Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio to
repeat myself because I'm right. File motions to impeach Trump today,
(00:31):
Move to impeach Trump today, and keep moving to impeach
Trump every day through next year's midterms. Impeachment is undefeated.
It is undefeated in American history. House Democrats, he handed
you twelve, maybe fifteen new impeachment counts on Friday Night alone,
(00:59):
blatantly brazenly illegal dismissals of departmental inspector general, just as
Project twenty twenty five promised, and eliminating the school's safety board,
elimination of oversight, elimination of legal protections against the mass
murder of children in school. In the old days, you
(01:19):
might have responded to this by having Trump arrested. Now
you are limited by the Supreme Court to impeachment bills
that will all fail, except they will ultimately succeed because
impeachment is undefeated. Impeach him for the Friday Night massacre.
(01:40):
Impeach him for circumventing the fourteenth Amendment. He just ramped
up the migrant arrest quote at a fifteen hundred a
day and started raids in Chicago yesterday Impeach him for
violating the Fourth Amendment. Impeach him for seizing Native Americans.
Impeach him for seizing an army veteran and for his
gestapo then questioning that veteran service. Impeach him for releasing
(02:01):
sixteen hundred thugs and criminals, and for violate his oath
to defend the country. Impeach him for illegally dismissing the
anti mass shooting school safety Board. Impeach him now, impeach
him later, then impeach him a couple of more times,
and give him an extra slice of impeachment to carry
(02:21):
him through the weekend. And if I hear one more
blowback to my previous call to impeach him, no matter
the outcome, one more headshake from a cowardly Democrat, and
especially one more factually inaccurate claim that impeachment doesn't work
because it's never removed a president, one more self absorbed
(02:44):
loser saying impeach Yeah, sounds good. How did it work
out for us last time? Pretty effing well. Actually, the
mere talk of impeaching Trump helped the Democrats win the
House in twenty eighteen and break trump tripartheid control of government.
The first actual impeachment was followed by keeping the House
(03:07):
in twenty twenty, and after the Georgia election, taking the
Senate in twenty twenty, and oh, by the way, taking
the White House in twenty twenty. The second impeachment crushed
any lingering attempt by Trump to overthrow the Biden government
in waiting in twenty twenty one, and it provided the
impetus for the January sixth prosecutions and the prosecution of Trump,
(03:28):
which Merrick Garland so thoroughly sabotaged. Impeachment works. Merrick Garland
is the thing that failed. Bottom line, impeach him again.
It is one of our darkest secrets as a nation,
something we have lied to ourselves about. But impeachment works.
(03:52):
The Democrats voted on articles of impeachment against Nixon in
nineteen seventy four. Before they were finished, he resigned. They
kept the House and the Senate in the mid terms
three months later, and they won the White House two
years later, And they kept the House two years later,
and they kept the Senate two years later. The Republicans
(04:16):
launched the official Clinton impeachment inquiry in October nineteen ninety eight,
after months of having the media softened the nation up.
First official Clinton impeachment inquiry begins October nineteen ninety eight.
November nineteen ninety eight. They kept the Senate, they kept
the House. They impeached him, They kept the Senate. In
(04:37):
the House in two thousand and they took the White
House first Trump impeachment. Democrats then kept the House, took
the Senate, took the presidency. Number of presidents removed from
office none of three. Number of times the parties that
did the impeachment won the next election thirteen out of thirteen.
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Thirteen out of thirteen House, Senate, White House, US. I
think we should write a letter instead, a really mean letter.
I mean, in fact, never mind thirteen of thirteen. You
can argue it's really fourteen out of fourteen because the
Republican that Republicans impeached in eighteen sixty eight, President Andrew Johnson,
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was actually a Democrat, and the goal was to hamstring
him from implementing his pro Confederacy agenda and especially to
keep him running as an incumbent. And it worked. It
just doesn't get understood. In the one second most elected
Democrats will give to analyze it. Either way, impeachment is undefeated.
(05:50):
Start now, You'll love it. It is a long term strategy,
and it is half neuwt Gingrich, half Muhammad Ali. No,
you are not going to knock out your opponent with
one and no, you are not going to avoid getting
bruised in the process. But each time you hit back,
they get bruised too. And if you are in this
(06:14):
fight and you are not convinced that you will ultimately
prevail and that you are tougher than they are, get
out of the fight. We'll do it without you, because
I'm tougher than Trump is, and you are tougher than
Trump is, and so even is Hakeem Jeffries. But if
(06:40):
Akeem Jeffries and other prominent Democrats think the strategy is
to issue a press release after every time Trump does
to this country exactly what Putin would have done to
this country, or what ben Laden would have done to
this country, they have to go. This is Trump in
the middle of his war against the United States of America.
(07:03):
We have been attacked again by Trump. And the answer
is not press releases. It's impeachment bills and walkouts and
protests and calling them a traitor and threatening a tax
strike in the Blue States and making the next two
years as infuriating for him and infuriating for every whore
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who supports him. You are not going to defeat him
until next year at the earliest, but you can make
his life and their worthless lives almost as miserable as
they intend to make ours. Let's get busy. Hit back.
(07:47):
And if you're not ready to hit back, Leader Jeffries, resign,
turn it over to AOC. She is clearly ready to
metaphorically knee them all in the groin. She is the
wartime conciliari. And guess what, kids, this is wartime? Or
(08:36):
if AOC has too many rough edges for you, or
not enough experience, if you want nice, put Bishop Marianne
Edgar Buddy in charge of the Democratic Party. I'm goddamned serious.
Forgive me, bishop, because this is where we are ethically
(08:56):
right now in this country. Lindsey Graham says the dismissals
of the Inspectors General are illegal, but so what quote.
I'm not losing a lot of sleep. So if you're
looking for some kind of regret and atonement from the fascists,
forget it. Trump has also escalated his version of the
(09:20):
Onschluss again over the weekend. I think the people of
Greenland want to be with US. I really don't know
what claim Denmark has to Greenland, but it would be
a very unfriendly act if they didn't allow unquote Trump
to seize Greenland. He has moved towards seizing other countries,
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or buying other countries, or crushing other countries economically because
Trump Land, Trump Land uber Alles, and nobody is saying
anything about it. It is, after all, the Hitler playbook,
like the one he kept on his bedstand. First you
(10:05):
sublimate your own nation, and then you start thrilling them
by sublimating other nations. And there doesn't have to be
a through line. There has to be no consistency to this.
It's just rage, it's just bloodlust. While Marco Rubio, the
(10:26):
new Secretary of comovers is talking about the Taliban holding
more American hostages than we knew, so implying we may
have to re invade Afghanistan, Trump just abandoned forty thousand
Afghans who had worked for US in Afghanistan and had
already been approved to move here from Afghanistan and escape
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the Taliban, and which Republican noted the utter militaristic, fascist,
immoral hypocrisy of all that correct answer is none of
the above. Trump now also wants everybody moved out of Gaza.
Thanks for those of you who voted against Harris as
(11:09):
a protest, and you know why he wants to move
them out of Gaza because he thinks he can get
Gaza and build golf courses and resorts there. Anybody talk
about that, they may have to do more bad afghand
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of than Marco Rubio said, well, checking his hair in
the mirror. After Trump demanded an apology from Bishop Buddy,
his really weird Vice President of the United States, JV
himself has taken us into an entirely new domestic area too.
JV Vans has threatened the Catholic Church. Now'll just repeat
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that JV. Vance has threatened the Catholic Church because it's
Bishop of Washington had the nerve to talk about Trump's
evil to his face. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Vance said, needs to actually look in the mirror a
(12:16):
little bit and recognize that when they receive more than
one hundred million to resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried
about humanitarian concerns or are they actually worried about their
bottom line. Any Republican Catholics recognize this little sequence of
plays here, any of them say anything personally, I don't
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care very much about the Catholic Church per se or
any other church. But have you have you ever heard
of the kirchen Kompf when Hitler went out to take
over the Catholic Church in Germany and use its power
as part of his bureaucracy of dictatorship. This is what
that is. This is what it is, baby, the opening
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shot of the fundamentalist attempt to take over the government
and at least to neuture and control the other brands
and flavors of religion. And if you think, well, I
mean it is the Catholic Church, it can defend itself
pretty well. This is just another sign of what's to come.
Whoever and whatever you are, to whichever group you belong,
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you're next. And all the Republicans are silent because power
and money are their only gods and their only codes.
And Lindsey Graham said he's not losing any sleep over it.
And the Democrats, oh, well, they know what to do
(13:49):
per CBS. The Democrats are introducing a resolution in the
Senate today but it's not just a resolution, it's a
gotcha resolution. It will ask for unanimous consent that quote
resolved that the Senate disapproves any pardons for individuals who
were found guilty of assaulting Capitol police officers. Oh hallelujah.
(14:12):
That'll do it. Ah Yo, You'll get Senate Republicans on
the record now supporting the assault on Capitol police officers,
which they're voters will applaud. That'll show those damn Republicans
for pardoning people their voters think were the victims. Can't
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get nothing past Chuck Schumer. Okay, actually there is some
hope here. I actually like Jerry Connolly's response Trump's Friday
night coup. The Congressman said, to overthrow legally protected independent
(15:00):
inspectors General is an attack on transparency and accountability. You
had me at coup, Congressman. Replacing inspectors general with political
hacks will harm every American. Goddamn right now, Jerry introduce
a bill to impeach him for doing this. Every Democratic
representative should introduce at least one impeachment measure in the
(15:22):
next two years. Flood Congress with them, turn it into
nothing else, disrupt all House business sabotage the cameras. If
you have to throw things, agitate, agitate, agitate, Except for
one thing, one stealth move you can do in between
(15:43):
the hourly impeachment bill. Reach out to Mike Johnson, get
him away from his porn reporting app for a moment
and ask him about instead his self prostitution for Trump
about a new January sixth committee and wants a show
(16:05):
trial with not very much to it. Think of that
running embarrassment James Comer was about the Biden family. From
their perspective, that was not an embarrassment. That just generated headlines.
That was all it was supposed to do, and it worked.
That's what Johnson wants. Don't give it to him. You
should go bipartisan with him on this. Democrats support a
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new January sixth committee. Why, I don't know. Put some
teeth into this thing. Johnson and Trump want to relitigate
January sixth. Think about that for a second. They want
to go through everything in January sixth again. God damn it.
Hakeem Jeffrey should volunteer to carry Mike Johnson into the
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House on his own shoulders if he's willing to reltigate
January sixth, he should volunteer to co chair the thing
with Mike Johnson. Let's go through this again. Let's swear
in Liz Cheney and Adam kinsing are his expert witnesses,
and go through all the evidence again. Put Trump's coup
on trial one more time, and sure, let Cash Patel
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come in with whatever he fabricates in his FBI and
cut him to effing pieces on national TV. You want
to relitigate January sixth, just after Trump succeeded in gaslighting
enough of this country about what actually happened. You want
to have an actual House committee devote itself to the
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people Trump stochastically pushed into that insurrection and then pardoned.
You want that every day for weeks in the news. Trump,
you want that. You got it, buddy. You want to
be shown to be a trader all over again. And
then the man who freed the other traders. Let's go. Oh,
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and Speaker Johnson, don't forget. We are going to call
Cassidy Hutchinson again and she's going to read those sexual
based text threats you, Mike Johnson said your members sent
her during her testimony last time. And oh, by the way,
Speaker Johnson, do you have any idea that that means
(18:18):
you're admitting you covered those texts up? Speaker Johnson, will
you raise your right hand and swear in here as
a witness to the new January sixth Committee. It's a reboot,
(18:40):
It's a Hollywood reboot. Or Democrats don't support the new
January sixth Committee and then subvert and co opt it
and blow it up in Trump's swollen face. Let's instead
do that bipartisan thing that the canimate from the twilight zone,
the to serve man guy what's his name, Senator Fetterman,
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the thing he wants, because offering the Republicans bipartisanship always works. Wait,
it doesn't. Mark Kelly, who I think still means well
and does not need to be checked up again like
Fetterman does. Mark Kelly and a dozen other Democrats wrote
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to John Thune offering to make a bipartisan border deal
if the Republicans agreed not to try to pass a
Trumpconian measure on a straight party vote, overwriting the filibuster.
And you can criticize Kelly for the message here, which
is that we're all moving to throw out immigrants. We're
(19:48):
just going to throw out less of them. But that's
not the point here. He made the gesture. He put
out that hand, even if it is bad bipartisanship, he
put out that hand. And the response the Republicans literally
laughed in his face. I will quote the NBC report,
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican Wisconsin. I'll add as an aside,
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Wisconsin and Russia. Senator Ron Johnson laughed out loud when
he was asked about the letter and whether Republicans might
accept the overture. That's the latter. We will ignore. Huh, ignore,
but appeasement because while you're appeasing and hemming and hawing
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and writing, oh he's goddamn writing letters and stern warnings
Susan Collins should have been a Democrat. While you're always
appeasing and writing and hemming and hawing and looking to
work with Trump and his flying monkeys like Andy Ogles,
they are already trying to butcher the Constitution and get
(20:58):
him the third term. I warned you about a year
ago a bill to amend the twenty second Amendment to
permit Trump a third term, and half the liberals saw
this and said, bring it on, we can run Obama
because they only read the headline, not the part that
it would still limit a president to two consecutive terms,
(21:19):
because that's what they seized on in twenty twenty one.
Once you've served two consecutive terms, you're out. Obama's out,
Clinton's out, W's out. This is a bill for one guy.
(21:40):
I suppose we could run Biden twice under this in
any event, the two consecutive terms, but three in total
or four in total. That's what they seized on in
twenty twenty one. And the Republicans who do not support
Andy freaking Oguls overriding the constitution only don't support that
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because they have Faber cater to an even bigger bullshit
claim that because the twenty second Amendment doesn't say we
don't just mean consecutive terms, it must mean just consecutive
terms by all means. Dems keep appeasing Musk and Zuckerberg
and Bezos and all the rest of the rogarchy, even
(22:23):
though we now know exactly how much America hates Elon
Musk and his non Nazi salute and his non Nazi
video endorsement of the non Nazi German New Nazi Party,
including saying Germans should stop feeling any guilt about the
Nazis and the Holocaust. It was a long time ago.
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Just let him keep going, even though America is pretty
much demanding somebody levels Elon Musk as soon as possible.
New poll. Twelve percent think these clowns like Musk who
still cannot buy a human soul or a human person nowady,
no matter how much cash they have. Twelve percent think
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they should be advising presidents twelve percent. Only thirty percent
even think the dog crap is a good thing. Only
one third of us same Associated Press poll have a
favorable view of Elon Musk. But please suck up to
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him more. Maybe you can appease him, if you know,
if the ketaman you know runs out, And for that,
as the teletype suggests, we have the corporate media, and
(23:54):
what has all the pandering gotten the network so far?
CBS and ABC legally bribing Trump, the Scarborough Brashinsky foretaste
of MSNVC. Trump just called Mattow an enemy of the people.
Trump'sknew gobbles, the angry male pattern baldness victim he put
in charge of the FCC just reinstated the license complaints
(24:16):
against stations owned by CBSABC and NBC but didn't they
just solve all this with Monet just reinstated these complaints
at the FCC because Trump didn't like ABC's handling of
the debate, because Trump didn't like the CBS Harris interview,
because NBC put Harris on Saturday Night Live. Congratulations, boys,
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you bribed Trump and he took your money, and he
spent your money on filing fees for lawsuits and complaints
with which to kick your assets. Not only are you
bad Americans, you're bad businessmen. And the other shoe finally
fell fully off at CNN, Jim Acosta still standing up
(25:00):
while the likes of Jake E Fing Tapper and all
the others there descend into both sides of absurdity, as
if that will stop Trump. Jim Acosta has now officially
lost his ten AM slot and now instead of being
moved to midnight, he may or may not work out
a new role there. This is courtesy of the latest
(25:21):
flabby minded collaborator brought in by Warner Bros. Discovery, Mark Thompson.
Sir Mark Thompson, He's not from here because having the
British or the Australians, or an Australian who pretends he's
British run our media has always worked so well as
(25:42):
an aside. Since the year two thousand, this guy Thompson
has been the head of BBC Television, then Chief exec
of Britain's Channel four, then back to the BBC as
Director General. Then he quit after a series of BBC scandals,
including pedophilia by kids show hosts. Then he left the country.
Then he became CEO of the New York Times, Then
(26:02):
he went to Ancestry dot com. Then he went to
CNN two years ago. That's six jobs in twenty three years.
If somebody on the air at CNN bounced around like that,
the reaction would be sob can't hold a job. But
for somebody in upper media management, that's considered a richly
varied resume. Spending two continents and lastly on the collaborators
(26:29):
in media, shut the f up, Stephen A. Smith, Steven
shut the f Smith goes on Bill Maher and I
just assumed that was for a contest between the two
of them to see who could say the most words
and waste the most airtime without saying anything of substance
(26:52):
or anything you will ever remember, or anything with insight
or anything that contributes to you know, humanity. But I
was wrong. Stephen went on there because he thinks he
understands politics, which to him is he voted for Kamala Harris.
She didn't win, So, like any other sports team or athlete,
(27:13):
Steven ever hyped, he now has to trash them because
he's a complete front runner whose only skill is verbosity. Yes,
I voted for her, A lot of people voted for her,
but in the end we end up feeling like damned
fools because we supported it. We fell for the okie doke.
As they say, if you had a primary, the likelihood
(27:34):
is she would not have been the Democratic nominee. You
feel like a damned fool, now, Steve, wait till you
look at a tape of your own work on ESPN. Oh,
in that line you keep getting on and then pretending
you didn't get on it and running away from it,
(27:55):
and then quietly get back on it again. That line
lick Sean Hannity's ass and Trump's just remember, Steve, it
always has room for one more sycophantic coward. I apologize.
(28:22):
I'm sorry for the degree of the venom there. When
I worked with him at ESPN, I thought it was
all harmless and at worst embarrassing, and he got a
lot of money for it. Good for him. To my mind,
nobody on the airs ever overpaid. I mean when I
worked with them, I was just kind of astonished that
anybody running or watching the company could successfully pretend that
(28:44):
steven A actually, you know, ever said anything or reported anything,
or did anything other than phil hours at a stretch.
I remember once getting a producer a call from him
when I was anchoring Sports Center in New York and
the producer was in Connecticut, and he said, we're redoing
(29:05):
the opening segment of the show because we have a
SoundBite from steven A on whatever the topic was. And
I assumed he had some reporting on it, and I
rewrote it like that, and we played the tape, which
I had not heard till we were on the air,
and the tape consisted of him him saying steven A
Smith saying the lead item in Sports Center being I
don't know how this is going to turn out. It
(29:28):
was it was the Emperor's new clothes. It was just
it was steven A. People watched it. We were in
the business of getting people to watch. Nice enough. Guy
used to say, hello, I've known him for years and
knew him. When they fired him. The first time anybody
goes back to ESPN, they're in my club. Didn't matter.
(29:50):
Good for him, good for them, whatever. But now this
matters because at any point in its history, ESPN would
have suspended or fired anybody who said what he said
on Bill Maher show on Friday, or anybody who might
have said they felt like a damned fool for voting
for Trump. They want in my last tenure after we
(30:16):
made peace. They once threatened to suspend me because I
sent a hyperbolic tweet criticizing the dictator of the Philippines,
Duterte du Turte. They were worried about I don't know
the ratings for Sports Center in the Philippines, our coverage
of the Manila folders. I was like the Philippines. But
(30:45):
this is the New Disney, which was the first to
settle a Trump nuisance suit so it could legally bribe him.
And he said, thanks for the money. I'm now going
to try to destroy you anyway. I feel like a
damned fool. Camels, Yeah, okay, if she'd won, you'd be
(31:08):
saying it was all you were doing. Also, of interest,
here on an all New edition. Trump thinks the chairman
of the January sixth Committee should go to jail. But
unfortunately Trump is so mentally gone he cannot remember the
chairman's name. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown
(31:35):
with Keith Alberman still ahead on this all new edition
(31:59):
of Countdown. Ever heard one of those stories about some
guy waking up from the anesthesia during the procedure. Yep,
I'm one of those guys. Not quite as bad as
it sounds, but still, what's the word for it. It's
a surprise ahead on things I promise not to tell first.
(32:21):
There are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute this edition of the other worst persons
in the world. This edition is dedicated to newsman Kyle
Clark of Channel nine in Denver, who risked the wrath
of the heelocks with a little segment on the Colorado
(32:45):
quote Congresswoman unquote Lauren Bobert and her paranoid stunt in
DC last week. But it was Clark's phrasing on social
media about his story that earned him this positive shout out.
Here's what he wrote, quote New Rep. Lauren Bobert are
Co came up empty handed in her search for a
(33:09):
man in the woman's bathroom at the Capitol today, I
see what you did there. And of course, since the
video of her and the first date and what she
was doing to him in that Colorado theater certainly not
coming up empty handed still exists, I see what she
(33:31):
did there too. I mean Clark worked in, came up
handed search for a man. In one sentence, I'd be
proud to have written that myself, sir, Congratulations about Lauren.
What a pair of hands for a Grandma Bobert. Now
(33:54):
to third place worser, and it's Trump. I will remind
you again that for all the arrogance of this old
stretched out balloon of a man golfing every day on
your and my dime, we are here, in fact safest
when he's out there doing that, because it's not just
the evil, it's the stupidity. Now he's always been trending
(34:17):
towards this next destination, but he's now fully engaged in
the world. What we used to call spoonerisms, malaprops, wrong names,
wrong words, Freudian slips, dreams. He had that he thinks
really happened. Guesses that have to be right because he's
guessing it, but especially those wrong names. And el Duche
(34:40):
has clearly had too many Benny's in his life.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
He's a crooked guy, a totally crooked politician. And so
he's pardoned, and some other people are pardoned. And these
are crooked politicians, every one of them. Bennie Johnson, what
he did is incredible. I mean, he was the leader
of the committee and he did it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Idiot Benny Thompson. Benny Thompson was the chairman of the
January sixth committee, not Bennie Johnson, the real January sixth committee,
not the new one. Like I said earlier, Oh please, please, please,
please please please let there be a new one. Please
relitigate this, please, Unless this was a Freudian slip and
(35:19):
Trump really wants to indict the most simpering, foppish, just
playing stupid of as many sycophantic social media whorees. Who
is Bennie Johnson. It's Benny the runners up the National
Football League and commissioner Roger Goodell. Now Baseball has kept
(35:40):
idiot commissioners in place for impossibly long stretches. Hockey two
several of them, Basketball not so much. Probably that explains
why the NBA went from something founded by all the
hockey owners in the mid nineteen forties so they could
get a few fans to spend some money in the
hockey arenas that they owned on off nights. And that
(36:02):
really is how professional basketball in this country actually got
started for real, how it went from that to dominating
the winter sports like oh hockey. But football has had
this guy Goodell in place for what will soon be
twenty years, and he is on an incredible winning streak
(36:22):
that makes Tom Brady look like the backup quarterback on
a semi pro team. Roger Goodell in twenty years nearly
has never done the right thing. New England Patriots vice
president of content Fred Kersh and honestly, what content could
the Patriots have without Bill Belichick? Anyway, He told a
(36:44):
Patriots centric podcast that the team had an account on
blue Sky, but it was ordered by the league Roger
Goodell commissioner to shut that account down because blue Sky
is not quote an approved social media platform for the NFL.
Yet Goodell, who literally always gets it wrong, did a
(37:05):
deal with Musk and X and his egor Linda yek
Garino to create an NFL portal on X last fall,
just as X clearly began its death rattle. You don't
believe it's a death rattle. The Wall Street Journal says
the banks who loaned Elmo the money to buy Twitter
and destroy it are going to sell off some of
(37:26):
the thirteen billion they loaned him, So the loans are
for sale, which is going to mean a lot of
trouble for Musk going forward. One of the reasons they're
going to do this, according to The Wall Street Journal,
which is not exactly a left wing media outlet, is
that they have an email the banks do that Musk
sent to his remaining employee slash Slaves over there, that
(37:47):
in part reads, our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive,
and we're barely breaking even. Alas the old saw is true,
being a Nazi will make you money early, but it's
just not a long term investment strategy, ask Eva Brown.
(38:08):
But back to the NFL, and it's unfortunate dim bulb
of a commissioner. Goodell has straight outside of the Muskrat catacombs,
though it has some kind of an arrangement with the
other Trump fell Later Mark the terrified Mark Zuckerberg to
go on the absolutely useless Threads platform. Gee, maybe Zuck
(38:29):
can get Roger Goodell a virtual reality helmet. How's that
working out for you, Zuck? Is that why your hair
looks like that because you wore the helmet too long?
The NFL on the social media cutting edge. It will
be on my Space any day now. But our winner
Noah Cindergard, one time All Star and still the only
(38:50):
pitcher to win a World Series game for the New
York Mets since the year two thousand. He also was
the live in dugout guest for the Mets Yankees game.
I did the play by play for on ESPN in
twenty eighteen, and he was outstanding and very funny and
very with his time. However, as we all knew even then,
Noah may not have the sharpest breaking balls in the league.
(39:14):
If you get my drift, he has now proved that
in spades. Cinderguard, unemployed since Cleveland cut him in August
twenty twenty three, shared a photo of himself at a
black tie event. In the foreground of this photo, Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, now happily in the photo, Kennedy is wearing
(39:36):
pants with him, Kennedy's hostage, I'm sorry, Kennedy's wife, also Cinderguard,
and some other people who may or may not be lunatics.
Cindergard added to this the hashtag mahaha, which they think
stands for Make America Healthy again, but which actually stands
for make America hell again. It's used by Kennedy to
(40:00):
push his anti vaccine, anti science, anti not dying of diseases.
We had a lit dominated pro polio, pro hallucinogenic drugs,
pro covid, pro on camera masturbation agenda, the one he
is pushing as nominee to head Health in Human Services,
presuming he's not too stoned to forget he was appointed
(40:20):
to the job, or he didn't just decide to stay
home and play with himself. An athlete, especially a baseball player,
especially a washed up pitcher, going fascist is nothing new.
It's probably a large majority of them. But Noah's Cindergard
endorsing Bobby Kennedy's lunatic health policies is particularly stupid, even
(40:43):
for a fascist picture or in his case, an X picture,
because in twenty eighteen, Noahs Cindergard had to miss a
start and go on the injured list because of rashes
and mouthsores after he contracted the virus that almost always
affects only children hand foot and mouth disease. It's handfoot
(41:05):
and mouth disease. You get it with play do dough
handfoot and mouth disease. Noah Cindergard becoming the first major
league player since like eighteen seventy seven to catch this
by simply not washing his freaking hands. So naturally, this
imbecil is endorsing that imbecile. Noah, make America contagious again, Cinderguard.
(41:31):
Today's worse worse that I know. So finally, I've been
trying to figure out the apt artistic for one of
(41:55):
a better term metaphor or imagery for where we are
in the United States of assholes right now. And I
think where we are is the same feeling you get
when you wake up from anesthesia during a medical procedure.
All right, it may not be perfect, but I think
it does get it kind of close. And it's important
(42:19):
to think about metaphors because art, and I don't want
to call that art, but you know what I mean.
Creativity helps us process evil, helps us get through evil.
Some of the best paintings, some of the best literature
written in prison, written in times of social upheaval. You know,
the whole speech by Orson Wells from the Third Man
(42:40):
about the cuckoo clock and the med cheese and Da
Vinci and all the rest of that. So I think
that's where we are. It's as if we have all
awakened from a medical procedure, from anesthesia during the procedure.
There may be another reason this is on my mind
as I hit my sixty sixth birthday today. It's that
(43:02):
I'm having a medical pressure tomorrow. And the last time
I had it, I woke up from it during anesthesia
to the top of the countdown and the number one
story and things I promised not to tell. And as
you know, I never like to talk about myself, but
this was one of the more extraordinary events of my
(43:26):
long and stupid medical history. Normally, the stories I tell
you are of my own direct physical stupidity, running into
subway trains for no particular reason headfirst when they weren't moving.
But I was falling off small cliffs, filming television commercials
(43:46):
for fast food, and famously cracking my pelvis, just a
hairline crack, but it required three months of cane and
anti inflammatories while walking down the street. And it wasn't
even much of an incline as I was walking down it.
But this one was something different. This was waking from
(44:10):
anesthesia in the middle of a medical procedure, while I
was still under and while they were still doing the
medical procedure. I have it written down somewhere. It's two
thousand and three, four five, somewhere in that range. So
I am in my late forties and I am being
(44:30):
overcome by what turned out to be nothing more serious,
although it's a serious problem than reflux, indigestion, heartburn as
it used to be colloquially known acid reflux, and it
was affecting my ability to talk. I didn't get most
of the pain or discomfort. It just caused my throat
to tighten up and I got very hoarse. And I
(44:53):
was a regular smoker of cigars and pipes at the time,
and I thought the worst, and happily it was not that,
and happily I quit doing the cigars and the pipes
twenty years ago anyway, But here's what happened. I went
in for an endoscopy to find out why my stomach
was being somewhat uncooperative. It was a highly reputable operation
(45:15):
in a highly reputable part of what used to be
called Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York, where I
would later get my appendix removed on an emergency basis.
That also wasn't my fault. Although not really noticing that
the pain I had in my stomach was more than constipation,
and waiting two days until I was, as my friend
John Clees pointed out, once technically dying of septocemia, that
(45:38):
was my fault. This was different. This was a kind
of routine medical procedure, no routine quality to it when
they give you an anesthetic, but it was a mild anesthetic,
and it was a professional operation. And there were twenty
people lined up in front of me in a whole
series of endoscopy and of course, colonoscopy suites, And thus
(45:58):
the air was filled with the wonderful smell of drugged
up people emitting gas. Everybody else seemed to be having
no problem whatsoever with their endoscopy or colonoscopy. People would
be wheeled out of these various rooms where they performed
those procedures, happily unconscious or nearly so emitting very very
(46:19):
loud emissions of gas. It was almost kind of entertaining.
As I sat there waiting to be the next one
in line, I was greeted by the I guess he
was an anesthesiologist. I had some doubts afterwards, and another
nurse perhaps two guys, who walked me through what they
were going to do, and gave me the initial sedative
(46:40):
and then had me lie down and piped in via
a shunt in my arm, a nice cooling anesthesia, and
before you knew what happened, it was lights out anesthesia.
By the way, if you've never gone through a procedure
in which you've had, it is really kind of like
(47:02):
a recording that you stopped up. You hit pause and
come back hours later, minutes later, some cases days later,
and then hit record again. You go back and look
at it, and you have nothing between one twenty one
pm and five thirty pm. I mean, it just stops.
You don't have a sense of time moving. It's not
like sleep, it's not like any of that. You're out
(47:24):
and then you're back, and then you look and you
say what time is it? And they say whatever time
it is, and you're surprised because it seems like five
minutes that time they took out my appendix after it
blew up. I literally thought they hadn't done it yet,
and it had been two and a half hours between
them putting me out and them waking me up in
(47:45):
any event, So I am lying there, but I don't
know I'm lying there. I am in some other bed
bath and beyond, and I am suddenly back. My eyes
are closed, but I'm hearing very clearly. I recognize one
(48:07):
of the voices. It's it's a doctor I just saw,
I met an anesthetic guy. I feel some tightness in
my neck, but there's no sense of panic. I think
I'm lying down. I'm not concerned very much by this.
It's well, it sounds like it feels like I'm having
(48:31):
one of those I've been abducted by an alien spacecraft moments.
I don't know where I am. There's something going on
with my body. I'm not fully awake, but I can
hear people talking, and I know they don't mean me harm,
and I hear with this kind of tone to it.
At this kind of distance, I hear one of the
(48:51):
guys say to the other guy, Yeah, don't you know
who that is. That's Keith Olberman. Keith, the one who
left SportsCenter. Yeah, the guy who quit Sports Center. That's
that's who that is. I want to why he left
Sports Center. That must be the best job in the world.
We'll have to ask him after he after he gets up.
I wonder why he left Sports Center. Well, needless to say,
(49:15):
they were talking about me, so there probably was no
anesthesia in the world that could keep me from not
hearing that, no matter where I was during this procedure,
which was apparently going fine and normally, and they didn't
think anything was wrong until I answered their question. I said,
as I remember, and they confirmed afterwards. I said, oh,
(49:39):
karkach and I hear one of the guys say, did
he say something? Did he? I think I heard him too,
Did he say, what, mister Olderman? Can you hear us?
And I said, ha, hi, Well what I hahn here?
You hurry hurry? Well, oh my god, you coming down
(50:05):
to the anesthesia. And that's when I realized where I
was and what was being done to me. There was
a hose down my throat. They were doing the endoscopy,
and then they promised me, oh, well, we'll give you
some more anesthesia right away. I'm sorry we misgauged how
much you needed. I guess we guess your weight wrong.
(50:27):
It's like I wonder how often this happens in this place?
That was my main thought. And then I asked a
fairly logical question, given that I was until recently out cold,
until it wore off prematurely, I said, how louck longer?
And the guy said how much longer? Aha? And he
(50:50):
said about a minute a half, about ninety seconds. Then
we're going to be removing it. And I said, I good,
You're good. Oh ah ah ah. I conveyed to them
that there was no reason to increase the anesthetic if,
after all, all they were going to do was remove
(51:12):
the endoscope. The problem if you've ever had an endoscopy
or anything else like that in which they put a
tube or a camera or both, or god knows garden
hose down your throat, the problem is when they put
it in, not when they take it out. In fact,
when they take it out is a sense of universal
(51:33):
relief in your body as you relax, as your throat relaxes,
as your mouth relaxes, as you hear the little pop
when the thing comes out and you go ah. So
I convinced them there was no particular reason to give
me any more anesthesia, and they pulled the damn thing
out of my throat stomach stomach first, I guess, very
(51:57):
very very slowly, and I could feel it, and I
would not describe this as the most pleasant feeling in
the world. But each centimeter that they took the thing,
or whatever small division there is of that, each division
they took the thing, or distance they took the thing
up out of my throat, it felt better, and I
(52:18):
was like, Okay, we're almost done here and I won't
be lying around emitting gas like everybody else. They wheeled
out of this place. My memory came back almost immediately.
All the things that had happened in my mind five
minutes before but were probably half an hour before, were
immediate past memories. They were clear as a bell, and
I was now eyes open and looking around and going, well,
(52:40):
I'm just going to keep my eyes closed so I
don't see this thing come out of my mouth and
start gagging. At the very end, it kind of was
like a reverse version of the movie Alien. Oh no,
actually it was the not reverse version of the movie Alien.
Wasn't it because the alien comes out of the victim's body.
(53:02):
So I didn't want to watch that, but it didn't
feel particularly pleasant. It was relief. So now they pull
a thing out and I'm fine, and they go, sorry
about that. Gee, I'm really I mean, I don't know
how we got those calculations wrong. Do you weigh a
lot more than it says here? And I was like, no,
that's my weight? Oh geez, well, I don't know. Maybe
(53:24):
are you Are you one of those super aware people,
those people, I said, yes, probably somebody who hears every
noise in the room. Yes, that's me, particularly if you're
talking about me and why I left ESPN, which at
that point had happened seven years before, eight years before.
(53:47):
I was not in a bad mood. It really hadn't
amounted to anything other than a surprise. But these guys,
I think, clearly thought I was going to sue them
for every penny the hospital had and they had, and
I had no interest in that. I just wanted to
go home and get the results of the end to scope.
So now I begin to sit up, because why should
(54:10):
I be lying there? Now that the hose, the garden
hose has been retracted and put back on the wall
under the shed or wherever they keep it. And they said,
you can't. You can't get up. What are you doing?
I said, what, why not? And the anesthesiologist said, well,
you're you're just coming up from the anesthesia. And I said, clearly,
(54:31):
I just came up from the anesthesia like four minutes ago.
Oh you have a point there. Well, all right, don't
don't sit up fully. Let's just adjust this thing. And
they pushed a button and it became kind of like
a reclining chair. And so I sat there for a
while and I said can I go home now? And
they went, okay, just stand up slowly in here so
(54:53):
we can see that you can do it. And of course,
because I am one of those people who I forget
the technical term for it is super aware and super
responsible and super every back to normal, and let's see
how things are going on in the adjoining county to
make sure everything is going on. Okay, there, I'm the
hyperaware guy. Wait, I would say to myself while asleep,
(55:17):
I think I just heard some movement twenty floors below
me in this hotel. Let's check that out. Wake up.
So I went home, having had an endoscopy and having
had that thing that in other medical procedures is the
worst thing that can happen to you short of them
(55:37):
killing you, which is you wake up from the anesthesia
while they have the scalpel on you or whatever. And
again i'll refer back to what I just mentioned. There
is a theory about alien abductions. You've heard this, the
idea of what people are mistaking for being abducted by
(55:58):
a UFO that when they see those humans with the
big bug like heads and you can't see their mouths,
but they're talking to you, and you know telepathically that
they don't mean you any harm. What it is is
a half remembered moment during partial anesthesia from an operating theater,
or perhaps while you were getting an endoscopy and you
(56:19):
woke up from it. Who are these aliens? Because we
know they weren't educated in any medical facility on this planet.
In any event, I went home. It turned out I
didn't have things like celiac disease. I didn't have other
major things that needed extensive treatment. I just needed like
(56:39):
prescription strength pepsid. And I got this story to tell
you of the day I woke up because they were
talking about me and why I left ESPN while giving
me an endoscopy, thinking I couldn't hear them because I
left that job while they stayed at their jobs and
did not give me enough anesthesia, so I woke up
(57:03):
in the middle of it. So always ask the anesthesiologist
if he's sure that he's giving you enough so you
don't wake up from it. Incidentally, when I had this
procedure in two thousand and three four five, the next
time I was at that hospital undergoing a procedure, which
(57:26):
was the aforementioned appendictomy, I said to the anesthesiologist. As
I lay down on the table and the surgeon and
I talked about David Wright and the New York Mets
in baseball. I said to the this is the anesthesiologist.
Let me tell you a quick story about something that
happened to me in this building two years ago. Please
make sure you give me enough. I don't want to
wake up with this. There's actual knives involved. And he
(57:47):
just laughed, and the next thing I knew, it was
two and a half hours later. There is one PostScript
to this. Tomorrow, I am going in for an endoscopy,
and all I can say is I'll talk to you
later to borrow a phrase from a past life that
(58:23):
they were asking about that one that story really deserves this.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. May all your medical procedures be uninterrupted
by questions about your past career moves. Oh Brian Ray
(58:44):
and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
in keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and
fithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Nancy Faust. Music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two.
(59:07):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
And my announcer today was my friend Nancy Faust. Everything
else was, as ever, my fault. So that's count down
for today, Just four hundred and fifty five days until
the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term.
(59:31):
As to our scheduled I'm going to keep this at
two a week for now because I'm not ready to
commit to more. But I am decided on keeping it
going until further notice. I did a long interview last
week with The Washington Post and the topic was again,
what should MSNBC do now, as if there were any
choices involved in this, and my answer was, as always,
(59:53):
a build a statue of me in front of thirty
rock and b double down. You now have almost a
true monopoly on actual news that isn't just pandering to Trump.
Everybody else gave up and ran away. But I emphasized
to the reporter that the audience is not ready to
start watching every day again, and I said, I'm pretty
(01:00:14):
sure that's true of this podcast too, So we'll play
the podcast by ear. Maybe I can do more. Right now,
I don't want to do more. I will be here
at least twice a week, barring and dyscopic mishaps. So
the next scheduled countdown is Thursday. As always, Boltons as
(01:00:35):
the news warrants, remember, impeach Trump. It won't work now,
it will win the Democrats the midterms. Impeachment is undefeated
till next time. I'm Keith Olberman, good morning, good afternoon,
good anesthesia, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(01:01:07):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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