January 31, 2023 • 42 mins
EPISODE 123: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: "You have a lot of folks who are just waiting for his mortal demise," says former Michigan Republican Congressman Peter Meijer. "I've heard from a lot of people who will go onstage and put on the red hat and then give me a call the next day and say 'I can't wait until this guy dies.'" It's an amazing strategy but a passive one. And it ignores the various walls closing in on Trump: two District Attorneys, three Grand Juries, one Judiciary Chairman annoyed at John Durham and William Barr, one Judiciary Chairman rebuffed by Merrick Garland, one porn star, and one guy named Pecker.
Still, potentially the most extraordinary story about Trump: the clouds gathering around the arrest of Charlie McGonigal, who was a 24/7, 365 days a year, hot and cold running blackmail-victim-FBI-Agent-waiting-to-happen. And now two analysts look at his arrest and suggest: this may evolve into a) a spy scandal in which the national security was utterly breached and b) a journalistic disaster in which Trump, Russia, and the FBI managed to manipulate The New York Times into pushing Trump across the finish line in 2016.
B-Block (18:53) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Memphis, in Texas (20:06) IN SPORTS: The passing of hockey's Bobby Hull and Cleveland's John Adams; Why was the 52nd best player in baseball chosen to adorn the cover of its top video game? And happy 206th birthday, J. Shorthouse, Esq. (24:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: More George Santos stupidity, a Florida Climate Caucus Congresswoman who owns up to $195k in oil stocks, and Megyn Kelly slams Jill Biden for something her own father did.
C-Block (29:56) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: CNN has gone and done it: addressing its cratering ratings by adding a regular Friday segment from Bill Maher's HBO panel. Time again to go back to 2009 when Bill and I nearly brawled at his HBO after-party because he insisted we never met in college (spoiler alert: Oh yeah we did).
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 I Heart Radio.
Just the Republicans are, in essence saying to Trump die already. Quote.
(00:28):
You have a lot of folks who are just wishing
for his mortal demise, says former Michigan Congressman Peter Meyer
to McKay Coppins for Coppin's new piece in The Atlantic,
quoting Meyer again, I want to be clear, I'm not
in that camp, but I've heard from a lot of
people who will go on stage and put on the
red hat and then give me a call the next
(00:50):
day and say, quote, I can't wait until this guy
dies unquote, Coppins says, ex Congress and Meyer describes this
strategy as actuarial arbitrage. As Coppins notes, it's certainly a
passive strategy, as he does not note, but should be
evident from today's headlines. There is also a more aggressive
(01:12):
version of the strategy that appears to be being practiced
right now by grand juries and district attorneys and senators
investigating special councils and muck breakers who want to investigate
Charles McGonagall and FBI New York. And this alternate strategy
could be summarized by simply emphasizing different words when you
say what Peter Meyer told The Atlantic not I can't
(01:35):
wait until this guy dies, but rather, I can't wait
until this guy dies. The district attorneys first in Washington
per CNN, the federal grand jury herring testimony and trump
stolen classified documents and potential nuclear espionage case have gotten
some from two individuals hired by Trump to search his
(01:57):
New York headquarters, the Florida storage unit and the New
Jersey golf course where all the bodies are buried, well
one body anyway. We know nothing of what they actually said,
except that they did not invoke the fifth back at
the ranch, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has reincarnated the
Stormy Daniels hush money case, and, to quote The New
(02:19):
York Times, is nearing a decision about whether to charge
Trump and laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against
Trump in the coming months. To his grand jury way downtown. Yesterday,
Bragg dragged the most aptly named figure in trump in history,
former publisher of the National Inquirer and blackmail conduit David Pecker,
(02:40):
who is the well the Pecker who tried to blackmail
Jeff Bezos into turning The Washington Post to a pro
Trump daily by threatening to expose Bezos his affair with
my former Fox Sports colleague Laurence Sanchez, and Bezos told
him to pound sand in the Stormy Daniels case, Bragg
has the testimony of Trump's former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen,
(03:02):
who already did time for this crime, and his office
has subpoena phone records and the time, says. Bragg wants
Trump organization employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarassoft to testify
to the grand jury, as well as Pecker's former editor
Dylan Howard. And yes, this is a crime involving a
porn star, a publisher named Pecker, a bunch of subpoenas,
(03:24):
and the laying of groundwork in Atlanta, Fulton County, d A.
Fanny Willis is trying to block the public release of
the report by the Election Subversion Special Grand Jury there
and the grounds she has cited should give you a
broad hint. The report should not be released, she says,
because decisions on indictments are quote imminent, and publishing it
(03:45):
could jeopardize the rights of quote future defendants, and since
she did not say defend Dant or defend Dance, it
means there are at least two of them, and realistically
you've only got like three future defend Dance in the
Georgia case anyway, and there Lindsay Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and
Trump moving on to the Senate less certain and with
(04:08):
greater potential for grandstanding. Is something I've been screaming about
since last week's revelations about the attempts to fabricate something
out of nothing by former Attorney General William Barr and
his Losers special counsel John Durham. As you already know,
Bar and Durham tried to give a veneer of investigative
legitimacy to the gas lighting about and suppression of the
(04:29):
Mueller Report and the Trump Russia scandal by quote proving
unquote that Hillary Clinton did it, or Bill Clinton did it,
or lou Clinton of the nineteen sixty six New York
Yankees did it in the kaleidoscope that is Trump related
law breaking. The outrageousness and likely criminality of Bar using
(04:50):
the Justice Department to try to cover up crime has
escaped the notice of almost everybody but Senator Dick Durbin
of Illinois told The Washington Post that Durham's quote abuses
are quote outrageous and constitute quote one of many instances
in which Trump and Bar weaponized the Justice Department unquote,
(05:10):
and I like his choice of words, they're weaponized. More importantly,
Durban is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and promises
quote a hard look at those repeated episodes and the
regulations and policies that enabled them to ensure such abuses
of power cannot happen again, unquote, which is both fine
(05:30):
and dandy, which does not quite have the impact or
the implication of saying we're gonna haul in Bar and
Durham's fat asses and put them on the witness stand
in prime time. Because once again, it may be Susan
Collins who keeps saying that some malefactor or other has
learned his or her lesson, but it's her Democratic colleagues
who actually seem to believe that if Senate Judiciary Chair
(05:55):
Durban was too tepid for us at least, how Judiciary
Chair Jim Jordan's the roy Cone of the new McCarthy
is m got his pep whacked in public by the
Partment of Justice. Jordan's whole stick this year will be
to try to run an investigation about the Trump documents investigation,
to do a Durham if you will, or failing that,
(06:15):
he'll go for the silver medal and beat his chest
about why they won't let him run an investigation about
the investigation. Well, it'll have to be the silver I
have mentioned before here the Lender letter, the two thousand
document from d o J to the House about how
it has been departmental policy for what is today about
ninety years to never give Congress anything on an active
(06:40):
criminal investigation. Sure enough, per The Guardian, the Assistant Attorney
General Carlos Rarte wrote to Jordan's an updated version of Lender,
telling him to get lost and underscoring quote, disclosures to
Congress about active investigations risk jeopardizing those investigations and creating
the appearance that Congress may be exerting improper political pressure
(07:03):
or attempting to influenced Department decisions. Unquote. You think still
for all of this, and let's recap two district attorneys,
three grand juries, one annoyed judiciary chairman, one rebuffed Judiciary chairman,
one porn star and one pecker. The potentially most explosive
(07:25):
story alive remains the arrest of the former FBI New
York lead on the two thousand sixteen Trump Russia case.
The man at the center of things, as that office
forced James Comey to reinflate the but her emails Clinton
smear just eleven days before the election. The man who
turned out to have a wife in one city and
(07:47):
a mistress in another, and was taking bribes from foreigners
while still at the FBI, and who is now under
arrest for taking twenty five thousand a month from the
Russian oligarch oleg Deripaska. He was once investigating none other
than Champagne, Charlie McGonagall and self. We now have the
(08:07):
McGonagall derri Pasca connection, elevated to confirmed status by the
authority of the written word, and the arrest warrant for McGonagall.
We now have the admittedly anonymous source, supposedly a former
McGonagall colleague at FBI, telling the independent news site spy
Talk about leaks out of the New York office in
October and November two thousand sixteen to Rudy Giuliani and others. Quote,
(08:30):
I would not doubt that Charlie played a role in them.
Quote wouldn't surprise me. It just wouldn't surprise me. And
now we have the story from Business Insider about McGonagall
bringing home bags of cash from his Albanian friends and
leaving them around his New York apartment where his two
thousand seventeen girlfriend, the one who thought mcdonagall's wife was
(08:52):
already his ex wife, where she could find them, which
makes it very obvious that Charles McGonagall was a seven
sixty five days a year hot and cold ning blackmail
victim FBI agent waiting to happen. It was the Yale
history professor Tim Snyder who first tweeted the kind of
(09:15):
meta view of Charlie McGonagall that stitched together how what
got him arrested could feedback into not just the Trump
Russia conspiracy, but how the Trump Russia conspiracy got buried
inside the Trump Justice Department and how comey wound up
sabotaging Hillary Clinton? And days after that, whoever got the
New York Times to essentially clear Trump on Russia in
(09:37):
two thousand sixteen, And in his sub stack, it is
again Professor Snyder who really did offer a chilling big picture.
Let me quote him at length quote, we are on
the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for
how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.
(10:00):
Snyder continues, The reporting on this so far seems to
miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump's
historical position looks far cloudier. In two thousand sixteen, Trump's
campaign manager Manafort was a former employee of a Russian oligarch,
Derrik Posca, and owed money to that same Russian oligarch,
(10:22):
and the FBI special agent McGonagall, who was charged with
investigating the Trump campaign's Russian connections, then went to work,
according to the indictment, for that very same Russian oligarch,
Derrik Posca. This is obviously very bad for Trump personally,
but it is also very bad for FBI New York,
for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America.
(10:47):
But wait, Tim Snyder says there's more and worse, quoting
him again, we must revisit the Russian influence operation on
Trump's behalf in two thousand sixteen and the strangely weak
American response. Moscow's goal was to move minds and institutions
such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win.
(11:11):
We might like to think that any FBI special agent
would resist, oppose, or at least be immuned to such
an operation. Now we are reliably informed that a trusted
FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just
this sort of operation, was corrupt. And again, the issue
is not just the particular person. If someone as important
(11:35):
as McGonagall could take money from foreigners while on the
job at FBI New York and then go to work
for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, he was once investigating, what
is at stake at a bare minimum is the culture
of the FBI's New York office. The larger issue is
the health of our national discussions of politics and the
(11:59):
integrity of our election process. Few But like the horror
film We're just when you thought you'd seen the last knife,
we have the further contribution of the estimable William Bunch
of the Philadelphia Inquir half a century ago this morning,
(12:19):
right around now, was just starting to work as a
news reporter for the student newspaper The Dial, at Hackley
School in Tarrytown, New York. Under the new editor of
News and later editor in chief, me Bunch has written
an epic piece That's half a Century of Them Now,
(12:40):
in which he notes that if mcgonagall's arrest is the
tip of an iceberg that involves the two thousand sixteen
FBI working not just with Trump, but with Trump and Russia,
it could also mean that the FBI, Trump and Russia
were working with, however, unknowingly a fourth conspirator. The New
York Times will asks, quote, how coordinated was the effort
(13:04):
in New York Field Office to pump up the ultimate
nothing burger about Clinton's emails while pooh poohing the very
real evidence of Russian interference on Trump's behalf and who
were the agents behind it? What was the role, if any,
of McGonagall at his international web of intrigue. Was the
now tainted McGonagall a source who told The New York
(13:26):
Times that faithful October that Russia was not trying to
help Trump win the election before the U. S Intelligence
community to determine the exact opposite, If not McGonagall, just
who was intentionally misleading America's most influential news organization and why?
Will wants answers from the New York Times. I want
(13:50):
answers about McGonagall and the rogue FBI New York Field
office because to circle back to ex Congressman Peter Meyer
and his guys in the Red Hats who secretly wait
for Trump's quote mortal demise. No, we can't wait until
this guy dies. By the way, Trump was right about something.
(14:24):
Jaed balson Naro is applying for a visa to stay
in Florida, so there are terrorists coming in through the
southern border. Still ahead, CNN has figured out how to
solve all its ratings problems. Take that little post show
chat Bill Maher does with his guests on HBO while
they're itching to get to the booze at his post
(14:44):
show party, and put that in the middle of the
news every Friday night. So it's time to retail the
saga of how mar and I know each other forty
five years and twice we nearly had fist bites over
the details. Plus two sports legends are gone, Hockey's Golden
Jet and the Drumbeat Cleveland. And in worst persons, it
(15:07):
is hard to believe anything the utterly corrupt Megan Kelly
could do now would be shocking but this one, this
one will make your jaw drop. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith still ahead on Countdown. Who's
(15:34):
that new face of baseball on the cover of its
top video game? No, seriously, I'm asking who is that guy?
He was the fifty second most valuable player in the
sport last year. Why is he on the cover? Plus
the answer to all of CNN's problems. Put Bill maher
on once a week to do something. I'll retell the
(15:56):
story of how he and I met in and nearly
had a fist fight. First, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day to Dallas and Cody's Friends rescue
and a puppy named Memphis age uncertain details unclear. Memphis, though,
is a puppy, maybe some kind of gray mix of
(16:18):
a hound and a lab. But there are two leg fractures,
and since there are no scratches or wounds, it looks
like they were inflicted by punches or kicks deliberately. Memphis
is a good candidate for recovery. They've set up a
giving grid Square to raise some money. You can find
Memphis there or on my Twitter Feed and your donations
and retweets are gratefully accepted. I thank you, and Memphis
(16:41):
thanks you. This is sports sen Wait, check that not anymore.
(17:09):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman in sports A lot
of Loss Yesterday. Hockey's Golden Jet, Bobby Hull has died,
three weeks after his eighty four birthday. Changed the game,
first with the slap shot, then with the curved stick,
then with the big money jump to the National Hockey
(17:29):
League's first rival, the World Hockey Association. Hull was the
first NHL player to score more than fifty goals in
a season. He was Most Valuable Player three times. He
played until he was forty one. At all told, he
scored nineteen goals. I interviewed him at Madison Square Garden
when he returned to the NHL in nine and he
said one of the most mind blowing things I have
(17:50):
ever heard. I must think of this quote at him
saying it in his gravelly voice at least twice a month.
I asked Bobby Hull about his memories of playing in
New York and he said, oh, that's behind me. Now,
never mind the past. We're here in the future. Now
we're here in the future now in Cleveland. On AUGUSTE,
(18:20):
baseball fan named John Adams tried to excite interest in
the always moribund Cleveland Indians baseball team by going to
the bleachers and buying two tickets, one for himself and
one for his enormous bass drum. John Adams pounded on
that drum incessantly through three World Series, eleven playoff rounds,
three All Star games, a perfect game by Cleveland pitcher
(18:42):
Lenn Barker, and about six of my live reports on
baseball games being telecast by NBC. John Adams died yesterday
at the age of seventy one. In more mundane stuff,
Baseball with its big promotional reveal yesterday the selection of
which young Star player would grace the cover of the
MLB The Show video game edition. Well, apparently they didn't
(19:05):
have any young Star players with the cover of MLB
The Show because the guy in the cover is a
Miami Marlin infielder named Jazz Chisholm Jr. Who hit a
career high two fifty four last year, who has struck
out two times in two d four career games, and
has a career ops plus, which is a stat measuring
how much above average you are in batting average and
(19:27):
slugging percentage. He has a career OPS plus a hundred
and three. Just average is a hundred. Chisholm is very
flashy on the field, but honestly, if he got sent
back to the miners at some point would not be
a big surprise except to the baseball people who make
these idiotic marketing decisions. I believe they outsourced them to
(19:49):
the consulting firm called We Step On Rakes Incorporated. Thank you,
Nancy Faust, and lastly, happy birthday to one of the
(20:10):
best play by play men in sports. My friend John
Shorthouse of the Vancouver Canucks, who first did that job
on radio, took over full time in and moved to
TV in two thousand eight, is crisp sixcinct enthusiastic delivery,
is right on the money. He's clearly a fan of
the team he covers, but he would never cover up
(20:31):
their mistakes. And the finest measure of his work is
that every time I tweet about how good he is added,
large numbers of Vancouver Canucks fans reply by telling me
to shut the hell up because they don't want a
Canadian or American network or a big market team to
find out about him and steal him from them. I
like to think of John as my older Canadian brother.
(20:54):
I like to except for the fact that he only
turns fifty three today, Or at least that's what he
says now to the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons
(21:18):
and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. The bronze good old George Santos. Nothing
big this time, just more of that old TV commercial
cliche about you know, you wonder if some people just
stopped trying. This all started because he unexpectedly won the
(21:39):
congressional seat formerly held by retired Congressman Tom Swazi Well,
George Santos district office on Long Island has something unusual
and untrue about it. Naturally, the window and the big
green awning on it both read quote Congressman Thomas are
Swazzy knowing George Santos. It's possible he's now using that
as an alias. The runner up, another congressional Representative, Lois Frankel,
(22:04):
Democrat out of Florida, member of the Safe Climate Caucus
and anti fracking advocate, and according to stock records, she
owns as much as are dollars worth of stocking six
different oil and gas companies, including Conoco, Phillips and diamond Back.
The conservative Washington Examiner reported this, but there is no
(22:24):
denial from Congresswoman Frankel, who told the paper that her
investments are quote managed independently by a money manager who
buys and sells stocks at his discretion. Unquote could be true.
I've had one of those, but it is the wrong
bloody answer. Firstly, congress people in senators should not get
to own any stock, any stock at all. But if
(22:48):
you are a climate change democrat, if you're in the caucus,
the only correct answer is my stocks are managed independently
by a money manager, and I had no idea about this.
I will instruct him to sell these stocks immediately and
to never again invest in fossil fuels the end, Congresswoman,
But our winner, Megan Kelly, fired by Fox, fired by NBC,
(23:10):
now reduced to pretending she's still on TV and streaming
it and not even through a service just from her
own website. You her confidence will never wane, nor will
her arrogance. She'll never know she's where she is now
because of things like her tweet during one of the
football playoff games. Quote announcers for this Eagles games just
(23:31):
spott at the first lady in a box and of
course call her doctor Jill Biden. Wonder if she realizes
what a wannabe she looks like, insisting on this fake title,
get a real m d or just work on your
self esteem unquote standard fascist insult template number thirty seven
and culture used to claim I didn't go to Cornell,
(23:52):
only she did because I didn't go to the arts
college like she did. To Megan Kelly, Joe Biden is
not a doctor because she doesn't cut people open on
an operating table. The first lady has a doctoral degree
in education from University of Delaware. She is Dr Biden.
But it was left to n y U law professor
Melissa Murray to post three earlier tweets from Megan Kelly,
(24:13):
which begin quote doctor Sebastian Gorka, these people aren't that
and doctor Sebastian Gorka discussion on whether Dotta and doctor
Sebastian Gorka the g head. Dr Gorka has a pH
d in political science from a university in Budapest. But
(24:33):
that's not even the real punch line here. Jason Patterson
from Washington University notes that there was somebody else who
had the same exact degree ed d. Doctor of Education
as Jill Biden does. Somebody who was addressed as doctor,
just as Megan Kelly does not think Jill Biden should be.
That would be former University of Albany professor Dr Edward F. Kelly,
(24:57):
Megan Kelly's father, Her father, the one who the paraphrase
his own daughter. Wonder if he realized what a wannabe
he looked like insisting on this fake title. Get a
real empty or just work on your self esteem, Dad,
Megan Kelly, who just called her own father a fake
two days worst person in the world, doctor doctor, give
(25:29):
me the dude. He's got a bad case. Down to
the number one story on Countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell l CNN
has now made it official. I told you two weeks
(25:50):
ago that Chris Licked had hit on a brilliant idea
to put some kind of humor programming into his lineup.
I mean intentional humor, not that unintentionally hilarious show he
has on in the mornings. Maybe a prime time show
though Chris Licked. Have you ever stopped to think about
what a funny name that is Chris Licked? Yeah? Are
(26:11):
there more details? Chris Licked now denies this, But there
was an idea around CNN to have a show with
John Stewart or Trevor Noah or Arsenio Hall going on
the air every night in prime time and somehow doing
the newscast and just praying nothing news. He actually happened.
And of course the brilliant idea that Chris Licked hit
on is not brilliant, not new, and not his many
(26:37):
CNN presidents ago as I also mentioned to a man
named Walter Isaacson brought me in to discuss the merits
of trying to have John Stewart do a daily or
weekly show on CNN. My meeting to talk about this
was Walter Isaacson was on August three, two thousand one. Anyway,
CNN has made its big push into comedy. The little
(26:57):
add on chat that his guests on his Friday HBO
show are roped into overtime will raw as part of
CNN's News Hour at eleven thirty every Friday night. Bill
Mars Overtime. It's previously been shown only online or on
HBO's streaming service or on demand service or whatever. And
(27:18):
it doesn't matter because CNN is down to ninety two
thousand primetime demo viewers. So it's really unlikely you would
have ever heard of this if I were not mentioning
it to you. Now, though, unresolved is the question of
how they will handle the fact that Bill likes to
swear and Bill likes to guests to swear. And I
know this because it turns out I know Bill for
(27:40):
nearly forty five years. This has a great backstory to it.
Sometime or eighty six, I saw a movie on Cable
called D C. Cab. There was a character in it.
Clearly the actor portraying him was talented and funny and distinctive,
but for some reason I felt like I knew him
(28:01):
from somewhere, and I really really disliked him. Remember, the
few ling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. His
name was Bill Mayor m A h. E. R. Mayor. Well,
I had a teacher named Bill Mayor, but his name
had a y in it said no, it wasn't him,
but I knew three things he was talented, I didn't
(28:22):
like him, and I knew him from somewhere. This is
pre Internet, of course, so no way to find out
where I knew him from. Hallow ELL's annual film guide
would be my best bet. Maybe he'd be in the
new one coming out checks Watch just eight or nine
months from now. Eventually I found out that where I
knew Bill maher from was college. He was in the
(28:44):
year ahead of Mind at Cornell University. I knew he
wasn't working at my radio station. He wasn't in my college.
Maybe I had him in a class somewhere. I could
never nail it down. I like to say I have
a photographic memory, but it's polaroids, and sorry, I didn't
always bother to put labels on the polaroids. All most
(29:04):
everything that has ever happened is stuck inside this big
empty head of mine. But often key details like who,
what went and where they're just missing. I forgot to
write them down, and honestly, in this case, it was
not worth the effort. I knew I was almost the
right word aware of this mar guy when we were
both in college. Occasionally, especially after I went from ESPN
(29:26):
to MSNBC, in a writer would note the coincidence of
university and years and asked me about Bill Maher, and
I would just say the same thing. I don't remember
if he was in a class with me or I
knew him somehow, but I was aware of him at Cornell.
On November two thousand, I went on his old show,
Politically Incorrect, used to be the late night show on ABC.
(29:49):
This was an all sports episode. Lennox Lewis, the boxer,
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Todd Zeal
the first basement of the New York Mets Me then
from Fox Sports. When I met Bill Maher, I asked
him about Cornell. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't
see anybody. I didn't do comedy anywhere. I didn't talk
to anybody. I didn't meet you. Well, that settled it,
(30:10):
except during the recording of his show and Mark contradicted
me on some minor point. I got angry, and there
was no reason for me to get angry, and I
dismissed the anger, and I dismissed the moment. Except on
the way home from the show, I kept thinking I
know him from school somehow. No matter what he says,
and I know I didn't like him in school. Over
(30:33):
the next decade, Bill got his weekly HBO political show
that is still on the air and now will be
expanded to CNN. It'll work, And I went back and
turned MSNBC into a political network. And the Internet happened,
so the Cornell juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over.
So I would get asked about it every couple of months,
and I would tell them the same thing. I can't
remember the details, but for twenty years now I have
(30:55):
been convinced I was aware of Bill Maher at Cornell.
Finally came the day March thousand nine when they asked
me to go on Real Time with Bill and Bill.
Mar Cornell seventy eight asked me Cornell seventy nine something
about colleges, and I said, well, as you know, we
overlapped at Cornell, and I don't know if we met,
but I was aware of you there. And he interrupted
(31:18):
me and said, no, you weren't, So I just went
back and answered his question. Now, after every episode of
his program, Mar has or at least hand a little
party back stage, I mean catered with booze and with
more guests than there are people in the studio audience,
and usually a bunch of models having done that show
(31:39):
four times, where they will fly you in first class
and put you up for the weekend in l A
just to do their show, and there's a party. I
began to suspect that, like many of the guests, Bill
Maher does the show just so he can have the
party anyway. Not long after it started, overcomes mar and
he's mad at me, and mind you, even if his
(32:02):
allegation that he is five ft eight is wrecked, I'm
just under six four, so he's giving up a lot
of height during an argument, and he starts yapping about
how I should stop saying I was aware of him
at Cornell and I'm just trying to get publicity off
something that never happened. And who could remember that kind
of crap anyway, And he never talked to anybody in
four years in college because quote except for the ethical
(32:22):
high school students, I sold drugs too, unquote. And I
notice he's getting heated, and this is just triggering that
core belief of mine that I was aware of him
in college and I didn't like him. And now it
becomes clear to me. He didn't like me either. He's
(32:44):
getting loud enough and he's swinging his arms around now
and it looks kind of funny, but apparently it happens
in the office sometimes. And this is when Scott Carter,
who was the executive producer whom I definitely did know
since when he worked at Comedy Central with my friend
Alan Haby. Scott Carter comes over to defuse the situation.
(33:04):
And Scott was a three piece suit kind of guy
with the thumbs tucking the vest, who would call a
group of men fellows, as in say fellows. So Scott
comes over and says, say fellows with your Cornell alumni
reunion here, And of course this makes Bill Maher even angrier.
Let me ask you something. I used to drive down
(33:25):
from Hobart to see concerts at Cornell. Has to say,
I think Cornell was the leading concert school in the
nation back an our day. And now Scott starts the
list who he saw in concert at Cornell. Robert Palmer
and the famous Grateful Dead concert at Cornell at Barton Hall.
He was there, and I say, I went to Springsteen,
and mar mumbles something about Loggins and Messina, and I
(33:48):
know what Carter is doing here, he's diffusing, and we
do a couple of rounds of who saw which Cornell concert?
And finally, I say, I can top both of you
comic geniuses. I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell.
Now it is criminal, but there's an excellent chance you
may not know who Robert Klein is, suffice to say,
(34:12):
as prominent a comedian in the sixties, seventies, eighties as
George Carlin or Richard pryor HBO. Itself was built on
annual George Carlin concerts and annual Robert Klein concerts and
everybody else. And Robert Klein wasn't quite as deep or
eternal as George Carlin, but he was really on the
money during Watergate and during Reagan. So I say I
(34:34):
saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell, and Mark looks
at me funny and not angrily, and says quietly, I
was at that too. I saw Robert Klein too, And
I don't really register that mars mood has now utterly changed.
He's not angry, he's confused. Well, I say I can
(34:55):
still top you, because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein.
Now Bill Mar starts to squint, and he looks at me,
and he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back
at me, and he says, wait, I interviewed Klein aft
of that concert too. And I'm smiling through all this
(35:16):
and smiling and smiling and smiling. And then suddenly, simultaneously
it hits Bill Maher and me at the same moment,
in the same fullness of detail, and I stopped smiling,
and I shout at Bill Maher, you and he pulls
his arms in towards his stomach and kind of bends
forward at the waist and covers his face with his hands,
and he says, oh God, I'm so sorry, Jesus, it
(35:37):
can't be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And while the anger
wells up inside me so powerfully, I can almost see
it in my own eyeballs. Bill Maher's concert going producer
Scott Carter is really confused. Say fellows, did I miss something?
Did I have a brief stroke or episode? And I
(35:57):
say Bill, and I just remembered how I happened to
be aware of him in school. And Mars still has
got his hands over his face and people are looking
at us, and Bill is shouting apologies, and I say
you want to tell him or should I? And Mark
just shakes his body no and mumbles, no, God, dude,
(36:19):
I can't. I can't, I can't, And it all came
back to me. For years, I would tell people the
story of the Robert Klein concert at Cornell University in
our radio station co sponsored his appearance along with the
Cornell Concert Commission, and in the contract we specified that
a couple of us real comedy nerds at the radio
(36:42):
station would get to go backstage afterwards and tape a
brief ten or fifteen minute interview with Robert Klein basically paid.
We paid him not much, but we paid him to
do an interview. And when my pal Andy Grossman and
I get backstage to talk to Robert Klein, and we
have our two microphones and two mike stands and three
tape recorders, there is this guy, this short guy, and
(37:04):
he's yelling at the chief of the Cornell Concert Commission,
and he's yelling at Robert Klein's manager, and he's demanding
that he should get to interview Robert Kline because like Klein,
this kid says he is a stand up comedian and
he publishes the Cornell Humor Magazine. And he points at
me and he says he should get priority over these
quote corporate sellouts from the Cornell radio station. I hated
(37:28):
him on site. Oh wait, I say to him in
and he's small and he's got dirty string hair and
he's loud, and I say, you're the publisher of the
Cornell Humor magazine, the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says,
I wouldn't get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow.
(37:50):
And so I say, oh so, then that means you're
the publisher of the Cornell Alternative Humor magazine, the Not
So Big Red or whatever it is they call it.
He says, no way, they're corporate sellouts. I published this.
And he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled
together and there's like a drawing on the front of
a naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine.
(38:16):
And I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now, while while
this idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still
get Mr Klein to Elane's in the city before it closes, right,
and the manager is wildly impressed. You know of Elanes
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
(38:38):
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders, can we still have ten minutes with
Mr Klein? And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. No, the kid shouts,
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
(39:02):
all the corporations in the world have made me about
a hundred bucks. So I threatened him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since seven, when I
was eight years old, I have started two fist fights,
two in fifty five years. I am a man of peace.
I am loud, but I am a man of peace.
(39:24):
But I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you in
the face. And he runs to where clients manager is
still gesturing towards him, and he screams, car frets out
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade nimiograph ten or twelve page
(39:48):
humor publication, and I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened, because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mars Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher. And now back in
(40:15):
well technically this is correct, back in real time. At
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand nine,
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame. And I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes.
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
(40:37):
And he mumbles no. And he says, if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
just call. And he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and and by the way, Bill Maher, if
Bill Maher's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher, Are you a
corporate sellout? And he says kind And that's how I
(41:00):
was aware of Bill Maher in college. What is CNN
gonna do about all the swearing on Bill Maher when
(41:21):
they run the overtime segment every Friday night. Well, I
guess we'll never find out who's gonna watch. Countdown has
come to you from the studios of Old Woman Broadcasting
Empire World Headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Thanks for listening. By the way, all that reference there
the Old Woman Broadcasting Empire Sports Capsule Building. Those are
jokes I used to do at Cornell among my friends
(41:43):
there could not include Bill Maher. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip s Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All
orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers.
Mother Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
(42:03):
group No Horns Loud. The sports music is the Alderman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fausts.
The best baseball stadium organist ever our announced here today
was Larry David. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
So let's countdown for this, the seven fifty sixth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
(42:26):
government of the United States. Arrest him now while we
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith all Reman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(42:54):
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Just the Republicans are, in essence saying to Trump die already. Quote.
(00:28):
You have a lot of folks who are just wishing
for his mortal demise, says former Michigan Congressman Peter Meyer
to McKay Coppins for Coppin's new piece in The Atlantic,
quoting Meyer again, I want to be clear, I'm not
in that camp, but I've heard from a lot of
people who will go on stage and put on the
red hat and then give me a call the next
(00:50):
day and say, quote, I can't wait until this guy
dies unquote, Coppins says, ex Congress and Meyer describes this
strategy as actuarial arbitrage. As Coppins notes, it's certainly a
passive strategy, as he does not note, but should be
evident from today's headlines. There is also a more aggressive
(01:12):
version of the strategy that appears to be being practiced
right now by grand juries and district attorneys and senators
investigating special councils and muck breakers who want to investigate
Charles McGonagall and FBI New York. And this alternate strategy
could be summarized by simply emphasizing different words when you
say what Peter Meyer told The Atlantic not I can't
(01:35):
wait until this guy dies, but rather, I can't wait
until this guy dies. The district attorneys first in Washington
per CNN, the federal grand jury herring testimony and trump
stolen classified documents and potential nuclear espionage case have gotten
some from two individuals hired by Trump to search his
(01:57):
New York headquarters, the Florida storage unit and the New
Jersey golf course where all the bodies are buried, well
one body anyway. We know nothing of what they actually said,
except that they did not invoke the fifth back at
the ranch, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has reincarnated the
Stormy Daniels hush money case, and, to quote The New
(02:19):
York Times, is nearing a decision about whether to charge
Trump and laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against
Trump in the coming months. To his grand jury way downtown. Yesterday,
Bragg dragged the most aptly named figure in trump in history,
former publisher of the National Inquirer and blackmail conduit David Pecker,
(02:40):
who is the well the Pecker who tried to blackmail
Jeff Bezos into turning The Washington Post to a pro
Trump daily by threatening to expose Bezos his affair with
my former Fox Sports colleague Laurence Sanchez, and Bezos told
him to pound sand in the Stormy Daniels case, Bragg
has the testimony of Trump's former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen,
(03:02):
who already did time for this crime, and his office
has subpoena phone records and the time, says. Bragg wants
Trump organization employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarassoft to testify
to the grand jury, as well as Pecker's former editor
Dylan Howard. And yes, this is a crime involving a
porn star, a publisher named Pecker, a bunch of subpoenas,
(03:24):
and the laying of groundwork in Atlanta, Fulton County, d A.
Fanny Willis is trying to block the public release of
the report by the Election Subversion Special Grand Jury there
and the grounds she has cited should give you a
broad hint. The report should not be released, she says,
because decisions on indictments are quote imminent, and publishing it
(03:45):
could jeopardize the rights of quote future defendants, and since
she did not say defend Dant or defend Dance, it
means there are at least two of them, and realistically
you've only got like three future defend Dance in the
Georgia case anyway, and there Lindsay Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and
Trump moving on to the Senate less certain and with
(04:08):
greater potential for grandstanding. Is something I've been screaming about
since last week's revelations about the attempts to fabricate something
out of nothing by former Attorney General William Barr and
his Losers special counsel John Durham. As you already know,
Bar and Durham tried to give a veneer of investigative
legitimacy to the gas lighting about and suppression of the
(04:29):
Mueller Report and the Trump Russia scandal by quote proving
unquote that Hillary Clinton did it, or Bill Clinton did it,
or lou Clinton of the nineteen sixty six New York
Yankees did it in the kaleidoscope that is Trump related
law breaking. The outrageousness and likely criminality of Bar using
(04:50):
the Justice Department to try to cover up crime has
escaped the notice of almost everybody but Senator Dick Durbin
of Illinois told The Washington Post that Durham's quote abuses
are quote outrageous and constitute quote one of many instances
in which Trump and Bar weaponized the Justice Department unquote,
(05:10):
and I like his choice of words, they're weaponized. More importantly,
Durban is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and promises
quote a hard look at those repeated episodes and the
regulations and policies that enabled them to ensure such abuses
of power cannot happen again, unquote, which is both fine
(05:30):
and dandy, which does not quite have the impact or
the implication of saying we're gonna haul in Bar and
Durham's fat asses and put them on the witness stand
in prime time. Because once again, it may be Susan
Collins who keeps saying that some malefactor or other has
learned his or her lesson, but it's her Democratic colleagues
who actually seem to believe that if Senate Judiciary Chair
(05:55):
Durban was too tepid for us at least, how Judiciary
Chair Jim Jordan's the roy Cone of the new McCarthy
is m got his pep whacked in public by the
Partment of Justice. Jordan's whole stick this year will be
to try to run an investigation about the Trump documents investigation,
to do a Durham if you will, or failing that,
(06:15):
he'll go for the silver medal and beat his chest
about why they won't let him run an investigation about
the investigation. Well, it'll have to be the silver I
have mentioned before here the Lender letter, the two thousand
document from d o J to the House about how
it has been departmental policy for what is today about
ninety years to never give Congress anything on an active
(06:40):
criminal investigation. Sure enough, per The Guardian, the Assistant Attorney
General Carlos Rarte wrote to Jordan's an updated version of Lender,
telling him to get lost and underscoring quote, disclosures to
Congress about active investigations risk jeopardizing those investigations and creating
the appearance that Congress may be exerting improper political pressure
(07:03):
or attempting to influenced Department decisions. Unquote. You think still
for all of this, and let's recap two district attorneys,
three grand juries, one annoyed judiciary chairman, one rebuffed Judiciary chairman,
one porn star and one pecker. The potentially most explosive
(07:25):
story alive remains the arrest of the former FBI New
York lead on the two thousand sixteen Trump Russia case.
The man at the center of things, as that office
forced James Comey to reinflate the but her emails Clinton
smear just eleven days before the election. The man who
turned out to have a wife in one city and
(07:47):
a mistress in another, and was taking bribes from foreigners
while still at the FBI, and who is now under
arrest for taking twenty five thousand a month from the
Russian oligarch oleg Deripaska. He was once investigating none other
than Champagne, Charlie McGonagall and self. We now have the
(08:07):
McGonagall derri Pasca connection, elevated to confirmed status by the
authority of the written word, and the arrest warrant for McGonagall.
We now have the admittedly anonymous source, supposedly a former
McGonagall colleague at FBI, telling the independent news site spy
Talk about leaks out of the New York office in
October and November two thousand sixteen to Rudy Giuliani and others. Quote,
(08:30):
I would not doubt that Charlie played a role in them.
Quote wouldn't surprise me. It just wouldn't surprise me. And
now we have the story from Business Insider about McGonagall
bringing home bags of cash from his Albanian friends and
leaving them around his New York apartment where his two
thousand seventeen girlfriend, the one who thought mcdonagall's wife was
(08:52):
already his ex wife, where she could find them, which
makes it very obvious that Charles McGonagall was a seven
sixty five days a year hot and cold ning blackmail
victim FBI agent waiting to happen. It was the Yale
history professor Tim Snyder who first tweeted the kind of
(09:15):
meta view of Charlie McGonagall that stitched together how what
got him arrested could feedback into not just the Trump
Russia conspiracy, but how the Trump Russia conspiracy got buried
inside the Trump Justice Department and how comey wound up
sabotaging Hillary Clinton? And days after that, whoever got the
New York Times to essentially clear Trump on Russia in
(09:37):
two thousand sixteen, And in his sub stack, it is
again Professor Snyder who really did offer a chilling big picture.
Let me quote him at length quote, we are on
the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for
how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.
(10:00):
Snyder continues, The reporting on this so far seems to
miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump's
historical position looks far cloudier. In two thousand sixteen, Trump's
campaign manager Manafort was a former employee of a Russian oligarch,
Derrik Posca, and owed money to that same Russian oligarch,
(10:22):
and the FBI special agent McGonagall, who was charged with
investigating the Trump campaign's Russian connections, then went to work,
according to the indictment, for that very same Russian oligarch,
Derrik Posca. This is obviously very bad for Trump personally,
but it is also very bad for FBI New York,
for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America.
(10:47):
But wait, Tim Snyder says there's more and worse, quoting
him again, we must revisit the Russian influence operation on
Trump's behalf in two thousand sixteen and the strangely weak
American response. Moscow's goal was to move minds and institutions
such that Hillary Clinton would lose and Donald Trump would win.
(11:11):
We might like to think that any FBI special agent
would resist, oppose, or at least be immuned to such
an operation. Now we are reliably informed that a trusted
FBI actor, one who was responsible for dealing with just
this sort of operation, was corrupt. And again, the issue
is not just the particular person. If someone as important
(11:35):
as McGonagall could take money from foreigners while on the
job at FBI New York and then go to work
for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, he was once investigating, what
is at stake at a bare minimum is the culture
of the FBI's New York office. The larger issue is
the health of our national discussions of politics and the
(11:59):
integrity of our election process. Few But like the horror
film We're just when you thought you'd seen the last knife,
we have the further contribution of the estimable William Bunch
of the Philadelphia Inquir half a century ago this morning,
(12:19):
right around now, was just starting to work as a
news reporter for the student newspaper The Dial, at Hackley
School in Tarrytown, New York. Under the new editor of
News and later editor in chief, me Bunch has written
an epic piece That's half a Century of Them Now,
(12:40):
in which he notes that if mcgonagall's arrest is the
tip of an iceberg that involves the two thousand sixteen
FBI working not just with Trump, but with Trump and Russia,
it could also mean that the FBI, Trump and Russia
were working with, however, unknowingly a fourth conspirator. The New
York Times will asks, quote, how coordinated was the effort
(13:04):
in New York Field Office to pump up the ultimate
nothing burger about Clinton's emails while pooh poohing the very
real evidence of Russian interference on Trump's behalf and who
were the agents behind it? What was the role, if any,
of McGonagall at his international web of intrigue. Was the
now tainted McGonagall a source who told The New York
(13:26):
Times that faithful October that Russia was not trying to
help Trump win the election before the U. S Intelligence
community to determine the exact opposite, If not McGonagall, just
who was intentionally misleading America's most influential news organization and why?
Will wants answers from the New York Times. I want
(13:50):
answers about McGonagall and the rogue FBI New York Field
office because to circle back to ex Congressman Peter Meyer
and his guys in the Red Hats who secretly wait
for Trump's quote mortal demise. No, we can't wait until
this guy dies. By the way, Trump was right about something.
(14:24):
Jaed balson Naro is applying for a visa to stay
in Florida, so there are terrorists coming in through the
southern border. Still ahead, CNN has figured out how to
solve all its ratings problems. Take that little post show
chat Bill Maher does with his guests on HBO while
they're itching to get to the booze at his post
(14:44):
show party, and put that in the middle of the
news every Friday night. So it's time to retail the
saga of how mar and I know each other forty
five years and twice we nearly had fist bites over
the details. Plus two sports legends are gone, Hockey's Golden
Jet and the Drumbeat Cleveland. And in worst persons, it
(15:07):
is hard to believe anything the utterly corrupt Megan Kelly
could do now would be shocking but this one, this
one will make your jaw drop. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith still ahead on Countdown. Who's
(15:34):
that new face of baseball on the cover of its
top video game? No, seriously, I'm asking who is that guy?
He was the fifty second most valuable player in the
sport last year. Why is he on the cover? Plus
the answer to all of CNN's problems. Put Bill maher
on once a week to do something. I'll retell the
(15:56):
story of how he and I met in and nearly
had a fist fight. First, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day to Dallas and Cody's Friends rescue
and a puppy named Memphis age uncertain details unclear. Memphis, though,
is a puppy, maybe some kind of gray mix of
(16:18):
a hound and a lab. But there are two leg fractures,
and since there are no scratches or wounds, it looks
like they were inflicted by punches or kicks deliberately. Memphis
is a good candidate for recovery. They've set up a
giving grid Square to raise some money. You can find
Memphis there or on my Twitter Feed and your donations
and retweets are gratefully accepted. I thank you, and Memphis
(16:41):
thanks you. This is sports sen Wait, check that not anymore.
(17:09):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman in sports A lot
of Loss Yesterday. Hockey's Golden Jet, Bobby Hull has died,
three weeks after his eighty four birthday. Changed the game,
first with the slap shot, then with the curved stick,
then with the big money jump to the National Hockey
(17:29):
League's first rival, the World Hockey Association. Hull was the
first NHL player to score more than fifty goals in
a season. He was Most Valuable Player three times. He
played until he was forty one. At all told, he
scored nineteen goals. I interviewed him at Madison Square Garden
when he returned to the NHL in nine and he
said one of the most mind blowing things I have
(17:50):
ever heard. I must think of this quote at him
saying it in his gravelly voice at least twice a month.
I asked Bobby Hull about his memories of playing in
New York and he said, oh, that's behind me. Now,
never mind the past. We're here in the future. Now
we're here in the future now in Cleveland. On AUGUSTE,
(18:20):
baseball fan named John Adams tried to excite interest in
the always moribund Cleveland Indians baseball team by going to
the bleachers and buying two tickets, one for himself and
one for his enormous bass drum. John Adams pounded on
that drum incessantly through three World Series, eleven playoff rounds,
three All Star games, a perfect game by Cleveland pitcher
(18:42):
Lenn Barker, and about six of my live reports on
baseball games being telecast by NBC. John Adams died yesterday
at the age of seventy one. In more mundane stuff,
Baseball with its big promotional reveal yesterday the selection of
which young Star player would grace the cover of the
MLB The Show video game edition. Well, apparently they didn't
(19:05):
have any young Star players with the cover of MLB
The Show because the guy in the cover is a
Miami Marlin infielder named Jazz Chisholm Jr. Who hit a
career high two fifty four last year, who has struck
out two times in two d four career games, and
has a career ops plus, which is a stat measuring
how much above average you are in batting average and
(19:27):
slugging percentage. He has a career OPS plus a hundred
and three. Just average is a hundred. Chisholm is very
flashy on the field, but honestly, if he got sent
back to the miners at some point would not be
a big surprise except to the baseball people who make
these idiotic marketing decisions. I believe they outsourced them to
(19:49):
the consulting firm called We Step On Rakes Incorporated. Thank you,
Nancy Faust, and lastly, happy birthday to one of the
(20:10):
best play by play men in sports. My friend John
Shorthouse of the Vancouver Canucks, who first did that job
on radio, took over full time in and moved to
TV in two thousand eight, is crisp sixcinct enthusiastic delivery,
is right on the money. He's clearly a fan of
the team he covers, but he would never cover up
(20:31):
their mistakes. And the finest measure of his work is
that every time I tweet about how good he is added,
large numbers of Vancouver Canucks fans reply by telling me
to shut the hell up because they don't want a
Canadian or American network or a big market team to
find out about him and steal him from them. I
like to think of John as my older Canadian brother.
(20:54):
I like to except for the fact that he only
turns fifty three today, Or at least that's what he
says now to the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons
(21:18):
and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. The bronze good old George Santos. Nothing
big this time, just more of that old TV commercial
cliche about you know, you wonder if some people just
stopped trying. This all started because he unexpectedly won the
(21:39):
congressional seat formerly held by retired Congressman Tom Swazi Well,
George Santos district office on Long Island has something unusual
and untrue about it. Naturally, the window and the big
green awning on it both read quote Congressman Thomas are
Swazzy knowing George Santos. It's possible he's now using that
as an alias. The runner up, another congressional Representative, Lois Frankel,
(22:04):
Democrat out of Florida, member of the Safe Climate Caucus
and anti fracking advocate, and according to stock records, she
owns as much as are dollars worth of stocking six
different oil and gas companies, including Conoco, Phillips and diamond Back.
The conservative Washington Examiner reported this, but there is no
(22:24):
denial from Congresswoman Frankel, who told the paper that her
investments are quote managed independently by a money manager who
buys and sells stocks at his discretion. Unquote could be true.
I've had one of those, but it is the wrong
bloody answer. Firstly, congress people in senators should not get
to own any stock, any stock at all. But if
(22:48):
you are a climate change democrat, if you're in the caucus,
the only correct answer is my stocks are managed independently
by a money manager, and I had no idea about this.
I will instruct him to sell these stocks immediately and
to never again invest in fossil fuels the end, Congresswoman,
But our winner, Megan Kelly, fired by Fox, fired by NBC,
(23:10):
now reduced to pretending she's still on TV and streaming
it and not even through a service just from her
own website. You her confidence will never wane, nor will
her arrogance. She'll never know she's where she is now
because of things like her tweet during one of the
football playoff games. Quote announcers for this Eagles games just
(23:31):
spott at the first lady in a box and of
course call her doctor Jill Biden. Wonder if she realizes
what a wannabe she looks like, insisting on this fake title,
get a real m d or just work on your
self esteem unquote standard fascist insult template number thirty seven
and culture used to claim I didn't go to Cornell,
(23:52):
only she did because I didn't go to the arts
college like she did. To Megan Kelly, Joe Biden is
not a doctor because she doesn't cut people open on
an operating table. The first lady has a doctoral degree
in education from University of Delaware. She is Dr Biden.
But it was left to n y U law professor
Melissa Murray to post three earlier tweets from Megan Kelly,
(24:13):
which begin quote doctor Sebastian Gorka, these people aren't that
and doctor Sebastian Gorka discussion on whether Dotta and doctor
Sebastian Gorka the g head. Dr Gorka has a pH
d in political science from a university in Budapest. But
(24:33):
that's not even the real punch line here. Jason Patterson
from Washington University notes that there was somebody else who
had the same exact degree ed d. Doctor of Education
as Jill Biden does. Somebody who was addressed as doctor,
just as Megan Kelly does not think Jill Biden should be.
That would be former University of Albany professor Dr Edward F. Kelly,
(24:57):
Megan Kelly's father, Her father, the one who the paraphrase
his own daughter. Wonder if he realized what a wannabe
he looked like insisting on this fake title. Get a
real empty or just work on your self esteem, Dad,
Megan Kelly, who just called her own father a fake
two days worst person in the world, doctor doctor, give
(25:29):
me the dude. He's got a bad case. Down to
the number one story on Countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell l CNN
has now made it official. I told you two weeks
(25:50):
ago that Chris Licked had hit on a brilliant idea
to put some kind of humor programming into his lineup.
I mean intentional humor, not that unintentionally hilarious show he
has on in the mornings. Maybe a prime time show
though Chris Licked. Have you ever stopped to think about
what a funny name that is Chris Licked? Yeah? Are
(26:11):
there more details? Chris Licked now denies this, But there
was an idea around CNN to have a show with
John Stewart or Trevor Noah or Arsenio Hall going on
the air every night in prime time and somehow doing
the newscast and just praying nothing news. He actually happened.
And of course the brilliant idea that Chris Licked hit
on is not brilliant, not new, and not his many
(26:37):
CNN presidents ago as I also mentioned to a man
named Walter Isaacson brought me in to discuss the merits
of trying to have John Stewart do a daily or
weekly show on CNN. My meeting to talk about this
was Walter Isaacson was on August three, two thousand one. Anyway,
CNN has made its big push into comedy. The little
(26:57):
add on chat that his guests on his Friday HBO
show are roped into overtime will raw as part of
CNN's News Hour at eleven thirty every Friday night. Bill
Mars Overtime. It's previously been shown only online or on
HBO's streaming service or on demand service or whatever. And
(27:18):
it doesn't matter because CNN is down to ninety two
thousand primetime demo viewers. So it's really unlikely you would
have ever heard of this if I were not mentioning
it to you. Now, though, unresolved is the question of
how they will handle the fact that Bill likes to
swear and Bill likes to guests to swear. And I
know this because it turns out I know Bill for
(27:40):
nearly forty five years. This has a great backstory to it.
Sometime or eighty six, I saw a movie on Cable
called D C. Cab. There was a character in it.
Clearly the actor portraying him was talented and funny and distinctive,
but for some reason I felt like I knew him
(28:01):
from somewhere, and I really really disliked him. Remember, the
few ling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. His
name was Bill Mayor m A h. E. R. Mayor. Well,
I had a teacher named Bill Mayor, but his name
had a y in it said no, it wasn't him,
but I knew three things he was talented, I didn't
(28:22):
like him, and I knew him from somewhere. This is
pre Internet, of course, so no way to find out
where I knew him from. Hallow ELL's annual film guide
would be my best bet. Maybe he'd be in the
new one coming out checks Watch just eight or nine
months from now. Eventually I found out that where I
knew Bill maher from was college. He was in the
(28:44):
year ahead of Mind at Cornell University. I knew he
wasn't working at my radio station. He wasn't in my college.
Maybe I had him in a class somewhere. I could
never nail it down. I like to say I have
a photographic memory, but it's polaroids, and sorry, I didn't
always bother to put labels on the polaroids. All most
(29:04):
everything that has ever happened is stuck inside this big
empty head of mine. But often key details like who,
what went and where they're just missing. I forgot to
write them down, and honestly, in this case, it was
not worth the effort. I knew I was almost the
right word aware of this mar guy when we were
both in college. Occasionally, especially after I went from ESPN
(29:26):
to MSNBC, in a writer would note the coincidence of
university and years and asked me about Bill Maher, and
I would just say the same thing. I don't remember
if he was in a class with me or I
knew him somehow, but I was aware of him at Cornell.
On November two thousand, I went on his old show,
Politically Incorrect, used to be the late night show on ABC.
(29:49):
This was an all sports episode. Lennox Lewis, the boxer,
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Todd Zeal
the first basement of the New York Mets Me then
from Fox Sports. When I met Bill Maher, I asked
him about Cornell. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't
see anybody. I didn't do comedy anywhere. I didn't talk
to anybody. I didn't meet you. Well, that settled it,
(30:10):
except during the recording of his show and Mark contradicted
me on some minor point. I got angry, and there
was no reason for me to get angry, and I
dismissed the anger, and I dismissed the moment. Except on
the way home from the show, I kept thinking I
know him from school somehow. No matter what he says,
and I know I didn't like him in school. Over
(30:33):
the next decade, Bill got his weekly HBO political show
that is still on the air and now will be
expanded to CNN. It'll work, And I went back and
turned MSNBC into a political network. And the Internet happened,
so the Cornell juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over.
So I would get asked about it every couple of months,
and I would tell them the same thing. I can't
remember the details, but for twenty years now I have
(30:55):
been convinced I was aware of Bill Maher at Cornell.
Finally came the day March thousand nine when they asked
me to go on Real Time with Bill and Bill.
Mar Cornell seventy eight asked me Cornell seventy nine something
about colleges, and I said, well, as you know, we
overlapped at Cornell, and I don't know if we met,
but I was aware of you there. And he interrupted
(31:18):
me and said, no, you weren't, So I just went
back and answered his question. Now, after every episode of
his program, Mar has or at least hand a little
party back stage, I mean catered with booze and with
more guests than there are people in the studio audience,
and usually a bunch of models having done that show
(31:39):
four times, where they will fly you in first class
and put you up for the weekend in l A
just to do their show, and there's a party. I
began to suspect that, like many of the guests, Bill
Maher does the show just so he can have the
party anyway. Not long after it started, overcomes mar and
he's mad at me, and mind you, even if his
(32:02):
allegation that he is five ft eight is wrecked, I'm
just under six four, so he's giving up a lot
of height during an argument, and he starts yapping about
how I should stop saying I was aware of him
at Cornell and I'm just trying to get publicity off
something that never happened. And who could remember that kind
of crap anyway, And he never talked to anybody in
four years in college because quote except for the ethical
(32:22):
high school students, I sold drugs too, unquote. And I
notice he's getting heated, and this is just triggering that
core belief of mine that I was aware of him
in college and I didn't like him. And now it
becomes clear to me. He didn't like me either. He's
(32:44):
getting loud enough and he's swinging his arms around now
and it looks kind of funny, but apparently it happens
in the office sometimes. And this is when Scott Carter,
who was the executive producer whom I definitely did know
since when he worked at Comedy Central with my friend
Alan Haby. Scott Carter comes over to defuse the situation.
(33:04):
And Scott was a three piece suit kind of guy
with the thumbs tucking the vest, who would call a
group of men fellows, as in say fellows. So Scott
comes over and says, say fellows with your Cornell alumni
reunion here, And of course this makes Bill Maher even angrier.
Let me ask you something. I used to drive down
(33:25):
from Hobart to see concerts at Cornell. Has to say,
I think Cornell was the leading concert school in the
nation back an our day. And now Scott starts the
list who he saw in concert at Cornell. Robert Palmer
and the famous Grateful Dead concert at Cornell at Barton Hall.
He was there, and I say, I went to Springsteen,
and mar mumbles something about Loggins and Messina, and I
(33:48):
know what Carter is doing here, he's diffusing, and we
do a couple of rounds of who saw which Cornell concert?
And finally, I say, I can top both of you
comic geniuses. I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell.
Now it is criminal, but there's an excellent chance you
may not know who Robert Klein is, suffice to say,
(34:12):
as prominent a comedian in the sixties, seventies, eighties as
George Carlin or Richard pryor HBO. Itself was built on
annual George Carlin concerts and annual Robert Klein concerts and
everybody else. And Robert Klein wasn't quite as deep or
eternal as George Carlin, but he was really on the
money during Watergate and during Reagan. So I say I
(34:34):
saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell, and Mark looks
at me funny and not angrily, and says quietly, I
was at that too. I saw Robert Klein too, And
I don't really register that mars mood has now utterly changed.
He's not angry, he's confused. Well, I say I can
(34:55):
still top you, because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein.
Now Bill Mar starts to squint, and he looks at me,
and he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back
at me, and he says, wait, I interviewed Klein aft
of that concert too. And I'm smiling through all this
(35:16):
and smiling and smiling and smiling. And then suddenly, simultaneously
it hits Bill Maher and me at the same moment,
in the same fullness of detail, and I stopped smiling,
and I shout at Bill Maher, you and he pulls
his arms in towards his stomach and kind of bends
forward at the waist and covers his face with his hands,
and he says, oh God, I'm so sorry, Jesus, it
(35:37):
can't be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And while the anger
wells up inside me so powerfully, I can almost see
it in my own eyeballs. Bill Maher's concert going producer
Scott Carter is really confused. Say fellows, did I miss something?
Did I have a brief stroke or episode? And I
(35:57):
say Bill, and I just remembered how I happened to
be aware of him in school. And Mars still has
got his hands over his face and people are looking
at us, and Bill is shouting apologies, and I say
you want to tell him or should I? And Mark
just shakes his body no and mumbles, no, God, dude,
(36:19):
I can't. I can't, I can't, And it all came
back to me. For years, I would tell people the
story of the Robert Klein concert at Cornell University in
our radio station co sponsored his appearance along with the
Cornell Concert Commission, and in the contract we specified that
a couple of us real comedy nerds at the radio
(36:42):
station would get to go backstage afterwards and tape a
brief ten or fifteen minute interview with Robert Klein basically paid.
We paid him not much, but we paid him to
do an interview. And when my pal Andy Grossman and
I get backstage to talk to Robert Klein, and we
have our two microphones and two mike stands and three
tape recorders, there is this guy, this short guy, and
(37:04):
he's yelling at the chief of the Cornell Concert Commission,
and he's yelling at Robert Klein's manager, and he's demanding
that he should get to interview Robert Kline because like Klein,
this kid says he is a stand up comedian and
he publishes the Cornell Humor Magazine. And he points at
me and he says he should get priority over these
quote corporate sellouts from the Cornell radio station. I hated
(37:28):
him on site. Oh wait, I say to him in
and he's small and he's got dirty string hair and
he's loud, and I say, you're the publisher of the
Cornell Humor magazine, the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says,
I wouldn't get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow.
(37:50):
And so I say, oh so, then that means you're
the publisher of the Cornell Alternative Humor magazine, the Not
So Big Red or whatever it is they call it.
He says, no way, they're corporate sellouts. I published this.
And he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled
together and there's like a drawing on the front of
a naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine.
(38:16):
And I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now, while while
this idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still
get Mr Klein to Elane's in the city before it closes, right,
and the manager is wildly impressed. You know of Elanes
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
(38:38):
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders, can we still have ten minutes with
Mr Klein? And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. No, the kid shouts,
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
(39:02):
all the corporations in the world have made me about
a hundred bucks. So I threatened him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since seven, when I
was eight years old, I have started two fist fights,
two in fifty five years. I am a man of peace.
I am loud, but I am a man of peace.
(39:24):
But I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you in
the face. And he runs to where clients manager is
still gesturing towards him, and he screams, car frets out
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade nimiograph ten or twelve page
(39:48):
humor publication, and I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened, because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mars Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher. And now back in
(40:15):
well technically this is correct, back in real time. At
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand nine,
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame. And I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes.
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
(40:37):
And he mumbles no. And he says, if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
just call. And he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and and by the way, Bill Maher, if
Bill Maher's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher, Are you a
corporate sellout? And he says kind And that's how I
(41:00):
was aware of Bill Maher in college. What is CNN
gonna do about all the swearing on Bill Maher when
(41:21):
they run the overtime segment every Friday night. Well, I
guess we'll never find out who's gonna watch. Countdown has
come to you from the studios of Old Woman Broadcasting
Empire World Headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Thanks for listening. By the way, all that reference there
the Old Woman Broadcasting Empire Sports Capsule Building. Those are
jokes I used to do at Cornell among my friends
(41:43):
there could not include Bill Maher. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip s Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All
orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers.
Mother Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
(42:03):
group No Horns Loud. The sports music is the Alderman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fausts.
The best baseball stadium organist ever our announced here today
was Larry David. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
So let's countdown for this, the seven fifty sixth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
(42:26):
government of the United States. Arrest him now while we
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith all Reman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(42:54):
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.