August 4, 2023 • 45 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 5: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: In a tradition as old as the nation itself, Trump has been indicted. The true headline is the accelerated timeline the Judge imposes. There can be no question they intend to begin this trial not just before the election but WELL before the election.
B-Block (19:29) IN SPORTS: The shut-up-and-dribble crowd forgets to shut up. The DeVos-owned NBA Orlando Magic donates $50,000 to a campaign arm of the racist, homophobic Ron DeSantis and the team players and ALL the NBA players rightfully go nuts. And Tiger Woods joins the PGA Board: will he save us from the Saudi takeover of golf, or collaborate with those who want to see The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Masters? (23:43) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump whore Mark Levin with an embarrassing flub, Tampa discovers "Dumpster Fire" is not always just a metaphor, and General Michael Flynn was trying to tweet something AGAINST child trafficking but wound up tweeting something that sounds like it's FOR child trafficking. We think that's what it is.
C-Block (29:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: If it's another indictment day I can only read you one of the master's works: he wrote it in 1931 when Donald wasn't even a gleam in Fred Trump's eye at an invigorating KKK rally. Yet it is the story: "The Greatest Man In The World."
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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. The
former President of the United States of America, Donald John
(00:25):
Trump has been indicted by the United States of America
on a series of felony charges, and he has pleaded
not guilty in federal court. Wait, who wrote this? We
did this story already, I swear last month, six weeks ago.
Maybe we did this can I got a producer in here.
(00:46):
It's some quality control so we don't get out of
date scripts again, Trump indicted. We did this story already,
Bill Murray Saturday Night Live Death of Pope John Paul
the first nineteen seventy eight. Sorry, had to there's a
point to this coming up. First. There are two headlines,
(01:10):
actual headlines from this one substantial one symbolic, and the
substantial one is really substantial. The timeline that the court
imposed and imposed is the exact word. They hit Trump
over the effing head with it. You've heard that phrase
from court's rocket docket. The judge demanded a brief from
(01:30):
Jack Smith's office proposing a trial date and its estimate
of how long the trial will take, and she wants
it Thursday, and then Trump's lawyers have to file a
response to that the Thursday after that, the seventeenth, and
the presiding jurist, the Judge Roy Bean of the January
sixth insurrection, Tanya Chutkin. We'll pick the trial date at
(01:52):
ten am August twenty eighth, that's three weeks from Monday.
Rocket docket. This is the Saturn five of schedules, the
Lunar thirteen of law, the javel and rocket of jurisprudence. Seriously,
there is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that Smith and
(02:14):
maybe even Merrick Garland have realized they are working against
the clock, and that democracy is working against the clock,
and that it is imperative to put him on trial
not just before the election, but well before the election.
That it was intriguing to see one of the CNN
analysts who has had pretty good sources on this. I
worked with her at NBC, Jamie Gangel, quote her contacts
(02:37):
as uniformly identifying the takeaway of indictment day as how
pared down and concise. This case against Trump is compared
to the now forty counts in Florida, and they all
took the same guess as to why to give the
judge and any other judges Trump tries to drag in
to mess up the timeline. Absolutely no excuse to not
(03:00):
start this trial asap, maybe even before the first of
the year. We can have no idea if Garland or
Smith or Trump or anybody else saw the polling on
this by Reuter's ipsos that came out yesterday, but it
is intriguing, if not conclusive. Forty five percent of Republicans
(03:21):
say they would not vote for Trump if he has
been quote convicted of a felony crime by a jury.
Forty five percent of Republicans. I'll caveat that. One they
say that now, and two they may be saying that
now because the assumption on the right is that Trump
canstall all these trials indefinitely. I really wonder if the
(03:43):
number would look different if the polling was done after
this Justice Express docket had been released. There was considerable
reporting from inside the Prettyman Courthouse that Trump looked really
honked off about something yesterday, especially compared to his demeanor
at the Florida arraignment. And a really good guess would
be this the court day, it's the SpaceX of sentencing.
(04:08):
That was the substantial headline, the symbolic one that photo
of Trump at the airport for the return flight to Bedminster,
New York, times alone getting out of just another suv,
looking down carrying his own umbrella, with a stunned expression
(04:30):
on his saggy face and looking like a sack of
wet spit, and his near incoherence in his brief statement,
unable to focus on himself for the first time in
his life, and instead going off on worldwide television about
how horrible the graffiti was in Washington, and knowing he
(04:55):
had blown it, suddenly remembering he was supposed to say,
this is a persecution of a political opponent. This was
never supposed to happen in America, by which, of course,
he meant this was never supposed to happen to him
in America, because he ran on persecuting his political opponent.
In twenty sixteen, he told Hillary Clinton to her face
(05:15):
at a debate that he would put her in prison,
and then as president, he tried to get the president
of Ukraine to fabricate evidence with which to persecute Joe Biden,
something his goblins on Capitol Hill like Jamie Comer and
Kevin McCarthy are still trying to do. And we're supposed
to forget that, and for once, with cameras rolling, Trump
could not pull off his only trick being martyred Trump
(05:39):
or fearless Trump or vengeful Trump or something Trump. He
came off as damp, limp chump Trump. And kudos to
CNN and MSNBC, among other networks for cutting away from
the live feed from the tarmac as dementia Jay started
(06:00):
to talk. Somehow somebody learned something. BBC News, sadly worldwide,
did not. They carried that nonsense live. On the other hand,
CNN also had a reporter in a car chasing the
Trump motorcade and who were duly rewarded with the audio
or the video going out on every hit from the
(06:20):
correspondent and the rest of the time they got a
shot of the car right ahead of them that Trump
also wasn't in notes from inside the Prettyman Courthouse. And
there are competing reports as to who stared Daggers at home,
and in fact whether Daggers were even stared. While The
New York Times insisted Trump never made eye contact with
(06:41):
Jack Smith's, CNN reported Smith stared at Trump or at
least won the staring contest. ABC reported that quote Trump
could be seen staring right towards Smith, knocking his clasped
hands on the table in a tense way. It's not
really news, of course, it was a tense way. He's
a psychopath. They get tents when the people who can
(07:02):
destroy them are not scared away their loud noises. Also,
Trump pleaded not guilty in his own voice, was asked
to confirm he understood he had the right to remain silent,
claimed he understood that. He doesn't understand that, And probably
the only unexpected development of the whole day came in
the traditional barrage of self pitying, self martyring social media
(07:25):
posts by Trump in which he spelled the word stolen
correctly sto just one l e M. World financial markets
crashed due to the result uncertainty among investors that there
was anything on this earth that could still rely on
(07:46):
two associated headlines. He may be only unindicted co conspirator
number two, but he's still unindicted sucker number one. John
Eastman still doesn't get it. As my old friend Steve
Bogart's dad said to Mary Astor, your take the fall.
(08:06):
Eastman's lawyer repeats, he's not flipping and he's not guilty.
Of anything, and they are sending prosecutors a memo. Oh good,
another Eastman memo, arguing that Eastman was acting quote as
an attorney advising a client that the advice was lawful
and that Eastman should not be indicted. Somebody needs to
wake them up and remind them. Trump's argument is that
(08:29):
he was listening to that advice and that he's not
guilty because Eastman is the other note. If you were
again disappointed by the lack of a mug shot of
the defendant, good news everyone. Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Lebat
has told The New York Times that if Trump is
indicted in Georgia, he would get treatment identical to any
(08:52):
other suspect being booked quote unless someone tells me differently.
The sheriff said, he plans to follow normal practices. We'll
have mugshots ready for you. Can I get one in
a size thirty eight by seven hundred and forty four
feet big picture. Year ago first episode of this series,
(09:17):
I suggested that the House January sixth committee obviously served
a real time purpose, but that ultimately didn't matter even
if it had really only been created exclusively for an
audience of one Merrick Garland sure enough huge traffic yesterday
on air and online about the Liz Cheney Committee, which
is how it will be remembered, even though she was
(09:38):
not the chair, Benny Thompson was. All of it was
deserved praise for the efforts and the straight line that
history will draw between what it did and yesterday's indictments.
And some of it went almost shockingly further than that
Congressman Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia, who has been in the
House exactly two hundred and fourteen days letter rip quote,
(10:01):
thank you, Speaker Pelosi for creating the House January sixth Committe.
If it were just up to the week and feckless
Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco, then today would have never happened.
It's only shocking because it's true, and that brings up
another point. If you're not old enough to appreciate this,
(10:24):
I apologize. But from the day John Glenn went up
in Friendship seven when I was three, until the night
when I was ten when Neil Armstrong got moondust all
over that nice clean spacesuit of his, there was a
building crescendo of excitement over the years as we got
closer and closer to the moon launch and the landing,
(10:45):
and then I just had to go look up online
who was on the mission between Armstrong and Aldron and
Collins on Apollo eleven that landed on the Moon and
got out, and Lovell, Hayes and Swigert driving home the
junk bus that was thirteen. I had no memory of
Apollo twelve. And that deflation of the excitement was by
(11:09):
all accounts universal in this country. And thus it is
sadly with Trump indictments. The silliness of the opening of
this episode. Notwithstanding, there was a point to it as valuable,
essential as yesterday was to our declining chances of preserving
representative government in this country. There was an astounding sense
(11:29):
of anti climax. We've seen this before. This time there
weren't even any interesting looking Trump lunatics outside and him,
as I said before, Wow, way to underdeliver. Donnie got
a roll of stamps and mail it in. That's because
obviously it is time to get off the pot and
(11:50):
put him in the can. I could not be happier
that the judges in Washington have decided to kick his
ass with this high speed calendar. But the secret value
to the high speed calendar is. It gives us frequent
changes to the narrative and the excitement levels to carry
us through to the next hearing. And we need that
as a nation to fight back against Trump till the
(12:13):
next hearing or maybe the next indictment Fani, maybe the
next indictment Jack, because as repetitive as some of these
are as spectacle, we want him so indicted that he
can't pass gas without violating a court order. We want
him so indicted. Wait, so indicted, so indicted. I feel
(12:38):
a song coming on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Oh Nancy, I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it.
I'm about to go to jail in America likes it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I'm so indicted.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
My defense he are tightened, and I know, I know
the unindicted co conspirators can bite it it, think you,
Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
We need to put out an album not of music.
I would like to point out that in a one
two week span, I anchored a presidential inauguration and the
super Bowl. There are related non Trump headlines to duck
(13:30):
in here and first on our quick trip to Shelbyville
and the Other America, and the lead story last night
at the Pretty Good barometer. That is the Washington Examiner,
not the Trump indictment, not even the Devon Archer transcript,
which they seem to have dismissed as the dud. It
was no this quote, Youngkin would beat Biden in Virginia.
(13:52):
New poll finds. Youngkin would beat Biden in Virginia, newpole
find If that name does not ring a bell, Youngkin
is the governor of Virginia who may yet step into
the grace once they send in Ron DeSantis's mommy to
go get him and bring him home, which could be today.
Ish quote came out Wednesday, I guess, but it only
(14:15):
started a steamroll yesterday. DeSantis cannot help himself and cannot
stop himself, and cannot save himself. On a tour of
New Hampshire, he issued the now standard, I ensure the
woke agenda ends up and then does been in history.
But then he added something new, And apparently this is
why they have him keep going back to woke, woke, this,
woke that, because when he tries something else, this happens.
(14:38):
As to federal bureaucracy and federal bureaucrats, Desantas said, quote,
We're going to start slitting throats on day one, you
realize how bad that is, even for fascists who relish
a good execution metaphor, that's just way too gory. That's
how bad it is. And be careful, Ronda, the throat
(15:01):
you slit may just have been your own doctor. Cornell West,
pissing away a career of service to this nation by
running on the let's elect Trump anyway platform turns out
to be just a little bit behind on the old taxes,
(15:21):
just five one hundred and forty three thousand dollars. The
Daily Beast could get no comment out of West or
his current campaign manager, Jill Stein. No, I'm not kidding.
(15:41):
Also of interest here, unless you saw this tweet, you
will never, never in a million years, correctly guess which
conservative tweeted one of the most horrifying Freudian slips of
all time. Quote, I highly encourage you to attend our
child trafficking training in Sarasota. God, that's next. This is countdown.
(16:11):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
This is sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
In sports Man, are sportspeople owning themselves lately? In droves?
In one case, it's folks from the usual shut up
and dribble crowd. Basketball's Orlando Magic, owned by members of
the infamous Devas family, taking huge heat from many quarters
because the franchise donated fifty thousand dollars the Czech says
(17:01):
Orlando Magic on it the donation was to an arm
of the Ron DeSantis campaign, right after DeSantis's latest anti
LGBTQ actions and contemporaneous with DeSantis's imbecilic remarks about how
slavery taught the slaves useful skills like blacksmithing. The Magic
(17:22):
then tried to claim that the team was not donating
to the campaign, but merely as a business to the
state of Florida. Then ownership claimed the check was written
before DeSantis had announced he was running, which is a
distinction without a difference, but also doesn't line up with
the date on the check. And now the Orlando Magic
have been sand blasted by the National Basketball Players Association
(17:46):
quote NBA governor's players and personnel have the right to
express their personal political views, including through donations and statements
the union rights and a press release. However, if contributions
are made on behalf of an entire team using money
earned through the labor of its employees. It is in
but upon the team governors to consider the diverse values
(18:08):
and perspectives of staff and players. The Magic's donation does
not represent player support for the recipient unquote, A very
salient point. What the NBAPA should do now, of course,
is donate some equal or larger amount to the Biden
campaign or one of the groups fighting DeSantis tyranny in Florida,
(18:30):
or I don't know, buy fifty thousand dollars worth of
banned books and hit them out to kids or anybody
really and do it on behalf of the Orlando Magic,
the players. And meanwhile, in golf, with the PGA Tour
selling out the sport in this country so the Saudis
can take it over completely and sportswash it's blood money
(18:53):
at events like the US Open and the Masters, that
would be the Prince Muhammad bin Salman Masters. Guess who
has been added to the PGA Tour policy boardd tiger Woods.
For tiger Woods, this is either a chance to redeem
his increasingly sketchy reputation or him making a complete sellout
(19:16):
of himself. We will see. Tiger Woods was one of
the leading opponents of the Saudi Trump Live Golf Tour,
which bought the PGA in June, and which has ever
since pretended that this is a partnership or a merger
with Woods. On the PGA board, actual players, actual golfers
now outnumber the non playing directors six to five, with
(19:37):
the twelfth member being the PGA's president. What it sounds
like is Tiger Woods to the rescue, stopping this farce,
which was engineered in large part by the PGA Commissioner
j Monahan. However, the first statement by Tiger Woods, in
fact his first statement since the Saudis bought the PGA,
(19:58):
Tiger praised Commissioner J. Monahan quote, we look forward to
being at the table with him to make the right
decisions for the future of the game. He has my
confidence moving forward with these changes. Uh oh, stell ahead
(20:29):
on Countdown Fridays with Thurber and with the latest arraignment
of Donald Trump. Collect the whole series. There can be
no better story to read you than Thurber's nostre damas
like writing of a story that's basically about Trump fifteen
years before Trump was born. The greatest man in the
(20:50):
world coming up first, It's time for the daily roundup
of the miss grants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The bronze
falsetto voiced Fox quote news unquote, screeching winer. Mark Levin,
one of the worst of the whores who will say
or claim anything to defend Trump, an unbelievably damaging figure
(21:14):
even in the right wing media. Bottomless pit of bus.
Levin's iron now is directed at Bill barr He's trying
to claim the former attorney general quote cooperated with Jack
Smith's office, whatever that means. Levin then wrote barr as
quote all over TV like a rectile dysfunction commercials, And
(21:36):
on a day when Trump finally spelled stolen correctly, Levin
misspelled dysfunction the disease, a rectiled dysfunction that has a Y.
He spelled it with an I, which tells you everything
you need to know about Mark Levin. The runners up
the residents of Tampa, Florida. Hello, not all of them,
(21:58):
mind you, but there is an epidemic there of what
might be the worst thing you could have an epidemic of,
other than like the rats we have here in the
New York City area. The worst thing, though, besides rats,
that you could have an epidemic of from a civic
pride and tourism standpoint, dumpster fires. In the last year,
(22:20):
Tampa has had more than twelve hundred dumpster fires. Not
metaphorical dumpster fires, not symbolic dumpster fires, not political dumpster fires,
not sports dumpster fires. Tampa dumpsters catching fire. What's worse.
(22:41):
This year there have been three so called hot load
dumpster fires in which the dumpsters catch fire spontaneously because
people have just thrown away with the regular trash, things
like lithium ion batteries and tanks of propane and electronics
and they just blowed up. They blowed up good, they
(23:01):
blowed up real good. So welcome to Tampa, City of
dumpster fires. But our winner, and yes there is a
segue here, General Michael Flynn. If you already thought he
was nuts, you ain't seen nothing yet. As you know,
Flynn went full QAnon and Pizzagate, and he sees invisible devils.
(23:24):
He did this a long time ago, so what he
was trying to tweet was understandable in the context of
his various manias. But the wording was I mean seriously. Generally,
you need to see a psychotherapist as quickly as possible.
I mean Freudian slips. I'm quoting him here on a
retweet of a link to one of these Holy Rollers
(23:44):
conventions in Florida on August seventeenth. You're ready, General Michael
Flynn in public quote, I highly encourage you to attend
our child trafficking training in Sarasota. Unquote. I'll just read
that quote again. I highly encourage you Flynn to attend
(24:05):
our child trafficking training in Sarasota. Boy Mike, child trafficking training.
Flynn two days worse worson and the world sit back
(24:41):
and relax, if relax is the right word for it.
For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber.
Looking back on it now from the vantage point of
nineteen forty one can only marvel that it had not happened.
Long before it did. The United States of America had
(25:02):
been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate Petard,
by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It
was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of
the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence background. And
character successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared
(25:23):
for aviators who stayed up for a long time or
flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for
national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen. So had
our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood
the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family,
(25:46):
and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of
their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale
marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights
of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound
to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven,
(26:09):
when Jack Pal smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small
garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a secondhand, single motored Presthaven
Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping.
(26:29):
Never before in the history of aviation had such a
flight as Smirchs even been dreamed of. No one had
even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks. Invention
of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles
Lewis Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When the
garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young man of
(26:53):
twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen
thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco,
and announced, nobody ain't seen no fly, And yet the
newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five
thousand mile flight. Aeronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea, curtly,
(27:17):
implying that it was a hoax, the publicity stunt. The rusty,
battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks
wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke. Smirch, however,
after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in
(27:38):
the flap folding department of a large paper box factory,
a girl whom he later described as his sweet Bitituty
climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable
seventh of July nineteen thirty seven. Spit a curve of
tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying
with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six
(28:02):
pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out over
the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all
seriousness that a man, unknown, young man whose name was
variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt
to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption,
(28:23):
trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster.
When nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny
plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York,
spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and
miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything
(28:43):
else off the front page. Even the shooting of the
Governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang, swelled to unprecedented size,
and the news stories began to run to twenty five
and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts
of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the
(29:06):
aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the
hero as a man were too meager, but because they
were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to
Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the ledge,
a little French coast town of ser Lee Lemaire to
dig up the story of the great man's life, had
(29:27):
promptly discovered that the story of his life could not
be printed. His mother, a sullen short order cook and
a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourists camping
ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son
with an angry and the hell with him a hoppy drowns.
His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing
(29:48):
spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother,
a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston,
Iowa Reformatory and was already wanted in several western towns
for the theft of money order blanks from post offices.
These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very
time that Pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century,
(30:12):
blear eyed, dead for sleep, half starved, was piloting his
crazy junk heap high above the region in which the
lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed
for New York and a greater glory than any man
of his time had ever known. The necessity for printing
(30:33):
some account in the papers of the young man's career
and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was,
of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous
popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung
up like a grass fire when he was halfway across
Europe on his flight around the globe. He was therefore
described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends,
(30:58):
popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken
at the wheel of a pony automobile in a cheap
photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so
that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer
was smoothed into a pleasant smile. The truth was in
(31:18):
this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did
not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared
by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that
the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits, had come
to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace.
(31:39):
Pal's smirch had the reporters discovered once knife the principle
of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but
he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in
the act of an stealing altar cloth from a church,
he had bashed the sexton over the head with a
pot of Easter lilies. For each of these offenses he
(32:01):
had served a sentence in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities,
both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an
understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring
disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot,
whose unheard of flight had aroused the civilized world to
(32:22):
hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the
character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight
of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the
world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to
cope with his own prodigious fame. I trust, said the
(32:44):
Secretary of State, at one of the many secret cabinet
meetings called to consider the national dilemma. I trust that
his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred
to missus Emma's Smirch's wish that her son might be drowned.
It was, however, too late for that Smirch had leaped
(33:04):
the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were
mill ponds. At three minutes after two o'clock on the
afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy
brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect
three point landing. It had, of course been out of
the question to arrange a modest little reception for the
(33:25):
greatest flier in the history of the world. He was
received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies
as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren and spent
hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane,
and was spirited from the field without having opened his
mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of
(33:48):
his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of
the Secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J.
Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governor's Fanamine Groves,
mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats.
Smirched not, in fact come two in time to take
part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for
(34:10):
the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing
home and confined in bed. It was nine days before
he was able to get up, or, to be more exact,
before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile, the greatest
minds in the country in solemn assembly, had arranged a
secret conference of city, state and government officials, which Smirch
(34:33):
was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in
the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the day that
the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up in
dress and for the first time in two weeks, took
a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to receive
the newspaper men this by way of testing him out.
(34:54):
Smirch did not wait for questions use guys he said,
and the Times Man winced, use guys can tell a
cock guide world. I put it over on Lindberg. See yeah, man,
an ass said, I'm two frogs. The two frogs was
a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers who,
(35:16):
in attempting a flight only halfway around the world, had
two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The Times
Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out
for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of
this kind. He explained that there should be no arrogant
statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of
(35:37):
foreign nations. Ah the hell with that, said Smirch. I
did it. See I did it, and I'm talking about it.
And he did talk about it. None of this extraordinary
interview was, of course printed. On the contrary, the newspapers,
already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created
(35:58):
for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave
out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as
he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only
that he was very happy, and that anyone could have
done what he did. My achievement has been I fear
slightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest with
(36:20):
a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from the hero,
a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising
malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed extremely grave
for Pale Smirch was, as he kept insisting, rare and
to go. He could not much longer be kept from
(36:42):
a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most
desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since
the sinking of Belusitania. On the afternoon of the twenty
seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference
room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists,
(37:03):
and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw
and a brief, unlovely grin, hi, he said. When Smirch
was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with
obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and
how he must act when presented to the world, ending
(37:23):
his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage
and integrity. The mayor was followed by Governor Fannerman of
New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced
Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris,
the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of
public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow
(37:46):
tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved,
smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer
on his lips. I get you, I get you, He
cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softie? Huh?
You want me to act like that nemy murmany baby
(38:06):
face lind big huh, well nuts to not see. Everyone
took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and
a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple
with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his
nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd. He exclaimed, Oh,
(38:29):
for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies
with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word
the room. Everyone stood up except Smirch, who was still
busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up.
Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States.
It had been thought that the presence of the chief
(38:49):
Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero,
and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation
of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room.
A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a
(39:10):
hand at the President. How are you coming, he asked,
and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone
coughed in a strained way. Jesus hot, ain't it, said Smirch.
(39:31):
He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest
and the tattooed word Sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart.
The great and important men in the room, faced by
the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns.
Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on, come on,
(39:54):
said Smirch, Let's get the hell out of here. Why
do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh? And
when is there gonna be this in it. He rubbed
a thumb and forefinger together meaningly. Money, exclaimed a state
senator shocked. Pale, Yeah, money, said pal, flipping his cigarette
(40:16):
out of the window. And big money. He began rolling
a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated. Frowning over the
rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and leered
at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal that
knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in
a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake, let's
(40:40):
get someplace where it's cool, he said. I've been cooped
up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and walked
over to an open window, where he stood staring down
into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting of
newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name,
hot dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over
(41:05):
the sill. You tell him, babies, he shouted down. Hut
diggity dog. In the tense little knot of men standing
behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken
word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room,
yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary
(41:27):
to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be
standing nearest smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of
the United States. The President, pale grim nodded shortly. Brand,
a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University,
stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by
his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and
(41:48):
pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out
the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out
of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side,
and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward
a side entrance of the building. The editor of the
Associated Press took charge, Being used to such things cris
he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay. Quickly.
He outlined a story which all the papers were to
(42:10):
agree on, sent two men to the street to handle
that end of the tragedy, commanded a senator to sob
and two congressmen to go to pieces nervously. In a word,
he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that
was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief
stricken world the sad story of the untimely accidental death
(42:32):
of its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was,
as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest,
and the saddest ever held in the United States of America.
The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft
of marble, then the simple device of a tiny plane
(42:56):
carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in
deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid
lofty tributes to little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At
a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout
the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town
(43:20):
of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of the
Department of Justice sought that one of them was especially
assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little
shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's camping ground
just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Missus
(43:42):
Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling
on her grill, bowed her head and turned away so
that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely
familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in the
(44:02):
World by Jane Eames Thurber. I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arrange produced and performed
(44:24):
by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who are the
countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, guitarist,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the oldrooman theme
from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren
(44:44):
Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss,
the best baseball stadium organist ever who accompanied me in
my song today. Our announcer today was my friend Tony Korneiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's
countdown for this the nine hundred and fortieth day since
Donald Trump's first attempted against the democratically elected government of
(45:06):
the United States arrest him again while we still can.
God knows there's more where that came from. The next
schedule Countdown is Monday bulletins as the news warrants till then.
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(45:27):
I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it. I'm
about to go to jail in America likes it. I'm
so indicted. My defense and they're.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Tidened, and I know, I know the unindicted co conspirators
can fight it.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
former President of the United States of America, Donald John
(00:25):
Trump has been indicted by the United States of America
on a series of felony charges, and he has pleaded
not guilty in federal court. Wait, who wrote this? We
did this story already, I swear last month, six weeks ago.
Maybe we did this can I got a producer in here.
(00:46):
It's some quality control so we don't get out of
date scripts again, Trump indicted. We did this story already,
Bill Murray Saturday Night Live Death of Pope John Paul
the first nineteen seventy eight. Sorry, had to there's a
point to this coming up. First. There are two headlines,
(01:10):
actual headlines from this one substantial one symbolic, and the
substantial one is really substantial. The timeline that the court
imposed and imposed is the exact word. They hit Trump
over the effing head with it. You've heard that phrase
from court's rocket docket. The judge demanded a brief from
(01:30):
Jack Smith's office proposing a trial date and its estimate
of how long the trial will take, and she wants
it Thursday, and then Trump's lawyers have to file a
response to that the Thursday after that, the seventeenth, and
the presiding jurist, the Judge Roy Bean of the January
sixth insurrection, Tanya Chutkin. We'll pick the trial date at
(01:52):
ten am August twenty eighth, that's three weeks from Monday.
Rocket docket. This is the Saturn five of schedules, the
Lunar thirteen of law, the javel and rocket of jurisprudence. Seriously,
there is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that Smith and
(02:14):
maybe even Merrick Garland have realized they are working against
the clock, and that democracy is working against the clock,
and that it is imperative to put him on trial
not just before the election, but well before the election.
That it was intriguing to see one of the CNN
analysts who has had pretty good sources on this. I
worked with her at NBC, Jamie Gangel, quote her contacts
(02:37):
as uniformly identifying the takeaway of indictment day as how
pared down and concise. This case against Trump is compared
to the now forty counts in Florida, and they all
took the same guess as to why to give the
judge and any other judges Trump tries to drag in
to mess up the timeline. Absolutely no excuse to not
(03:00):
start this trial asap, maybe even before the first of
the year. We can have no idea if Garland or
Smith or Trump or anybody else saw the polling on
this by Reuter's ipsos that came out yesterday, but it
is intriguing, if not conclusive. Forty five percent of Republicans
(03:21):
say they would not vote for Trump if he has
been quote convicted of a felony crime by a jury.
Forty five percent of Republicans. I'll caveat that. One they
say that now, and two they may be saying that
now because the assumption on the right is that Trump
canstall all these trials indefinitely. I really wonder if the
(03:43):
number would look different if the polling was done after
this Justice Express docket had been released. There was considerable
reporting from inside the Prettyman Courthouse that Trump looked really
honked off about something yesterday, especially compared to his demeanor
at the Florida arraignment. And a really good guess would
be this the court day, it's the SpaceX of sentencing.
(04:08):
That was the substantial headline, the symbolic one that photo
of Trump at the airport for the return flight to Bedminster,
New York, times alone getting out of just another suv,
looking down carrying his own umbrella, with a stunned expression
(04:30):
on his saggy face and looking like a sack of
wet spit, and his near incoherence in his brief statement,
unable to focus on himself for the first time in
his life, and instead going off on worldwide television about
how horrible the graffiti was in Washington, and knowing he
(04:55):
had blown it, suddenly remembering he was supposed to say,
this is a persecution of a political opponent. This was
never supposed to happen in America, by which, of course,
he meant this was never supposed to happen to him
in America, because he ran on persecuting his political opponent.
In twenty sixteen, he told Hillary Clinton to her face
(05:15):
at a debate that he would put her in prison,
and then as president, he tried to get the president
of Ukraine to fabricate evidence with which to persecute Joe Biden,
something his goblins on Capitol Hill like Jamie Comer and
Kevin McCarthy are still trying to do. And we're supposed
to forget that, and for once, with cameras rolling, Trump
could not pull off his only trick being martyred Trump
(05:39):
or fearless Trump or vengeful Trump or something Trump. He
came off as damp, limp chump Trump. And kudos to
CNN and MSNBC, among other networks for cutting away from
the live feed from the tarmac as dementia Jay started
(06:00):
to talk. Somehow somebody learned something. BBC News, sadly worldwide,
did not. They carried that nonsense live. On the other hand,
CNN also had a reporter in a car chasing the
Trump motorcade and who were duly rewarded with the audio
or the video going out on every hit from the
(06:20):
correspondent and the rest of the time they got a
shot of the car right ahead of them that Trump
also wasn't in notes from inside the Prettyman Courthouse. And
there are competing reports as to who stared Daggers at home,
and in fact whether Daggers were even stared. While The
New York Times insisted Trump never made eye contact with
(06:41):
Jack Smith's, CNN reported Smith stared at Trump or at
least won the staring contest. ABC reported that quote Trump
could be seen staring right towards Smith, knocking his clasped
hands on the table in a tense way. It's not
really news, of course, it was a tense way. He's
a psychopath. They get tents when the people who can
(07:02):
destroy them are not scared away their loud noises. Also,
Trump pleaded not guilty in his own voice, was asked
to confirm he understood he had the right to remain silent,
claimed he understood that. He doesn't understand that, And probably
the only unexpected development of the whole day came in
the traditional barrage of self pitying, self martyring social media
(07:25):
posts by Trump in which he spelled the word stolen
correctly sto just one l e M. World financial markets
crashed due to the result uncertainty among investors that there
was anything on this earth that could still rely on
(07:46):
two associated headlines. He may be only unindicted co conspirator
number two, but he's still unindicted sucker number one. John
Eastman still doesn't get it. As my old friend Steve
Bogart's dad said to Mary Astor, your take the fall.
(08:06):
Eastman's lawyer repeats, he's not flipping and he's not guilty.
Of anything, and they are sending prosecutors a memo. Oh good,
another Eastman memo, arguing that Eastman was acting quote as
an attorney advising a client that the advice was lawful
and that Eastman should not be indicted. Somebody needs to
wake them up and remind them. Trump's argument is that
(08:29):
he was listening to that advice and that he's not
guilty because Eastman is the other note. If you were
again disappointed by the lack of a mug shot of
the defendant, good news everyone. Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Lebat
has told The New York Times that if Trump is
indicted in Georgia, he would get treatment identical to any
(08:52):
other suspect being booked quote unless someone tells me differently.
The sheriff said, he plans to follow normal practices. We'll
have mugshots ready for you. Can I get one in
a size thirty eight by seven hundred and forty four
feet big picture. Year ago first episode of this series,
(09:17):
I suggested that the House January sixth committee obviously served
a real time purpose, but that ultimately didn't matter even
if it had really only been created exclusively for an
audience of one Merrick Garland sure enough huge traffic yesterday
on air and online about the Liz Cheney Committee, which
is how it will be remembered, even though she was
(09:38):
not the chair, Benny Thompson was. All of it was
deserved praise for the efforts and the straight line that
history will draw between what it did and yesterday's indictments.
And some of it went almost shockingly further than that
Congressman Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia, who has been in the
House exactly two hundred and fourteen days letter rip quote,
(10:01):
thank you, Speaker Pelosi for creating the House January sixth Committe.
If it were just up to the week and feckless
Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco, then today would have never happened.
It's only shocking because it's true, and that brings up
another point. If you're not old enough to appreciate this,
(10:24):
I apologize. But from the day John Glenn went up
in Friendship seven when I was three, until the night
when I was ten when Neil Armstrong got moondust all
over that nice clean spacesuit of his, there was a
building crescendo of excitement over the years as we got
closer and closer to the moon launch and the landing,
(10:45):
and then I just had to go look up online
who was on the mission between Armstrong and Aldron and
Collins on Apollo eleven that landed on the Moon and
got out, and Lovell, Hayes and Swigert driving home the
junk bus that was thirteen. I had no memory of
Apollo twelve. And that deflation of the excitement was by
(11:09):
all accounts universal in this country. And thus it is
sadly with Trump indictments. The silliness of the opening of
this episode. Notwithstanding, there was a point to it as valuable,
essential as yesterday was to our declining chances of preserving
representative government in this country. There was an astounding sense
(11:29):
of anti climax. We've seen this before. This time there
weren't even any interesting looking Trump lunatics outside and him,
as I said before, Wow, way to underdeliver. Donnie got
a roll of stamps and mail it in. That's because
obviously it is time to get off the pot and
(11:50):
put him in the can. I could not be happier
that the judges in Washington have decided to kick his
ass with this high speed calendar. But the secret value
to the high speed calendar is. It gives us frequent
changes to the narrative and the excitement levels to carry
us through to the next hearing. And we need that
as a nation to fight back against Trump till the
(12:13):
next hearing or maybe the next indictment Fani, maybe the
next indictment Jack, because as repetitive as some of these
are as spectacle, we want him so indicted that he
can't pass gas without violating a court order. We want
him so indicted. Wait, so indicted, so indicted. I feel
(12:38):
a song coming on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Oh Nancy, I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it.
I'm about to go to jail in America likes it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
I'm so indicted.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
My defense he are tightened, and I know, I know
the unindicted co conspirators can bite it it, think you,
Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
We need to put out an album not of music.
I would like to point out that in a one
two week span, I anchored a presidential inauguration and the
super Bowl. There are related non Trump headlines to duck
(13:30):
in here and first on our quick trip to Shelbyville
and the Other America, and the lead story last night
at the Pretty Good barometer. That is the Washington Examiner,
not the Trump indictment, not even the Devon Archer transcript,
which they seem to have dismissed as the dud. It
was no this quote, Youngkin would beat Biden in Virginia.
(13:52):
New poll finds. Youngkin would beat Biden in Virginia, newpole
find If that name does not ring a bell, Youngkin
is the governor of Virginia who may yet step into
the grace once they send in Ron DeSantis's mommy to
go get him and bring him home, which could be today.
Ish quote came out Wednesday, I guess, but it only
(14:15):
started a steamroll yesterday. DeSantis cannot help himself and cannot
stop himself, and cannot save himself. On a tour of
New Hampshire, he issued the now standard, I ensure the
woke agenda ends up and then does been in history.
But then he added something new, And apparently this is
why they have him keep going back to woke, woke, this,
woke that, because when he tries something else, this happens.
(14:38):
As to federal bureaucracy and federal bureaucrats, Desantas said, quote,
We're going to start slitting throats on day one, you
realize how bad that is, even for fascists who relish
a good execution metaphor, that's just way too gory. That's
how bad it is. And be careful, Ronda, the throat
(15:01):
you slit may just have been your own doctor. Cornell West,
pissing away a career of service to this nation by
running on the let's elect Trump anyway platform turns out
to be just a little bit behind on the old taxes,
(15:21):
just five one hundred and forty three thousand dollars. The
Daily Beast could get no comment out of West or
his current campaign manager, Jill Stein. No, I'm not kidding.
(15:41):
Also of interest here, unless you saw this tweet, you
will never, never in a million years, correctly guess which
conservative tweeted one of the most horrifying Freudian slips of
all time. Quote, I highly encourage you to attend our
child trafficking training in Sarasota. God, that's next. This is countdown.
(16:11):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
This is sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
In sports Man, are sportspeople owning themselves lately? In droves?
In one case, it's folks from the usual shut up
and dribble crowd. Basketball's Orlando Magic, owned by members of
the infamous Devas family, taking huge heat from many quarters
because the franchise donated fifty thousand dollars the Czech says
(17:01):
Orlando Magic on it the donation was to an arm
of the Ron DeSantis campaign, right after DeSantis's latest anti
LGBTQ actions and contemporaneous with DeSantis's imbecilic remarks about how
slavery taught the slaves useful skills like blacksmithing. The Magic
(17:22):
then tried to claim that the team was not donating
to the campaign, but merely as a business to the
state of Florida. Then ownership claimed the check was written
before DeSantis had announced he was running, which is a
distinction without a difference, but also doesn't line up with
the date on the check. And now the Orlando Magic
have been sand blasted by the National Basketball Players Association
(17:46):
quote NBA governor's players and personnel have the right to
express their personal political views, including through donations and statements
the union rights and a press release. However, if contributions
are made on behalf of an entire team using money
earned through the labor of its employees. It is in
but upon the team governors to consider the diverse values
(18:08):
and perspectives of staff and players. The Magic's donation does
not represent player support for the recipient unquote, A very
salient point. What the NBAPA should do now, of course,
is donate some equal or larger amount to the Biden
campaign or one of the groups fighting DeSantis tyranny in Florida,
(18:30):
or I don't know, buy fifty thousand dollars worth of
banned books and hit them out to kids or anybody
really and do it on behalf of the Orlando Magic,
the players. And meanwhile, in golf, with the PGA Tour
selling out the sport in this country so the Saudis
can take it over completely and sportswash it's blood money
(18:53):
at events like the US Open and the Masters, that
would be the Prince Muhammad bin Salman Masters. Guess who
has been added to the PGA Tour policy boardd tiger Woods.
For tiger Woods, this is either a chance to redeem
his increasingly sketchy reputation or him making a complete sellout
(19:16):
of himself. We will see. Tiger Woods was one of
the leading opponents of the Saudi Trump Live Golf Tour,
which bought the PGA in June, and which has ever
since pretended that this is a partnership or a merger
with Woods. On the PGA board, actual players, actual golfers
now outnumber the non playing directors six to five, with
(19:37):
the twelfth member being the PGA's president. What it sounds
like is Tiger Woods to the rescue, stopping this farce,
which was engineered in large part by the PGA Commissioner
j Monahan. However, the first statement by Tiger Woods, in
fact his first statement since the Saudis bought the PGA,
(19:58):
Tiger praised Commissioner J. Monahan quote, we look forward to
being at the table with him to make the right
decisions for the future of the game. He has my
confidence moving forward with these changes. Uh oh, stell ahead
(20:29):
on Countdown Fridays with Thurber and with the latest arraignment
of Donald Trump. Collect the whole series. There can be
no better story to read you than Thurber's nostre damas
like writing of a story that's basically about Trump fifteen
years before Trump was born. The greatest man in the
(20:50):
world coming up first, It's time for the daily roundup
of the miss grants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The bronze
falsetto voiced Fox quote news unquote, screeching winer. Mark Levin,
one of the worst of the whores who will say
or claim anything to defend Trump, an unbelievably damaging figure
(21:14):
even in the right wing media. Bottomless pit of bus.
Levin's iron now is directed at Bill barr He's trying
to claim the former attorney general quote cooperated with Jack
Smith's office, whatever that means. Levin then wrote barr as
quote all over TV like a rectile dysfunction commercials, And
(21:36):
on a day when Trump finally spelled stolen correctly, Levin
misspelled dysfunction the disease, a rectiled dysfunction that has a Y.
He spelled it with an I, which tells you everything
you need to know about Mark Levin. The runners up
the residents of Tampa, Florida. Hello, not all of them,
(21:58):
mind you, but there is an epidemic there of what
might be the worst thing you could have an epidemic of,
other than like the rats we have here in the
New York City area. The worst thing, though, besides rats,
that you could have an epidemic of from a civic
pride and tourism standpoint, dumpster fires. In the last year,
(22:20):
Tampa has had more than twelve hundred dumpster fires. Not
metaphorical dumpster fires, not symbolic dumpster fires, not political dumpster fires,
not sports dumpster fires. Tampa dumpsters catching fire. What's worse.
(22:41):
This year there have been three so called hot load
dumpster fires in which the dumpsters catch fire spontaneously because
people have just thrown away with the regular trash, things
like lithium ion batteries and tanks of propane and electronics
and they just blowed up. They blowed up good, they
(23:01):
blowed up real good. So welcome to Tampa, City of
dumpster fires. But our winner, and yes there is a
segue here, General Michael Flynn. If you already thought he
was nuts, you ain't seen nothing yet. As you know,
Flynn went full QAnon and Pizzagate, and he sees invisible devils.
(23:24):
He did this a long time ago, so what he
was trying to tweet was understandable in the context of
his various manias. But the wording was I mean seriously. Generally,
you need to see a psychotherapist as quickly as possible.
I mean Freudian slips. I'm quoting him here on a
retweet of a link to one of these Holy Rollers
(23:44):
conventions in Florida on August seventeenth. You're ready, General Michael
Flynn in public quote, I highly encourage you to attend
our child trafficking training in Sarasota. Unquote. I'll just read
that quote again. I highly encourage you Flynn to attend
(24:05):
our child trafficking training in Sarasota. Boy Mike, child trafficking training.
Flynn two days worse worson and the world sit back
(24:41):
and relax, if relax is the right word for it.
For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber.
Looking back on it now from the vantage point of
nineteen forty one can only marvel that it had not happened.
Long before it did. The United States of America had
(25:02):
been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate Petard,
by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It
was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of
the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence background. And
character successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared
(25:23):
for aviators who stayed up for a long time or
flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for
national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen. So had
our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood
the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family,
(25:46):
and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of
their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale
marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights
of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound
to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven,
(26:09):
when Jack Pal smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small
garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a secondhand, single motored Presthaven
Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping.
(26:29):
Never before in the history of aviation had such a
flight as Smirchs even been dreamed of. No one had
even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks. Invention
of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles
Lewis Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When the
garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young man of
(26:53):
twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen
thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco,
and announced, nobody ain't seen no fly, And yet the
newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five
thousand mile flight. Aeronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea, curtly,
(27:17):
implying that it was a hoax, the publicity stunt. The rusty,
battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks
wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke. Smirch, however,
after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in
(27:38):
the flap folding department of a large paper box factory,
a girl whom he later described as his sweet Bitituty
climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable
seventh of July nineteen thirty seven. Spit a curve of
tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying
with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six
(28:02):
pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out over
the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all
seriousness that a man, unknown, young man whose name was
variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt
to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption,
(28:23):
trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster.
When nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny
plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York,
spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and
miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything
(28:43):
else off the front page. Even the shooting of the
Governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang, swelled to unprecedented size,
and the news stories began to run to twenty five
and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts
of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the
(29:06):
aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the
hero as a man were too meager, but because they
were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to
Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the ledge,
a little French coast town of ser Lee Lemaire to
dig up the story of the great man's life, had
(29:27):
promptly discovered that the story of his life could not
be printed. His mother, a sullen short order cook and
a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourists camping
ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son
with an angry and the hell with him a hoppy drowns.
His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing
(29:48):
spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother,
a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston,
Iowa Reformatory and was already wanted in several western towns
for the theft of money order blanks from post offices.
These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very
time that Pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century,
(30:12):
blear eyed, dead for sleep, half starved, was piloting his
crazy junk heap high above the region in which the
lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed
for New York and a greater glory than any man
of his time had ever known. The necessity for printing
(30:33):
some account in the papers of the young man's career
and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was,
of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous
popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung
up like a grass fire when he was halfway across
Europe on his flight around the globe. He was therefore
described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends,
(30:58):
popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken
at the wheel of a pony automobile in a cheap
photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so
that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer
was smoothed into a pleasant smile. The truth was in
(31:18):
this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did
not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared
by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that
the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits, had come
to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace.
(31:39):
Pal's smirch had the reporters discovered once knife the principle
of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but
he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in
the act of an stealing altar cloth from a church,
he had bashed the sexton over the head with a
pot of Easter lilies. For each of these offenses he
(32:01):
had served a sentence in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities,
both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an
understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring
disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot,
whose unheard of flight had aroused the civilized world to
(32:22):
hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the
character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight
of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the
world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to
cope with his own prodigious fame. I trust, said the
(32:44):
Secretary of State, at one of the many secret cabinet
meetings called to consider the national dilemma. I trust that
his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred
to missus Emma's Smirch's wish that her son might be drowned.
It was, however, too late for that Smirch had leaped
(33:04):
the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were
mill ponds. At three minutes after two o'clock on the
afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy
brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect
three point landing. It had, of course been out of
the question to arrange a modest little reception for the
(33:25):
greatest flier in the history of the world. He was
received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies
as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren and spent
hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane,
and was spirited from the field without having opened his
mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of
(33:48):
his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of
the Secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J.
Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governor's Fanamine Groves,
mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats.
Smirched not, in fact come two in time to take
part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for
(34:10):
the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing
home and confined in bed. It was nine days before
he was able to get up, or, to be more exact,
before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile, the greatest
minds in the country in solemn assembly, had arranged a
secret conference of city, state and government officials, which Smirch
(34:33):
was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in
the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the day that
the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up in
dress and for the first time in two weeks, took
a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to receive
the newspaper men this by way of testing him out.
(34:54):
Smirch did not wait for questions use guys he said,
and the Times Man winced, use guys can tell a
cock guide world. I put it over on Lindberg. See yeah, man,
an ass said, I'm two frogs. The two frogs was
a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers who,
(35:16):
in attempting a flight only halfway around the world, had
two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The Times
Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out
for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of
this kind. He explained that there should be no arrogant
statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of
(35:37):
foreign nations. Ah the hell with that, said Smirch. I
did it. See I did it, and I'm talking about it.
And he did talk about it. None of this extraordinary
interview was, of course printed. On the contrary, the newspapers,
already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created
(35:58):
for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave
out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as
he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only
that he was very happy, and that anyone could have
done what he did. My achievement has been I fear
slightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest with
(36:20):
a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from the hero,
a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising
malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed extremely grave
for Pale Smirch was, as he kept insisting, rare and
to go. He could not much longer be kept from
(36:42):
a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most
desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since
the sinking of Belusitania. On the afternoon of the twenty
seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference
room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists,
(37:03):
and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw
and a brief, unlovely grin, hi, he said. When Smirch
was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with
obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and
how he must act when presented to the world, ending
(37:23):
his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage
and integrity. The mayor was followed by Governor Fannerman of
New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced
Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris,
the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of
public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow
(37:46):
tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved,
smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer
on his lips. I get you, I get you, He
cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softie? Huh?
You want me to act like that nemy murmany baby
(38:06):
face lind big huh, well nuts to not see. Everyone
took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and
a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple
with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his
nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd. He exclaimed, Oh,
(38:29):
for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies
with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word
the room. Everyone stood up except Smirch, who was still
busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up.
Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States.
It had been thought that the presence of the chief
(38:49):
Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero,
and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation
of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room.
A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a
(39:10):
hand at the President. How are you coming, he asked,
and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone
coughed in a strained way. Jesus hot, ain't it, said Smirch.
(39:31):
He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest
and the tattooed word Sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart.
The great and important men in the room, faced by
the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns.
Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on, come on,
(39:54):
said Smirch, Let's get the hell out of here. Why
do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh? And
when is there gonna be this in it. He rubbed
a thumb and forefinger together meaningly. Money, exclaimed a state
senator shocked. Pale, Yeah, money, said pal, flipping his cigarette
(40:16):
out of the window. And big money. He began rolling
a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated. Frowning over the
rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and leered
at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal that
knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in
a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake, let's
(40:40):
get someplace where it's cool, he said. I've been cooped
up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and walked
over to an open window, where he stood staring down
into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting of
newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name,
hot dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over
(41:05):
the sill. You tell him, babies, he shouted down. Hut
diggity dog. In the tense little knot of men standing
behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken
word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room,
yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary
(41:27):
to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be
standing nearest smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of
the United States. The President, pale grim nodded shortly. Brand,
a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University,
stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by
his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and
(41:48):
pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out
the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out
of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side,
and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward
a side entrance of the building. The editor of the
Associated Press took charge, Being used to such things cris
he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay. Quickly.
He outlined a story which all the papers were to
(42:10):
agree on, sent two men to the street to handle
that end of the tragedy, commanded a senator to sob
and two congressmen to go to pieces nervously. In a word,
he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that
was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief
stricken world the sad story of the untimely accidental death
(42:32):
of its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was,
as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest,
and the saddest ever held in the United States of America.
The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft
of marble, then the simple device of a tiny plane
(42:56):
carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in
deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid
lofty tributes to little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At
a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout
the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town
(43:20):
of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of the
Department of Justice sought that one of them was especially
assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little
shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's camping ground
just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Missus
(43:42):
Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling
on her grill, bowed her head and turned away so
that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely
familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in the
(44:02):
World by Jane Eames Thurber. I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arrange produced and performed
(44:24):
by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who are the
countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, guitarist,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the oldrooman theme
from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren
(44:44):
Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss,
the best baseball stadium organist ever who accompanied me in
my song today. Our announcer today was my friend Tony Korneiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's
countdown for this the nine hundred and fortieth day since
Donald Trump's first attempted against the democratically elected government of
(45:06):
the United States arrest him again while we still can.
God knows there's more where that came from. The next
schedule Countdown is Monday bulletins as the news warrants till then.
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(45:27):
I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it. I'm
about to go to jail in America likes it. I'm
so indicted. My defense and they're.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Tidened, and I know, I know the unindicted co conspirators
can fight it.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Host
Keith Olbermann
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