IF THEY RE-DID THE ELECTION TODAY HARRIS WOULD BEAT TRUMP BY FIVE - 5.15.25 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Somebody
up there is listening to me. I mean up there

(00:28):
in the ranks of the pollsters. We have the first
polling not on what I've been begging for, a hypothetical
presidential recall vote, but on the next best thing, a
presidential revote if the twenty twenty four election were held today.
Harris forty seven, Trump forty two among the same voters.

(00:52):
The first reliable midterm indicators. Democratic House candidates favored over
Republicans by six This is all from Elliott Morris, The
Last King of Five p. Thirty eight, for his new
site Strength in numbers done by Verisite polling and Trump's
interior numbers. Trump is not underwater, He's drowning. He is

(01:14):
sixteen points under on net approval, but on strongly approved
or disapproval. Strong net approval he's down by two to
one forty two percent strongly disapprove. The strongly approved number
is twenty one percent. That is half by individual policies.

(01:35):
Is the economy better now under Trump's decisions or was
it better last year under Biden's decisions? He's net minus
thirty four prices and inflation, He's at net minus thirty two,
tariffs and trade net minus twenty one, the Doge bullshit
and social programs net minus twenty jobs, and the economy

(01:57):
net minus seventeen, Foreign policy net minus sixteen, healthcare net
minus sixteen, education net minus sixteen, immigration net minus two,
border security net plus ten. Until you go into specifics,

(02:18):
ask about sending all undocumented immigrants back to their home country,
and Trump gets that net plus ten. Then tell them
the Kilmar Abrego Garcia story and the other mistakes, or
the deliberate seizing of people who are here legally and
disappearing them anyway and refusing to bring them back, and

(02:41):
Trump's support collapses craters. Trump goes from plus sixteen to
minus four. He is underwater on disappearing.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Immigrants.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Bluntly speaking, were this Obama or Clinton or Carter, the
right wing meet would be demanding that the president either
fire his entire cabinet or resign his office. And just
when you thought you never wanted to hear another poll
goddamned number again. Harris by five if the election were

(03:21):
held today, Democrats by six. In the House midterms, Trump
approval net minus sixteen. Trump economic decisions net minus thirty four.
Trump renditions plus sixteen until you tell them the truth,
and then it drops twenty points. And yet they keep
digging on the kidnapping and the abuse and the erasure

(03:44):
of due process. A memo to Christy Nome, the dog
murdering sadist, the plasticized witch now serving as Trump's ilsa,
the she wolf of the SS. Even as your criminal gang,
posing as a government kidnapped Kilmara breg Garcia and renditioned

(04:06):
him and pretended he could not be brought back, even
after Trump said he could bring him back, Even as
your collection of criminal thugs lied about him and slandered
him and disseminated fabricated photographs of him. Even then, none
of you had the gall to accuse him or charge
him with terrorism. And then you know, in the House

(04:27):
of Representatives, as Democrat after Democrat tore you to shreds,
and Congressman Goldman in some respects avenged your daughter's puppy cricket,
you had the nerve to call mister Abrego Garcia a terrorist.
The terrorists here are those who disappeared Abrego Garcia, the

(04:50):
fiends without souls like Trump and Nome f you, which
if your continued advocacy for him were too.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
I'm not advocating for him, I'm advocating for a court order,
Madam Secretary.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
This the court order.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Says that you must take steps to follow the court order.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
You are here under oath.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
What steps have you taken to return mister Abrego Garcia
pursue it to this court order.

Speaker 4 (05:18):
It's got to be extremely discouraging to be one of
your constituents. To see you fight for a terrorist like
this and not fight for them is extremely alarming to.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
I'm fighting for due process, and that's under the Constitution, gentlemen,
as you fight to hire process.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Thank you, Congressman Goldman. So they had to submit a
privileged log in the Abrego Garcia case or probably face
a contempt charge from Judge Zennis. Had to do it
by Tuesday at three pm. They filed it under seal,
so the public cannot see it because obviously there is
nothing about it that needs to be secret or sealed.

(05:58):
Afforded chance after chance to cure their breach of the
laws of the basic morality, they have refused. This will matter, Christyme,
Tom Holman, Donald Trump, during your trials and the trials
of the others four years from now, and in Abrago

(06:18):
Garcia's suits against you, each individually for millions of dollars.
There's another hearing in this case tomorrow, as Judge Zennis
continues to build her file for contempt charges. Can you
give Christinome a thousand years in jail for contempt? Even

(06:39):
a Trump appointee, Judge Stephanie Haynes of Pennsylvania, while becoming
the first to rubber snamp his disappearing of Hispanic people
and Trump's unconstitutional misuse of the Alien Enemies Act, even
she says they cannot simply grab people and throw them
on a plane and give them three hours to try

(07:00):
to stop it through legal action. They must be given
three weeks of due process, three weeks at least. Even
a Trump stooge says this. Meanwhile, the Trump four hundred

(07:41):
million dollar flying bribe crisis is so bad even Chuck
Schumer has noticed. The Trump four hundred million dollar flying
bribe crisis is so bad even Politico wrote something almost
snarky and pithy about it Guitar Alago in response to
Trump taking the guitar bribe. Schumer has actually done one

(08:06):
of the few things he can do one of the
few things McConnell or any of those evil bastards would
have done. He's placing holds on all Justice Department political appointees.
He should now have every Democratic senator call a hold
on something or somebody that the Republicans are trying to
fast track through the Senate. Slow it all down, freeze them.

(08:27):
Politico at least acknowledged that everything else Trump is trying
to do in the Middle East has been dwarfed by
the four hundred million dollar flying bribe crisis, But as usual,
its primary presence its playbook newsletter drop the ball on
what those who are suffering from Maga disease have latched
onto as the whataboutest headline. By four h five am

(08:49):
Local time, Trump had taken to reposting comments comparing the
four hundred million dollar freebe luxury jet plane to France's
gift of the Statue of Liberty in eighteen eighty four,
unquote the end, Well, where's the rest of it? The
background on the statute and the enabling legislation, Where's that?

(09:13):
Or is Ann Coulter the newest editor of Politico Playbook.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Hell?

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Everybody else in Washington has had a shot at that
job in the last six months since Ryan Liza blew
himself up. I can't wait for the press to find
out about France's so called gift of the Statue of Liberty,
accepted in eighteen eighty six by then President Grover Cleveland.
There is a reason that our shared alma mater leaves Anne.

(09:41):
That's Ann Coulter, Cornell eighty four off all of its
lists of alumni. She did not learn enough at Cornell
to even now go and google stuff, or go to
Wikipedia or ask a grown up. Unlike Trump's four hundred
million dollar Freebee luxury Jet, America only accepted the Statfatue

(10:04):
of Liberty, which by the way, does not fly. After
the House and Senate passed a joint resolution, and on
his last full day in office in March eighteen seventy seven,
President Ulysses S. Grant signed that legislation. The joint resolution
was based on finding somewhere to put the statue and
raising funds private funds to erect it. It was christened

(10:27):
at the end of October eighteen eighty six, a mere
eleven years and a month after the French first offered it.
If Trump wants to accept this four hundred million dollar
bribe and put it into service as Air Force one
effective June fifteenth, two thousand thirty six. I'm on board

(10:49):
when this small detail that we only accepted the Statue
of Liberty after Congress said it was okay. When this
small detail appeared, those with Maga disease turned to the
Resolute Desk, the one in the Oval Office, the one
Trump thinks is called the Resolute desk because that means

(11:09):
he's resolute, and he heard the word once and he
thinks it sounds tough, rather than it being called the
Resolute desk because it was built from the timbers of
an Arctic exploration ship called Resolute that was abandoned in
the Arctic in eighteen fifty four. The claim is the

(11:32):
desk was given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria,
and nobody complained about that, and golly, I didn't know
that the Resolute Desk could also fly like the Statue
of Liberty, or that it will be handed over to
the Trump Presidential Library.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I did know.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
That the ship Resolute was located and towed back to
America by an American whaling ship, and we, the Americans,
repaired it for the British who owned the ship, and
returned it to them, and they used it in service
in their navy for twenty years, and when they finally
decommissioned it, they made four desks out of it, and

(12:14):
Queen Victoria sent one of the desks to President Hayes.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
As a thanks.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Technically, under naval salvage laws, the Resolute became American property
the moment we towed it back, so Victoria actually just
returned part of it to us. And the real question
isn't who in the hell thinks a desk is the
same thing as a four hundred million dollar flying bribe.
That's not the real question. The real question is how

(12:45):
come when they broke up an entire four hundred and
twenty four ton ship they only had enough wood to
make four desks out of it. Most of our nightmare, course,

(13:07):
is Trump's fault, and those with Maga disease have lost
their mind over the woke Marxist Pope because they know,
if any religion is correct, the woke Marxist Pope will
help send Trump to hell and his judgment cometh right soon.
The next level of guilty in all this is Trump's
enablers Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, every establishment Republican who traded

(13:31):
their souls for power and money, perhaps literally traded their souls.
But the tertiary tear, still to me the most astonishing
of them all, consists of the people who will go
to meet their maker, if any, and be fully surprised
to find out then and only then, that they made
Trump possible, mostly because they either did not own a mirror,

(13:54):
or did not use the mirror they did own, or
saw in that mirror only their own fingers pointing at others.
And now foremost among them are the smirking self unaware
Chief Justice of the United States, John Glover Roberts, Junior,
and one Arthur greg A g Selzberger, the smirking, self

(14:17):
unaware publisher of The New York Times, And they have
now spoken words meant to utterly condemn those who have
assailed and damaged and surrendered in its entirety to Trump,
in Robert's case, the judicial system, and in Sealzburger's case,
the news reportorial system. Roberts has now told an audience

(14:38):
at Georgetown, at least many of whom had to have
realized that he was talking about himself without ever realizing
it that in this country the rule of law is
now quote endangered, and that while he encourages criticism of
court decisions quote not ad hominem against the justices, I

(14:59):
just think that doesn't do any good. While he has
allowed Alito and Thomas and the others to track the
liberal justices ad hominem, and for the entirety of those
with Maga disease to trash judges and others who have
different religious beliefs, and anybody they don't like, and anybody
who stands in Trump's way, and anybody who believes in

(15:20):
the Constitution. He has allowed them to trash all of
those people at hominem, and he and his little body
of elves have trashed the Constitution that have made up
and erased words in it at hominem. Sulzberger has now

(15:41):
told an audience at Notre Dame, and was so inexplicably
proud of his brief comments just five thousand, five hundred
and forty five words, that he made his editors publish
it in his newspaper. He is now told an audience
at Notre Dame without ever realizing it, that he is

(16:01):
just as gullible as Bill Maher and that he even
though sure Trump is trying to stochastically inspire mobs to
kill him and the other people who run the Times,
and to burn the New York Times to the ground,
and to have his legal whores sue the Times and

(16:23):
everybody else to end freedom of the press in this country,
that in person, Sealzburger says, Trump was quote Sybil and
quote despite his bombastic rhetoric, he's a longtime reader of
the Times who loved chatting with our reporters and sending
them signed clippings of articles that caught his eye. Removed
from the rally stage, he admits to being an admirer

(16:45):
of what he's called my newspaper and a great great
American jewel, a world jewel. Sealzburger pulled himself out of
Trump's ass long enough to add that Joe Biden and
his aides lashed out at the Times, but quote Trump,
in contrast, continues to make himself more available to reporters

(17:09):
than previous presidents.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Christ Jesus H.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Christ Salzburger came this close to saying Trump really likes
wordle where He's a big fan of the Wirecutter Guide
to the most cost effective wasp and hornet sprays. Of course,
Trump has made himself more available to reporters. He's using reporters,
he's exploiting reporters. He's training them. He certainly has trained

(17:41):
this NEPO baby, Sealzburger. This is why Salzburger told Notre
Dame or those who were left awake at the end,
that the best way to resist Trump is to not
resist at all. He quoted a Hungarian investigative journalist named
Andras Petho, whom Sealzburger claims warns that nothing makes autocrats

(18:05):
happier than reporters who portray themselves as crusaders against the
regime or victims of it. If you act like an advocate,
you should not be surprised if you become viewed as such.
If you are in the news business, your greatest possible
contribution to saving democracies is doing your job and doing
it well. Mister Selzberger did not note that for whatever

(18:29):
good mister Pitho has done or tried to do in
Hungary during his time as a journalist in Hungary, Hungary
has moved from democracy to dictatorship and is now the
template for Trump's American dictatorship and the delight of the
Tucker Carlsons of this world. Mister Patho's words are noble
and laudatory and completely irrelevant. And oh, by the way,

(18:52):
his approach failed in Hungary and it is failing in America.
Don't advocate, Just point and go tisc. Don't advocate when
those who want capitalist democracy and those who want it
replaced by fascist kleptocracy have now divided completely into two

(19:15):
separate political parties. Just report on Trump. That'll show him.
Just report on Orban. That'll show him. No, actually it won't.
It'll show mister Peto, or it should have. He had
to relocate to Harvard as a Nieman Fellow for a year,
and much of his work now is not published in

(19:37):
Hungary because you can't. It's published here in places like
The Times. Because no, don't ever crusade or advocate or
acknowledge that Orban is trying to kill you. Where that
Hitler was, where that Trump is quoting Sealzburger again. The
signs that have troubled me most have come from other

(19:58):
public and private sector leaders, too worried about the administration
to stand up for their own rights and principles. Large companies,
nonprofits and foundations long supportive of journalism now tell us
they fear retaliation if they openly support news organizations. Mister Sealzburger,

(20:22):
get thee to a mirror. You are no longer standing
up for your own rights and principles. The Times was
founded as the Civil War loomed. Do you really think
your predecessors told each other not to crusade or advocate for,
you know, the destruction of slavery rather than the destruction

(20:46):
of this country. This simpleton, Sealzburger, has been ted bundied,
just like Mar was Ted Bundy Trump twice in Mars case,
just like thousands millions before them have been ted Bundy
by Ted Bundy Trump. I got a fan letter from

(21:10):
Trump once. My first reaction was what the f is
wrong with this guy? My reaction rereading that fan letter
today is what the f is wrong with this guy?
My reaction the day I met him in nineteen eighty
three was what the f is wrong with this guy?
Nothing about how civil he is. You are being massaged

(21:37):
and manipulated, Salzburger, to the point where Trump can stop
with the compliments and you will just keep on massaging
and manipulating yourself, like Chief Justice Roberts has, We're developing
a situation where a whole group of young people is
growing up having no real sense about how our system

(21:58):
of justice works developing, mister Roberts. This started with the
gutting of education under Ronald Reagan. It continues at this
minute under the president from your party, mister Roberts, the
president for whom your zeppelin sized corruption machines Alito and
Thomas stay Aloft. The President just named a secretary of

(22:21):
education of person instructed to destroy. The secretary of Education,
a woman so stupid she literally thinks AI is pronounced
a one. I'm the secretary of stik sauce. And tell me,
mister Chief Justice, how does our system of justice work today?

(22:47):
Any school child trying to learn more than Trump wants
to teach him, would look at the Supreme Court and say,
they're the ones who made up presidential immunity. It's not
in the constitution. They erase the fourteenth Amendment. They're now
looking for ways to erase the twenty second Amendment about
term limits. And they have been ignored by, and embarrassed by,

(23:08):
and urinated upon by this belching dictator in what is
now nearly six weeks of contempt of one of the
Court's orders in that of Brago Garcia case, and the
Supreme Court has done nothing about it.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Well, the judiciary beneath it rots and withers because judges
are afraid to do a damn thing about a tyrant
who self inflates a little bit bigger every goddamn day,
And the Supreme Court just sits there. But tell me
more about who's it fault here, Johnny Roberts, for endangering
the judicial system, and how it certainly is not you.

(23:47):
And tell me more about who's it fault here, Dash
Selzburger for endangering freedom of the press, and how it
certainly is not you. We're all trying to find the
guy who did this, says the guy in the hot
dog suit, after somebody drives a hot dog shaped car
into a store and give him a spanking. Roberts and

(24:10):
Sealzburger didn't say that, of course, Tim Robinson did in
his show I Think You Should Leave in the Hot
Dog Suit and in a billion meme replays since. But
Robinson could redo that sketch now using a scotismobile while
wearing the robes of the Chief Justice of the United States,
or while driving a New York Times delivery van while

(24:32):
wearing a bright red Times Cooking apron forty two ninety
five special Delivery available because in a time when the
minimum we need for America to survive is a chief
justice who realizes that it is the president who is
gradually turning the government into his own merchandise outlet store.

(24:58):
And a publisher of the leading newspaper who realizes that
the leading newspaper has to advocate for the truth and
for the continuation of democracy, and for the life of
the nation, and not for balanced headlines like some say
Trump should be a dictator, but others suggest he should
instead destroy representative government. But instead of that, and the

(25:20):
imagery isn't just good, it's perfect, and it isn't mine.
It's that of the online satirist Darth. Instead of that,
the one and only thing John Roberts and A. G.
Sealzburger are actually doing is fighting over who gets to
wear Tim Robinson's goddamned hot dog suit. I would suggest

(25:49):
Sealzburger sells The Times, but he would probably sell it
to Mark Zuckerberg or Musk I'd suggest Roberts resign as
Chief Justice, but Trump would then just to point Alena
Habba and checking in on Maga disease patient zero. Trump's

(26:09):
brain has continued its ceaseless march towards liquification.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
Friend of mine who's a business man, very very very
top guy. Most of you would have heard of him,
a highly neurotic, brilliant businessman, seriously overweight, and he takes
the fat the fat shot drug. And he called me
up and he said President. He used to call me Donald.

(26:37):
Now he calls me president, so that's nice.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Respect.

Speaker 5 (26:40):
But it's a rough guy, smart guy, very successfully, very rich.
I wouldn't even know how we would know this, but
because he's got comments the president, could I ask you
a question. What I'm in London and I just paid
for this damn fat drug I take.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
I said, it's not working. He said, he said.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
A friend who takes the quote fat shot takes.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
The fat shot.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Well, we know Trump's not talking about himself, is he.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Musk?

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Maybe Trump told that story again later on Air Force one,
the non briby one he has now, so maybe he
is talking about himself, which raises the horrifying specter that
this glutenous mass wearing a tent converted into a suit
with a red tie, that it's actually Trump after ozempic

(27:41):
speaking of that, Uh, here we go. Steve the blob
Bannon isn't taking the quote fat shot either, but he
does think the election was rigged. Not twenty twenty, not
twenty sixteen, not twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
The papal election. The papal election was rigged.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
The conclave for the Pope was more rigged than the
twenty twenty election. Now, why do I say, let me
back up some facts. On Piers Morgan show. Ten days
before the conclave started, I called, I said, Prevost is
the dark horse. He wasn't in any betting pool if
you look at it, tell TV nowhere.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
The reason is is not only.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Is the uh he's only been a cardinal less than
two years. And it only took three ballots, folks, It
took one day. They had one vote late in the afternoon.
Next day came back. It is impossible, and he taught
the Daily Mayor reports. He talked to his brother the
two days before the conclave and they were talking about
picking Leo. They wanted he wanted to pick Leo, but
he thought it might be the thirteenth, and then they

(28:46):
figured out I was the fourteenth. How would you talk
to your brother about that? This was totally rigged by
the Curia to be both anti Trump and and and
and and and to drive We're going to have a
schism in the church because the traditional Catholics are not
going to go along with the continuation of Burtgolio.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
See what he means by rigged is he didn't get
the result he wanted. If you were one of one
hundred and thirty five men in a room and one
of you was certainly going to be chosen pope, of
course you would have a name in mind in advance.

(29:25):
If you're in the cardinal priest business, you probably have
a name years in advance. I'm not even Catholic, and
I have my name chosen in advance. A Pola. I
want to be popa Pola. By the way, just to

(29:51):
ratchet this up, Steve Bannon is Catholic, I assume lapsed,
but he went to Benedictine College prep. And the reason
for his insane conspiracy that for once doesn't even have
any of his usual bullshit, is unless his religion is
entirely wrong. He is in more trouble than you can

(30:13):
possibly imagine. As Don moynihan wrote, asks are red, conclaves
are Oh wait, last time I said, I should you know? Oh, Nancy,

(30:33):
the cassicks are red, conclaves are dope. Wake up, babe,
We've got a word Marxist pole. Thank you, Nancy Fast. Look,
they can't all be number one, but American political journalism

(30:55):
needs more singing, not by me. I don't suck exactly,
but I can't carry a tune for more than forty
five seconds. But the answer to the cable news crisis
might just be a show with you know, political songs
in it. Saturday Night Live used to do it. I
believe there was a musical about Alexander Hamilton or George

(31:16):
Hamilton or Lewis Hamilton or somebody.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
What was that? That was the week?

Speaker 1 (31:21):
That was was Mark Russell Tom Lair, which leads to
this question. At MSNBC, can Jensaki sing?

Speaker 2 (31:35):
No?

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Well, we know she can sink. I have mentioned before
here that I was dubious about her possible success at
MSNBC because she was too much of a saleswoman to doctrinaire,
too trained in burying the complex and selling the simple,
and right now having been the White House Press Secretary
for President Biden is not exactly the coin of the realm. Plus,

(32:02):
I don't know how many MSNBC shows I witnessed vanish
without a trace, even as we all knew beforehand they would.
But I did not think that Jensaki Show would be
in a death spiral by the middle of week two.

(32:22):
One million, two hundred thousand for her debut a week
ago Tuesday, good, one hundred and thirty nine thousand in
the advertiser's demo twenty five to fifty four good. Not
a guarantee of success, but pretty good. Hopeful the next
night down to a million viewers and a genuinely shocking
loss of fifty three percent of the younger audience down

(32:45):
to sixty six thousand of them for comparison, and I
know it's little green apples to big red apples. This
podcast now usually exceeds a total audience of one hundred
thousand per episode. And if your demo audience on TV
is smaller than my totalde audience on a podcast which

(33:06):
I record here in my suit closet, you're done. It
is possible Saki could have a future in a show
as one of eight or nine people like that thing
that is on against her at nine pm on CNN
that nobody watches, as well the Abby. We don't actually

(33:27):
put this political pie fight on TV. We just do
it to produce viral clips. Philip Hower. And if you'd
like even worse political media news, well, of course there's
ag Sealzberger in the hot dog suit. But also Semaphore
reports that a Democratic donor group called American Bridge held

(33:47):
a retreat with a goal of detoxifying the Democratic brand. Now,
if the brand really is toxic, it is toxic with
Democrats who are tired of their leaders going to retreats
rather than going to training camps at which they could
learn how to metaphorically break the MAGA disease carriers in
the House, in the Senate, on TV, and on the

(34:07):
goddamned campaign trail. If the brand really is toxic, why
that toxic loser atop the last Democratic toxic emergency toxic
ticket the polling just indicated would beat Trump today by
five points. Oh it's toxic. Oh we'd win the presidency
if the vote were today, Well, still toxic. I don't

(34:30):
make any money. If it's not toxic, who needs consultants?
If we would win, don't tell anybody about that poll.
This is not how democratic leaders see it. The Semaphore
report is that the American Bridge people paid some media
types to steer the Democrats forward to regain independence, which
is shorthand for let's burn the money, to try to

(34:55):
find ways to get people who voted for Trump to
be sane again. Among the people they paid money, Tim
Miller and Bill Crystal of the Bulwark that would be
Jeb Bush's communications director and Dan Quayle's chief of staff,
clearly lifelong Democrats. They asked Matt Iglesias, who is I

(35:21):
believe the current leading candidate to get this year's Chris
Solicit chair in both sides ism at the Chuck Todd
School of Broadcasting, and best of all, to show Democrats
exactly how to move forward and save democracy. American Bridge
paid an unnamed sum for a speech from that dedicated, principled, unswerving,

(35:44):
never wavering anti Trump warrior, Joe Scarborough. My sources say
Joe Scarborough told the group quote, we're all trying to
find a guy who did this and give him a spanking.

(36:11):
Please tell me, you didn't pay Joe Scarborough more than
twenty five dollars. Also of interest, here funniest dog gun
thing a White Sox fan. He's elected pope and five
days later, shoelessh Joe jackson of a White Sox suddenly
becomes eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.

Speaker 6 (36:50):
This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Olberman still ahead. You know which state has the crowns
democratic leaders? Mine does New York. Andrew Cuomo, who had
to resign as governor for well, you know, just just
pick any item on the menu of Skeezee is running

(37:21):
for mayor now, reportedly with the help of a mega
super pack. Isn't that special? Ahead in Worse Persons? First
from the Sportsball Central Center news desk tonight dateline, Cooperstown,
New York, to the seventeen baseball men who on Tuesday

(37:44):
suddenly found themselves no longer banned from baseball and no
longer banned, thus from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
New York.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
I've got good news and I've got bad news. The
good news is you are no longer banned, Pete Rose,
you are no longer banned, Shoelash, Joe Jackson, no longer banned,
Eddie Seacott and Buck Weaver, and even Benny Kauff. The
bad news is you're all still dead. The seventeen guys,

(38:16):
including all eight members of the infamous Black Sox White
Sox who threw or tried to throw, or took money
to throw, or knew about money being offered to throw
the nineteen nineteen World Series, and the former Phillies owner
who bet on baseball, William Cox, and Benny Kauff, who
won the batting championship of the Federal League both years

(38:36):
there was a Federal League, and several others become eligible
again when Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred declared that if you're
on the permanently ineligible list and you're dead, poof, you're
no longer on the permanently ineligible list. He may have
done this because Trump told him too, for Pete Rose's sake.

(38:58):
I wish I were kidding talk about dead metaphorically or otherwise.
I have long had mixed feelings about all of them
on that list. Unlike my feelings about Rob Manfred metaphorically,
you know, kind of deceased in the brain. I thought
there should be echelon's at the Hall of Fame, including

(39:19):
an echelon for the guys whose skills were worthy but
whose conduct was not like Shoelish, Joe Jackson, Pete Rose,
Barry Bonds. Put them in the Hall of Fame, but
like you know, in a part that isn't well lit,
or they don't clean it every day or something. In
any event, I am a believer in mercy, but do

(39:39):
not kid yourself. This decision by Baseball ain't got nothing
to do with mercy. It has everything to do with
merch merchandise because the moment this was announced on Tuesday,
the value of all substantial Pete Rose memorabilia and all
Joe Jackson's stuff went up because they will probably now

(40:02):
go into the Hall of Fame in the next few years,
which means also guess what the Hall of Fame and
Major League Baseball can now sell with impunity. Yeah, Pete
Rose and Joe Jackson's stuff and still ahead on this

(40:41):
all new edition of Countdown. The greatest discovery of rare,
even unique sports trading cards took place forty years ago,
this summer inside the false ceiling of a wreck room
in a house in New London, Connecticut, and they called
of all people in as the expert me it was

(41:03):
like Aladdin cave in there, and I could have purchased
all of it, but I had because I was between jobs.
Two hundred dollars to my name. I have finally gotten
the key, the most intriguing, the most interesting of all
those cards, the one with the best imaginable backstory, which

(41:25):
I will tell next first, believe it or not, there
are still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who
constitute the latest other worst persons in the world, the
brons worse. The Protein Puck Company of Boise, Idaho. As

(41:47):
a vegetarian, I have nothing against the product. It's described
as plant based energy, and it has a variety of
enticing flavors, and bluntly, it's better than eating something you
could probably train to be a loving pet. But that
name and that appearance and those sub brands, I mean,

(42:08):
it's a hockey puck sized and shaped like massive seeds
and nuts and stuff. My friend paton Oswalt. We share
a birthday. We were in the first episode of BoJack
Horseman together. He's been a guest on my show. Patten

(42:29):
posted a photo of one the Wanderlust full size protein
puck and if you've ever seen the famous Charlton Heston
actually overacted more in this movie than he did in
the Planet of the Apes movie. The Citizen Kane of
over the top dystopian Flick's Soilent Green. You immediately thought

(42:50):
of one thing, and one thing only. Soilent Green, a
special flavor filled wafer given out just once a week
to a starving, overpopulated world of the future. Supposedly it
was made out of plankton, but in fact it was
made out of people. As Heston says in the movie
when he finds out and proves it, ocean's dying, Plankton's dying,

(43:15):
it's people.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Soil and green is made out of people. They're making
our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding
is like cattle for food.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
You gotta tell them, you gotta tell them, I.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Mean protein bucks. It's goalies. Protein Bucks is made out
of hockey goalies.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
They're making our food out of hockey people. Okay, they're not.
I'm sorry, it's a joke. It's just what I thought of.
But seriously, maybe you want to tweak.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
The name or the shape or I don't know. I
like the idea. I might eat one, but.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
I don't know. Thinking about all those former New York
Rangers defense prospects, the runner up worser goalie Sheikh Holslami,
the chief executive of Politico. Politico, outside of like Fox News,
might be the journalistic outlet which most thinks it's a ten,
when it's actually about a two, maybe a one and
a half. Politico is in the log rolling business, not

(44:24):
the news business. You have something to promote, go there.
You have something to leak, you go there. You have
something you want your committee to approve.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
You go there.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
It's in the spotted business listing which D list reporters attended,
which D list parties at the C list events after
the C list White House Correspondence dinner. This is where
Ryan Lizza worked, where Steven Miller could threaten to suspend
Habeas Corpus. But in the first newsletter of the New
Business Week, Politico wouldn't mention that fact. But it did

(44:58):
find room that day for the list of the birthdays
of congressional staffers. They asked Miss Shaikoslami about the new
world of high profile independent reporting, newsletters, podcasts, platforms in
which former mainstream news stalwarts now act independently like you

(45:20):
know here in Paradise. She dismissed the entirety of the field, quote,
I wouldn't say we're in the same business. Politico serves
a very specific audience that relies on us, not just
for insight, but real time intelligence tools. We have six
hundred political and policy journalists worldwide. That's hard to replicate bullshit.

(45:46):
Politico is the same place that hired a writer I
will not call her a reporter named Dasha Burns. Hired
her away from NBC, where the night before a Republican debate,
she let two Trump goons buy her and others dinner
while they mocked the other candidates at the debate. They
made Burns Politico did their White House Bureau chief, and

(46:08):
not long after she went out and nominally appeared at
Sea Pack you know, Nazi Con. She appeared on stage
at Seapack. Not only on stage at Sea Pack, but
as the Seapack interviewer of the Ridiculous trumpster Rit Grennell,
she's an official component of an outfit that wants to
end democracy as we know it. But even if it didn't,

(46:30):
even if it were the Democratic Purity Conference where the
Keith Olberman fan Club annual dinner dance, how after you
appear on stage doing an interview for it as part
of it, how are you still a reporter after that?
The answer is you're not. The head of Politico is
right in a way about all us independence out here.

(46:51):
We are independent, independent, We are not compromised. We are
not reduced like ms Burns, like Politico, to be stenographers
and publicists without any standards. Speaking of which our winner

(47:12):
worst and Drew Cuomo, the disgraced, the multiple disgrace award
winning former governor of New York COVID women a kind
of conspiracy with his brother, the equally disgraced ex newscaster,
not doing the job well, pretty much the complete set

(47:33):
of bad. Evidently, mister Cuomo has looked at the New
York City mayor's race and the list of recent New
York City mayors and said, Hey, I'm bad enough to
hold that job. He's running for the office as a
Democrat in the primary, possibly because He wants to make
current Mayor Eric Adams, who is a Republican sheep in
sheep's clothing, and Adam's predecessor, Bill de Blasio, a well

(47:57):
intentioned but panoramically incompetent administrator. He wants to make the
both of them look better. Cuomo just hit a kind
of speed bump though, that not only underscored his own
lack of standards, but revealed the truth that while he
may be running as a Democrat, he ain't a Democrat.
He was supposed to get six hundred and twenty two
thousand and fifty six dollars in matching funds for his

(48:20):
mayoralty campaign. That's what we do here, We give out
matching funds. But his gang apparently screwed up the filing
instructions about its relationships with other groups trying to funnel
money into all the campaigns, and the city Elections Board
docked his campaign that money. He still gets about a
million and a half, but he was supposed to get
about two point one million. No, six hundred and twenty

(48:43):
two thousand and fifty six bucks for you, mister Cuomo,
and limiting his expenditures by the same amount, all because
he potentially coordinated with a group called Fix the City NYC,
which has flooded the internet with demands that Cuomo become
the next mayor. And who exactly is Fix the City NYC?

(49:06):
According to New York State Assemblymen Zora and Mamdani, also
running from mayor, it's a quote Maga funded super pack.
So Cuomo wants to be elected the Democratic mayor of
New York with the help of Maga Andrew. If there
was anything corrupt left to do, he just did it.

(49:28):
Andrew Maga Cuomo two days other worst worth.

Speaker 6 (49:35):
In the world.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
To the number one story on the countdown, and there
is an excellent chance you're about to hit stop. That's okay,
but if you do, you will miss a pretty good
story of what happens when one of the greatest athletes
of his generation has undiagnosed bipole hilarity, and what happens
when you hit that magical moment of which every investor

(50:09):
or collector dreams. You have found that priceless needle in
the haystack, and you do not even have the money
with which to buy a piece of the hey let
alone the whole haystack. I've had a good run lately
in my main hobby of my life, finding those pieces
of sports memorabilia I've been looking for, in some cases,

(50:31):
looking for for half a century, nineteen ninety Louisville slugger
glove tag Eric Davis, where he's listed as an outfielder,
not as outfield. Only a few copies exist. I suddenly
found three of them. Turns out there are two different versions,
a variety upon a variety. I just traded around three

(50:51):
hundred nineteen hundred and seven British soccer cards for one
really scarce nineteen ten British football card number forty five
David dy Jones of Mirth might be a unique car card.
And while I'm still looking for the nineteen sixty seven
Tops baseball proof card of number four eighty seven Tommy
Reynolds with his name spelled wrong Tommy, which I could

(51:15):
have bought at an auction in nineteen eighty nine, but
I got scared when it got up to one thousand dollars.
If you have one, let me know. I finally have
landed the infamous Tops hockey card of Marcel Piee that
they fixed because it doesn't show Marcel Piee, it shows
Frank Pace. That's the story right there, and what it

(51:40):
leads to is this. I'm pretty sure that there are
three unissued error cards that the TOPS company printed then
withdrew from its nineteen sixty two to sixty three hockey set.
Whether any of them, like the Piee Pacee got job,
ever got into the packs of hockey cards so the
kids could buy them, I can't say, but based on

(52:00):
the TOPS production methods, I'm pretty sure they could have
gotten into the packs. They might have been issued, they
might have been withdrawn. The scarcest of all varieties in
sports cards, there's number three Bruce cam Gamble, which has
a photo of Doug Mons, and number six Doug Moans,
which has a photo of Bruce Gamble, and especially number

(52:21):
sixty one Marcel Piee with Piee's name and position on
the front and Piee's biography on the back. But the
photo is not pie but rather the trainer of the
New York Rangers, Frank pace the guy with all the
tape who gives you the rubdowns. These have been categorized
dismissed even as proof cards, preliminary cards that were corrected

(52:44):
before the set was printed, cards that were never supposed
to leave the office. I don't think so, and why
I don't think so requires a lot of backstory. I
first bumped into this small scale mystery as an unknown
but curious ten year old kid after my folks bought
me the nineteen sixty two sixty three hockey set as

(53:04):
a Christmas present. That's what Christmas was like for my folks.
That era's TOPS hockey cards showed only players from the
Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, and the New York Rangers. The
three Canadian teams and Detroit belonged to another company, Parkhurst.
It quickly struck me, even at age ten, that there
was something wrong with the personnel selections Tops made for

(53:28):
the New York Rangers. In that set, the cards were
numbered ordered by team, and within each team by position.
The Boston Bruins are numbers one through twenty two, the
Blackhawks or number twenty three through forty four, and each
started with the coach, then two goalies, then the defenseman,
then the forwards, then the picture of the team. But

(53:49):
the New York Rangers cards number forty five through sixty five,
there was no card of the coach. There was only
one goalie, not two, and incongruously, Frank Pace the team's
trainer when the cards originally came out in nineteen two.
Still the trainer when I obtained my set in nineteen
sixty nine. Still the trainer when I came home from

(54:11):
Easter break as a sophomore in college. Frank Pace is
in that set. Pick any of those junctures I just mentioned,
and it never made any sense. No card of the coach,
one goalie, not two, A card of the trainer. Who
the hell wants a card of a trainer? My focus

(54:32):
as a kid was trying to figure out why there
was no coach card. Future Hall of Famer Doug Harvey
had come in from the Montreal Canadians to become the
Rangers player coach, the NHL's last player coach to make
it through a full season, by the way, and frankly,
in the nineteen sixty one sixty two season he killed it.
He led the Rangers to the playoffs for the first

(54:53):
time in four years. He was named first team All Star.
He won the Norris Trophy as the top defenseman in
the league. If there had been an award for top coach,
he would have won that two He had a three
year deal at twenty five thousand dollars a year to
play and coach for the team, and observers figured that
by succeeding so well in his first year, he had

(55:14):
cleared the highest hurdle with flying Colors. If anything was
going to change for the nineteen sixty two sixty three season,
it was assumed, and Harvey even hinted that, approaching his
thirty eighth birthday, Harvey would retire as a player and
just coach the team. Some of Harvey's old teammates with
the Montreal Canadians thought Harvey might even wind up as

(55:35):
coach and general manager and player instead. On June fourth,
nineteen sixty two, about two months after the Rangers lost
their playoff series, Doug Harvey quit as coach. Days later,
he said he also would not return to the Rangers
as just a player, and he was in fact retiring

(55:58):
from hockey. The Rangers kept both their coaching job and
Harvey's spot on their roster open ontil August twenty second,
nineteen sixty two, when they talked him back as a
player only for what was then a record salary of
thirty thousand dollars a year, maybe thirty five thousand dollars.
On August thirty, they announced that general manager muzz Patrick,

(56:20):
who had just given Harvey at least a five thousand
dollars rais to do a lot less work. Muz would
coach the team with the assistance of former Rangers goalie
Amiel Francis. The smart money was on Patrick spending an
undetermined period of the season ahead trying to talk Harvey
into becoming coach again, and if he decided he had
failed to officially resign and make Amael Francis the full

(56:44):
time coach. And on December twenty eighth, nineteen sixty two,
muzz Patrick gave up his pursuit of Harvey. He resigned
his coach and named as his own successor George Red Sullivan.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Well.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Needless to say, this completely screwed up the hockey card
preparations at the TOPS company. The deadline to finalize the
set looks to have been around mid September nineteen sixty two.
We can conclude this by the fact that Tops did
not touch Harvey with a ten foot pole. It did
not make any card of any kind of Doug Harvey,

(57:18):
but it did make a card of a veteran player
named Bert Olmsted, who had been obtained by the New
York Rangers in the summer draft. Olmsted retired from hockey
during training camp on September twentieth, but he's still in
the set, so that means they published them before September twentieth.
Otherwise they would have gotten rid of him. Hell, they

(57:38):
got rid of Doug Harvey. Tops didn't know if Harvey
would be player coach or just coach or just player
or none of the above, so they left him out
as if more uncertainty were needed. Doug Harvey broke a
knuckle in early September diagramming a football play on a blackboard.
It looked like he would be in the Rangers opening

(57:59):
night roster, but given his reputation for being erratic, somebody
made new for sure, but probably nobody did, probably not
even Doug Harvey. Later his reputation turned out to be
one part bipolarity and one part self medicating his bipolarity
with alcohol. Anyway, it looked like Muzz Patrick was the coach,

(58:23):
but would that still be the case when the cards
came out. It looked like Emil Francis would eventually be
the coach, but when turned out, he became the coach
after Sullivan washed out in nineteen sixty six, four years later,
but the Defcon one level confusion still would not explain
why TOPS had decided to make a card of the

(58:43):
trainer instead of a coach, any coach. Yet there he
was number sixty one Frank Pace Trainer, New York Rangers. Well,
from the time I first saw this card, it only
bothered me for the next fifteen years. To that point,

(59:05):
in early nineteen eighty five, I wrote a couple of
pieces about TOPS proof cards. Those, as I mentioned before,
the original drafts of the cards that were published, just
to see if the colors were right, the names were right,
or the photos were right or wrong and were never
supposed to leave the TOPS office. I published this for
Baseball Cards Magazine, mostly to pass the time as I

(59:27):
waited to move from New York to Los Angeles to
take up a job as the sports director and sportscaster
on Channel five there. I was kind of a player
coach too, anyway. Just weeks before my move, at the
end of August, I was contacted by a man in
New London, Connecticut, who said he and his friend had
been remodeling the friend's wreck room there and in the

(59:49):
ceiling they had discovered a lot, a lot, as in
hundreds of what he believed were TOPS proof sheets, and
the same day one of them saw the magazine with
my article about TOPS proofs at a new stand somewhere.
Could I come up to New London and evaluate things
for them, they'd reimburse me, Which is how I happened

(01:00:12):
upon the greatest find of proof sheets ever, not counting
the auction Tops ran emptying its warehouse four years later.
And of course I happened upon this, this gold mine,
when I had not worked in literally ten months, was
taking care of my family. I was going to have
to borrow the money from my kid's sister to get

(01:00:35):
on the bus to go to JFK Airport to get
to LA for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
My new job.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Thanks Jen, What these men had up there in New London,
Connecticut was simply all but approximately one of all the
nineteen sixty two TOPS Baseball, Tops Football and Tops hockey
uncut sheets and the aluminum plates from which they were
printed that you have ever seen or that have ever

(01:01:02):
been for sale in the last forty years. They literally
fell out of this guy's ceiling. The Tops National Football
League proofs with the wrong player's photo on card after card.
They were in there. The Baseball All Star cards where
there was no positions printed, including the Mickey Mantle didn't

(01:01:23):
say outfield. They were in there. The photos from the
second series of the nineteen fifty nine set, including of
Sandy Kofax, printed for some reason without borders or names
or anything. They were in there. The nineteen sixty two
tops card of Don Zimmer listing him with the Mets,
not the Reds. They were in there, all of them.

(01:01:43):
Full color sheets, one color sheets, two color sheets, three
color sheets, front sheets, back sheets. How how how I
remember now? The guy I bought the house from, he
used to work at the printers in town. He told
me this room had extra insulation. They were using the

(01:02:04):
card sheets that the company the guy worked for throw away.
They were using them as insulation insulation, even though a
lot of the aluminum printing plates had rusted and in
some cases that had stained some of the sheets. I
estimated what they had was worth at least six figures

(01:02:27):
maybe seven forty years ago. They thanked me by letting
me buy one sheet of my choice at way below value.
I took the baseball sheet with the most variations on
it from the issued cards those all stars without positions,
including Mantle and the Zimmer with the Mets and a
few others, And they only took my last two hundred dollars.

(01:02:51):
They gave me the money to go home on the
train extra. Even with that, I had to cut that
sheet up to split the cost with a fellow proof
collector who had a similarly microscopic bank account. My second
choice out of all these sheets, and there were literally
hundreds of them, happened to be the sheet on which

(01:03:13):
was printed the nineteen sixty two sixty three tops Hockey set.
The proof sheet, and the proof sheet had just explained
this whole thing about Doug Harvey, besides the quaint switch
of the photos of Bruins players gamble and moans. There
he was top row, third from the right, the Rangers
hand out photo of their trainer Frank Pace, faintly smiling

(01:03:37):
up at me from the sheet, Except that card did
not identify him as Frank Pace. It called him Marcel Payee,
and it labeled him not as a trainer but as
a goalie.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
And of an.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Instant it sort of made sense they hadn't chosen to
skip the coach card and put in a trainer instead.
They had simply added a card of a second Ranger's
goalie Payee. It might even have been the case that
there was some original idea to make that number sixty
one card a cardiff Doug Harvey, because although that run
of numbers is otherwise occupied by forwards, number sixty one

(01:04:14):
does fit into this alphabetical sequence. Fifty nine is Rod
s Gilbert, sixty is Vic Hadfield, sixty one is Pie,
but sixty two is Camille Henry. Number sixty three is
Bronco Horvath, number sixty four is Pat Hannigan, So it's
a G and H. Payee, then three more hs in
a row. Maybe number sixty one was originally supposed to

(01:04:36):
be Wayne Hall or Brian Hextall, junior Rangers rookies who
did not make the Rangers out of their training camp.
Maybe it was supposed to be that Hannigan guy, and
somebody at Tops was really bad at alphabetizing. Or maybe
number sixty one was supposed to be Doug Harvey and
they pulled him out when the final decision was made
at Top sometime in September nineteen sixty just before they

(01:04:59):
said September nineteen sixty two, just before they said roll
the presses number sixty one became Marcel pie complete with
the easiest to explain possible mistake, especially in an alphabet
challenged office where preparing the Canadian hockey card set was
probably not high on the priority job list. It was

(01:05:21):
Frank Pace's mislabeled picture Pace pai Ce instead of Pie
Pai llle of note back in New London in the
summer of nineteen eighty five. The pie Proof front with
Pace's photo was blank backed, and the pie Proof back

(01:05:44):
complete with Pie's biography was blank fronted. For years, forty
of them. I kept an I out for a nineteen
sixty two sixty three Tops Marcel Piee card in any form.
Finally I was rewarded a few years ago and one
of the aluminum printing plate versions I couldn't have afforded
to buy in the previous century turned up. It was

(01:06:06):
the back with the Paie bio. Then a full aluminum
sheet turned up. I got that too, and finally, a
couple months ago, a full nineteen sixty two sixty three
Tops Hockey blank backed proof sheet appeared in another auction,
complete with a little aluminum debris on the back. It
is undoubtedly the same one I had gently padded goodbye,

(01:06:28):
presumably forever, as I was escorted away by the finders
and off to the New London train station on the
early evening of some night in August nineteen eighty five,
when I was the tender age.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Of twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
It was all revealed at some point late in the
summer of sixty two, Tops gave up waiting for Doug
Harvey to make up his damn mind. They pulled him
out of the set. They put the backup goalie Paiee in.
They grabbed the photo of the wrong guy whose name
started Pai, and they caught the mistake so late in
the publishing process that it was just easier and cheaper

(01:07:05):
to rewrite the name Pie on the front to the
name pace and redo the back altogether. It was easier
and cheaper to do that than it was to swap
out photos and put in a real photo of Marcel Pie,
if they even had one. But that's when the TOPS
vault file binder, page four, It's nineteen sixty two sixty

(01:07:29):
three hockey set cards number sixty one to sixty three
turned up. You're probably unfamiliar with the TOPS file binders.
They were a kind of a counting record of everything.
Tops issued two copies of each card in each set,
from hockey cards to Mars attacks, would be glued onto

(01:07:50):
thick construction paper and then kept in three ring binders forever.
One of them would be glued in face up glue
on the back, next to it back up face on
the front on the glue side. Now with only three
cards shown per page, Needless to say, there were a

(01:08:10):
lot of TOPS filebinders sort of proof of publication archive.
There were so many TOPS filebinders they had their own
room at the old TOPS headquarters on Whitehall Street in
New York. I was admitted to this room once. I
was greatly covetous. Also, the room was so big that
it echoed. I don't know how I missed it when

(01:08:34):
they actually sold the piee pace page in the first place,
But there it was again in a recent auction. Slabbed
inside one of those holders, they put coins or valuable
baseball cards in and complete with the historical evidence of
the day they realized the mistake. Payee's name is crossed

(01:08:55):
off the front facing card and frank pace trainer written
in in grease pencil on a piece of Scotch tape
near his head. In block letters, the backfacing card fared
more poorly, still at the hand of the arkibist. The
name has been crossed off and over the English bio
is the word in red wrong, and over the French

(01:09:17):
bio is the word player. Between these two copies of
the same card in ordinary pencil, written vertically is the
correct identification Frank Pace Trainer. The same vehement corrections had
been made on the slabbed pages showing the gamble Moan's
photo switch. So Pai Pace is just a proof card.

(01:09:41):
That's the end of it. It never saw the light
of day. It's curious, but in terms of the history
of hockey cards, it doesn't mean all that much. Well, no,
not really. As I said, I was in the filebinder room.
I don't know how many different binders I was shown
from how many different sports, from how many different sets.
But I can tell you this with certainty. They did

(01:10:02):
not use proof cards in the filebinders that I inspected.
They used issued cards. That was the point. These were
not records of cards they intended to sell but didn't.
These were the official eternal files of all the cards
they actually let loose into an unsuspecting world in case

(01:10:23):
they had to prove it in court. Besides which, to
make a filebinder out of proof cards, you would have
had to take a proof sheet of the fronts and
a proof sheet of the back and cut them up,
probably by hand. This would take a long time. Trust me,
I've done it as I mentioned earlier, and all the

(01:10:46):
cards on those hockey binder sheets inside the slabs are
meticulously and precisely cut, like they had been cut on
a professional automated machine, not by hand by some TOPS employee.
There's also nothing of what we call the glow oh
that ether has always accompanied printers proofs, especially TOPS sports

(01:11:10):
cards proofs. The proofs are shinier and clearer. They are
first generation printings. They're not the later, fuzzier, flatter reproductions
that appear on the cards in the packs. But the
cards in the file binder page slabs look exactly like
the issued nineteen sixty two sixty three TOPS hockey cards.

(01:11:31):
They don't glow light proofs. They look a little fuzzy,
a little flatter. Moreover, if you hold those slabbed sheets
up to strong light, you get the barest hint of
what is on the glued down side of each card,
faintly visible on the other sides of the back facing
cards like the one with Piez biography and the frantic

(01:11:52):
wrong player correction, is a thin blue rectangle. That's all
you can see looking through the back, A thin blue
rectangle along the top and the side edges that matches
the design of the front of the cards. I tested
the opacity of the file binder page and the slab

(01:12:13):
using all kinds of other cards, including some of the
bright glowing orange backs of nineteen eighty eight TOPS Baseball.
I rested those cards atop the slab, held everything up
to a strong light, and you can't see anything except
the shadow of the shape of the cards, but you
could see the little blue suggesting that the card that

(01:12:35):
had the back visible had the front glued, meaning these
were issued cards. Now I would have to break the
slab apart and peel these cards off their construction paper home.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Yeah, I'm still thinking about it. I'm conflicted.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
I'd have to do that to be certain, But I
think those are issued cards glued on there, and I
think TOPS caught its mistakes in time to pull all
or nearly all copies of number sixty one. Marcel Payee oops,
it's frank pace plus the gamble and the moans mistakes
before they went into the packs, or maybe after they

(01:13:18):
went into the packs. Maybe these cards were withdrawn, or
maybe they were proof sheets used for the nineteen sixty
two hockey binders that weren't blank backed. Tops did print
complete proof sheets fronts, backs, bios, card numbers, cartoons in

(01:13:38):
nineteen fifty nine and nineteen sixty But remember the thing
in New London. All those sixty two sheets found in
Connecticut were one sided, only hundreds and hundreds of fronts
or backs, not both, And that would mean for the
cards in the binders to have been proof sheets with
backs on them. That would require TOPS to have printed

(01:14:02):
only one sided nineteen sixty two baseball proof sheets and
only one sided nineteen sixty two football proof sheets, and
then one sided nineteen sixty two hockey proof sheets, and
then for some reason also to print some two sided
nineteen sixty two hockey proof sheets.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Just cause.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
I could easily be wrong. The fate rectangles I see
could be big glue stains on blank backed or blank
fronted proof cards. It makes no sense at all, but
TOPS certainly could have printed two different kinds of proof
sheets just that one time. This could just be my
now ancient eyes playing tricks on me. This could be
my nineteen eighty five brain cells and memory and wallet

(01:14:47):
crying out for vengeance. It could all be wish fulfillment.
Or they are unissued error cards that TOPS printed and destroyed,
and a couple of them might be out there in
somebody's collection because they might not have destroyed all of them.

(01:15:09):
For now, I can only offer these postscripts. The next year,
TOPS did not make the same mistake with the Hockey Immortal,
who had inadvertently set this row of dominoes falling in
nineteen sixty two. They proudly made a nineteen sixty three
sixty four card of Doug Harvey, whereupon Doug Harvey skipped
the Rangers training camp and was sent down to the Miners.

(01:15:31):
The card came out he wasn't on the Rangers. The
year before he was on the Rangers, there was no card.
Doug Harvey returned to New York for fourteen listless games,
and then they said enough and they banished him to
Quebec of the American Hockey League. He did not return
to the National Hockey League until nineteen sixty six. Then,

(01:15:52):
at the age of forty three, he exploded back into
stardom as the ace defenseman of the first Saint Louis
Blues team as it advanced to the nineteen sixty eight
Stanley Cup Final against his old team, the Canadians. Opeachee,
the TOPS affiliate in Canada, even made him card number
one in its nineteen sixty eight sixty nine set, and

(01:16:12):
just to add a little twist here, they used an
image that is probably just a horizontally flipped version of
the same photo that they used on his nineteen sixty
three sixty four Rangers card. As to the other guy,
Marcel Piee, he would finally get a real card of
his own when TOPS got the rights to all six

(01:16:33):
NHL teams in nineteen sixty four and celebrated with the
beloved Tall Boys set cards that are basically twice as
large as the ordinary sports card. Marcel Piee is number
ninety two in the nineteen sixty four sixty five set.
He is what we would call today a super short
print an SSP, or maybe a super super super short

(01:16:56):
print an SSSP. Especially to try to find it in
good condition, It's a very valuable card for someone who
was not, frankly a very valuable goalie. On the other hand,
I have checked, I have double checked, I have triple checked.
The guy shown on the nineteen sixty four to sixty

(01:17:17):
five tops card of Marcel Paiee is actually surprisingly enough,
Marcel Piee. I've done all the damage I can do here.

(01:17:37):
Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil
the musical directors have Countdown, have arranged, produced and performed
most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust,

(01:17:58):
now back doing cameos with the White Sox Vatican City's team.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis for to see a ESPN inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed,
and my announcer today was also Nancy Faust. Also, I
guess like Shulish, Joe Jackson and the other seven men

(01:18:22):
out who are now back in also resurrected by what's
his name again, Pope Kamiski. The first everything else was,
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, Day one
hundred and sixteen of America held hostage just three hundred
and forty seven days until the scheduled end of his
lane duck and lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner,

(01:18:46):
or the actuarial tapes due, or we do. The next
scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants,
especially if they're about Marcel Payee or Frank Pace or
Doug freaking Harvey. Remember Trump is laying the groundwork now
to not leave office later, and he must be stopped

(01:19:09):
until next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Cassocks are conclaves, a dope
Wake up, babe, We've got a woke Marxis Pom. Countdown

(01:19:33):
with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.

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IF THEY RE-DID THE ELECTION TODAY HARRIS WOULD BEAT TRUMP BY FIVE - 5.15.25

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}IF THEY RE-DID THE ELECTION TODAY HARRIS WOULD BEAT TRUMP BY FIVE - 5.15.25