And the larger issue is this. It is a question
Tucker Carlson said just one hundred words in that quote there.
Twice in those one hundred words he said federal agent. Twice.
(19:09):
In those one hundred words, he said informant. Twice in
those hundred words, he said ray Epps. Once he said
I knew for a fact. Once he said the ray
Epps thing isn't organic. Once he said, don't lie to
my face. So here is the question. If Tucker Carlson
was not trying to tell his audience on March eleventh
(19:32):
of this year that ray Epps was a federal agent
and an informant who influenced the events of January sixth,
what the hell else could Tucker Carlson have possibly been
trying to say? Also of interest here, Trump was ready
(19:54):
to announce during the twenty nineteen Stated the Union Address
that he was invoking the Insurrection Act and he would
deploy US troops to forcibly prevent a migrant caravan from
crossing our border. He was ready to do the unthinkable
to have American troops threaten or if necessary, shoot at,
(20:19):
or actually shoot asylum seekers. And it's not just Miles
Taylor's recollection of his role talking Trump out of it.
There is a contemporary, corroborating witness. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Washington, days before the twenty nineteen Stated
the Union Address, Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff
Miles Taylor and his boss, Kristen Nielsen raced over to
the White House. He said, to talk Trump out of
the big splash he was going to make in the
(21:08):
annual address. Trump had decided he wanted to answer the
latest Fox News race hype outrage another migrant caravan headed
towards the US border. So Trump was just going to
invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize US troops to stand
on US soil, presumably with weapons drawn and maybe even
(21:30):
ready to be fired at the asylum seekers as they
approached the border. Quote Donald Trump was a few sentences
away from making it happen. I was there, Taylor writes
it in his new book Blowback. We know Trump was
ready to declare an insurrection during the Black Lives Matter
protests of twenty twenty, and he was looking for an
excuse to do it again later that year or early
(21:52):
in twenty twenty one in order to unconstitutionally remain in office,
and his former Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, knew the threats
were real throughout the administration, quoting him, I swore an
oath to supper and defend the Constitution. Never did I
dream that troops taking the same oath would be ordered,
under any circumstance, to violate the constitutional rights of their
(22:13):
fellow citizens. This is a good time to mention that
Miles Taylor is starting today in fact a new podcast
here in iHeart Politics Land The Whistleblowers, Miles Taylor will
be scaring the crap out of you retroactively. The new
series is devoted to the stories of high ranking officials
who sounded the alarm about corruption during the Trump administration.
(22:37):
People who were there because they believed in policy or
in the Republican Party, and they were suddenly faced with
the choice risking everything they had previously worked for to
tell the truth about the risk to democracy that Trump
posed and still poses. The Whistleblowers with Miles Taylor, Episode
one dropping today on iHeart or Wherever You podcast and
(23:00):
Dateline London. It has now been revealed that the unidentified
be BBC presenter who had been suspended after tabloid claims
that he paid about thirty five thousand pounds to a
young man for semi naked photographs, turned out to be
no less a figure than the country's leading newscaster, Hugh
Edwards of BBC News. At ten, he was the anchor
(23:21):
for the death of Queen Elizabeth, for the coronation, the elections,
the Olympics, the monthly live coverage of the monthly new
British Prime Minister. The scandal has consumed British media for
a week, even though a even the tabloid never printed
Edwards's name b The young man in the case was
of legal age and he insisted there was nothing illegal
(23:42):
and his parents had overreacted. C London Police set a
thorough review showed that that was correct. There were no crimes,
there'll be no charges d The BBC was excoriated for
not naming the presenter, even some other BBC stars demanded
that he out himself. While e it turns out the
BBC was in fact protecting the privacy of one of
(24:04):
its employees, Edwards, who has publicly acknowledged suffering from depression
and who has been hospitalized anew after another bout with depression,
which we know because f when his identity was finally
made public. It was made public in a statement issued
yesterday by his wife. He has five children. I'd just
(24:25):
like to mention I am available to succeed him on
News at ten, and I would be in fact the
best choice they could possibly make. While all this was happening,
the WhatsApp messages of the former British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson were required by court ruling to have been handed
over by Monday by the government to an inquiry into
how Johnson had violated COVID lockdown rules. And that still
(24:48):
hasn't happened, and nobody is talking about it. And because
it doesn't involve underwear, it got no coverage and this
story instead got all of it. I should also mention
one final point, point G, because British libel laws are
so much more stringent than are those here. No news
organization actually reported that it was Hugh Edwards, but the
(25:10):
cat was out of the bag for several days because
time after time over the last couple of days, British radio,
television and digital reporters made the same slip on air
online wherever intentional or otherwise. Instead of saying we still
don't know who the presenter is, they kept saying, yeah,
(25:35):
we still don't know, Hugh the presenter is, Oh, totally accidental,
(25:56):
no doubt. Still ahead on countdown. It's happened again. Somebody
else has told me a story about a day in
nineteen eighty at the Lake FLASCT Olympics where I was
up a mountain without an audio cassette, and I asked
a colleague from a rival wire service if I could
borrow his spare audio cassette so I could do my
interviews and not get fired. And the guy went no,
(26:18):
It's an unbelievable story. It gets more unbelievable every time
I think about it. Next in Things I promised not
to tell, but first time for the daily roundup of
the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world. The Bronze polster
Patrick Raffini. After the June inflation numbers hit yesterday three percent,
(26:39):
slowest pace in more than two years, Ruffini helpfully tweeted
reminder prices are still significantly above January twenty twenty twenty
one levels. Gosh, thanks Pat everybody for God. I'd also
like to note this reminder, prices are still significantly above
January twenty seventh, nineteen fifty nine levels. That was the
(26:59):
day I was born. And I'm not taking a rap
for that inflation, no, sirree Bob Patrick. The runner up
Clarence Thomas the only Supreme Court justice with a for
sale sign growing out of his ass. Well, not the
only one, but you know what I mean. The Guardian
reporting that a bunch of lawyers who had business before
the Supreme Court, including one of them that was in
(27:21):
the case that just ended affirmative action in college admissions,
have sent VENMO payments to Thomas's top aid's former top
aid now re John Vashist. Guardian says this seems to
be connected to Thomas's twenty nineteen Christmas party. How much
fun would that be? But the darn thing is seven
of the payments are from lawyers who were previously legal
(27:44):
clerks for Clarence Thomas, and three of them argued cases
before Thomas, and a fourth was in the Trump administration.
And honestly, this sounds like it could be innocent, but
good God, Clarence Thomas just doesn't care if it sounds
innocent or not, does he. By the way, you want
to know the name of another former Thomas Supreme Court clerk,
Laura Ingram. No, I'm not kidding, but the winner Barry Bonds.
(28:09):
Barry Bonds has finally begun the attempt to rehabilitate himself.
He wants to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
He's told a podcast quote. People have to understand something.
Is that the fact is that I was vindicated. I
went to court, I was in federal court, and I
won my case one hundred percent. Where is the vindication
of me in my own sport. That's what bothers me.
(28:30):
Major League Baseball already punished me. Why is the Hall
of Fame punishing me. It doesn't make sense. It makes
zero sense that you're being double punished for something that
you've already been punished for. Here's what Bonds has to understand.
He is other than the game fixers, the greatest cheat
in the history of the sport. By the way, the
game fixers from the nineteen nineteen World Series, they were
(28:52):
all quitted in court themselves. The Hall of Fame election
is not a court of law. Barry Bonds could have
been found guilty or not guilty, and neither verdict matters.
The eligibility rules are fluid and variable, and often that
is a problem when it comes to Bonds. It is
a blessing. Barry Bonds will never be in the Baseball
(29:14):
Hall of Fame, and outside of the San Francisco Bay Area,
he will never be recognized as the holder of the
records for most homers in a season or most homers
in a career. Never Barry Bonds. No, no, You're not
going to Cooperstown unless you're willing to pay your way.
(29:34):
In Today's Worst Person in the World, arm goes off.
It is pitch black in my room at the Swiss
(29:56):
Acres Motel. It is Valentine's Day and I am still drunk.
Keith knew he was in trouble, but I was also
twenty one years old, and in fact, my twenty first
birthday had only been eighteen days earlier. So somehow I survived, showered, dressed, packed,
(30:18):
and I mean I packed two cassette tape recorders, four
sets of batteries, an audio processing machine that weighed like
fourteen pounds the nine volt batteries it took. I think
It was a dozen of them. A telephone, a backup telephone,
twelve assorted patch cords, two loose leaf notebooks, about eight pens,
two microphones, two extra pair of socks. Then I got dressed,
(30:40):
two full sets of thermal underwear, shirts, sweaters, snow pants,
snow shoes. Because it was eleven degrees below zero that morning.
I got something quick to eat at the commissary, and
I made it out somehow to the line for the
bus from the Lake Placid Olympics Center to the Lake
Placid Transportation Center to Lake Placid's own White Face Mountain,
(31:04):
then on to the snow track the open penned mountain
tractor that went up the side of Whiteface Mountain and
took me to the finish line of the nineteen eighty
Olympic Men's downhill ski final still drunk. That is how
a reporter covered the Olympics nearly forty three years ago.
You drank, you woke up, you went, you stood near
(31:27):
the finish line, and when the skiers completed their runs,
you hiked or wobbled over to them, and you took
out your microphone or your pen, and you interviewed them,
like two minutes after they had finished hurtling towards you
down the hill. You could see almost nothing of the
race from there. There were no TV monitors. Basically your
only clue was the sound of the crowd that would
(31:49):
give you about thirty seconds worth of warning that the
skier was coming over the near horizon and you should
be prepared to flee just in case he or she
wiped out. Also, you were on top of a mountain
at the dead point of winter, and whereas it might
have been a balmy eleven degrees below zero in the
(32:09):
comfort of the Swiss Acres motel with the wind chill,
at the base of the mountain, it was forty eight
below zero and there had already been four inches of
new snow since the sun came up, which is where
the still drunk part came in Handy, my boss is
at my first job, the thousand station radio network called
(32:31):
United Press International Audio, had decided the night before to
teach me how to drink while on assignment. My bosses
were the bureau manager for that part of you PI,
the late Stan Sabik, who had hired me, and Sam Rosen,
the sports director of the network, who not only somehow
survived being my first boss, but today, just forty three
(32:51):
years later, is still working as the television voice of
the New York Rangers hockey team and is in the
Hockey Hall of Fame. So I guess my reputation is
a tough employee is wildly overrated, or at least Sam thinks.
So Sam and Stan kept me drinking at the motel
until two am, knowing full well that I had to
get on the six am bus to go cover the
(33:13):
men's downhill, because it was the two of them who
had assigned me to go cover the men's downhill, and bluntly,
I was surprisingly pleased with myself that freezing morning because
I had indeed learned how to drink while on assignment.
I had somehow found the phone jack for the UPI
phone buried under all the new snow, which of course
(33:35):
was buried under all the old snow, attached the phone
to it, gott in a dial tone, called the office,
checked the alligator clips with which I would feed the tape,
and all was well until I went to put a
cassette tape into the cassette recorder. I didn't have one
(33:58):
fat lot of good two cassette tape machines gonna do
you without a cassette to sticking one of them? I
looked forlornly around the base of Whiteface Mountain, twelve hundred
feet above sea level as we were. There was a
surprisingly nice chalet and a decent restaurant, but there were
no radio shacks or other electronics stores. There was, however,
(34:20):
one other radio guy, Jack Briggs, from the Associated Press
Radio Network, the nominal arch rival to our own UPI Audio.
I knew Jack a little. He was a nice guy.
I went and explained my plight, making sure to blame
my bosses for my predicament. Oh man, he said, his
(34:41):
breath turning into first steam and then ice cubes. I'm
so sorry, but I can't give you a cassette. I'm sorry,
you're UPI, and I'm ap Oh how I laughed. That
was a great line to say to a rookie reporter,
still drunk thanks to the initiation rituals of his own bosses,
(35:04):
the possessor of one great buzz but zero audio cassettes.
Jack Briggs could tell I thought he was kidding. That's
when he said, I'm not kidding. Look. If my boss,
Shelby Whitfield, ever found out, he'd fire me. I suddenly
wasn't drunk anymore, not at all. My my boss will
(35:24):
will fire me. Briggs was adamant, I can't run the
risk of shellby finding out. I have to confess. I shouted,
how the hell is he gonna find out?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Jack?
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I think subconsciously I was hoping to create an avalanche,
which would have been a better solution than the one
I was faced with. I said to him, there's you
and there's me, and we're on top of a goddamn
mountain and Shelby Whitfield, your boss is in Washington, DC,
and he's a drunk, and he's probably more drunk than
I am, and he'd probably thank you for helping me
(36:00):
to drink more. Briggs would not. Budge told him I
would pay him. I told him I would give him
the cassette back after I fed my boss the interviews
over the phone, so there'd be no evidence and he
wouldn't even have to do any interviews. No good, I'm sorry,
and I know you're going to tell this story about
me for a while. As he walked away from me,
(36:20):
I shouted after him. Forever turned out there was no
radio shack and no camaraderie, but there was a West
Coast newspaper reporter atop the mountain who heard some of
this conversation. I guess I yelled a little loudly at
mister Briggs. Some guy standing next to a Saint Bernard
told me to quiet down and mentioned something else about
(36:43):
the avalanches. Or maybe I dreamed that part. I don't know. Anyway,
the West Coast newspaper guy said he had a micro
cassette machine and he would loan it to me and
I could give it back to him at the media
center that day or the next one. But I had
to do him a favor because there was this really
cute reporter in our UPI bureau and he really wanted
to be introduced to her. And I said, I can
promise you nothing but a handshake, and he understood, and
(37:04):
that's how I did not get fired. But of course,
a story like this has punchlines, and this one has
two of them. The first is two years and a
couple of months later, Shelby Whitfield asked me to lunch.
He had left the Associated Press to run the sports
department at the ABC Radio network, back when that was
not only a thing but a big thing. We went
(37:27):
to a terrific New York City Chinese restaurant near ABC
called shun Lee, and Shelby Whitfield interviewed me for a
job when that kind of job paid eighty thousand a
year in my very nice studio apartment in a very
nice part of town costs less than five hundred dollars
a month later, in an interesting twist, I found out
that jobs didn't exist. I was mentioning the interview in
(37:49):
a press box somewhere I think Madison Square Garden, and
there was another kid reporter named Howie Rose, and how
he is still working, he does the New York Mets
games on the radio, and how he said, wait, they
interviewed me for that job last year, Just an excuse
for that damn Whitfield to go drink his lunch on
ABC's tab. Anyway, before we started the interview for the
(38:13):
job I did not know did not exist at ABC.
I told Shelby Whitfield the White Face Mountain, can I
borrow a cassette Jack Briggs story? And Shelby's exact reply was,
I don't know. Was I going to find out? There
was you and there was him, and you were on
top of a goddamn mountain and I was in Washington.
Only he didn't say goddamn that Briggs. He added, always
(38:34):
trying to suck up to me. I got to tell
you something I actually once promised I wouldn't tell you
if we ever met. This. When the Olympics were over
and came back to the office, he told me what happened.
He expected me to be happy or give him a
bonus or something. And I called him a little snitch.
Only Shelby didn't say snitch, just a word that rhymed
with it. The other punchline is from nineteen ninety two,
(38:56):
and remember this happened at the nineteen eighty Olympics. I
go to work at ESPN and come in a little
early to launch their radio network, a story I've told
here before. And there I find a friend of mine
since my radio days, who I have not seen in
a year or so, and he says, hey, last month,
I was at an NBA game in Washington. I ran
in at Jack Briggs. He heard you were going to ESPN.
(39:17):
He asked me if you were still telling that story
about the time you got stuck on Whiteface Mountain without
a cassette. And he was the only other reporter there,
and he wouldn't give you a spare and I told
him you were and I smiled, and I replied, I
hope you remembered to use the word forever. Just as
(39:46):
a bonus, I will close this episode with a couple
of reports from the nineteen eighty Olympics. I think I'm
sober on them. I think I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arrange produced and performed
by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
(40:07):
all orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Schanel, produced by
Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. 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
(40:28):
today was my friend John Dean, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. Don't forget Countdown Now also available
on YouTube subscribe there as well give yourself multiple options.
So that's Downtown for this the nine hundred and nineteenth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States arrested him again while
(40:49):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olraman, Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
There has been an awful lot of singing on the
slopes of White Faced Mountain during these Olympics, and most
of it has been done by the Austrians.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
This didy is.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Barana Marie Moser Prol on Sunday can flit in an
Austrian sweep of the Olympic downhills. The downhill is the
skiing event as far as the Austrians are concerned, and
they were so confident of success that the Olympic team
had reserved an area house for a celebration center. The
honored stock and I'm Marie Moser Prol did not disappoint,
and for now the singing will continue both here and
in Austria. Keith Olberman, Lake Placid. Let's talk luge Louje
(41:54):
is a real fund sport here in the Winter Olympics.
It doesn't get an awful lot of publicity, and between
the Olympiads you tend to forget about it. That is
not fair. Louje, of course, is the event where a
guy or a earl, or two guys or two girls
lie down on this very small sled and rocket around
a refrigerated bank track feet first. He, she or they
have strings with which to control more or less where
(42:15):
they are going. This doesn't always work, of course, and
many as the time the luji lujer or lujis takes
to mid air when he hits one of those curves wrong.
If you can get used to the repetitiveness of competitive louge,
the sport becomes a part of your life. Some people
have an innate tendency to participate or watch. They, of course,
are the born lugers. There is an International Luge Federation Congress,
(42:37):
and I would suggest if they want to increase the
popularity of their.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Sport they do a little promotion.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Now, I wouldn't tamper with the sport itself. Rocketing around
a refrigerated bank track simply cannot be meddled with luge
purists even doubt the validity of the two man luge.
I would stick to those promotions To boost the sport's
acceptance with the public. We need a national luge league
and a luge Hall of Fame. The luge Hall of
Fame could be built in the shape of the bank track,
and it would naturally be refrigerated. Would enter at the top,
(43:05):
lie down on a real luge, and go through the
hall on their backs, watching overhead slide shows and glancing
quickly at plaques detailing the careers.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Of the world's great lougers.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Buttons and pins with choice catchphrases would also help luge.
How about I'm a loujer or born to luge, both
of which could also be turned into great popular music hits.
We would avoid degradations of the sport like no luge
is good luge, or the inaccurate insinuation that lujers travel
on their backs, because nobody would dare ride down that
course head first. And I would remind you, you knew
(43:37):
luge fan, you of the first promotional luge statement. For everything,
there is a season, a time to gain, and a
time to louge. I'm Keith Olberman and from Lake Placid.
That's my Side.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Count Down 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. Groups
of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of
(00:26):
Galllooft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, Investigations by the
House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
by the House Select Committee on China, and by the
House Oversight Committee. Investigations into the obvious security breaches and
the potential national security threat of relying on somebody who
(00:46):
may be a spy for China. Ray Epps is suing
Fox and Tucker Carlson for defamation and is using the
same local lawyer dominion voting systems used and based on
the filing, it looks like ray Apps will wind up
owning Tucker Carlson and maybe Fox as well, and Trump
stochastic terrorist who went to kill Obama after Trump doxed
(01:09):
Obama will stay in jail until trial. Let us start
with gall Luft and overside Chairman James Comer, and whether
Comer and his fellow travelers are Looft's minders or inventors,
or programmers or marionettes or what It is not quite
(01:29):
the full throated investigation of Jamie Comer and Ron Johnson
and Nancy Mace and Jim Jordan and all the others
who are figuratively in bed with a Chinese agent who
also works for Iran and is also an international fugitive
from justice, which I called for here yesterday. However, the
ranking Democrat on the scandal factory that Comer has turned
(01:51):
the Oversight Committee into is Jamie Raskin, and Jamie Raskin
and Congressman Dan Goldman have written to Comer quote, calling
for an investigation into whether Committee Republicans may have relied
on false statements or misinformation provided by Gallloft. Just as importantly,
Rascin and Goldman note that Comer and the Republicans have
(02:13):
refused to share any documents from or about Gallloft, or
any information provided by gall Looft with Democrats on the
same committee. Rascin and Goldman ad quote, given Chairman Comber's
own public endorsements of mister Luft's information, there is no
plausible basis for Republicans to withhold from Committee Democrats any
(02:35):
and all information un quote that Looft has provided, including
quote any information that led Committee Republicans to conclude that
Looft is a quote very credible witness despite being under
indictment and a fugitive from justice unquote, if the rascin
Goldman demand for an investigation into Looft and his influence
(02:59):
over Comer and the others is not sufficient evidence that
Comer has crawled out onto the very end of the
limb and then sawed it off behind him, Florida Congressman
Jared Moskowitz has asked how Select Committee on China Chair
Mike Gallagher to launch an investigation into Luft, who, as
Moscowitz wrote, Rogers is now quote charged with arms trafficking,
(03:21):
sanctions violations, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China.
Moskowitz just barely touched the charge that Loof bribed a
member of the transition team for the then President elect Trump,
widely reported to be the former CIA director James Woolsey. Quote.
Despite this damning eight count indictment, members of the majority
(03:44):
on the Oversight Committee are still trying to obtain mister
Loot's testimony to validate their conspiracy theories about the Biden family.
The lengths to which Chairman Comer and other members are
willing to go to sell these theories to the American
people and influence the twenty twenty four presidential election extend
(04:06):
into a dangerous realm, one that may jeopardize national security. Unquote,
and of course Congressman Marskowitz is goddamned right and what
he says cannot be repeated too often. Galllooft is credibly
accused of acting as an unregistered agent. Spy may not
(04:30):
be too strong a term for China. Key Republicans, including
the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, are relying for information,
whether the information is true, partially true, or utter contemptible
fiction that has been provided by a Chinese agent. As
Moskowitz writes to Gallagher, enabling a Chinese backed Iranian arms
(04:54):
supplier and making him a centerpiece of oversight investigations calls
into question whether the Chinese Communist Party has tainted the
Oversight Committee and its work. In his choice of the
word tainted, Representative Moscowitz is I feel being conservative and polite.
(05:14):
This is no longer about the corrupt, dishonest, shameful, sleezy
lies and defamation spread by this jackass comer and his
fellow jackass Republicans who will literally stop at nothing to
promote their own jackass careers and damage a present and
damage this country. This is beyond that. Now, this is
(05:37):
national security. This is the open question of what other
influence Gollloft and his Chinese interests, the ones he represents
have wielded on Comer and the others, if other representations
there may be. Jamie Comer is now doing exactly what
(05:57):
the Chinese would want him to do. Ron Johnson is
now doing exactly what the Chinese would want want him
to do. Nancy Mace is now doing exactly what the
Chinese would want her to do. Jim Jordan is now
doing exactly what the Chinese would want him to do.
(06:20):
Jared Moskowitz is clearly as pissed off about this as
you and I are. He has also asked Armed Services
Committee Chair Rogers and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair McFall to
conduct congressional briefings about goll Luft, quoting again on their own,
mister Luf's interactions with Iran and on behalf of the
(06:41):
People's Republic of China seriously threaten our national interests and
those of our allies. However, he continues, this individual has
been embraced and elevated by the chairman of the House
Oversight Committee, which I believe increases the risk to our
national security that mister Loof presents, as well as the
integrity of the committee. I ask that you hold a
(07:03):
briefing to examine the im pact of mister Luft's dealing
with Iran and China and any security breaches resulting from
his actions. Unquote. Moskowitz and Raskin and Goldman in tandem
are right on the money here, but these are only
first steps. This is now about James Comer and the
(07:25):
House Oversight Committee and what influence Chinese interests have over both.
This certainly needs to be examined within the non insane
parts of the House Republican Caucus, but it is too
important to be left in any venue in which amoral, irresponsible,
disloyal Republican political acts have a say or a vote.
(07:48):
If the questions are indeed about quote security breaches, quote
our national interests and those of our allies quote national security.
If those are the stakes, then the investigation needs to
be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and the
Office of the Director drive National Intelligence. Because while the
big red, rotating blaring siren may be this man Gollloft,
(08:13):
he is not a sitting member of the House or
the Senate, and this nation needs to know immediately to
what degree if any Congressman Comber, Congressman Jordan, Congresswoman Mace,
Senator Johnson, and other Republicans may have been compromised by
China or may have been targets for compromise by China.
(08:35):
There is, It turns out, as the Republicans have been saying,
a foreign influenced scandal inside the government of the United States,
and it exists at this hour, and the smell is
coming from inside the offices of the House Committee on
Oversight and Accountability James Comer, Chairman. And now to the
(09:02):
unexpected good news from the Trump bid to get somebody
to attack Barack Obama or his family or just his
home by remote control. Taylor Taranto will now be held
without bail until trial. You will recall this terrifying timeline.
Sometime in late May or early June, Taylor Taranto, a
(09:24):
January sixth defendant not yet arrested, had begun living in
a van near the Washington Jail, where many conspirators, either
convicted or awaiting trial were serving their time. On Thursday,
June twenty eighth, Trump, who has refined the process of
terrorism by proxy to a science posted on social media
(09:48):
what he said was Barack Obama's home address. Taylor Toronto
reposted Trump's unspoken call for his cultists to go there
and added quote, we got those losers surrounded. See you
in hell, Podesta's and Obama's. Years later, Taylor Toronto began
to live stream from the Obama neighborhood, saying he had
(10:10):
quote control en quote of a block that he was
searching for quote entrance points and the quote tunnels underneath
their houses and was looking for quote a good angle
on a shot. Police arrested Taylor Toronto on the outstanding
January sixth warrants, and they found in his truck which
(10:32):
he was living in, two of the twenty guns registered
in his name, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Prosecutors understandably asked US Badgistrate Judge Zia Ferruki to detain
Toronto indefinitely. And that's when one of the creaking corners
of the law which Trump has so magnificently manipulated these
long eight years, seemed to come to his proxy's aid,
(10:56):
because Toronto had been arrested only on those January sixth
charges the only argument US attorneys could make for detaining
him without was this profoundly disturbed and clearly potentially violent
man's relative likelihood as a flight risk. Judge Faruki quite
reasonably asked what he was supposed to do about this
(11:18):
man if he was to find that Taranto was in
fact not a flight risk. Happily, Farruki found a way out.
He adjourned for nearly a week a hearing in which
Taranto's public defender demanded his release on bond, and yesterday
Farruki ordered the man held indefinitely while prosecutors develop other
(11:39):
charges against him. Faruki said, the quote temperature is way
too high in our political discussions unquote. He added that
the consequences could be quote catastrophic if Taranto were released
and was free to do the things that he thought
in his warped mind that elected officials were telling him
to do. Translation. Faraki believes Taranto could still be a
(12:03):
trump stochastic terrorist and could still easily head to Obama's
house or anywhere to do anything he thought would please Trump.
It is Dracula and Renfield all over again. The judge
said the nation had failed Taranto by not getting him
the help he needed for his PTSD after service INTERAQ.
(12:24):
And that is true, and frankly, unfortunately right now that
is irrelevant to the national safety. But without naming names,
the judge made it clear he thought others were morally
responsible for this nightmare. Quote where are the people telling
you do things? He asked, Taranto, where are they? They're
not here unquote. I'll take that question, judge. The leader
(12:50):
of them is in Florida. He is poisoning other minds
as we speak, and also as we speak, he is
trying to steal again the ultimate power of this nation.
And as I reported to you two days ago, Ray Epps,
hardly innocent but clearly a bystander, has indeed sued Fox
(13:13):
News for defamation and false light characterization. And he has
sued them in the same jurisdiction in Delaware using the
same local attorney Dominion used when Dominion won an eight
hundred million dollars settlement just before that trial was to begin,
and his lawsuit is peppered with references to the lies
Tucker Carlson told about him that the suit claims destroyed
(13:36):
the lives of Epps and his wife and forced them
to flee their home and go live in an RV
in an undisclosed location. I have detailed the EPP's case
here Before the day Fox fired the vermin Tucker Carlson,
Tucker Carlson was ready to do yet another segment, his
(13:57):
eighteenth or nineteenth or twentieth on how Ray Epps, a
staunch conservative, a true believer the election had been stolen
from Trump, had the night of January fifth and early
on the day of January sixth urge protesters, including the
infamous Moron Baked, Alaska, to go to the US capital
(14:18):
on the sixth, But when they got there and violence erupted,
Epps suddenly turned away. He never himself entered the capital.
He tried to stop the violence he encountered. Unlike literally
one thousand others, Ray Epps was not arrested, not yet Anyway,
Carlson and others on foxlaw Ingram did it at least
(14:39):
once concluded, fabricated that there was only one possible explanation
for this behavior, that they could not understand, that Epps
must be a provocateur, that he was planted by the FBI. Yeah,
the FBI, He was planted by the FBI to foment
an insurrection to make Trump look bad. In the diseased, vengeful,
(15:06):
racist mind of Tucker Carlson, two simple facts never broke
through the clutter. The FBI was under Donald Trump's control
at the time, and since there was no evidence, none
of anybody but Trump fomenting the coup attempt, that was
on his behalf. A logical person not filled with insane
(15:31):
rage like Tucker Carlson, would have recognized that Epps had
simply believed he was heading to a peaceful protest and
was appalled by the destruction and the violence and recoiled
like a responsible human being, the kind of person Tucker
Carlson deplores and mocks on an hourly basis. The EPP's
(15:51):
lawsuit is hardly a slam dunk, but it is filled
with things Carlson or his guests said that will be
nearly impossible for Fox to defend. Just six months ago,
Carlson again emphasized that Epps had not yet been charged.
Quote why is that, Well, let's just stop lying at
this point. It's pretty obvious why that is. In other
(16:14):
shows over an eighteen month span, Carlson and his guests
hammered Ray Epps again and again with no evidence, and
called him the quote stage manager of January sixth, the
quote smoking gun of the entire fed surrection. And then
there is one paragraph that is the most problematic for
(16:38):
Fox and for Carlson, and one wonders how or if
Epps will amend his lawsuit if Carlson picks this up
on his Twitter program, which I believe is called the
law of diminishing returns. During the last gasp of Tucker
Carlson on Fox, his big reveal of the unseen video
(16:58):
from January sixth that was personally handed to him by
the speaker weasel of the House, Kevin McCarthy, the review
that turned out to be so underwhelming, so boring, so
meaningless that Carlson only showed a few minutes of it,
and some of that two and three times per clip.
In that last gasp, Tucker Carlson and Fox News figuratively
(17:21):
hanged themselves in terms of this lawsuit. On March eleventh,
twenty twenty three, Tucker Carlson showed video that showed pretty
much nothing, but then he said that this video proved
the January sixth coup attempt was a false flag, quoting
the fired host that night March eleven. A lot of
(17:43):
this was clearly influenced by federal agents or informants. It
was okay, but I did not want to suggest someone
was a federal agent or informant unless I knew for
a fact, because you could really get someone in trouble,
right if you're like, this was the guy, and like,
we don't know, I do know for I mean, it's
(18:04):
very clear something very strange is going on with ray Epps.
We've named him repeatedly, We've invited him on the show repeatedly.
I mean, don't lie to my face. The ray Epps
thing isn't isn't organic sorry unquote amid Carlson's paranoia and
(18:27):
his condescension, and his trumpy and technique of dancing right
up to a legally actionable slander and then never actually
finishing the sentence, there is one larger issue in that quotation.
I just read that Fox will either have to bet
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that no jury
(18:49):
will notice, or it will have to pay those same
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to ray Epps.
And the larger issue is this. It is a question
Tucker Carlson said just one hundred words in that quote there.
Twice in those one hundred words he said federal agent. Twice.
(19:09):
In those one hundred words, he said informant. Twice in
those hundred words, he said ray Epps. Once he said
I knew for a fact. Once he said the ray
Epps thing isn't organic. Once he said, don't lie to
my face. So here is the question. If Tucker Carlson
was not trying to tell his audience on March eleventh
(19:32):
of this year that ray Epps was a federal agent
and an informant who influenced the events of January sixth,
what the hell else could Tucker Carlson have possibly been
trying to say? Also of interest here, Trump was ready
(19:54):
to announce during the twenty nineteen Stated the Union Address
that he was invoking the Insurrection Act and he would
deploy US troops to forcibly prevent a migrant caravan from
crossing our border. He was ready to do the unthinkable
to have American troops threaten or if necessary, shoot at,
(20:19):
or actually shoot asylum seekers. And it's not just Miles
Taylor's recollection of his role talking Trump out of it.
There is a contemporary, corroborating witness. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Washington, days before the twenty nineteen Stated
the Union Address, Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff
Miles Taylor and his boss, Kristen Nielsen raced over to
the White House. He said, to talk Trump out of
the big splash he was going to make in the
(21:08):
annual address. Trump had decided he wanted to answer the
latest Fox News race hype outrage another migrant caravan headed
towards the US border. So Trump was just going to
invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize US troops to stand
on US soil, presumably with weapons drawn and maybe even
(21:30):
ready to be fired at the asylum seekers as they
approached the border. Quote Donald Trump was a few sentences
away from making it happen. I was there, Taylor writes
it in his new book Blowback. We know Trump was
ready to declare an insurrection during the Black Lives Matter
protests of twenty twenty, and he was looking for an
excuse to do it again later that year or early
(21:52):
in twenty twenty one in order to unconstitutionally remain in office,
and his former Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, knew the threats
were real throughout the administration, quoting him, I swore an
oath to supper and defend the Constitution. Never did I
dream that troops taking the same oath would be ordered,
under any circumstance, to violate the constitutional rights of their
(22:13):
fellow citizens. This is a good time to mention that
Miles Taylor is starting today in fact a new podcast
here in iHeart Politics Land The Whistleblowers, Miles Taylor will
be scaring the crap out of you retroactively. The new
series is devoted to the stories of high ranking officials
who sounded the alarm about corruption during the Trump administration.
(22:37):
People who were there because they believed in policy or
in the Republican Party, and they were suddenly faced with
the choice risking everything they had previously worked for to
tell the truth about the risk to democracy that Trump
posed and still poses. The Whistleblowers with Miles Taylor, Episode
one dropping today on iHeart or Wherever You podcast and
(23:00):
Dateline London. It has now been revealed that the unidentified
be BBC presenter who had been suspended after tabloid claims
that he paid about thirty five thousand pounds to a
young man for semi naked photographs, turned out to be
no less a figure than the country's leading newscaster, Hugh
Edwards of BBC News. At ten, he was the anchor
(23:21):
for the death of Queen Elizabeth, for the coronation, the elections,
the Olympics, the monthly live coverage of the monthly new
British Prime Minister. The scandal has consumed British media for
a week, even though a even the tabloid never printed
Edwards's name b The young man in the case was
of legal age and he insisted there was nothing illegal
(23:42):
and his parents had overreacted. C London Police set a
thorough review showed that that was correct. There were no crimes,
there'll be no charges d The BBC was excoriated for
not naming the presenter, even some other BBC stars demanded
that he out himself. While e it turns out the
BBC was in fact protecting the privacy of one of
(24:04):
its employees, Edwards, who has publicly acknowledged suffering from depression
and who has been hospitalized anew after another bout with depression,
which we know because f when his identity was finally
made public. It was made public in a statement issued
yesterday by his wife. He has five children. I'd just
(24:25):
like to mention I am available to succeed him on
News at ten, and I would be in fact the
best choice they could possibly make. While all this was happening,
the WhatsApp messages of the former British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson were required by court ruling to have been handed
over by Monday by the government to an inquiry into
how Johnson had violated COVID lockdown rules. And that still
(24:48):
hasn't happened, and nobody is talking about it. And because
it doesn't involve underwear, it got no coverage and this
story instead got all of it. I should also mention
one final point, point G, because British libel laws are
so much more stringent than are those here. No news
organization actually reported that it was Hugh Edwards, but the
(25:10):
cat was out of the bag for several days because
time after time over the last couple of days, British radio,
television and digital reporters made the same slip on air
online wherever intentional or otherwise. Instead of saying we still
don't know who the presenter is, they kept saying, yeah,
(25:35):
we still don't know, Hugh the presenter is, Oh, totally accidental,
(25:56):
no doubt. Still ahead on countdown. It's happened again. Somebody
else has told me a story about a day in
nineteen eighty at the Lake FLASCT Olympics where I was
up a mountain without an audio cassette, and I asked
a colleague from a rival wire service if I could
borrow his spare audio cassette so I could do my
interviews and not get fired. And the guy went no,
(26:18):
It's an unbelievable story. It gets more unbelievable every time
I think about it. Next in Things I promised not
to tell, but first time for the daily roundup of
the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world. The Bronze polster
Patrick Raffini. After the June inflation numbers hit yesterday three percent,
(26:39):
slowest pace in more than two years, Ruffini helpfully tweeted
reminder prices are still significantly above January twenty twenty twenty
one levels. Gosh, thanks Pat everybody for God. I'd also
like to note this reminder, prices are still significantly above
January twenty seventh, nineteen fifty nine levels. That was the
(26:59):
day I was born. And I'm not taking a rap
for that inflation, no, sirree Bob Patrick. The runner up
Clarence Thomas the only Supreme Court justice with a for
sale sign growing out of his ass. Well, not the
only one, but you know what I mean. The Guardian
reporting that a bunch of lawyers who had business before
the Supreme Court, including one of them that was in
(27:21):
the case that just ended affirmative action in college admissions,
have sent VENMO payments to Thomas's top aid's former top
aid now re John Vashist. Guardian says this seems to
be connected to Thomas's twenty nineteen Christmas party. How much
fun would that be? But the darn thing is seven
of the payments are from lawyers who were previously legal
(27:44):
clerks for Clarence Thomas, and three of them argued cases
before Thomas, and a fourth was in the Trump administration.
And honestly, this sounds like it could be innocent, but
good God, Clarence Thomas just doesn't care if it sounds
innocent or not, does he. By the way, you want
to know the name of another former Thomas Supreme Court clerk,
Laura Ingram. No, I'm not kidding, but the winner Barry Bonds.
(28:09):
Barry Bonds has finally begun the attempt to rehabilitate himself.
He wants to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
He's told a podcast quote. People have to understand something.
Is that the fact is that I was vindicated. I
went to court, I was in federal court, and I
won my case one hundred percent. Where is the vindication
of me in my own sport. That's what bothers me.
(28:30):
Major League Baseball already punished me. Why is the Hall
of Fame punishing me. It doesn't make sense. It makes
zero sense that you're being double punished for something that
you've already been punished for. Here's what Bonds has to understand.
He is other than the game fixers, the greatest cheat
in the history of the sport. By the way, the
game fixers from the nineteen nineteen World Series, they were
(28:52):
all quitted in court themselves. The Hall of Fame election
is not a court of law. Barry Bonds could have
been found guilty or not guilty, and neither verdict matters.
The eligibility rules are fluid and variable, and often that
is a problem when it comes to Bonds. It is
a blessing. Barry Bonds will never be in the Baseball
(29:14):
Hall of Fame, and outside of the San Francisco Bay Area,
he will never be recognized as the holder of the
records for most homers in a season or most homers
in a career. Never Barry Bonds. No, no, You're not
going to Cooperstown unless you're willing to pay your way.
(29:34):
In Today's Worst Person in the World, arm goes off.
It is pitch black in my room at the Swiss
(29:56):
Acres Motel. It is Valentine's Day and I am still drunk.
Keith knew he was in trouble, but I was also
twenty one years old, and in fact, my twenty first
birthday had only been eighteen days earlier. So somehow I survived, showered, dressed, packed,
(30:18):
and I mean I packed two cassette tape recorders, four
sets of batteries, an audio processing machine that weighed like
fourteen pounds the nine volt batteries it took. I think
It was a dozen of them. A telephone, a backup telephone,
twelve assorted patch cords, two loose leaf notebooks, about eight pens,
two microphones, two extra pair of socks. Then I got dressed,
(30:40):
two full sets of thermal underwear, shirts, sweaters, snow pants,
snow shoes. Because it was eleven degrees below zero that morning.
I got something quick to eat at the commissary, and
I made it out somehow to the line for the
bus from the Lake Placid Olympics Center to the Lake
Placid Transportation Center to Lake Placid's own White Face Mountain,
(31:04):
then on to the snow track the open penned mountain
tractor that went up the side of Whiteface Mountain and
took me to the finish line of the nineteen eighty
Olympic Men's downhill ski final still drunk. That is how
a reporter covered the Olympics nearly forty three years ago.
You drank, you woke up, you went, you stood near
(31:27):
the finish line, and when the skiers completed their runs,
you hiked or wobbled over to them, and you took
out your microphone or your pen, and you interviewed them,
like two minutes after they had finished hurtling towards you
down the hill. You could see almost nothing of the
race from there. There were no TV monitors. Basically your
only clue was the sound of the crowd that would
(31:49):
give you about thirty seconds worth of warning that the
skier was coming over the near horizon and you should
be prepared to flee just in case he or she
wiped out. Also, you were on top of a mountain
at the dead point of winter, and whereas it might
have been a balmy eleven degrees below zero in the
(32:09):
comfort of the Swiss Acres motel with the wind chill,
at the base of the mountain, it was forty eight
below zero and there had already been four inches of
new snow since the sun came up, which is where
the still drunk part came in Handy, my boss is
at my first job, the thousand station radio network called
(32:31):
United Press International Audio, had decided the night before to
teach me how to drink while on assignment. My bosses
were the bureau manager for that part of you PI,
the late Stan Sabik, who had hired me, and Sam Rosen,
the sports director of the network, who not only somehow
survived being my first boss, but today, just forty three
(32:51):
years later, is still working as the television voice of
the New York Rangers hockey team and is in the
Hockey Hall of Fame. So I guess my reputation is
a tough employee is wildly overrated, or at least Sam thinks.
So Sam and Stan kept me drinking at the motel
until two am, knowing full well that I had to
get on the six am bus to go cover the
(33:13):
men's downhill, because it was the two of them who
had assigned me to go cover the men's downhill, and bluntly,
I was surprisingly pleased with myself that freezing morning because
I had indeed learned how to drink while on assignment.
I had somehow found the phone jack for the UPI
phone buried under all the new snow, which of course
(33:35):
was buried under all the old snow, attached the phone
to it, gott in a dial tone, called the office,
checked the alligator clips with which I would feed the tape,
and all was well until I went to put a
cassette tape into the cassette recorder. I didn't have one
(33:58):
fat lot of good two cassette tape machines gonna do
you without a cassette to sticking one of them? I
looked forlornly around the base of Whiteface Mountain, twelve hundred
feet above sea level as we were. There was a
surprisingly nice chalet and a decent restaurant, but there were
no radio shacks or other electronics stores. There was, however,
(34:20):
one other radio guy, Jack Briggs, from the Associated Press
Radio Network, the nominal arch rival to our own UPI Audio.
I knew Jack a little. He was a nice guy.
I went and explained my plight, making sure to blame
my bosses for my predicament. Oh man, he said, his
(34:41):
breath turning into first steam and then ice cubes. I'm
so sorry, but I can't give you a cassette. I'm sorry,
you're UPI, and I'm ap Oh how I laughed. That
was a great line to say to a rookie reporter,
still drunk thanks to the initiation rituals of his own bosses,
(35:04):
the possessor of one great buzz but zero audio cassettes.
Jack Briggs could tell I thought he was kidding. That's
when he said, I'm not kidding. Look. If my boss,
Shelby Whitfield, ever found out, he'd fire me. I suddenly
wasn't drunk anymore, not at all. My my boss will
(35:24):
will fire me. Briggs was adamant, I can't run the
risk of shellby finding out. I have to confess. I shouted,
how the hell is he gonna find out?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Jack?
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I think subconsciously I was hoping to create an avalanche,
which would have been a better solution than the one
I was faced with. I said to him, there's you
and there's me, and we're on top of a goddamn
mountain and Shelby Whitfield, your boss is in Washington, DC,
and he's a drunk, and he's probably more drunk than
I am, and he'd probably thank you for helping me
(36:00):
to drink more. Briggs would not. Budge told him I
would pay him. I told him I would give him
the cassette back after I fed my boss the interviews
over the phone, so there'd be no evidence and he
wouldn't even have to do any interviews. No good, I'm sorry,
and I know you're going to tell this story about
me for a while. As he walked away from me,
(36:20):
I shouted after him. Forever turned out there was no
radio shack and no camaraderie, but there was a West
Coast newspaper reporter atop the mountain who heard some of
this conversation. I guess I yelled a little loudly at
mister Briggs. Some guy standing next to a Saint Bernard
told me to quiet down and mentioned something else about
(36:43):
the avalanches. Or maybe I dreamed that part. I don't know. Anyway,
the West Coast newspaper guy said he had a micro
cassette machine and he would loan it to me and
I could give it back to him at the media
center that day or the next one. But I had
to do him a favor because there was this really
cute reporter in our UPI bureau and he really wanted
to be introduced to her. And I said, I can
promise you nothing but a handshake, and he understood, and
(37:04):
that's how I did not get fired. But of course,
a story like this has punchlines, and this one has
two of them. The first is two years and a
couple of months later, Shelby Whitfield asked me to lunch.
He had left the Associated Press to run the sports
department at the ABC Radio network, back when that was
not only a thing but a big thing. We went
(37:27):
to a terrific New York City Chinese restaurant near ABC
called shun Lee, and Shelby Whitfield interviewed me for a
job when that kind of job paid eighty thousand a
year in my very nice studio apartment in a very
nice part of town costs less than five hundred dollars
a month later, in an interesting twist, I found out
that jobs didn't exist. I was mentioning the interview in
(37:49):
a press box somewhere I think Madison Square Garden, and
there was another kid reporter named Howie Rose, and how
he is still working, he does the New York Mets
games on the radio, and how he said, wait, they
interviewed me for that job last year, Just an excuse
for that damn Whitfield to go drink his lunch on
ABC's tab. Anyway, before we started the interview for the
(38:13):
job I did not know did not exist at ABC.
I told Shelby Whitfield the White Face Mountain, can I
borrow a cassette Jack Briggs story? And Shelby's exact reply was,
I don't know. Was I going to find out? There
was you and there was him, and you were on
top of a goddamn mountain and I was in Washington.
Only he didn't say goddamn that Briggs. He added, always
(38:34):
trying to suck up to me. I got to tell
you something I actually once promised I wouldn't tell you
if we ever met. This. When the Olympics were over
and came back to the office, he told me what happened.
He expected me to be happy or give him a
bonus or something. And I called him a little snitch.
Only Shelby didn't say snitch, just a word that rhymed
with it. The other punchline is from nineteen ninety two,
(38:56):
and remember this happened at the nineteen eighty Olympics. I
go to work at ESPN and come in a little
early to launch their radio network, a story I've told
here before. And there I find a friend of mine
since my radio days, who I have not seen in
a year or so, and he says, hey, last month,
I was at an NBA game in Washington. I ran
in at Jack Briggs. He heard you were going to ESPN.
(39:17):
He asked me if you were still telling that story
about the time you got stuck on Whiteface Mountain without
a cassette. And he was the only other reporter there,
and he wouldn't give you a spare and I told
him you were and I smiled, and I replied, I
hope you remembered to use the word forever. Just as
(39:46):
a bonus, I will close this episode with a couple
of reports from the nineteen eighty Olympics. I think I'm
sober on them. I think I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arrange produced and performed
by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
(40:07):
all orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Schanel, produced by
Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. 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
(40:28):
today was my friend John Dean, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. Don't forget Countdown Now also available
on YouTube subscribe there as well give yourself multiple options.
So that's Downtown for this the nine hundred and nineteenth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States arrested him again while
(40:49):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olraman, Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
There has been an awful lot of singing on the
slopes of White Faced Mountain during these Olympics, and most
of it has been done by the Austrians.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
This didy is.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Barana Marie Moser Prol on Sunday can flit in an
Austrian sweep of the Olympic downhills. The downhill is the
skiing event as far as the Austrians are concerned, and
they were so confident of success that the Olympic team
had reserved an area house for a celebration center. The
honored stock and I'm Marie Moser Prol did not disappoint,
and for now the singing will continue both here and
in Austria. Keith Olberman, Lake Placid. Let's talk luge Louje
(41:54):
is a real fund sport here in the Winter Olympics.
It doesn't get an awful lot of publicity, and between
the Olympiads you tend to forget about it. That is
not fair. Louje, of course, is the event where a
guy or a earl, or two guys or two girls
lie down on this very small sled and rocket around
a refrigerated bank track feet first. He, she or they
have strings with which to control more or less where
(42:15):
they are going. This doesn't always work, of course, and
many as the time the luji lujer or lujis takes
to mid air when he hits one of those curves wrong.
If you can get used to the repetitiveness of competitive louge,
the sport becomes a part of your life. Some people
have an innate tendency to participate or watch. They, of course,
are the born lugers. There is an International Luge Federation Congress,
(42:37):
and I would suggest if they want to increase the
popularity of their.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Sport they do a little promotion.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Now, I wouldn't tamper with the sport itself. Rocketing around
a refrigerated bank track simply cannot be meddled with luge
purists even doubt the validity of the two man luge.
I would stick to those promotions To boost the sport's
acceptance with the public. We need a national luge league
and a luge Hall of Fame. The luge Hall of
Fame could be built in the shape of the bank track,
and it would naturally be refrigerated. Would enter at the top,
(43:05):
lie down on a real luge, and go through the
hall on their backs, watching overhead slide shows and glancing
quickly at plaques detailing the careers.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Of the world's great lougers.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Buttons and pins with choice catchphrases would also help luge.
How about I'm a loujer or born to luge, both
of which could also be turned into great popular music hits.
We would avoid degradations of the sport like no luge
is good luge, or the inaccurate insinuation that lujers travel
on their backs, because nobody would dare ride down that
course head first. And I would remind you, you knew
(43:37):
luge fan, you of the first promotional luge statement. For everything,
there is a season, a time to gain, and a
time to louge. I'm Keith Olberman and from Lake Placid.
That's my Side.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Count Down with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
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