June 19, 2023 • 41 mins
EPISODE 230: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith may be readying an indictment against Trump for illegally attempting to coerce Mike Pence to defy his legal duties in the Electoral College count? Ryan Goodman from “Just Security,” whom I cite here frequently though I don’t know him and only because he knows this stuff, told Bill Kristol’s podcast that he thinks Jack Smith quote “going to indict Trump for the False Slate of Electors scheme” – and with Goodman saying the odds Fonny Willis indicts on False Electors and election interference in Georgia are 90 percent, Trump could face twin federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman adds something that took my breath away. Indicting Trump for False Electors, “AND quite probably/possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence.” Wait – what?
Goodman sets the odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump ABOUT PENCE… at 60 to 70 percent. Pressuring the Vice President, Goodman says, quoting him again “is independent of whether or not he thought he won the election. He can think he won the election, doesn’t matter. But you can’t try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties – which is just to count the votes.” Goodman doesn’t mention that, but you will remember that Stewart Rhodes and other Oathkeepers were prosecuted for – and convicted of – interfering with Congress’s ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for a moment the prospect of Smith indicting Trump, running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to coerce PENCE, running for the Republican nomination. Oh and necessarily having Pence TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP either before Trump is nominated or before the election.
I’m beginning to think we may have WILDLY under-estimated how many MORE things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump for. There is reason today to believe that the number of separate indictments OF Trump BY Smith could be as many as FOUR. Maybe even FIVE.
B-Block (20:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Nikki Haley tries to make it sound like she DIDN'T say The Confederate Flag was just a symbol of "sacrifice, service and heritage" until Dylann Roof came along and spoiled it with his mass murdering. The Joe Rogan-JFK "debate" stink. The Bland leading the Blind? What on earth would they debate? HOW stupid Rogan is? And Military Mean Tweets (25:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Why was Lou Dobbs' wife subpoenaed in the Smartmatic case? David Clarke tries to get the Saudis off the hook for the Khashoggi murder. Curt Schilling says it's time for more shots, like at Concord, but he only means shots metaphorically. And the Chia Pet of Fox, Jesse Watters, has a plan for the homeless.
C-Block (33:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The New York crisis continues, with poor 3-year old Dior and her pneumonia (34:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of Lou Dobbs' wife, it was just 42 summers ago when she and Lou had to leave CNN New York in a hurry and they had to hire as an emergency temp a radio sports guy with no TV experience - me. THEY started my career!
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
am beginning to believe that we may have wildly underestimated
(00:26):
how many more things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump.
Four Could the Special Council in fact be preparing now
to indict Trump for illegally pressuring Mike Pence. There is
reason today to believe that the number of new separate
(00:46):
indictments of Trump by Smith could be as many as four,
maybe even five, Based on both reporting and analysis by
the people who have been right so far, the general
consensus seem to have been there would be two new ones. First,
the fake Elector's schemes, since there were fake electors seen
entering the court building house a the Special Council's Washington
Grand Jury that almost exactly the same moment that Smith
(01:09):
was announcing the document's case in Miami ten days ago.
There has also been consistent dribbing and drabbing coming out
of what appears to be a very serious Smith investigation
of what at first seems like an almost sidebar to
that part of the Trump massive coup plan. The gradual
assembling of evidence that when Trump made his desperate pleas
to the yokels, in November and December twenty twenty to
(01:31):
raise funds to fight the stolen election. He knew, damn
well and acknowledged, damn well, it was not a stolen election,
and thus all that fundraising was fraud. That January sixth
fraud stuff was puzzling in a way because while it's
like tax evasion, fraud is easier to prove than say,
(01:52):
an intricate plot to overthrow the government using stochastic terrorism
and deniable incitements of mobs and milities. It did seem
a little off the point. Do not get me wrong here.
If they can jail tru forever based on stealing box
cars full of gold rustolium that he sprayed on his head, fine,
(02:12):
Still there is a sadness about this. He tried to
overthrow the democracy. We need to put him on trial
for trying to overthrow the democracy. Well, we may yet
do so. Ryan Goodman from Just Security, when I cite
here frequently, even though I don't know him, and only
because he knows his stuff, told the Bill Crystal podcast
(02:34):
that he thinks Jack Smith is quote going to indict
Trump for the false slate of Elector's scheme, and with
Goodman adding that the odds Fannie Willis indicts on false
electors and election interference in Georgia are at ninety percent.
Trump could then face twin federal and state cases on
overlapping topics. And then Goodman added something that took my
(02:54):
breath away, indicting Trump for false electors quote and quite
probably possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence. Wait what
Goodman sends The odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump about
Pence at sixty to seventy percent. Pressuring the vice president,
(03:16):
Goodman says, quoting him again, is independent of whether or
not he Trump thought he won the election. He can
think he won the election, doesn't matter. But you can't
try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties,
which is just to count the votes. Goodman does not
mention this, but you will remember that Stuart Rhodes and
(03:36):
some of the other oathkeepers were prosecuted for and convicted
of interfering with Congress's ability to complete its legal duties.
Ponder for just a moment the prospect the eternal carnival
of Smith indicting Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination,
for attempting to course Pence, who is running for the
(03:58):
Republican nomination, oh and necessarily having Pence testify against Trump
either before Trump is nominated or before the election. So
instead of two, that would be three separate prongs to
Smith's pursuit of Trump, four if you count the thirty
seven documents indictments already brought documents stolen election fundraising, fraud
(04:18):
January sixth, false electors January sixth, pressure campaign against Mike Pence.
Goodman also does not see the January sixth stuff waiting
out in the hall. According again, I think it's very
likely that the Special Council indicts him about January sixth
in the summer. He wants to do it by the
summer to avoid doing it much later. And if that
(04:41):
is not enough to chew on. Goodman thinks the odds
are fifty to fifty that Smith will further expand the
case against Trump on the stolen documents and add further
charges to it, but not in Florida. As I've noted before,
Goodman notes that the charging document released to the public
concurrent with the indictments in Miami was very specific about
the crimes Trump had committed and the individual events The
(05:03):
Florida charging document references the dissemination of defense information to
people not authorized to see it, and refers explicitly to
both the classified map Trump showed people and that Mark
Millie military plan for war on Iran, the stuff Trump
is caught on tape going over with the Mark Meadows ghostwriters.
All of that stuff is in the Florida charging document
(05:26):
that has now been in circulation for ten days, but
there have been no charges about it. Goodman's explanation for
this anomaly is simple. Trump's crimes of stealing and keeping
the documents happened in Florida. Telling people what was in
the documents happened in New Jersey. So if Goodman is
right about Jersey and more documents and more charges, that's
(05:47):
four or five separate prosecutions, depending on your definitions. Documents
could theoretically just be considered parts A and B of
the same case. And if you're tired of one guy
speculating about one other guy speculating, good news everyone. There
is hard and firm information from Jack Smith in court
(06:08):
paperwork he filed last Friday in which he said that
a protective order needed to be placed on anything produced
by the legal discovery conducted by the Trump team, because
the stuff found in discovery would contain information about quote
ongoing investigations that could quote identify uncharged individuals, Mark Meadows.
(06:32):
So there is no question Smith is still seeking new charges,
and obviously they are against Trump, and obviously he has
unrevealed witnesses. And we know from one of the flood
of New York Times reports, this one from about six
weeks ago, that Smith is still active on the subject
of Trump and things that happened in New Jersey. The
Times report from the beginning of May was that there
(06:54):
had been quote previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump organization
which sought records pertaining to Trump's dealings with a Saudi
backed professional golf bench known as Live Golf, which Trump
has so far dealt with not at Mari Lago or
his other golf courses, but at his Bedminster club in
New Jersey. Goodman didn't mention this. The Times didn't mention this.
(07:17):
Nobody's mentioned this. It is officially still inside the realm
of political science fiction. But if you want to ratchet
up the whole golf thing one more notch, you could,
as I previously have envisioned, Trump trading information to the
Saudis so that they would make the big Trump signs
on the golf course one square foot larger than originally
(07:37):
agreed to. You know he would, you know he would?
You know he would. There is also the gathering prospect
of Trump being hoist with his own petard. The Times
also noted that five separate statements inside the charging documents
are quotations from Trump during the lockher upstage of the
(07:58):
twenty sixteen presidential campaign. There is a belief among experts
in the field that these statements could all be introduced
as evidence at trial to show not that Hillary Clinton
was right, although that would be a pleasing side effect,
but that Trump knew exactly what the penalties were for
stealing boxes of defense information and classified documents. On the
(08:20):
subject of experts in the field, one of them has
now chewed up Trump and spit him out for the
second consecutive week. I have explained previously that my having
no use for William Barr is second generation. His father
arrived as the new headmaster of my prep school as
I graduated, and the bastard nearly bankrupted the place. But
(08:43):
like Ryan Goodman, Bill Barr is at least correct at
the moment. He was asked on Face the Nation yesterday
if he thinks Trump is a target specifically in January
sixth prosecutions. Quote. I'm actually starting to think they will
pull the trigger on that, Barr replied, and I would
expect it to be this summer unquote. Barr was also
(09:03):
asked if he had gotten any in side insight from
the Justice Department. He once ran and he refused to comment,
which is a strange thing to do if you have
not gotten inside insight. Barr also took some satisfying shots
at Trump. Quote, he will always put his own interests
and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including
the country's interests. No crap, Bill, that's Trump's physical or
(09:25):
emotional illness. He's like a nine year old, a defiant
nine year old kid who's always pushing the glass toward
the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop
him from doing it. It's a means of self assertion
and exerting his dominance over other people. Well, yes, Bill,
but six a defiant six year old child. For the
(09:48):
first time in years, there were two different Sunday News
interviews that may have contained actual news breadcrumbs, because Pence's
former chief of staff, Mark Short also went on one
of them, the one on Fox, and he brought up
another topic that had slipped through the cracks after it
had suddenly reappeared in the middle of a sexual abuse
suit against Rudy Giuliani. Short said, quote, one of the
(10:11):
most unseemly parts of the end of our administration was
the pardons Donald Trump gave to cocaine traffickers, to family members,
to people guilty of violent crimes. It was indefensible. Short
then added the money quote literally, people giving seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to lobbyists trying to get pardons unquote. Okay,
(10:35):
what's with that. Giuliani's alleged victim says his price to
take a pardon to Trump was two million, to be
split with Trump. Certainly like the prospective indictments on defrauding
his own cultists to raise money to solve a stolen
election that was not stolen. There's got to be a
money trail a mile long for Jack Smith on these
million dollar pardons. For crying out loud, there are three
(10:59):
other new morsels here to savor. Chris Christie suggested that
based on his days as a prosecutor, the likelihood is
two thirds of Jack Smith's case. Well, case says well
panoply of case says is still below the surface, witnesses evidence,
God knows what. Ryan Goodman jumped on that in the
(11:20):
Crystal podcast and asked a rhetorical question. That is absolutely fascinating.
That tape of Trump talking to Mark Meadow's ghostwriters describing
the secret Iran war plans. He cannot give them because
they're classified, but he will describe to them because he's
a compulsive talker. Goodman says, that's a tape in essence
(11:41):
of Trump narrating his own crimes as he commits them,
a confession in real time. More intriguingly, Goodman asks, what
happens if anyone of the dozens of top news organizations
pursuing this the political story, the foremost political story in
American history. What if one of those news organizations were
(12:02):
to get a copy of that tape, post it or
put it on television or on TikTok, Not a transcript,
but Trump's actual crime, in Trump's actual voice, as Trump
actually commits it. Party down. One thing we do know
(12:23):
is if that happens Trump's lawyers are not exactly poised
to stop the tape from being made public. She is
hardly the lead on the document's case, but they are
still letting Alina Haba make public appearances on Trump's behalf.
I guess on the theory that Christina Bob is even dumber.
(12:43):
Habba spoke to the throng outside the Miami courthouse. She
also went on a Breitbart show and said that before
there was a trial, quote, we need a fair opportunity
to depose people and see what their answers are to
some of the things we have questions about. Haba said
she wanted people under oath explaining the raid, in other words,
(13:04):
the f search at Mary A Lago. It is quite
clear from that demand and that part just there about
a fair opportunity to depose people that this Habba is
under the impression that in a criminal case, the defendant
gets to take depositions from the prosecutors from the FBI.
(13:26):
I mean, I took one communications law class as a
junior in college forty six years ago this fall, and
even I know that criminal defendants don't get to cross
examine the Special Council. You could never tell Alina Habba
made her name in parking lot real estate law. Could
(13:47):
you so? Before the punchline? To all this the additional
comic relief, let's recap. Smith has charged Trump for mishandling
government documents in Florida. That's case one. He seems to
be on the verge of indictments on the phony fundraising scheme.
That would be case two, and Goodman is confident Smith
will also indict Trump on the fake elector slates. That
(14:08):
would be number three. He has added in the prospect
of a Smith indictment against Trump for trying to coerce
Mike Pence. That's four, and Goodman also thinks it's half
half that Smith will expand the document's case to include
illegal dissemination of defense information in New Jersey. And now, lastly,
the promised punchline, a quick peek into the parallel universe
(14:31):
in which Trump is completely innocent and he's being framed
and Joe Biden is going to resign by the end
of the week and then be jailed. Now, Rudy Giuliani says,
one of the key players in the reducts of the
Ukraine conspiracy that exists only in his viagra addled mind,
Barisma II Electric Boogaloo. That witness has died at the
(14:56):
same exact time Congressman Jamie Comer, who I think is
now beginning to regret fronting this story in which they
don't know if there's this source, and the source doesn't know,
if there's a whistleblower, and the whistleblower doesn't know, if
there's a foreign oligarch, and the foreign oligarch doesn't know
if there's seventeen audio tapes and some of them are dead.
(15:17):
I think Jamie Combers beginning to regret this, And if
he wasn't before, now he is now because his newest
Congressional Office disbursement filing has been made for the first quarter,
and it includes such thrillers as two hundred and forty
four dollars for janitorial services and fourteen dollars to Mailchimp.
And then there is the four hundred and forty five
(15:37):
bucks Comber's office paid to the Wooden Casket Company LLLC
of Tompkinsville, Kentucky. The purpose listed on the file is
habituation expense. So Jamie Comer's witnesses are dead, and Jamie
(15:58):
Comber's office has just bought a four hundred and forty
five dollars casket for somebody or something to live in
what comer's hopes of reelection. Also of interest here, Joe
Rogan could actually be the dumbest person on the planet,
(16:22):
the dumbest out of all of us. Rogan continues to
push this debate between RFK Junior and doctor Peter Hotez.
What exactly is this debate going to be about? That
Rogan has been wrong about everything all along, about vaccines
and in so doing he risked the lives of thousands
(16:45):
of people. And on the other hand, doctor Hotez has
you know, an actual job saving the lives of thousands
of people. I mean, what's the debate going to be about? Rogan?
You brain damage, bowling ball with shoes. What's the debate
going to be about? All the zombie you see? That's next?
(17:07):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
Dateline Charleston, South Carolina, Another week, another whole for Republican
(17:29):
presidential wanna be Nicki Haley to try to dig herself
out of she is trying to claim she did not
say that while governor of that state, she went from
defending the Confederate flag in public to supporting its removal
because when the mass murderer, Dylan Roof, issued a manifesto
showing himself posing with the Confederate flag, he quote hijacked
(17:50):
the flag's real meaning, which she said had been quote service,
sacrifice and heritage. Here is this guy, she told Blaze TV,
and pro tip if you ever find yourself on Blaze
TV the flea quote, here is this guy who comes
out with his manifesto holding the Confederate flag and had
(18:12):
just hijacked everything that people thought of. We don't have
hateful people in South Carolina. There's always the small minority
who are always going to be there. But people saw
it as service, sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that,
there was no way to overcome it. The former governor
has also denounced Barack Obama for she says, making minorities
(18:34):
feel like victims. But in her statement, though Miss Haley
says she is an example of a member of a
minority group who succeeded through her own hard work. She
refers to members of minority groups as quote them unquote,
I think we all know what's going on here and
we don't have to put a name on it. Dateline Austin, Texas,
where Joe Rogan and RFK Junior have teamed up. That
(18:56):
would be the bland leading the blind to demand that
the scientist and physician, doctor Peter Hotez debate them about
something something vaccines. I mean, what are they debating about?
Am I missing something? What is the debate Rogan and
RFK Junior want to have? How their predictions of mass
(19:18):
deaths from COVID vaccinations not only have not come true,
but we're only off by about oh approximately, rounding up
to the nearest number completely. How the vaccine worked so well,
How people who are vaccinated don't die from the COVID anything. No, no,
that's not it. How unlike what poor Kennedy keeps saying
(19:42):
about how vaccines are the only drugs that don't have
to be tested. I mean, they even got in a
significant test of the COVID vaccine before giving it to
the rest of us. I mean, what is the debate
about that Rogan is brain damaged, That RFK Junior is
a sick man. Do you know RFK Junior. I've known
him for twenty years because I questioned some of the
(20:03):
terrorism lockdown in Ohio during the two thousand and four
presidential election. He called me up. He told me I
was his hero, which is a startling thing to hear
from the son of Robert F. Kennedy. But since then
I have watched with deep sadness as his cheese has slowly,
but without interruption, slid completely off his cracker every day since.
(20:28):
Mark Cuban may have summed this nonsense up best quote, Joe,
you and Elon Musk's Twitter are the mainstream online media,
and your platforms have become everything supposedly wrong with MSM.
You are driven by self interest. Don't lie to yourselves
and all of us and tell us you are different.
You aren't. Unquote and jeez, Rogan, if you want to
(20:50):
debate debate another doctor about whether or not you should
get checked out right away for CTE. Thank you, Nancy
Faus Dateline the Pentagon. Yes, it's true. The military's equivalent
(21:14):
of the Secret Service is in fact protecting current and
former top ranking officers from quote, assassination, kidnapping, injury, or embarrassment.
Wait what kind of embarrassment? Smelly feet the website the
intercept uncovered an Army procurement document indicating that the Army's
(21:37):
Protective Services Battalion is protecting the brass from mean tweets
and other social media insults. Well, general, then don't dance
on TikTok, and they will not make fun of you
on TikTok. And there's one more half news, half worst
(22:10):
person's kind of story, and it's also a tease. The
Smart Maatic Companies two point seven billion dollar defamation lawsuit
against Fox and Maria Bartiromo and Rudy Giuliani and Janine
Piro and Lou Dobbs. Smart Mattic has now subpoenaed Lou
Dobbs's wife, Debbie Nay Debbie Sigura, Debbie Sigura Dobbs Nay
(22:34):
CNN sportscaster Debbie Sigura Nay CNN sportscaster Debbie Siegura, who
had to leave town one day in a big hurry
forty two years ago this summer, so CNN had to
try out a radio sportscaster with no TV experience. Me.
All I know about today's Debbie story is the subpoena
demands a vast array of documents and communications from September
(22:56):
twenty twenty through April twenty twenty one. But I know
lots more about the day I had to fill in
for her. Up next in things I promised not to tell. First,
the daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning,
kruegerriffc specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The Bronze, the former Milwaukee sheriff, remember him, the idiot
(23:16):
and a cowboy hat that's like six sizes too big
for him. David Clark, he's now trying to get the
GOP nomination for the Senate from Wisconsin. And if you
need another reason to hate his stinking guts, Clark has
told a conservative radio show that everybody needs to stop
with the self righteousness about the Saudi government killing Jamal
Koshogi of the Washington Post because, says fewer Clark, Kashoki
(23:41):
wasn't a journalist, just a writer, and that Kashoki was
quote playing the terrorist side and the American side unquote.
Just remember these are the Saudis who also just bought
American golf out from under this country. The Bronze Kurt Shilling,
the only man who's talked himself off the Philadelphia Phillies
at the beast of his teammates, then talked himself out
(24:03):
of Major League base then talked himself out of government
supported video games, then talked himself out of baseball broadcasting,
then talked himself out of baseball broadcasting again, then talked
himself out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Apparently reduced
to drawing occasional checks from Glenn Beck's Blaze TV. What
did I say about Blaze TV? Flee Shilling went on
(24:27):
Fox to talk about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who
appeared at Dodger Stadium in LA on Friday night, and
basically he called for some sort of organized repression of
them while dancing around, actually suggesting it was time for
conservatives to start firing guns at the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence and other liberals. Shillings quote, you look at the guys,
(24:52):
the young men that signed the Constitution and all the
things that they sacrificed everything to come out from under
a tyrannical government. And then eventually, at some point there
was a man at conquered who decided he was going
to pull the trigger and finished school. And I feel
like We're getting back to a point where somebody's going
to have to pull a trigger, because everything we hold dear,
everything this country was founded on, is being just dragged
(25:14):
through the mud and mocked and made fun of. Shilling
then insisted he meant pulling the trigger metaphorically. Apart from
the really bad history there, who fired it conquered kids
signed the constitution anyway. A couple of additional things. Several
of Shilling's fellow fascists, like Ron DeSantis, saw video from
(25:35):
that pregame ceremony with the drag nuns at Dodger Stadium
Friday night, and they saw the sparse crowd in the video,
and they concluded their boycott of the Dodgers had worked
and the Dodgers are about to go out of business.
DeSantis said, quote, the virtually empty stadium for the game
itself was a powerful image. Unquote, he added, could you
lower the microphone. I'm a little short, except, of course,
(25:58):
that video and the crowd wasn't for the game itself,
It was an hour or an hour and a half beforehand.
The Friday out at Dodger Stadium is also always late arriving.
It's la There are freeways by the third inning. They
had the usual forty nine thousand fans at the game.
Nobody noticed the boycott. Rudy Giuliani said, don't go to
Dodger games. The Dodgers have decided to declare war on Christianity.
(26:21):
Forget the Dodgers. Rudy also says he's been boycotting the
Yankees since the Yankees supported Black Lives Matter. Yeah, he's
been boycotting the Yankees since they stopped giving him free tickets. Anyway,
back to Shilling, there's long been something wrong with his brain,
and after the Dodger Stadium thing, he made some more
threats against me on Twitter, although I don't think he
(26:42):
repeated his favorite one that if we ever meet, he's
going to beat the hell out of me. And the
reason I don't worry about Kurt Shilling is a Yeah,
he's eight years younger than I am, but I'm bigger
than he is, and more importantly be We met in
nineteen ninety three when he was pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies.
Kurt told me what a fan of mine he was,
and he didn't remember that and c We met again
(27:06):
in nineteen ninety seven when I was the host of
the World Series telecasts on NBC, and he was traveling
with us with Barry Larkin on NBC's first online World
Series team. We traveled together for a week. I gave
him a lot of broadcasting advice and he thanked me
for it. He doesn't remember that either, and then d
We met another time in two thousand and seven when
I sat on the Red Sox bench during the spring
(27:28):
training game, and he told me he hated my politics
but was still a fan of my sports casting. So
if we ever do meet for the fourth time, I've
got a feeling Kurt Shilling will not know who I am,
and for that matter, he won't know who he is.
But our winner Jesse Waters, whose Fox hate fest Shilling
was on when he said all that conquered and trigger crab.
(27:50):
You know Waters, he's the diet version of Hannity, only
has the chia pet hair. He was nice enough to
share a solution to the homelessness problem, quoting Jesse Waters,
you have to stigmatize them, you have to call them
what they are. These some of the people that have
failed in life and they're on their deathbed unquote gosh,
a little Jesse failed in life and are on their deathbed.
(28:13):
I thought that was the Fox News primetime lineup, Jesse.
And by the way, his grandfather published Better Homes and Gardens,
So maybe that chia pet thing might be literally correct.
Waters Today's worst fison in the World just ahead. I
(28:42):
really don't know why Lou Dobbs's wife, Debbie has reportedly
been subpoened in the smartmatic voting machines lawsuit against Dobbs
and Bartiromo and Giuliani and Piro and Fox. But looks
like she has. Maybe while they're questioning her, they can
ask her about the last time Lou got her in
trouble and it led directly to the start of my
TV career. Thanks Lou, Thanks Debbie. Next. First, in each
(29:05):
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its day. I did not
intend this to be only about the dogs on the
kill list at the New York Pound, but the wheels
have come off. They're dozens of dogs, dozens, and if
they are sick or scared, forget it. Dior is a
three year old grayish tan pity fifty five pounds, great
(29:26):
with people in kids, I mean two year old kids.
She likes cats, she doesn't like dogs, affectionate, well behaved
at home facing death now because a couple broke up
and they use Dior as a pawn in the breakup,
and now she has pneumonia and they're not really treating it.
She can be adopted right now, or she needs a
rescue asap. So I need your pledges to help cover
(29:47):
the rescue's expenses. Look for Dior on my Twitter feeds
pledge if you can, or just retweet her I thank
you and Dior thanks you. Lou da was rumored to
be stepping out on his wife. I went to work
(30:10):
at Cable News Network CNN, then just starting its second
year on the air on the morning of Monday, August third,
nineteen eighty one, because lou Dobbs was rumored to be
stepping out on his wife. On my first day, my
first interview was with Joe Torre, who is still a friend.
(30:30):
On my first day, I learned you have to take
the Lavalier microphone off your lapel before you walk away
from the camera. And on my first day, I learned
that if you are videotaping near airport radar, the cameraman
has to take steps to protect the camera, often with tinfoil.
(30:51):
Otherwise almost everything you record will have radar blips embedded
into it and be unusable. And I learned all this
all because Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife. So I was a radio sportscaster in
nineteen eighty one, twenty two years old, and having already
(31:11):
moved from the United Press International Network, which I've mentioned before,
where my boss was, as I've also mentioned before, Sam Rosen,
who has been the play by play man of the
New York Rangers for most of the forty one years since,
and I moved from working for him to the much
better paying RKO Radio network, where my boss was Charlie Steiner,
who still does play by play of the Los Angeles
(31:33):
Dodgers games. But two years into my radio career, I
had almost topped out salary wise, and my ambitions had
always been to do TV anyway, I just wasn't sure
how to do it. Turned out my career was not
a question of my doing it. It was a question
of Lou Dobbs doing it. My alma mater, Cornell University,
(31:56):
had one of the best student radio stations in the world,
but the entire university offered one television course, and to
take it you had to rent the camera for fifty
dollars an hour, and it was black and white and
you needed three guys to lift it. So as well
as I had done starting in network radio in New
York straight out of college, I was somewhat stymied ree TV.
(32:20):
One local news director offered me the chance to have
a kind of audition at his station, but that never
worked out. The lou Dobbs thing worked out. I actually
interviewed with Cable News Network twice, once in April nineteen
eighty when they were not on the air yet, and
I saw no reason they ever would be. Because the
New York bureau consisted of one coffee table, one coffee machine,
(32:43):
one stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief,
Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there, CNN
Sports president Bill McPhail up from Atlanta, was visiting, so
it was technically two staffers. After a long year, my
phone rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill
(33:04):
in for two weeks in two weeks for their New
York sports reporter. She was going on vacation August third, sooner.
McPhail added, if the baseball strike ended before then, her
name was Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation.
Turned out it was part vacation, part get out of
town quickly, very very quickly. See when CNN started, it
(33:27):
wasn't just news, news and commentary and opinion shows. There
was a half hour business show every night, and a
half hour sports cast at seven point thirty and another
one at eleven, and a fashion program, and hourly stock
reports and meteorologists and short sports casts. And the business
anchor based in the New York bureau in the World
(33:50):
Trade Center was Lou Dobbs, and as the producer they
had sent up to work with me. Phil Griffin later,
the president of MSNBC, explained to me when we got
in the car to go out to Shaye Stadium to
interview all those Mets guys forty two years ago, Lou
Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out on his wife
with the CNN New York sports reporter, Debbie and missus
(34:14):
Dobbs had found out, and there was even another rumor
there was somebody else who also worked in the CNN
New York bureau and thus Bill mcphale's hurried call asking
me to fill in for her for two weeks. In
two weeks because she was going on quote vacation unquote.
Dobbs and the first missus Dobbs eventually split, but apparently
(34:37):
the ill will persisted. Everybody decided it would be better
off for all concerned if Dobbs and Debbie Sigura, or
she was then called behind her back Debbie does Dobbs
if all of them and most of the New York
Bureau business staff moved to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. This
left New York without a sports reporter, and they tried
(34:58):
another one of the Atlanta anchors for a while, but
they kept giving him extra vacation time, so they would
have to bring me in freelance every month, and finally
the following March they offered me the job full time.
And I have not earned an honest paycheck since, and
I mean that in two ways. They were paying me
five hundred dollars a week, which was about forty percent
less than what I made for like three days a
(35:21):
week in radio. I pointed this out acceptingly. I was
learning how to do TV while on TV and getting
paid for it, and that's when they told me that
five hundred dollars a week was already more than they
were paying Debbie Sigura or the guy who was their
reporter in Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the president,
(35:43):
called and offered me a contract for twenty five grand
and I said, wait, that's less. Why would it take less?
Is there health insurance or something? And he said no,
there's just security. And I said, I'd rather have the
thousand dollars you just cut out of my salary, and
they found it somewhere. But they always reminded me how
(36:05):
generous they'd been and how many meetings they'd had to
have just to get me the thousand dollars back. I
didn't have to do much with Dobbs in New York,
but there is something about TV. Either it's a really
small world or the people in it will do anything
to stay in it. I might be an example of
the latter. When Dobbs moved to Atlanta, the guy who
(36:28):
stepped up to become CNN's number one business reporter in
New York was named Stuart Varney, and he was great
to me. One night, our sports producer in Atlanta call
up around five and said congratulations, you get to do
a commentary on the seven tonight And I croaked what
and she said, yeah, you'll do it live. And I said,
(36:48):
I have no idea how to read a teleprompter, and
she said, better learn fast click, and I told Stu
and he taught me how to use a teleprompter in
like ten minutes, and I was always grateful. And then
he had some sort of religious conversion or a hit
his head on something or both, and he's still one
of the most virulent fascists on Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs
(37:12):
and Debbie got married and lou settled in and as
part of the deal, Debbie Siguri Dobbs became a CNN
sports anchor in Atlanta. Except while she could get through
those short three or four minutes sports updates she used
to do in New York, which I inherited during the
longer half hour and hour long shows, she could not
read the prompter to save her life. About two months
(37:36):
into her time in Atlanta came the night she got
so lost in the teleprompter that about twenty minutes in
she got up and left the studio. Her boss by
this point, my boss, Bill McPhail, had to take her
off the longer shows and return her to doing those
three minute updates in the middle of the afternoon. She
(37:57):
was secretly relieved her husband, Lou Dobbs, who started my
TV career because he was rumored to be stepping out
on his first wife. He was not relieved. He promptly
went into Bill mcphie's office and challenged him to a fistfight.
I have looked this up on the internet. The day
this happened, Lou Dobbs was thirty six years old and
(38:19):
Bill McPhail was sixty one. Debbie's TV career ended not
long after as mine began. She went into horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately,
she and Dobbs made it back to the New York Bureau.
I worked with him again in two thousand and one.
Two He deteriorated into a running joke spewing anti immigrant
(38:42):
and anti Latino bile while she raised their family in
New Jersey and the rest of us marveled that Lou
and his Latino family made millions off his anti Latino bile.
Jersey was where Debbie Sigura Dobbs was On Tuesday January
twenty second, two thousand and three, when she tried to
board a flight for Florida at Newark Airport and a
(39:03):
TSA agent found a loaded gun in her handbag. She
was arrested, released on bail. I never did hear what
happened to that charge. It carried the possibility of prison
that clearly did not happen. Can't find anything in the
newspaper archives or anywhere online. But Dobbs later explained the
whole thing. It was all a misunderstanding. He said that
(39:25):
loaded gun had been in his wife's handbag since the
previous autumn, and she'd just forgotten about it. Although exactly
what that explained I still haven't figured out. I've done
(39:50):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(40:12):
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN, inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and ninety fifth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
(40:35):
United States. Arrest him now while we still can again.
The next schedule countdown is tomorrow till then on Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(40:57):
Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
am beginning to believe that we may have wildly underestimated
(00:26):
how many more things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump.
Four Could the Special Council in fact be preparing now
to indict Trump for illegally pressuring Mike Pence. There is
reason today to believe that the number of new separate
(00:46):
indictments of Trump by Smith could be as many as four,
maybe even five, Based on both reporting and analysis by
the people who have been right so far, the general
consensus seem to have been there would be two new ones. First,
the fake Elector's schemes, since there were fake electors seen
entering the court building house a the Special Council's Washington
Grand Jury that almost exactly the same moment that Smith
(01:09):
was announcing the document's case in Miami ten days ago.
There has also been consistent dribbing and drabbing coming out
of what appears to be a very serious Smith investigation
of what at first seems like an almost sidebar to
that part of the Trump massive coup plan. The gradual
assembling of evidence that when Trump made his desperate pleas
to the yokels, in November and December twenty twenty to
(01:31):
raise funds to fight the stolen election. He knew, damn
well and acknowledged, damn well, it was not a stolen election,
and thus all that fundraising was fraud. That January sixth
fraud stuff was puzzling in a way because while it's
like tax evasion, fraud is easier to prove than say,
(01:52):
an intricate plot to overthrow the government using stochastic terrorism
and deniable incitements of mobs and milities. It did seem
a little off the point. Do not get me wrong here.
If they can jail tru forever based on stealing box
cars full of gold rustolium that he sprayed on his head, fine,
(02:12):
Still there is a sadness about this. He tried to
overthrow the democracy. We need to put him on trial
for trying to overthrow the democracy. Well, we may yet
do so. Ryan Goodman from Just Security, when I cite
here frequently, even though I don't know him, and only
because he knows his stuff, told the Bill Crystal podcast
(02:34):
that he thinks Jack Smith is quote going to indict
Trump for the false slate of Elector's scheme, and with
Goodman adding that the odds Fannie Willis indicts on false
electors and election interference in Georgia are at ninety percent.
Trump could then face twin federal and state cases on
overlapping topics. And then Goodman added something that took my
(02:54):
breath away, indicting Trump for false electors quote and quite
probably possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence. Wait what
Goodman sends The odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump about
Pence at sixty to seventy percent. Pressuring the vice president,
(03:16):
Goodman says, quoting him again, is independent of whether or
not he Trump thought he won the election. He can
think he won the election, doesn't matter. But you can't
try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties,
which is just to count the votes. Goodman does not
mention this, but you will remember that Stuart Rhodes and
(03:36):
some of the other oathkeepers were prosecuted for and convicted
of interfering with Congress's ability to complete its legal duties.
Ponder for just a moment the prospect the eternal carnival
of Smith indicting Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination,
for attempting to course Pence, who is running for the
(03:58):
Republican nomination, oh and necessarily having Pence testify against Trump
either before Trump is nominated or before the election. So
instead of two, that would be three separate prongs to
Smith's pursuit of Trump, four if you count the thirty
seven documents indictments already brought documents stolen election fundraising, fraud
(04:18):
January sixth, false electors January sixth, pressure campaign against Mike Pence.
Goodman also does not see the January sixth stuff waiting
out in the hall. According again, I think it's very
likely that the Special Council indicts him about January sixth
in the summer. He wants to do it by the
summer to avoid doing it much later. And if that
(04:41):
is not enough to chew on. Goodman thinks the odds
are fifty to fifty that Smith will further expand the
case against Trump on the stolen documents and add further
charges to it, but not in Florida. As I've noted before,
Goodman notes that the charging document released to the public
concurrent with the indictments in Miami was very specific about
the crimes Trump had committed and the individual events The
(05:03):
Florida charging document references the dissemination of defense information to
people not authorized to see it, and refers explicitly to
both the classified map Trump showed people and that Mark
Millie military plan for war on Iran, the stuff Trump
is caught on tape going over with the Mark Meadows ghostwriters.
All of that stuff is in the Florida charging document
(05:26):
that has now been in circulation for ten days, but
there have been no charges about it. Goodman's explanation for
this anomaly is simple. Trump's crimes of stealing and keeping
the documents happened in Florida. Telling people what was in
the documents happened in New Jersey. So if Goodman is
right about Jersey and more documents and more charges, that's
(05:47):
four or five separate prosecutions, depending on your definitions. Documents
could theoretically just be considered parts A and B of
the same case. And if you're tired of one guy
speculating about one other guy speculating, good news everyone. There
is hard and firm information from Jack Smith in court
(06:08):
paperwork he filed last Friday in which he said that
a protective order needed to be placed on anything produced
by the legal discovery conducted by the Trump team, because
the stuff found in discovery would contain information about quote
ongoing investigations that could quote identify uncharged individuals, Mark Meadows.
(06:32):
So there is no question Smith is still seeking new charges,
and obviously they are against Trump, and obviously he has
unrevealed witnesses. And we know from one of the flood
of New York Times reports, this one from about six
weeks ago, that Smith is still active on the subject
of Trump and things that happened in New Jersey. The
Times report from the beginning of May was that there
(06:54):
had been quote previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump organization
which sought records pertaining to Trump's dealings with a Saudi
backed professional golf bench known as Live Golf, which Trump
has so far dealt with not at Mari Lago or
his other golf courses, but at his Bedminster club in
New Jersey. Goodman didn't mention this. The Times didn't mention this.
(07:17):
Nobody's mentioned this. It is officially still inside the realm
of political science fiction. But if you want to ratchet
up the whole golf thing one more notch, you could,
as I previously have envisioned, Trump trading information to the
Saudis so that they would make the big Trump signs
on the golf course one square foot larger than originally
(07:37):
agreed to. You know he would, you know he would?
You know he would. There is also the gathering prospect
of Trump being hoist with his own petard. The Times
also noted that five separate statements inside the charging documents
are quotations from Trump during the lockher upstage of the
(07:58):
twenty sixteen presidential campaign. There is a belief among experts
in the field that these statements could all be introduced
as evidence at trial to show not that Hillary Clinton
was right, although that would be a pleasing side effect,
but that Trump knew exactly what the penalties were for
stealing boxes of defense information and classified documents. On the
(08:20):
subject of experts in the field, one of them has
now chewed up Trump and spit him out for the
second consecutive week. I have explained previously that my having
no use for William Barr is second generation. His father
arrived as the new headmaster of my prep school as
I graduated, and the bastard nearly bankrupted the place. But
(08:43):
like Ryan Goodman, Bill Barr is at least correct at
the moment. He was asked on Face the Nation yesterday
if he thinks Trump is a target specifically in January
sixth prosecutions. Quote. I'm actually starting to think they will
pull the trigger on that, Barr replied, and I would
expect it to be this summer unquote. Barr was also
(09:03):
asked if he had gotten any in side insight from
the Justice Department. He once ran and he refused to comment,
which is a strange thing to do if you have
not gotten inside insight. Barr also took some satisfying shots
at Trump. Quote, he will always put his own interests
and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including
the country's interests. No crap, Bill, that's Trump's physical or
(09:25):
emotional illness. He's like a nine year old, a defiant
nine year old kid who's always pushing the glass toward
the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop
him from doing it. It's a means of self assertion
and exerting his dominance over other people. Well, yes, Bill,
but six a defiant six year old child. For the
(09:48):
first time in years, there were two different Sunday News
interviews that may have contained actual news breadcrumbs, because Pence's
former chief of staff, Mark Short also went on one
of them, the one on Fox, and he brought up
another topic that had slipped through the cracks after it
had suddenly reappeared in the middle of a sexual abuse
suit against Rudy Giuliani. Short said, quote, one of the
(10:11):
most unseemly parts of the end of our administration was
the pardons Donald Trump gave to cocaine traffickers, to family members,
to people guilty of violent crimes. It was indefensible. Short
then added the money quote literally, people giving seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to lobbyists trying to get pardons unquote. Okay,
(10:35):
what's with that. Giuliani's alleged victim says his price to
take a pardon to Trump was two million, to be
split with Trump. Certainly like the prospective indictments on defrauding
his own cultists to raise money to solve a stolen
election that was not stolen. There's got to be a
money trail a mile long for Jack Smith on these
million dollar pardons. For crying out loud, there are three
(10:59):
other new morsels here to savor. Chris Christie suggested that
based on his days as a prosecutor, the likelihood is
two thirds of Jack Smith's case. Well, case says well
panoply of case says is still below the surface, witnesses evidence,
God knows what. Ryan Goodman jumped on that in the
(11:20):
Crystal podcast and asked a rhetorical question. That is absolutely fascinating.
That tape of Trump talking to Mark Meadow's ghostwriters describing
the secret Iran war plans. He cannot give them because
they're classified, but he will describe to them because he's
a compulsive talker. Goodman says, that's a tape in essence
(11:41):
of Trump narrating his own crimes as he commits them,
a confession in real time. More intriguingly, Goodman asks, what
happens if anyone of the dozens of top news organizations
pursuing this the political story, the foremost political story in
American history. What if one of those news organizations were
(12:02):
to get a copy of that tape, post it or
put it on television or on TikTok, Not a transcript,
but Trump's actual crime, in Trump's actual voice, as Trump
actually commits it. Party down. One thing we do know
(12:23):
is if that happens Trump's lawyers are not exactly poised
to stop the tape from being made public. She is
hardly the lead on the document's case, but they are
still letting Alina Haba make public appearances on Trump's behalf.
I guess on the theory that Christina Bob is even dumber.
(12:43):
Habba spoke to the throng outside the Miami courthouse. She
also went on a Breitbart show and said that before
there was a trial, quote, we need a fair opportunity
to depose people and see what their answers are to
some of the things we have questions about. Haba said
she wanted people under oath explaining the raid, in other words,
(13:04):
the f search at Mary A Lago. It is quite
clear from that demand and that part just there about
a fair opportunity to depose people that this Habba is
under the impression that in a criminal case, the defendant
gets to take depositions from the prosecutors from the FBI.
(13:26):
I mean, I took one communications law class as a
junior in college forty six years ago this fall, and
even I know that criminal defendants don't get to cross
examine the Special Council. You could never tell Alina Habba
made her name in parking lot real estate law. Could
(13:47):
you so? Before the punchline? To all this the additional
comic relief, let's recap. Smith has charged Trump for mishandling
government documents in Florida. That's case one. He seems to
be on the verge of indictments on the phony fundraising scheme.
That would be case two, and Goodman is confident Smith
will also indict Trump on the fake elector slates. That
(14:08):
would be number three. He has added in the prospect
of a Smith indictment against Trump for trying to coerce
Mike Pence. That's four, and Goodman also thinks it's half
half that Smith will expand the document's case to include
illegal dissemination of defense information in New Jersey. And now, lastly,
the promised punchline, a quick peek into the parallel universe
(14:31):
in which Trump is completely innocent and he's being framed
and Joe Biden is going to resign by the end
of the week and then be jailed. Now, Rudy Giuliani says,
one of the key players in the reducts of the
Ukraine conspiracy that exists only in his viagra addled mind,
Barisma II Electric Boogaloo. That witness has died at the
(14:56):
same exact time Congressman Jamie Comer, who I think is
now beginning to regret fronting this story in which they
don't know if there's this source, and the source doesn't know,
if there's a whistleblower, and the whistleblower doesn't know, if
there's a foreign oligarch, and the foreign oligarch doesn't know
if there's seventeen audio tapes and some of them are dead.
(15:17):
I think Jamie Combers beginning to regret this, And if
he wasn't before, now he is now because his newest
Congressional Office disbursement filing has been made for the first quarter,
and it includes such thrillers as two hundred and forty
four dollars for janitorial services and fourteen dollars to Mailchimp.
And then there is the four hundred and forty five
(15:37):
bucks Comber's office paid to the Wooden Casket Company LLLC
of Tompkinsville, Kentucky. The purpose listed on the file is
habituation expense. So Jamie Comer's witnesses are dead, and Jamie
(15:58):
Comber's office has just bought a four hundred and forty
five dollars casket for somebody or something to live in
what comer's hopes of reelection. Also of interest here, Joe
Rogan could actually be the dumbest person on the planet,
(16:22):
the dumbest out of all of us. Rogan continues to
push this debate between RFK Junior and doctor Peter Hotez.
What exactly is this debate going to be about? That
Rogan has been wrong about everything all along, about vaccines
and in so doing he risked the lives of thousands
(16:45):
of people. And on the other hand, doctor Hotez has
you know, an actual job saving the lives of thousands
of people. I mean, what's the debate going to be about? Rogan?
You brain damage, bowling ball with shoes. What's the debate
going to be about? All the zombie you see? That's next?
(17:07):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
Dateline Charleston, South Carolina, Another week, another whole for Republican
(17:29):
presidential wanna be Nicki Haley to try to dig herself
out of she is trying to claim she did not
say that while governor of that state, she went from
defending the Confederate flag in public to supporting its removal
because when the mass murderer, Dylan Roof, issued a manifesto
showing himself posing with the Confederate flag, he quote hijacked
(17:50):
the flag's real meaning, which she said had been quote service,
sacrifice and heritage. Here is this guy, she told Blaze TV,
and pro tip if you ever find yourself on Blaze
TV the flea quote, here is this guy who comes
out with his manifesto holding the Confederate flag and had
(18:12):
just hijacked everything that people thought of. We don't have
hateful people in South Carolina. There's always the small minority
who are always going to be there. But people saw
it as service, sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that,
there was no way to overcome it. The former governor
has also denounced Barack Obama for she says, making minorities
(18:34):
feel like victims. But in her statement, though Miss Haley
says she is an example of a member of a
minority group who succeeded through her own hard work. She
refers to members of minority groups as quote them unquote,
I think we all know what's going on here and
we don't have to put a name on it. Dateline Austin, Texas,
where Joe Rogan and RFK Junior have teamed up. That
(18:56):
would be the bland leading the blind to demand that
the scientist and physician, doctor Peter Hotez debate them about
something something vaccines. I mean, what are they debating about?
Am I missing something? What is the debate Rogan and
RFK Junior want to have? How their predictions of mass
(19:18):
deaths from COVID vaccinations not only have not come true,
but we're only off by about oh approximately, rounding up
to the nearest number completely. How the vaccine worked so well,
How people who are vaccinated don't die from the COVID anything. No, no,
that's not it. How unlike what poor Kennedy keeps saying
(19:42):
about how vaccines are the only drugs that don't have
to be tested. I mean, they even got in a
significant test of the COVID vaccine before giving it to
the rest of us. I mean, what is the debate
about that Rogan is brain damaged, That RFK Junior is
a sick man. Do you know RFK Junior. I've known
him for twenty years because I questioned some of the
(20:03):
terrorism lockdown in Ohio during the two thousand and four
presidential election. He called me up. He told me I
was his hero, which is a startling thing to hear
from the son of Robert F. Kennedy. But since then
I have watched with deep sadness as his cheese has slowly,
but without interruption, slid completely off his cracker every day since.
(20:28):
Mark Cuban may have summed this nonsense up best quote, Joe,
you and Elon Musk's Twitter are the mainstream online media,
and your platforms have become everything supposedly wrong with MSM.
You are driven by self interest. Don't lie to yourselves
and all of us and tell us you are different.
You aren't. Unquote and jeez, Rogan, if you want to
(20:50):
debate debate another doctor about whether or not you should
get checked out right away for CTE. Thank you, Nancy
Faus Dateline the Pentagon. Yes, it's true. The military's equivalent
(21:14):
of the Secret Service is in fact protecting current and
former top ranking officers from quote, assassination, kidnapping, injury, or embarrassment.
Wait what kind of embarrassment? Smelly feet the website the
intercept uncovered an Army procurement document indicating that the Army's
(21:37):
Protective Services Battalion is protecting the brass from mean tweets
and other social media insults. Well, general, then don't dance
on TikTok, and they will not make fun of you
on TikTok. And there's one more half news, half worst
(22:10):
person's kind of story, and it's also a tease. The
Smart Maatic Companies two point seven billion dollar defamation lawsuit
against Fox and Maria Bartiromo and Rudy Giuliani and Janine
Piro and Lou Dobbs. Smart Mattic has now subpoenaed Lou
Dobbs's wife, Debbie Nay Debbie Sigura, Debbie Sigura Dobbs Nay
(22:34):
CNN sportscaster Debbie Sigura Nay CNN sportscaster Debbie Siegura, who
had to leave town one day in a big hurry
forty two years ago this summer, so CNN had to
try out a radio sportscaster with no TV experience. Me.
All I know about today's Debbie story is the subpoena
demands a vast array of documents and communications from September
(22:56):
twenty twenty through April twenty twenty one. But I know
lots more about the day I had to fill in
for her. Up next in things I promised not to tell. First,
the daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning,
kruegerriffc specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The Bronze, the former Milwaukee sheriff, remember him, the idiot
(23:16):
and a cowboy hat that's like six sizes too big
for him. David Clark, he's now trying to get the
GOP nomination for the Senate from Wisconsin. And if you
need another reason to hate his stinking guts, Clark has
told a conservative radio show that everybody needs to stop
with the self righteousness about the Saudi government killing Jamal
Koshogi of the Washington Post because, says fewer Clark, Kashoki
(23:41):
wasn't a journalist, just a writer, and that Kashoki was
quote playing the terrorist side and the American side unquote.
Just remember these are the Saudis who also just bought
American golf out from under this country. The Bronze Kurt Shilling,
the only man who's talked himself off the Philadelphia Phillies
at the beast of his teammates, then talked himself out
(24:03):
of Major League base then talked himself out of government
supported video games, then talked himself out of baseball broadcasting,
then talked himself out of baseball broadcasting again, then talked
himself out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Apparently reduced
to drawing occasional checks from Glenn Beck's Blaze TV. What
did I say about Blaze TV? Flee Shilling went on
(24:27):
Fox to talk about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who
appeared at Dodger Stadium in LA on Friday night, and
basically he called for some sort of organized repression of
them while dancing around, actually suggesting it was time for
conservatives to start firing guns at the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence and other liberals. Shillings quote, you look at the guys,
(24:52):
the young men that signed the Constitution and all the
things that they sacrificed everything to come out from under
a tyrannical government. And then eventually, at some point there
was a man at conquered who decided he was going
to pull the trigger and finished school. And I feel
like We're getting back to a point where somebody's going
to have to pull a trigger, because everything we hold dear,
everything this country was founded on, is being just dragged
(25:14):
through the mud and mocked and made fun of. Shilling
then insisted he meant pulling the trigger metaphorically. Apart from
the really bad history there, who fired it conquered kids
signed the constitution anyway. A couple of additional things. Several
of Shilling's fellow fascists, like Ron DeSantis, saw video from
(25:35):
that pregame ceremony with the drag nuns at Dodger Stadium
Friday night, and they saw the sparse crowd in the video,
and they concluded their boycott of the Dodgers had worked
and the Dodgers are about to go out of business.
DeSantis said, quote, the virtually empty stadium for the game
itself was a powerful image. Unquote, he added, could you
lower the microphone. I'm a little short, except, of course,
(25:58):
that video and the crowd wasn't for the game itself,
It was an hour or an hour and a half beforehand.
The Friday out at Dodger Stadium is also always late arriving.
It's la There are freeways by the third inning. They
had the usual forty nine thousand fans at the game.
Nobody noticed the boycott. Rudy Giuliani said, don't go to
Dodger games. The Dodgers have decided to declare war on Christianity.
(26:21):
Forget the Dodgers. Rudy also says he's been boycotting the
Yankees since the Yankees supported Black Lives Matter. Yeah, he's
been boycotting the Yankees since they stopped giving him free tickets. Anyway,
back to Shilling, there's long been something wrong with his brain,
and after the Dodger Stadium thing, he made some more
threats against me on Twitter, although I don't think he
(26:42):
repeated his favorite one that if we ever meet, he's
going to beat the hell out of me. And the
reason I don't worry about Kurt Shilling is a Yeah,
he's eight years younger than I am, but I'm bigger
than he is, and more importantly be We met in
nineteen ninety three when he was pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies.
Kurt told me what a fan of mine he was,
and he didn't remember that and c We met again
(27:06):
in nineteen ninety seven when I was the host of
the World Series telecasts on NBC, and he was traveling
with us with Barry Larkin on NBC's first online World
Series team. We traveled together for a week. I gave
him a lot of broadcasting advice and he thanked me
for it. He doesn't remember that either, and then d
We met another time in two thousand and seven when
I sat on the Red Sox bench during the spring
(27:28):
training game, and he told me he hated my politics
but was still a fan of my sports casting. So
if we ever do meet for the fourth time, I've
got a feeling Kurt Shilling will not know who I am,
and for that matter, he won't know who he is.
But our winner Jesse Waters, whose Fox hate fest Shilling
was on when he said all that conquered and trigger crab.
(27:50):
You know Waters, he's the diet version of Hannity, only
has the chia pet hair. He was nice enough to
share a solution to the homelessness problem, quoting Jesse Waters,
you have to stigmatize them, you have to call them
what they are. These some of the people that have
failed in life and they're on their deathbed unquote gosh,
a little Jesse failed in life and are on their deathbed.
(28:13):
I thought that was the Fox News primetime lineup, Jesse.
And by the way, his grandfather published Better Homes and Gardens,
So maybe that chia pet thing might be literally correct.
Waters Today's worst fison in the World just ahead. I
(28:42):
really don't know why Lou Dobbs's wife, Debbie has reportedly
been subpoened in the smartmatic voting machines lawsuit against Dobbs
and Bartiromo and Giuliani and Piro and Fox. But looks
like she has. Maybe while they're questioning her, they can
ask her about the last time Lou got her in
trouble and it led directly to the start of my
TV career. Thanks Lou, Thanks Debbie. Next. First, in each
(29:05):
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its day. I did not
intend this to be only about the dogs on the
kill list at the New York Pound, but the wheels
have come off. They're dozens of dogs, dozens, and if
they are sick or scared, forget it. Dior is a
three year old grayish tan pity fifty five pounds, great
(29:26):
with people in kids, I mean two year old kids.
She likes cats, she doesn't like dogs, affectionate, well behaved
at home facing death now because a couple broke up
and they use Dior as a pawn in the breakup,
and now she has pneumonia and they're not really treating it.
She can be adopted right now, or she needs a
rescue asap. So I need your pledges to help cover
(29:47):
the rescue's expenses. Look for Dior on my Twitter feeds
pledge if you can, or just retweet her I thank
you and Dior thanks you. Lou da was rumored to
be stepping out on his wife. I went to work
(30:10):
at Cable News Network CNN, then just starting its second
year on the air on the morning of Monday, August third,
nineteen eighty one, because lou Dobbs was rumored to be
stepping out on his wife. On my first day, my
first interview was with Joe Torre, who is still a friend.
(30:30):
On my first day, I learned you have to take
the Lavalier microphone off your lapel before you walk away
from the camera. And on my first day, I learned
that if you are videotaping near airport radar, the cameraman
has to take steps to protect the camera, often with tinfoil.
(30:51):
Otherwise almost everything you record will have radar blips embedded
into it and be unusable. And I learned all this
all because Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife. So I was a radio sportscaster in
nineteen eighty one, twenty two years old, and having already
(31:11):
moved from the United Press International Network, which I've mentioned before,
where my boss was, as I've also mentioned before, Sam Rosen,
who has been the play by play man of the
New York Rangers for most of the forty one years since,
and I moved from working for him to the much
better paying RKO Radio network, where my boss was Charlie Steiner,
who still does play by play of the Los Angeles
(31:33):
Dodgers games. But two years into my radio career, I
had almost topped out salary wise, and my ambitions had
always been to do TV anyway, I just wasn't sure
how to do it. Turned out my career was not
a question of my doing it. It was a question
of Lou Dobbs doing it. My alma mater, Cornell University,
(31:56):
had one of the best student radio stations in the world,
but the entire university offered one television course, and to
take it you had to rent the camera for fifty
dollars an hour, and it was black and white and
you needed three guys to lift it. So as well
as I had done starting in network radio in New
York straight out of college, I was somewhat stymied ree TV.
(32:20):
One local news director offered me the chance to have
a kind of audition at his station, but that never
worked out. The lou Dobbs thing worked out. I actually
interviewed with Cable News Network twice, once in April nineteen
eighty when they were not on the air yet, and
I saw no reason they ever would be. Because the
New York bureau consisted of one coffee table, one coffee machine,
(32:43):
one stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief,
Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there, CNN
Sports president Bill McPhail up from Atlanta, was visiting, so
it was technically two staffers. After a long year, my
phone rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill
(33:04):
in for two weeks in two weeks for their New
York sports reporter. She was going on vacation August third, sooner.
McPhail added, if the baseball strike ended before then, her
name was Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation.
Turned out it was part vacation, part get out of
town quickly, very very quickly. See when CNN started, it
(33:27):
wasn't just news, news and commentary and opinion shows. There
was a half hour business show every night, and a
half hour sports cast at seven point thirty and another
one at eleven, and a fashion program, and hourly stock
reports and meteorologists and short sports casts. And the business
anchor based in the New York bureau in the World
(33:50):
Trade Center was Lou Dobbs, and as the producer they
had sent up to work with me. Phil Griffin later,
the president of MSNBC, explained to me when we got
in the car to go out to Shaye Stadium to
interview all those Mets guys forty two years ago, Lou
Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out on his wife
with the CNN New York sports reporter, Debbie and missus
(34:14):
Dobbs had found out, and there was even another rumor
there was somebody else who also worked in the CNN
New York bureau and thus Bill mcphale's hurried call asking
me to fill in for her for two weeks. In
two weeks because she was going on quote vacation unquote.
Dobbs and the first missus Dobbs eventually split, but apparently
(34:37):
the ill will persisted. Everybody decided it would be better
off for all concerned if Dobbs and Debbie Sigura, or
she was then called behind her back Debbie does Dobbs
if all of them and most of the New York
Bureau business staff moved to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. This
left New York without a sports reporter, and they tried
(34:58):
another one of the Atlanta anchors for a while, but
they kept giving him extra vacation time, so they would
have to bring me in freelance every month, and finally
the following March they offered me the job full time.
And I have not earned an honest paycheck since, and
I mean that in two ways. They were paying me
five hundred dollars a week, which was about forty percent
less than what I made for like three days a
(35:21):
week in radio. I pointed this out acceptingly. I was
learning how to do TV while on TV and getting
paid for it, and that's when they told me that
five hundred dollars a week was already more than they
were paying Debbie Sigura or the guy who was their
reporter in Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the president,
(35:43):
called and offered me a contract for twenty five grand
and I said, wait, that's less. Why would it take less?
Is there health insurance or something? And he said no,
there's just security. And I said, I'd rather have the
thousand dollars you just cut out of my salary, and
they found it somewhere. But they always reminded me how
(36:05):
generous they'd been and how many meetings they'd had to
have just to get me the thousand dollars back. I
didn't have to do much with Dobbs in New York,
but there is something about TV. Either it's a really
small world or the people in it will do anything
to stay in it. I might be an example of
the latter. When Dobbs moved to Atlanta, the guy who
(36:28):
stepped up to become CNN's number one business reporter in
New York was named Stuart Varney, and he was great
to me. One night, our sports producer in Atlanta call
up around five and said congratulations, you get to do
a commentary on the seven tonight And I croaked what
and she said, yeah, you'll do it live. And I said,
(36:48):
I have no idea how to read a teleprompter, and
she said, better learn fast click, and I told Stu
and he taught me how to use a teleprompter in
like ten minutes, and I was always grateful. And then
he had some sort of religious conversion or a hit
his head on something or both, and he's still one
of the most virulent fascists on Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs
(37:12):
and Debbie got married and lou settled in and as
part of the deal, Debbie Siguri Dobbs became a CNN
sports anchor in Atlanta. Except while she could get through
those short three or four minutes sports updates she used
to do in New York, which I inherited during the
longer half hour and hour long shows, she could not
read the prompter to save her life. About two months
(37:36):
into her time in Atlanta came the night she got
so lost in the teleprompter that about twenty minutes in
she got up and left the studio. Her boss by
this point, my boss, Bill McPhail, had to take her
off the longer shows and return her to doing those
three minute updates in the middle of the afternoon. She
(37:57):
was secretly relieved her husband, Lou Dobbs, who started my
TV career because he was rumored to be stepping out
on his first wife. He was not relieved. He promptly
went into Bill mcphie's office and challenged him to a fistfight.
I have looked this up on the internet. The day
this happened, Lou Dobbs was thirty six years old and
(38:19):
Bill McPhail was sixty one. Debbie's TV career ended not
long after as mine began. She went into horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately,
she and Dobbs made it back to the New York Bureau.
I worked with him again in two thousand and one.
Two He deteriorated into a running joke spewing anti immigrant
(38:42):
and anti Latino bile while she raised their family in
New Jersey and the rest of us marveled that Lou
and his Latino family made millions off his anti Latino bile.
Jersey was where Debbie Sigura Dobbs was On Tuesday January
twenty second, two thousand and three, when she tried to
board a flight for Florida at Newark Airport and a
(39:03):
TSA agent found a loaded gun in her handbag. She
was arrested, released on bail. I never did hear what
happened to that charge. It carried the possibility of prison
that clearly did not happen. Can't find anything in the
newspaper archives or anywhere online. But Dobbs later explained the
whole thing. It was all a misunderstanding. He said that
(39:25):
loaded gun had been in his wife's handbag since the
previous autumn, and she'd just forgotten about it. Although exactly
what that explained I still haven't figured out. I've done
(39:50):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(40:12):
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN, inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and ninety fifth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
(40:35):
United States. Arrest him now while we still can again.
The next schedule countdown is tomorrow till then on Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(40:57):
Keith Olderman 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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