March 21, 2023 • 44 mins
UPDATE 158: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: What if they gave a Trump Rally and nobody came? It happened, yesterday, at Trump Tower. My exclusive report from the scene as TWO people showed up, 22 showed up downtown, and today's big California rally is scheduled in the parking lot of a Laguna Hills In-N-Out Burger apparently because THE NEAREST FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING WAS BOOKED.
While the rest of us celebrate the thrilling holiday season before Mugshotmas, the far right continue to act as if the gravity has been turned off in their universe. DeSantis defends Trump; Trump implies he's a pedophile or he's gay. McCarthy insists Trump wants no protests; Trump tries to get New York police to NOT defend anti-Trump residents.
And in the case against those who allegedly defamed on Trump's behalf, as Dominion Voting and Fox go back into a courtroom in Delaware today, the Fox "News" case comes apart. The former producer of Maria Bartiromo's show, now a Tucker Carlson guest booker, says Fox lawyers tried to make her take the fall. She sues them; they try to stop her from testifying against them. But her testimony leaks: she says her bosses called Bartiromo "a crazy b*tch" and Carlson's producer asked if Bartiromo were having an affair with Kevin McCarthy. She also alleges Carlson's staff made jokes about Jews, and conducted a mock debate about who they'd rather sleep with: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or her challenger Tudor Dixon.
On the other hand: Rupert Murdoch is getting married again, because love means never having to say you're sorry you're 92.
B-BLOCK (15:07) A special summary of 20 years ago as this nation attacked Iraq based on a series of lies by a series of liars named George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. At this milestone anniversary, liberal media is quite rightly assailed for 'letting it happen.' But I want to give some context for it, especially as one of the few who risked their careers to be anti-war (and my first anti-Iraq War broadcast was in October 2002). I was once almost fired for simply telling the truth about the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, and I expected to be when I aired the first Special Comment against Iraq and Rumsfeld's attempt to demonize dissent. I'll re-read that commentary, too.
C-BLOCK (34:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Fenix in Tennessee (35:32) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: On JULY 2, 1979 I was just a fan in the stands cheering Thurman Munson of the New York Yankees. On AUGUST 2, 1979 I was the anchor on a 1000-station radio network having to cover his sudden death, as it flashed across the wire machine two minutes before my first sportscast.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio gear
before Me. At the Trump rally in front of Trump
(00:26):
Tower in New York City teams a vast multitude, as
far as the eye can see, millions and millions of
patriots rallying for Trump at his Monday evening rush hour
rally in New York City. The number is literally unaccountable.
And when I say uncountable, I mean let me count them. One, two, two.
(00:57):
There's two people here. As my cousin Mike Tyson says,
everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,
and these people just got punched in the mouse. Two
guys at the rally. Dell could be worse. They could
be rallying in the parking lot of an in and
out burger in Laguna Hills, California. Two people. Oh the humanity.
(01:24):
Thanks Keith, great report. Kind of wish I was kidding
about that rally at Trump Tower drawing two people, or
the one downtown by the New York Young Republicans at
the Federal Courthouse drawing an estimated twenty two people and
a hundred reporters, or the part about that in and
out burger in Laguna Hills, California, because Roger Stone says
(01:45):
that's where today's Trump rally actually is, in the parking
lot off exit ninety one of the five Freeway, and
a reminder that in and Out has no drive through.
This is four seasons total landscaping all over again. But
it's as if there was a four seasons total landscaping
and a new Rudy Giuliani in every American city making
(02:08):
a fool out of himself and Trump and their cult
again and again and again. And now it's the Simpsons
meme stops to hop he's already dead, and the full
fledged right wing insane headless chicken. This can't happen. I've
never really seen one, but that's got all the airmarks
of being a run on the bank panic by Trump.
(02:28):
And the gang continues uninterrupted and unrelieved, and it will
continue through today at least and into tomorrow because the
Stormy Daniel's grand jury has the day off today. And
this is the most fun I've had in like two years.
And while Politico reported that there could be an indictment
(02:51):
and arrest of Trump tomorrow because the grand jury really
is off today, CNN quoted a person close to the
Trump team, who I'm thinking could easily be CNN's new owner,
who says they aren't expecting any initial appearance by Trump arraignment, arrest, mugshot,
but no purp walk, repeating there will be no purp walk.
(03:11):
The Trump team is not expecting even the first hurdle
to happen before next week. Then again, the CNN reporter
on this is PAULA red Or, earlier yesterday said Trump
was showing restraint because he had only called for violence
in some of his social media posts. And then, of
course Trump promptly insisted that when there's violence in New York,
the police should not defend any victims if they're anti Trump,
(03:33):
but support the thugs. The only restraint Trump should be
showing is a straight jacket. It is amazing that after
all this time, eight years in politics and forty plus
years in public life, people still step on the same
trump Ian rake again and again. Oh, he hasn't said
(03:53):
something stupid, or threatened something stupid, or promised something stupid
in the last ten twelve hours, so he clearly never
will do so again. Not only did this read from
CNN fall for it, but Kevin McCarthy fell forward again,
McCarthy said, if Trump's arrested, he McCarthy believes there should
(04:15):
not be protests and quote, I think Trump, if you
talk to him, he doesn't believe that either. And of course,
hours later, Trump went back on to social media to
claim he was being persecuted by the radical left, communist
Marxist rhinos and losers. And he first posted a message
implying that Ron Dessantis was a pedophile or gay, and
then deleted that message, and then within the hour posted
(04:38):
a new version of that message showing an image of
dessantists with seemingly underaged girls. And it was then McDonald
Trump finally became president. His supporters spent Monday as they
spent Sunday, as they spent Saturday, as they will spend
each day until mug Shotmas, making the proverbial unforced errors.
(05:01):
Whatever Trump's attorney, Robert J. Costello said, to try to
impeach Michael Cohen at the Grand Jury in New York
yesterday was not enough to even make the Grand jury
call Cohen to Rebut even though Cohen was sitting outside
in the hallway after speaker McCarthy bordered on obstruction of
justice twice on Sunday by threatening to cut off federal
(05:21):
funding to the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Three of his
sleaziest lieutenants, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, and Brian I actually
worked for Fox Style, wrote Bragg, requesting documents and testimony,
with no apparent awareness that Da Bragg can ignore them,
because not only would a Biden Justice Department never enforce
(05:44):
a contempt of Congress complaint against him, even if they
somehow got the votes in the House, but a Republican
department would hesitate to interfere with another prosecutor and a
prosecution already in progress. While Dessantis triggered Trump by laughing
as he said, quote, I don't know what goes into
(06:04):
paying hush money to a porn star, the dumbest remark
still had to have come from New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenny.
Tenny told Newsmax, quote, I think this is all going
to blow over because I don't see any way that
they're actually going to get Donald Trump to appear in
a court for indictment or any type of charge. So
(06:25):
I think, again, this is grandstanding. Tenny was so magnificently
wrong about this that even the Newsmax hosts had to
gently explain to her that the day Trump said he
was going to be arrested, he also said he would
show up in court. This is not going to just
blow over. Meanwhile, on the arrest Trump, while we still
(06:48):
can and when he's been arrested, arrest Trump again front
his Georgia attorneys through a hail Mary, asking that the
entire Fulton County grand jury report be quashed erased. Legally,
you never know about this stuff, but it seems unlikely
to happen, given that exactly the same time, the Fulton
County prosecutors were asking to interview one of Trump's non
(07:11):
Georgia attorneys, the infamous Christina bob And in the case
of the company that may go bankrupt because they defamed
on Trump's behalf, Fox quote News unquote and Dominion Voting
Systems go into their Delaware courtroom today having each asked
the judge for summary judgment, in other words, claiming that
(07:32):
the other side is so incredibly guilty that there is
no need to bother with a trial, so just find
against them now. While rumors flew that Fox may settle
and remember Dominion suited for one billion six hundred million
dollars in damages, while the next suit by Smart Mattocks
were two billion, seven hundred million. The entire case went crazy.
(07:54):
Last night, somebody leaked that Abby Grossberg, former producer for
Maria Bartaromo and now guest booker for Tucker Carlson, is
suing her employer at Fox. She has accused Fox's lawyers,
i'll be an essence setting her up, of coercing her
into giving misleading testimony in the dominion lawsuit. She's also
(08:17):
sued them for gender discrimination, and Fox has in turn
sued her to keep her from talking about what the
attorneys talked to her about, but she has already talked,
and not just about the attorneys. Grossberg says that Fox
bosses called Maria Bartaromo a quote crazy bitch unquote end quote,
(08:39):
menopausal unquote. She also says when she switched over to
Tucker Carlson's show, Carlson's top producer, Justin Wells, asked her
if Barbaromo was having an affair with Kevin McCarthy. The
world answers you later, Grossberg claims, quoting The New York Times,
(08:59):
mister Carlson's staff joked about Jews and freely deployed a
full her term for women. She says that before Michigan
Republican governor candidate Tutor Dixon was interviewed on Carlson's show,
v quote, staff held a mock debate about whether they
would prefer to have sex with miss Dixon or her
Democratic opponent, Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Unquote, huh, all, this line's
(09:24):
up without Tucker Carlson behaved at MSNBC anyway. Three final thoughts. One,
Mike Tyson really is my cousin the line about everybody
has a plan till they get hit in the mouth.
He was adopted by his first boxing manager, Customatto and cuss.
His niece, Geraldine Jerry was married to my uncle. She
was my aunt Jerry by marriage and adoption. Mike Tyson
(09:47):
and I are cousins, okay. Two. The impeccable Julia Davis,
who monitors Russian TV for The Daily Beast, quotes a
commentator there as saying, translated, it's possible that our Donald
Fredovich Trump might end up in the slammer, to which
George Conway added the helpful note that Fredovich means son
of fred, a common Russian usage, so Trump's name in
(10:11):
Russia is Donald, son of fred But of course let
me add that you could pronounce that name differently, and
suddenly he's Donald Fredo Fitch. And three bad news for him.
You know about the alleged anti Semitism in Tucker Carlson's
office and the whole Bartar Romo Kevin McCarthy question. On
(10:33):
the other hand, Rupert Murdoch is getting married again. Her
name is Anne Leslie Smith, and this time it's for life.
Rupert is ninety two years old. It's the thought that
counts still ahead of us. In this edition of Countdown,
(11:04):
twenty years since we attacked Iraq. And I actually heard
a BBC interview Aska the other day. If overall it
had turned out to be a good thing, it was
during the Iraq War and George W. Bush's compulsive lying
about the Iraq War that I first became a true
political commentator. I would like to read you some of
the anti war commentary I gave, not during the war,
(11:26):
but before it, in two thousand and two and early
two thousand and three, And then, if you'll indulge me,
the backstory to the first ever special comment the one
about Donald Rumsfeld's moral and ethical confusion speech and the
comment itself, and then in things I promised not to tell.
Sometimes life throws you into the deep end of the pool.
(11:46):
On July second, nineteen seventy nine, I was a fan
cheering Thurman Munson from the stands at Yankee Stadium. On
August second, nineteen seventy nine, I was a reporter covering
the shocking news that Munson had died piloting his own
private plane, the story that broke two minutes before my
first sportscast. That's next. This is countdown something different today
(12:20):
because it is now twenty years since this country attacked
Iraq on what we now know was cherry picked, falsified, dishonest, corrupt,
manufactured evidence about weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.
For nearly six years, the president of the United States
insisted those weapons did exist, and his cult insisted they
(12:41):
did exist. And there are some who at worst today
think of George W. Bush as benign in the context
of Trump, who still believe they exist. There is also
now a lot of dismissal of liberal media types who
let Iraq happen. It's an absolutely valid criticism, but it
requires context. I was anchoring on CNN as US troops
(13:06):
landed in Afghanistan that night, and I was anchoring on
MSNBC as they landed in Iraq to fight against a
presidential administration that could end careers by simply saying this senator,
this reporter, this American is not tough enough on terrorism.
Meant accepting and fighting threats, threats to your job, your livelihood,
(13:29):
even your life. Not everybody could face all three. I'm
happy to say circumstances permitted me too. But a few
twists and turns the other way, and it might have
been different. I might have been afraid. I might have
had a mortgage. I did a daily radio commentary for
ABC News in two thousand and two and two thousand
and three in addition to the CNN work, and on
(13:51):
October twenty eighth, two thousand and two, as Bush began
to push for a war he had planned for Iraq
long before nine to eleven occurred, I said that before
we gave into Bush, we needed to present all the
evidence we had as a country to the United Nations,
the way John F. Kennedy had done so through the
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban missile Crisis of nineteen
(14:14):
sixty two. Little did I know that when they finally
did that, they would use fake evidence and send Colin
Powell there to pretend it was not a lie. On
January twenty nine, two thousand and three, I expanded on
this idea of the necessity of evidence made public at
the UN, quoting from my script for the ABC show,
(14:35):
It's got to be more than just a proof that
Iraq had or has anthrax. Many of our allies had
or have anthrax. We have or had anthrax. Draw us
a map, miss President. The idea that these weapons aren't
just part of the madness of Sadam Hussein, but are
being provided to the far graver threats the terrorists has
(14:56):
to be established. Mister Bush said that America's purpose is
more than to follow a process. It is to achieve
a result. But that's not true. That's not this country.
We are about both the process and the result. We
are not our enemies. Powell's speech to the United Nations
has to be so much about process that all doubts
(15:19):
are erased. By March seventh, two weeks before we started bombing,
I said something on ABC that got me called in
by management. Quote I think President Bush really doesn't know
what he's doing. If there has been a more lackluster
public performance at a news conference by an American president
than mister Bush's last night, I cannot recall it. He
(15:42):
sounded like a talking doll pull its string and it
gives you one of a couple of answers, sometimes the
same one over and over again. It is not enough
to smirk at the people who disagree with you, mister president.
It is not enough to look at the rest of
us like we were too stupid to understand you, so
you're not going to bother to explain it to us.
That was not leadership by chief executive or irret media.
(16:05):
That was getting a roll of stamps and mailing it in.
On March twenty third, two thousand and three, just twenty
years ago, and I was on MSNBC again. By this point,
a supply clerk with a maintenance company on the ground
in Iraq was captured by the Iraqis private Jessica Lynch.
(16:26):
The military and the Bush administration immediately put out a
story that she was being tortured by evil Iraqi Sadam
Hussein doctors. Then on April first, there was the glorious
rescue of Jessica Lynch and the parades and the you
better not question. This story mandates from management at MSNBC,
(16:47):
which lasted at MSNBC and elsewhere about six weeks until
a newspaper in Toronto printed a different account of how
Jessica Lynch returned to American hands. It was that Lynch
was rescued from an Iraqi hospital and a US military team,
in good faith went to extract her, but that this
was all arranged by the Iraqi doctors, one of whom
(17:10):
sneaked over to the American lines at night and said, listen,
one of your soldiers is hurt and we don't have
the right equipment to help her. Could you swing by
and pick her up? I reported that version on MSNBC,
quoting the Toronto paper virtually word for word, and the
next day my boss, Phil Griffin called me in and
said that the head of NBC News and the NBC president,
(17:35):
Bob Wright, the president of the network, had been on
the phone all morning insisting I should be fired immediately
for implying that the Bush administration had lied. Griffin proudly
said he had talked them into letting me get away
with apologizing, apologizing to the troops who rescued her. I
(17:57):
have to say, despite my reputation for flying off the handle,
I did some very good and very quick thinking. The
demand was comical nonsense journalistically. On the other hand, if
I agreed to apologize to the troops who rescued her,
I would get the chance to tell the real Jessica
Lynch story again that night. So I did. The apology
(18:20):
was fifteen seconds, and while unnecessary, was sincere in my
admiration for the troops. I made sure that the retelling
of the true Lynch rescue story that followed took two
minutes and fifteen seconds. Over the next three years, I
took every opportunity I could to criticize the war and
Bush and how he had lied us into it, but
(18:42):
always in small doses, in little asides, in two minute readers,
in questions to guests. And then it got a little longer,
a few pieces here and there, a few brief two
or three minute commentaries. But the self censorship of the
time by most major media outlets in this country was infuriating.
And then came the night I decided I didn't care anymore.
(19:07):
On August twenty ninth, two thousand and six, a flight
I was taking from Los Angeles back to New York
was delayed, and as we sat on the tarmac at LAX,
I read and I read it for the first time,
I think in my life. I read a news story
on my phone and it was about the then Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying about how any of us
(19:28):
who disagreed with the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, or
indeed just disagreed with the Bush administration itself, were morally
or intellectually confused. Well, this pissed me off. Our takeoff
kept getting pushed back and back, the drinks in first
(19:50):
class kept getting pushed forward and forward, and my ire
kept getting pushed up and up. And so I took
the few pages of my trip itinerary and scratched out
what turned out to be a very very long commentary,
which I figured I'll read on MSNBC and then they'll
fire me. I aired it the last next night, and
(20:11):
I fully expected they would fire me, or somebody would
throw me in the back of a car, or in
the trunk of a car perhaps, or I'd wind up
at Gitmo or all of the above. If you don't
mind I'd like to read that commentary handwritten as it
ran on MSNBC on August thirtieth, two thousand and six.
We needed a graphic to indicate that this was a commentary,
(20:35):
just my opinion, and I wanted to emphasize that this
commentary was just going to be a one shot thing.
So I just threw out a title and they made
it into a graphic. So I said, call it a comment,
call it a special comment. The man who sees absolutes
(20:56):
where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning
is either a prophet or a quack. Donald S. Rumsfell
is not a prophet. Mister Rumsfeld's remarkable comments to the
veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis and
the sober contemplation of every American, for they do not
(21:17):
merely serve to impugne the morality or intelligence, indeed the
loyalty of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient
occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse still,
they credit those same transient occupants our employees with total omniscience,
a total omniscience which neither common sense nor this administration's
(21:39):
track record at home or abroad suggests they deserve. Dissent
and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom,
and not merely because it is the first roadblock against
the kind of tyranny. The men mister Rumsfeld likes to
think of as his troops still fight this very evening
in Iraq. It is also essential because just every once
(22:04):
in a while it is right and the power to
which it speaks is wrong. In a small irony, however,
mister Rumsfeld's speech writer was adroit in evoking the memory
of the appeasement of the Nazis, For in their time
there was another government, faced with true peril, with a
growing evil, powerful and remorseless. That government, like mister Rumsfeld's,
(22:28):
had a monopoly on all the facts. It too had
the secret information. It alone had the true picture of
the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in
terms like mister Rumsfeld's, questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England's. In the nineteen thirties. It knew
(22:52):
Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re arming in violation of
all treaties and accords. It knew that the hard evidence
it received which contradict did policies, conclusions, and omniscience needed
to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already
(23:14):
knew the truth. Most relevant of all, It knew that
its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact,
it portrayed the foremost of them as a bloodthirsty warmonger
who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or
intellectually confused. That critic's name was Winston Churchill. Sadly, we
(23:38):
have no Winston Churchill's evident among us this evening. We
have only Donald Rumsfeldt's demonizing disagreement. The way Neville Chamberlain
demonized Winston Churchill, history and one hundred and sixty three
million pounds of Luftwappa bombs over England taught us. All
(23:58):
that mister Chamberlain had was his certainty and his own confusion,
infusion that suggested that the office cannot only make the man,
but that the office can also make the facts. Thus
did mister rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy, accepting the
fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His
(24:21):
government absolute and exclusive in its knowledge. Is not the
modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of never Chamberlain.
But back to today's omniscience, that about which mister Rumsfeld
is confused is simply this. This is a democracy, still
(24:46):
sometimes just barely, and as such all voices count, not
just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any
of their prior claims of omniscience about Osama bin Laden's
plans five years ago, about Sodom Hussein's weapons four years ago,
about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago, we all might
(25:08):
be able to swallow hard and accept their omniscience as
a bearable, even useful recipe of fact plus ego. But
to date this government has proved little besides its own
arrogance and its own hubris. Mister Rumsfeld is also personally confused,
morally or intellectually about his own standing in this matter.
(25:30):
From Iraq to Katrina to the entire fog of fear
which continues to envelope this nation. He, mister Bush, mister Cheney,
and their cronies have inadvertently or intentionally profited and benefited
both personally and politically, and yet he can stand up
in public and question the morality and the intellect of
(25:52):
those of us who dare ask just for the receipt
for the Emperor's new clothes. In What country was mister
Rumsfeld raised as a child of Whose heroism did he
read on What side of the battle for freedom? Did
he dream one day to fight? With? What country? Has
(26:16):
he confused? The United States of America. The confusion we,
as its citizens must now address is stark and forbidding,
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men
like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our
skies and obscured our flag. Note with hope in your
(26:38):
heart that those earlier Americans always found their way to
the light, and we can too. The confusion is about
whether this Secretary of Defense and this administration are in
fact now accomplishing what they claim. The terrorists seek, the
destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the
same veterans mister Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City
(27:01):
have so valiantly fought. And about mister Rumsfeld's other main
assertion that this country faces a quote new type of
fascism unquote, as he was correct to remind us how
a government that knew everything could get everything wrong. So
too was he right when he said that, though probably
(27:22):
not in the way he thought he meant it, this
country faces a new type of fascism. Indeed, although I
presumptuously use his sign off each night in feeble tribute,
I have utterly no claim to the words of the
exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never, in the trial
of a thousand years of writing could I come close
(27:43):
to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier
generation of us at a time when other politicians thought
they and they alone knew everything and branded those who
disagreed confused or immoral. Thus forgive me for reading Murrow
in full. We must not confuse dissent with loyalty, he
(28:05):
said in nineteen fifty four. We must remember always that
accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence
and due process of law. We will not walk in
fear one of another. We will not be driven by
fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep
in our history and our doctrine and remember that we
(28:27):
are not descended from fearful men, not from men who
feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend
causes that were, for the moment unpopular. When MSNBC management
came into my office the next afternoon, it was not
to fire me, nor throw me into the back seat
(28:49):
or the trunk of a car. The MSNBC president Griffin asked,
could you do one of those every night the ratings doubled?
I told him no, they should be done only when necessary. Well,
could you do one of those only when necessary? I said,
he had a deal. It is correct to say the
(29:13):
news media failed twenty years ago as this nation lied
its way into Iraq. It is also correct to say,
and I will go out on the egotistical limb to
say it that some of us tried. Still ahead on countdown,
(29:38):
will continue this theme of history in the making, but
switch it to sports. Four weeks to the day that
my full time broadcasting career began, I had to cover
for a one thousand station radio network the tragic breaking
news of one of baseball's most popular players, a man
I had been cheering from the stands as a fan
(29:59):
literally a month before dying in a plane crash. I'm
that happy. First in each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day to Phoenix, not the city, but the dog,
spring Hill, Tennessee. We don't know how this happened in
this tiny Yorkie, evidently from a breeder's dumped in a
field at barely a year old. He was healthy. He
(30:22):
is not healthy now, parasites, there's some blood in his cough.
He's in intensive care at the animal hospital. But House
of Stray's Rescue is going all out to save his life.
It already has a home lined up for him if
he makes it. If you can donate, you can find
him on Cuddly that's Phoenix fe Nix, or on my
Twitter feeds. Your retweets would also help him. Thinking good
(30:44):
thoughts for him can't hurt either. I thank you, and
Phoenix thanks you. August second, nineteen seventy nine is now
forty three years ago. And if I sound incredulous about that,
(31:07):
it's because I'm incredulous about that. A certain part of
me is always living back there on August second, nineteen
seventy nine, and the rest of that day is seared
into my memory, like my name and address one month
earlier to the day, July second, nineteen seventy nine, I
had been in the stands in my family seats back
(31:28):
of first base at Yankee Stadium in New York, a
twenty year old Yankees fan, applauding Thurman Munson's r behind
double and Lou Pinello's two for four day and Roy
White's appearance, since Roy White was my mother's favorite Yankee player,
but months in particularly, he had been playing for the
Yankee since I was nine. I was now twenty, thus
(31:49):
more than half my life now. On August second, nineteen
seventy nine, I was finishing the first month of my
professional broadcasting career. It was my seventh or eighth solo
shift anywhere for money. I was the night time sportscaster
of United Press International's radio network one thousand stations worldwide
(32:10):
known as UPI Audio. For my first sportscast of the
night due to go at five forty five PM, I
had long since finished my script. Tom Watson was leading
Round one of the PGA Golf in Michigan. The lawyer
who owned Washington of the NFL, Edward Bennett Williams. He
had just bought the Baltimore Orioles. There was an exposed
Cubs matinee at baseball game in Montreal that prevailed through
(32:34):
three rain delays. It was just about five forty three
pm Eastern Time, and I was making the short walk
from the little sports cubbyhole to the little main on
air studio in UPI World headquarters in the Daily News Building,
or if you saw the movie the Superman Building on
forty second Street in Manhattan. I was just walking past
(32:55):
the bank of thermal printers, each making their sluggish, muted
honking sound as they slowly printed stories out onto what
wasn't really paper. There was the main UPI wire, the
UPI Sports Wire, the UPI Business Wire, the UPI International Wire,
the UPI Radio wire, several internal message wires via which
(33:18):
the UPI bureaus around the world could communicate with headquarters
in New York, or as it was abbreviated NX. Those
message wires were the nineteen seventy nine equivalent of texting.
As I got within a foot of these machines, one
of them made a noise I had never heard before,
a series of ten really loud bells. As I moved
(33:40):
over to see what the hell they could mean, the
news editor, Frank Raphael came over to check as well.
We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously, Cleveland Bureau
to nx Thurman, Munson Catcher, Captain New York Yankees dead
piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport thirty Still it stuns
(34:04):
to read those words aloud. As soon as they finished printing,
Cleveland sent it again. The bells went off again. I
could see I now had about a minute until I
went on the air. The editor pointed this out to me,
You'll have to add lib the sportscast, then come out
here and do a voice or just talk about his career.
Keep repeating that it's a bulletin that he's dead, and
that he was piloting a private plane. You know anything
(34:25):
about him and planes? And I remember saying, oh God,
I do. And he said, well, use whatever you think fits.
If more details come in, I'll bring them into you.
I'll try to get somebody at the airport for some sound.
I don't remember anything of what I said on the
air that night, nor in the special report the voicer
the editor had had me record. As soon as I
(34:47):
finished that live sportscast, it was all recorded. I never
wanted to hear any of it. I never wanted to
keep any of it. I have basically the rest of
my career on tape. But I knew my youth was
over right then. Thurman Munson had joined the Yankees when
I was nine years old, literally more than half my
(35:08):
life ago. He was the first good rookie I ever
saw added to my team. My family was convinced he
looked like my mother's cousin Billie. I met him a
couple of times, had photographed him once, interviewed him once.
He was gruff and forbidding, but I had never had
a problem with him. What I knew about him and
(35:28):
his plane I spoke of as generically as possible in
my mind. I flashed back to lunch in the press
room at Yankee Stadium four months earlier, when I was
still in college with my friend Rick Serone, the editor,
not the catcher Munson. Rick said, almost surreptitiously, leaning in
toward me over the little table. Munson is flying his
(35:50):
own plane back home to Ohio on like every day off.
The Yankees are terrified he's not as good a pilot
as he thinks. He is, honest to God, wanted executives
is trying to get George. That would be George Steinbrenner,
the owner, to trade him to Cleveland, just so he'll
(36:12):
get out of the damn plane. They're all terrified he
might wind up killing himself. I don't know how many
special reports I did forty three years ago today, in
addition to a new sportscast every hour. Later, a friend
of mine from college, who didn't even know I'd gotten
the job as a sportscaster. I was so new there,
(36:34):
told me he was driving in Buffalo listening to the
all news station on the radio. He heard them say
munths and had been killed and with more here's Keith
Alderman in New York. And he said he almost drove
off the road because of the double shock. And I
do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the morning
shift and would have only gotten home from it around
(36:54):
one or two pm. He came back into the office
to supervise things and to put together a long memorial
special to feed that the thousand stations that you dar
stuff would all use. I was so glad to see
Sam that day. And then he handed me a piece
of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for Lupinella
(37:17):
and Roy White, call them, try to do interviews, be gentle,
record first, ask later, like Munson. They had played in
that game a month before. Really was my last as
a fan. Roy White had been with the Yankees since
I was six years old. Lupinella answered his phone, and
(37:40):
somehow I asked him if he would talk to me
for two minutes, and he did, and almost immediately he
burst into tears. There was such raw, immediate brutal pain
in his voice. I did the only thing I could
think of. I said, listen, you should not have to
do this all night. I will make copies of this
interview and give it to the other radio networks so
(38:02):
they will leave you alone. And only then did I
think to ask my boss Sam, who by the way,
still does the New York Rangers games on TV, if
that was okay, and mercifully, Sam said, it was a
great idea. When I called Roy White, and Roy White
was literally on the Yankees the day I became a
Yankee fan. He begged me to tell him that they
(38:24):
had discovered some kind of a mistake, that Thurman Munson
was not dead. Both he and Panella were blunt, but
gentle and courteous, and I did make copies of the interviews,
and I can see myself handing a cassette to a
guy from NBC Radio named Mike Levinthal, who ran a
kind of cartel, almost a black market among New York
(38:46):
radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts with Panella and White,
not me, were all over radio that day. I also
remembered discovering, after three or four hours of literally working
non stop, that I had never really known what that
meant before. I remember I was supposed to be done
at eleven PM, that was the end of the shift,
but I stayed until one am, and I just merit
(39:08):
rarely made the train, the last one of the night
back to my house. I remember my boss Sam Rosen
talking to our stringer in San Francisco, fellow named Rob Navius,
and he said, they're killing my team. I should go
to Mexico and smoke myself blind. The things you remember
at a time of stress and tragedy. In my youthful
(39:29):
misunderstanding of how these things worked, I found myself coming
back to the thought that I had somehow failed Thurman
Mounthson by not telling somebody about that Yankee fear from
April that he was not as good a pilot as
he thought he was. Although even then I asked myself,
who were you going to tell? There are two postscripts
(39:50):
to my story of the twenty year old me covering
the night Thurman Mounthson died. Twenty years later, I was
hosting Baseball's Game of the Week on Fox and I
asked my producer what we were doing for the months
in anniversary. He asked what anniversary. He was younger than
I was. I had to explain it to him. Even then,
you want to write something we can preproduce, like a
(40:12):
minute and a half, minute and a half. I did it,
didn't think much of it. A couple of years later,
I was one of the public address announcers at Old
Timer's Day at Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director
Rick Serone. Same Rick Serone who in April nineteen seventy
nine told me about Munthson and the private planes and
the Yankees spheres. It is a small world. The twenty
(40:36):
fifth anniversary of Thurman Munson's death was just days away.
His widow, Diane was there. We had never met. Then
she saw me on the field and raced up to
me and hugged me. That piece you did on him
on the Game of the week. When was it five
years ago? That was the best memorial I've ever seen
to Thurman. We both cheered up. I couldn't believe she
(40:58):
said that I told her about that night in nineteen
seventy nine, what had had been like for me? I said,
it was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought
it was important somehow to share. She hugged me again.
It was deeply moving and it is still. The other
PostScript I only learned of last year. Four forever, and
(41:20):
the coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam
Rosen being the Hall of Fame announcer of the New
York Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But forever, the reporter
covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper the
New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had forgotten
until last year that the year that Thurman Munson was killed,
Larry was a very very young beat reporter covering not
(41:41):
Rangers hockey but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent me a
clipping from the New York Post from Saturday July twenty eighth,
nineteen seventy nine, five days before Munson's fatal plane crash.
It is almost beyond belief. Larry Brooks's story began quote,
(42:02):
reports of Thurman monthson death are exaggerated, at least slightly unquote.
Of course he was using a metaphor. Munson's knees had
been giving him trouble, and the manager of the Yankees,
Billy Martin, was giving him more time off between catching
assignments than usual. But Larry's story also included an even
more jaw dropping quote. Asked about the rumors he might
(42:27):
not catch again this year, Munson said, I don't know
who started them. It was Martin. Asked after the game
how his knees felt, he said, quote sore, real sore. Hey,
you might be seeing my last hurrah ute. Larry says
(42:49):
that since August second, nineteen seventy nine, forty three years ago,
that story has haunted him. Now it haunts me, maybe
it haunts you. I've done all the damage I can
(43:16):
do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
(43:36):
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy
of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for this the eight hundred and fifth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
(43:56):
government of the United States. Arrest him now while we
still can, or if as you listen to this it's
already happened, rest him again while we still can. The
next schedule countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith ol Reman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(44:21):
with Keith Olverman 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 Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio gear
before Me. At the Trump rally in front of Trump
(00:26):
Tower in New York City teams a vast multitude, as
far as the eye can see, millions and millions of
patriots rallying for Trump at his Monday evening rush hour
rally in New York City. The number is literally unaccountable.
And when I say uncountable, I mean let me count them. One, two, two.
(00:57):
There's two people here. As my cousin Mike Tyson says,
everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,
and these people just got punched in the mouse. Two
guys at the rally. Dell could be worse. They could
be rallying in the parking lot of an in and
out burger in Laguna Hills, California. Two people. Oh the humanity.
(01:24):
Thanks Keith, great report. Kind of wish I was kidding
about that rally at Trump Tower drawing two people, or
the one downtown by the New York Young Republicans at
the Federal Courthouse drawing an estimated twenty two people and
a hundred reporters, or the part about that in and
out burger in Laguna Hills, California, because Roger Stone says
(01:45):
that's where today's Trump rally actually is, in the parking
lot off exit ninety one of the five Freeway, and
a reminder that in and Out has no drive through.
This is four seasons total landscaping all over again. But
it's as if there was a four seasons total landscaping
and a new Rudy Giuliani in every American city making
(02:08):
a fool out of himself and Trump and their cult
again and again and again. And now it's the Simpsons
meme stops to hop he's already dead, and the full
fledged right wing insane headless chicken. This can't happen. I've
never really seen one, but that's got all the airmarks
of being a run on the bank panic by Trump.
(02:28):
And the gang continues uninterrupted and unrelieved, and it will
continue through today at least and into tomorrow because the
Stormy Daniel's grand jury has the day off today. And
this is the most fun I've had in like two years.
And while Politico reported that there could be an indictment
(02:51):
and arrest of Trump tomorrow because the grand jury really
is off today, CNN quoted a person close to the
Trump team, who I'm thinking could easily be CNN's new owner,
who says they aren't expecting any initial appearance by Trump arraignment, arrest, mugshot,
but no purp walk, repeating there will be no purp walk.
(03:11):
The Trump team is not expecting even the first hurdle
to happen before next week. Then again, the CNN reporter
on this is PAULA red Or, earlier yesterday said Trump
was showing restraint because he had only called for violence
in some of his social media posts. And then, of
course Trump promptly insisted that when there's violence in New York,
the police should not defend any victims if they're anti Trump,
(03:33):
but support the thugs. The only restraint Trump should be
showing is a straight jacket. It is amazing that after
all this time, eight years in politics and forty plus
years in public life, people still step on the same
trump Ian rake again and again. Oh, he hasn't said
(03:53):
something stupid, or threatened something stupid, or promised something stupid
in the last ten twelve hours, so he clearly never
will do so again. Not only did this read from
CNN fall for it, but Kevin McCarthy fell forward again,
McCarthy said, if Trump's arrested, he McCarthy believes there should
(04:15):
not be protests and quote, I think Trump, if you
talk to him, he doesn't believe that either. And of course,
hours later, Trump went back on to social media to
claim he was being persecuted by the radical left, communist
Marxist rhinos and losers. And he first posted a message
implying that Ron Dessantis was a pedophile or gay, and
then deleted that message, and then within the hour posted
(04:38):
a new version of that message showing an image of
dessantists with seemingly underaged girls. And it was then McDonald
Trump finally became president. His supporters spent Monday as they
spent Sunday, as they spent Saturday, as they will spend
each day until mug Shotmas, making the proverbial unforced errors.
(05:01):
Whatever Trump's attorney, Robert J. Costello said, to try to
impeach Michael Cohen at the Grand Jury in New York
yesterday was not enough to even make the Grand jury
call Cohen to Rebut even though Cohen was sitting outside
in the hallway after speaker McCarthy bordered on obstruction of
justice twice on Sunday by threatening to cut off federal
(05:21):
funding to the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Three of his
sleaziest lieutenants, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, and Brian I actually
worked for Fox Style, wrote Bragg, requesting documents and testimony,
with no apparent awareness that Da Bragg can ignore them,
because not only would a Biden Justice Department never enforce
(05:44):
a contempt of Congress complaint against him, even if they
somehow got the votes in the House, but a Republican
department would hesitate to interfere with another prosecutor and a
prosecution already in progress. While Dessantis triggered Trump by laughing
as he said, quote, I don't know what goes into
(06:04):
paying hush money to a porn star, the dumbest remark
still had to have come from New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenny.
Tenny told Newsmax, quote, I think this is all going
to blow over because I don't see any way that
they're actually going to get Donald Trump to appear in
a court for indictment or any type of charge. So
(06:25):
I think, again, this is grandstanding. Tenny was so magnificently
wrong about this that even the Newsmax hosts had to
gently explain to her that the day Trump said he
was going to be arrested, he also said he would
show up in court. This is not going to just
blow over. Meanwhile, on the arrest Trump, while we still
(06:48):
can and when he's been arrested, arrest Trump again front
his Georgia attorneys through a hail Mary, asking that the
entire Fulton County grand jury report be quashed erased. Legally,
you never know about this stuff, but it seems unlikely
to happen, given that exactly the same time, the Fulton
County prosecutors were asking to interview one of Trump's non
(07:11):
Georgia attorneys, the infamous Christina bob And in the case
of the company that may go bankrupt because they defamed
on Trump's behalf, Fox quote News unquote and Dominion Voting
Systems go into their Delaware courtroom today having each asked
the judge for summary judgment, in other words, claiming that
(07:32):
the other side is so incredibly guilty that there is
no need to bother with a trial, so just find
against them now. While rumors flew that Fox may settle
and remember Dominion suited for one billion six hundred million
dollars in damages, while the next suit by Smart Mattocks
were two billion, seven hundred million. The entire case went crazy.
(07:54):
Last night, somebody leaked that Abby Grossberg, former producer for
Maria Bartaromo and now guest booker for Tucker Carlson, is
suing her employer at Fox. She has accused Fox's lawyers,
i'll be an essence setting her up, of coercing her
into giving misleading testimony in the dominion lawsuit. She's also
(08:17):
sued them for gender discrimination, and Fox has in turn
sued her to keep her from talking about what the
attorneys talked to her about, but she has already talked,
and not just about the attorneys. Grossberg says that Fox
bosses called Maria Bartaromo a quote crazy bitch unquote end quote,
(08:39):
menopausal unquote. She also says when she switched over to
Tucker Carlson's show, Carlson's top producer, Justin Wells, asked her
if Barbaromo was having an affair with Kevin McCarthy. The
world answers you later, Grossberg claims, quoting The New York Times,
(08:59):
mister Carlson's staff joked about Jews and freely deployed a
full her term for women. She says that before Michigan
Republican governor candidate Tutor Dixon was interviewed on Carlson's show,
v quote, staff held a mock debate about whether they
would prefer to have sex with miss Dixon or her
Democratic opponent, Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Unquote, huh, all, this line's
(09:24):
up without Tucker Carlson behaved at MSNBC anyway. Three final thoughts. One,
Mike Tyson really is my cousin the line about everybody
has a plan till they get hit in the mouth.
He was adopted by his first boxing manager, Customatto and cuss.
His niece, Geraldine Jerry was married to my uncle. She
was my aunt Jerry by marriage and adoption. Mike Tyson
(09:47):
and I are cousins, okay. Two. The impeccable Julia Davis,
who monitors Russian TV for The Daily Beast, quotes a
commentator there as saying, translated, it's possible that our Donald
Fredovich Trump might end up in the slammer, to which
George Conway added the helpful note that Fredovich means son
of fred, a common Russian usage, so Trump's name in
(10:11):
Russia is Donald, son of fred But of course let
me add that you could pronounce that name differently, and
suddenly he's Donald Fredo Fitch. And three bad news for him.
You know about the alleged anti Semitism in Tucker Carlson's
office and the whole Bartar Romo Kevin McCarthy question. On
(10:33):
the other hand, Rupert Murdoch is getting married again. Her
name is Anne Leslie Smith, and this time it's for life.
Rupert is ninety two years old. It's the thought that
counts still ahead of us. In this edition of Countdown,
(11:04):
twenty years since we attacked Iraq. And I actually heard
a BBC interview Aska the other day. If overall it
had turned out to be a good thing, it was
during the Iraq War and George W. Bush's compulsive lying
about the Iraq War that I first became a true
political commentator. I would like to read you some of
the anti war commentary I gave, not during the war,
(11:26):
but before it, in two thousand and two and early
two thousand and three, And then, if you'll indulge me,
the backstory to the first ever special comment the one
about Donald Rumsfeld's moral and ethical confusion speech and the
comment itself, and then in things I promised not to tell.
Sometimes life throws you into the deep end of the pool.
(11:46):
On July second, nineteen seventy nine, I was a fan
cheering Thurman Munson from the stands at Yankee Stadium. On
August second, nineteen seventy nine, I was a reporter covering
the shocking news that Munson had died piloting his own
private plane, the story that broke two minutes before my
first sportscast. That's next. This is countdown something different today
(12:20):
because it is now twenty years since this country attacked
Iraq on what we now know was cherry picked, falsified, dishonest, corrupt,
manufactured evidence about weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.
For nearly six years, the president of the United States
insisted those weapons did exist, and his cult insisted they
(12:41):
did exist. And there are some who at worst today
think of George W. Bush as benign in the context
of Trump, who still believe they exist. There is also
now a lot of dismissal of liberal media types who
let Iraq happen. It's an absolutely valid criticism, but it
requires context. I was anchoring on CNN as US troops
(13:06):
landed in Afghanistan that night, and I was anchoring on
MSNBC as they landed in Iraq to fight against a
presidential administration that could end careers by simply saying this senator,
this reporter, this American is not tough enough on terrorism.
Meant accepting and fighting threats, threats to your job, your livelihood,
(13:29):
even your life. Not everybody could face all three. I'm
happy to say circumstances permitted me too. But a few
twists and turns the other way, and it might have
been different. I might have been afraid. I might have
had a mortgage. I did a daily radio commentary for
ABC News in two thousand and two and two thousand
and three in addition to the CNN work, and on
(13:51):
October twenty eighth, two thousand and two, as Bush began
to push for a war he had planned for Iraq
long before nine to eleven occurred, I said that before
we gave into Bush, we needed to present all the
evidence we had as a country to the United Nations,
the way John F. Kennedy had done so through the
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban missile Crisis of nineteen
(14:14):
sixty two. Little did I know that when they finally
did that, they would use fake evidence and send Colin
Powell there to pretend it was not a lie. On
January twenty nine, two thousand and three, I expanded on
this idea of the necessity of evidence made public at
the UN, quoting from my script for the ABC show,
(14:35):
It's got to be more than just a proof that
Iraq had or has anthrax. Many of our allies had
or have anthrax. We have or had anthrax. Draw us
a map, miss President. The idea that these weapons aren't
just part of the madness of Sadam Hussein, but are
being provided to the far graver threats the terrorists has
(14:56):
to be established. Mister Bush said that America's purpose is
more than to follow a process. It is to achieve
a result. But that's not true. That's not this country.
We are about both the process and the result. We
are not our enemies. Powell's speech to the United Nations
has to be so much about process that all doubts
(15:19):
are erased. By March seventh, two weeks before we started bombing,
I said something on ABC that got me called in
by management. Quote I think President Bush really doesn't know
what he's doing. If there has been a more lackluster
public performance at a news conference by an American president
than mister Bush's last night, I cannot recall it. He
(15:42):
sounded like a talking doll pull its string and it
gives you one of a couple of answers, sometimes the
same one over and over again. It is not enough
to smirk at the people who disagree with you, mister president.
It is not enough to look at the rest of
us like we were too stupid to understand you, so
you're not going to bother to explain it to us.
That was not leadership by chief executive or irret media.
(16:05):
That was getting a roll of stamps and mailing it in.
On March twenty third, two thousand and three, just twenty
years ago, and I was on MSNBC again. By this point,
a supply clerk with a maintenance company on the ground
in Iraq was captured by the Iraqis private Jessica Lynch.
(16:26):
The military and the Bush administration immediately put out a
story that she was being tortured by evil Iraqi Sadam
Hussein doctors. Then on April first, there was the glorious
rescue of Jessica Lynch and the parades and the you
better not question. This story mandates from management at MSNBC,
(16:47):
which lasted at MSNBC and elsewhere about six weeks until
a newspaper in Toronto printed a different account of how
Jessica Lynch returned to American hands. It was that Lynch
was rescued from an Iraqi hospital and a US military team,
in good faith went to extract her, but that this
was all arranged by the Iraqi doctors, one of whom
(17:10):
sneaked over to the American lines at night and said, listen,
one of your soldiers is hurt and we don't have
the right equipment to help her. Could you swing by
and pick her up? I reported that version on MSNBC,
quoting the Toronto paper virtually word for word, and the
next day my boss, Phil Griffin called me in and
said that the head of NBC News and the NBC president,
(17:35):
Bob Wright, the president of the network, had been on
the phone all morning insisting I should be fired immediately
for implying that the Bush administration had lied. Griffin proudly
said he had talked them into letting me get away
with apologizing, apologizing to the troops who rescued her. I
(17:57):
have to say, despite my reputation for flying off the handle,
I did some very good and very quick thinking. The
demand was comical nonsense journalistically. On the other hand, if
I agreed to apologize to the troops who rescued her,
I would get the chance to tell the real Jessica
Lynch story again that night. So I did. The apology
(18:20):
was fifteen seconds, and while unnecessary, was sincere in my
admiration for the troops. I made sure that the retelling
of the true Lynch rescue story that followed took two
minutes and fifteen seconds. Over the next three years, I
took every opportunity I could to criticize the war and
Bush and how he had lied us into it, but
(18:42):
always in small doses, in little asides, in two minute readers,
in questions to guests. And then it got a little longer,
a few pieces here and there, a few brief two
or three minute commentaries. But the self censorship of the
time by most major media outlets in this country was infuriating.
And then came the night I decided I didn't care anymore.
(19:07):
On August twenty ninth, two thousand and six, a flight
I was taking from Los Angeles back to New York
was delayed, and as we sat on the tarmac at LAX,
I read and I read it for the first time,
I think in my life. I read a news story
on my phone and it was about the then Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying about how any of us
(19:28):
who disagreed with the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, or
indeed just disagreed with the Bush administration itself, were morally
or intellectually confused. Well, this pissed me off. Our takeoff
kept getting pushed back and back, the drinks in first
(19:50):
class kept getting pushed forward and forward, and my ire
kept getting pushed up and up. And so I took
the few pages of my trip itinerary and scratched out
what turned out to be a very very long commentary,
which I figured I'll read on MSNBC and then they'll
fire me. I aired it the last next night, and
(20:11):
I fully expected they would fire me, or somebody would
throw me in the back of a car, or in
the trunk of a car perhaps, or I'd wind up
at Gitmo or all of the above. If you don't
mind I'd like to read that commentary handwritten as it
ran on MSNBC on August thirtieth, two thousand and six.
We needed a graphic to indicate that this was a commentary,
(20:35):
just my opinion, and I wanted to emphasize that this
commentary was just going to be a one shot thing.
So I just threw out a title and they made
it into a graphic. So I said, call it a comment,
call it a special comment. The man who sees absolutes
(20:56):
where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning
is either a prophet or a quack. Donald S. Rumsfell
is not a prophet. Mister Rumsfeld's remarkable comments to the
veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis and
the sober contemplation of every American, for they do not
(21:17):
merely serve to impugne the morality or intelligence, indeed the
loyalty of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient
occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse still,
they credit those same transient occupants our employees with total omniscience,
a total omniscience which neither common sense nor this administration's
(21:39):
track record at home or abroad suggests they deserve. Dissent
and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom,
and not merely because it is the first roadblock against
the kind of tyranny. The men mister Rumsfeld likes to
think of as his troops still fight this very evening
in Iraq. It is also essential because just every once
(22:04):
in a while it is right and the power to
which it speaks is wrong. In a small irony, however,
mister Rumsfeld's speech writer was adroit in evoking the memory
of the appeasement of the Nazis, For in their time
there was another government, faced with true peril, with a
growing evil, powerful and remorseless. That government, like mister Rumsfeld's,
(22:28):
had a monopoly on all the facts. It too had
the secret information. It alone had the true picture of
the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in
terms like mister Rumsfeld's, questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England's. In the nineteen thirties. It knew
(22:52):
Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re arming in violation of
all treaties and accords. It knew that the hard evidence
it received which contradict did policies, conclusions, and omniscience needed
to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already
(23:14):
knew the truth. Most relevant of all, It knew that
its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact,
it portrayed the foremost of them as a bloodthirsty warmonger
who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or
intellectually confused. That critic's name was Winston Churchill. Sadly, we
(23:38):
have no Winston Churchill's evident among us this evening. We
have only Donald Rumsfeldt's demonizing disagreement. The way Neville Chamberlain
demonized Winston Churchill, history and one hundred and sixty three
million pounds of Luftwappa bombs over England taught us. All
(23:58):
that mister Chamberlain had was his certainty and his own confusion,
infusion that suggested that the office cannot only make the man,
but that the office can also make the facts. Thus
did mister rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy, accepting the
fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His
(24:21):
government absolute and exclusive in its knowledge. Is not the
modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of never Chamberlain.
But back to today's omniscience, that about which mister Rumsfeld
is confused is simply this. This is a democracy, still
(24:46):
sometimes just barely, and as such all voices count, not
just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any
of their prior claims of omniscience about Osama bin Laden's
plans five years ago, about Sodom Hussein's weapons four years ago,
about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago, we all might
(25:08):
be able to swallow hard and accept their omniscience as
a bearable, even useful recipe of fact plus ego. But
to date this government has proved little besides its own
arrogance and its own hubris. Mister Rumsfeld is also personally confused,
morally or intellectually about his own standing in this matter.
(25:30):
From Iraq to Katrina to the entire fog of fear
which continues to envelope this nation. He, mister Bush, mister Cheney,
and their cronies have inadvertently or intentionally profited and benefited
both personally and politically, and yet he can stand up
in public and question the morality and the intellect of
(25:52):
those of us who dare ask just for the receipt
for the Emperor's new clothes. In What country was mister
Rumsfeld raised as a child of Whose heroism did he
read on What side of the battle for freedom? Did
he dream one day to fight? With? What country? Has
(26:16):
he confused? The United States of America. The confusion we,
as its citizens must now address is stark and forbidding,
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men
like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our
skies and obscured our flag. Note with hope in your
(26:38):
heart that those earlier Americans always found their way to
the light, and we can too. The confusion is about
whether this Secretary of Defense and this administration are in
fact now accomplishing what they claim. The terrorists seek, the
destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the
same veterans mister Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City
(27:01):
have so valiantly fought. And about mister Rumsfeld's other main
assertion that this country faces a quote new type of
fascism unquote, as he was correct to remind us how
a government that knew everything could get everything wrong. So
too was he right when he said that, though probably
(27:22):
not in the way he thought he meant it, this
country faces a new type of fascism. Indeed, although I
presumptuously use his sign off each night in feeble tribute,
I have utterly no claim to the words of the
exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never, in the trial
of a thousand years of writing could I come close
(27:43):
to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier
generation of us at a time when other politicians thought
they and they alone knew everything and branded those who
disagreed confused or immoral. Thus forgive me for reading Murrow
in full. We must not confuse dissent with loyalty, he
(28:05):
said in nineteen fifty four. We must remember always that
accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence
and due process of law. We will not walk in
fear one of another. We will not be driven by
fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep
in our history and our doctrine and remember that we
(28:27):
are not descended from fearful men, not from men who
feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend
causes that were, for the moment unpopular. When MSNBC management
came into my office the next afternoon, it was not
to fire me, nor throw me into the back seat
(28:49):
or the trunk of a car. The MSNBC president Griffin asked,
could you do one of those every night the ratings doubled?
I told him no, they should be done only when necessary. Well,
could you do one of those only when necessary? I said,
he had a deal. It is correct to say the
(29:13):
news media failed twenty years ago as this nation lied
its way into Iraq. It is also correct to say,
and I will go out on the egotistical limb to
say it that some of us tried. Still ahead on countdown,
(29:38):
will continue this theme of history in the making, but
switch it to sports. Four weeks to the day that
my full time broadcasting career began, I had to cover
for a one thousand station radio network the tragic breaking
news of one of baseball's most popular players, a man
I had been cheering from the stands as a fan
(29:59):
literally a month before dying in a plane crash. I'm
that happy. First in each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day to Phoenix, not the city, but the dog,
spring Hill, Tennessee. We don't know how this happened in
this tiny Yorkie, evidently from a breeder's dumped in a
field at barely a year old. He was healthy. He
(30:22):
is not healthy now, parasites, there's some blood in his cough.
He's in intensive care at the animal hospital. But House
of Stray's Rescue is going all out to save his life.
It already has a home lined up for him if
he makes it. If you can donate, you can find
him on Cuddly that's Phoenix fe Nix, or on my
Twitter feeds. Your retweets would also help him. Thinking good
(30:44):
thoughts for him can't hurt either. I thank you, and
Phoenix thanks you. August second, nineteen seventy nine is now
forty three years ago. And if I sound incredulous about that,
(31:07):
it's because I'm incredulous about that. A certain part of
me is always living back there on August second, nineteen
seventy nine, and the rest of that day is seared
into my memory, like my name and address one month
earlier to the day, July second, nineteen seventy nine, I
had been in the stands in my family seats back
(31:28):
of first base at Yankee Stadium in New York, a
twenty year old Yankees fan, applauding Thurman Munson's r behind
double and Lou Pinello's two for four day and Roy
White's appearance, since Roy White was my mother's favorite Yankee player,
but months in particularly, he had been playing for the
Yankee since I was nine. I was now twenty, thus
(31:49):
more than half my life now. On August second, nineteen
seventy nine, I was finishing the first month of my
professional broadcasting career. It was my seventh or eighth solo
shift anywhere for money. I was the night time sportscaster
of United Press International's radio network one thousand stations worldwide
(32:10):
known as UPI Audio. For my first sportscast of the
night due to go at five forty five PM, I
had long since finished my script. Tom Watson was leading
Round one of the PGA Golf in Michigan. The lawyer
who owned Washington of the NFL, Edward Bennett Williams. He
had just bought the Baltimore Orioles. There was an exposed
Cubs matinee at baseball game in Montreal that prevailed through
(32:34):
three rain delays. It was just about five forty three
pm Eastern Time, and I was making the short walk
from the little sports cubbyhole to the little main on
air studio in UPI World headquarters in the Daily News Building,
or if you saw the movie the Superman Building on
forty second Street in Manhattan. I was just walking past
(32:55):
the bank of thermal printers, each making their sluggish, muted
honking sound as they slowly printed stories out onto what
wasn't really paper. There was the main UPI wire, the
UPI Sports Wire, the UPI Business Wire, the UPI International Wire,
the UPI Radio wire, several internal message wires via which
(33:18):
the UPI bureaus around the world could communicate with headquarters
in New York, or as it was abbreviated NX. Those
message wires were the nineteen seventy nine equivalent of texting.
As I got within a foot of these machines, one
of them made a noise I had never heard before,
a series of ten really loud bells. As I moved
(33:40):
over to see what the hell they could mean, the
news editor, Frank Raphael came over to check as well.
We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously, Cleveland Bureau
to nx Thurman, Munson Catcher, Captain New York Yankees dead
piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport thirty Still it stuns
(34:04):
to read those words aloud. As soon as they finished printing,
Cleveland sent it again. The bells went off again. I
could see I now had about a minute until I
went on the air. The editor pointed this out to me,
You'll have to add lib the sportscast, then come out
here and do a voice or just talk about his career.
Keep repeating that it's a bulletin that he's dead, and
that he was piloting a private plane. You know anything
(34:25):
about him and planes? And I remember saying, oh God,
I do. And he said, well, use whatever you think fits.
If more details come in, I'll bring them into you.
I'll try to get somebody at the airport for some sound.
I don't remember anything of what I said on the
air that night, nor in the special report the voicer
the editor had had me record. As soon as I
(34:47):
finished that live sportscast, it was all recorded. I never
wanted to hear any of it. I never wanted to
keep any of it. I have basically the rest of
my career on tape. But I knew my youth was
over right then. Thurman Munson had joined the Yankees when
I was nine years old, literally more than half my
(35:08):
life ago. He was the first good rookie I ever
saw added to my team. My family was convinced he
looked like my mother's cousin Billie. I met him a
couple of times, had photographed him once, interviewed him once.
He was gruff and forbidding, but I had never had
a problem with him. What I knew about him and
(35:28):
his plane I spoke of as generically as possible in
my mind. I flashed back to lunch in the press
room at Yankee Stadium four months earlier, when I was
still in college with my friend Rick Serone, the editor,
not the catcher Munson. Rick said, almost surreptitiously, leaning in
toward me over the little table. Munson is flying his
(35:50):
own plane back home to Ohio on like every day off.
The Yankees are terrified he's not as good a pilot
as he thinks. He is, honest to God, wanted executives
is trying to get George. That would be George Steinbrenner,
the owner, to trade him to Cleveland, just so he'll
(36:12):
get out of the damn plane. They're all terrified he
might wind up killing himself. I don't know how many
special reports I did forty three years ago today, in
addition to a new sportscast every hour. Later, a friend
of mine from college, who didn't even know I'd gotten
the job as a sportscaster. I was so new there,
(36:34):
told me he was driving in Buffalo listening to the
all news station on the radio. He heard them say
munths and had been killed and with more here's Keith
Alderman in New York. And he said he almost drove
off the road because of the double shock. And I
do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the morning
shift and would have only gotten home from it around
(36:54):
one or two pm. He came back into the office
to supervise things and to put together a long memorial
special to feed that the thousand stations that you dar
stuff would all use. I was so glad to see
Sam that day. And then he handed me a piece
of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for Lupinella
(37:17):
and Roy White, call them, try to do interviews, be gentle,
record first, ask later, like Munson. They had played in
that game a month before. Really was my last as
a fan. Roy White had been with the Yankees since
I was six years old. Lupinella answered his phone, and
(37:40):
somehow I asked him if he would talk to me
for two minutes, and he did, and almost immediately he
burst into tears. There was such raw, immediate brutal pain
in his voice. I did the only thing I could
think of. I said, listen, you should not have to
do this all night. I will make copies of this
interview and give it to the other radio networks so
(38:02):
they will leave you alone. And only then did I
think to ask my boss Sam, who by the way,
still does the New York Rangers games on TV, if
that was okay, and mercifully, Sam said, it was a
great idea. When I called Roy White, and Roy White
was literally on the Yankees the day I became a
Yankee fan. He begged me to tell him that they
(38:24):
had discovered some kind of a mistake, that Thurman Munson
was not dead. Both he and Panella were blunt, but
gentle and courteous, and I did make copies of the interviews,
and I can see myself handing a cassette to a
guy from NBC Radio named Mike Levinthal, who ran a
kind of cartel, almost a black market among New York
(38:46):
radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts with Panella and White,
not me, were all over radio that day. I also
remembered discovering, after three or four hours of literally working
non stop, that I had never really known what that
meant before. I remember I was supposed to be done
at eleven PM, that was the end of the shift,
but I stayed until one am, and I just merit
(39:08):
rarely made the train, the last one of the night
back to my house. I remember my boss Sam Rosen
talking to our stringer in San Francisco, fellow named Rob Navius,
and he said, they're killing my team. I should go
to Mexico and smoke myself blind. The things you remember
at a time of stress and tragedy. In my youthful
(39:29):
misunderstanding of how these things worked, I found myself coming
back to the thought that I had somehow failed Thurman
Mounthson by not telling somebody about that Yankee fear from
April that he was not as good a pilot as
he thought he was. Although even then I asked myself,
who were you going to tell? There are two postscripts
(39:50):
to my story of the twenty year old me covering
the night Thurman Mounthson died. Twenty years later, I was
hosting Baseball's Game of the Week on Fox and I
asked my producer what we were doing for the months
in anniversary. He asked what anniversary. He was younger than
I was. I had to explain it to him. Even then,
you want to write something we can preproduce, like a
(40:12):
minute and a half, minute and a half. I did it,
didn't think much of it. A couple of years later,
I was one of the public address announcers at Old
Timer's Day at Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director
Rick Serone. Same Rick Serone who in April nineteen seventy
nine told me about Munthson and the private planes and
the Yankees spheres. It is a small world. The twenty
(40:36):
fifth anniversary of Thurman Munson's death was just days away.
His widow, Diane was there. We had never met. Then
she saw me on the field and raced up to
me and hugged me. That piece you did on him
on the Game of the week. When was it five
years ago? That was the best memorial I've ever seen
to Thurman. We both cheered up. I couldn't believe she
(40:58):
said that I told her about that night in nineteen
seventy nine, what had had been like for me? I said,
it was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought
it was important somehow to share. She hugged me again.
It was deeply moving and it is still. The other
PostScript I only learned of last year. Four forever, and
(41:20):
the coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam
Rosen being the Hall of Fame announcer of the New
York Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But forever, the reporter
covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper the
New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had forgotten
until last year that the year that Thurman Munson was killed,
Larry was a very very young beat reporter covering not
(41:41):
Rangers hockey but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent me a
clipping from the New York Post from Saturday July twenty eighth,
nineteen seventy nine, five days before Munson's fatal plane crash.
It is almost beyond belief. Larry Brooks's story began quote,
(42:02):
reports of Thurman monthson death are exaggerated, at least slightly unquote.
Of course he was using a metaphor. Munson's knees had
been giving him trouble, and the manager of the Yankees,
Billy Martin, was giving him more time off between catching
assignments than usual. But Larry's story also included an even
more jaw dropping quote. Asked about the rumors he might
(42:27):
not catch again this year, Munson said, I don't know
who started them. It was Martin. Asked after the game
how his knees felt, he said, quote sore, real sore. Hey,
you might be seeing my last hurrah ute. Larry says
(42:49):
that since August second, nineteen seventy nine, forty three years ago,
that story has haunted him. Now it haunts me, maybe
it haunts you. I've done all the damage I can
(43:16):
do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
(43:36):
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy
of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for this the eight hundred and fifth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
(43:56):
government of the United States. Arrest him now while we
still can, or if as you listen to this it's
already happened, rest him again while we still can. The
next schedule countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith ol Reman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(44:21):
with Keith Olverman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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