October 26, 2023 • 36 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 61: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: House Republicans have fully embraced Dementia J. Trump's tiny, ugly, Johnson. And even as Speaker Mike Johnson checks all the denialist nihilist boxes - he's homophobic, he wants to put abortion providers in prison, he wants to make gay sex illegal, he wants to spend taxpayer money on religious projects, he is so obscure that Senators Barrasso and Collins had no idea who he was - are the seeds already in price for his eventual dethroning?
On January 6th, during the insurrection, on Fox News, Mike Johnson CRITICIZED DONALD TRUMP. One can only assume that nobody has played the clip for Trump or said "Are you aware, sir, that he blamed you for not doing more to stop things, SIR?"
In the short term there is new reporting that Johnson was far more involved in the insurrection than originally known. He was the point man in the House's Amicus Brief to the Texas lawsuit to throw out the electoral results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington (a brief so controversial that other Republicans said Trump should preemptively pardon all the Congressmen who signed it). But now it turns out he briefed other Congressmen on January 5th on how to rationalize blocking the certification of Biden's victory on bullshit "constitutional" grounds.
Meanwhile: when will a judge in this country do the right thing and put Trump in jail the way he would put you or me in jail? During the lunch break at the civil fraud trial yesterday, Trump AGAIN attacked Judge Arthur Engoron's clerk. The judge merely assessed a $10,000 fine. If you're not going to have the balls to put him in prison, at least get his attention. The fine should be $1,500,000,000. See what he does about that.
B-Block (19:43) IN SPORTS: Dusty Baker ends his baseball managerial career, while the only manager to commute with me on the New York Subway system shifts from San Diego to San Francisco. And Baseball's Hall of Fame announces ten nominees for its annual recognition of one great broadcaster and I've worked with three of them and four of them are good friends and good grief I'm old. (26:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tommy Tuberville may have been thwarted by Senate Democrats. There's a Clarence Thomas money scandal (no, a DIFFERENT one), and here we go: Eric Adams says he was made mayor of New York City by God. Only this time it gets translated in real time into Spanish.
C-Block (32:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: America lost something when the intricate, rehearsed, multi-person practical joke vanished. 41 years ago this month I was fortunate to play a minor role in the greatest practical joke I ever witnessed, when we at the NFL player strike negotiations convinced a reporter from The New York Times that he had just missed the biggest story of the year.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. So
House Republicans have fully embraced Donald J. Trump's tiny, ugly
(00:29):
Johnson one threatening social media posts from the man whose
only true skill is threatening social media posts. And these independent, rogue,
deep thinking men and women of the people fell right
in line and picked the Eddie Haskell of the Trump
Christo fascist, homophobic authoritarian theocracy, Mike Johnson of Louisiana to
(00:53):
lead their jackal pack. The man who once said, you
know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them
being rigged with this software by dominion, there's a lot
of merit to that was in the new Speaker was
in fact much deeper in the election subversion weeds than
generally known. Hours after his election, yesterday, sources produced a
(01:16):
quote record unquote of a closed door Republican meeting on
January fifth, twenty twenty one, one sunset before the more
violent of those who agreed with Trump and Speaker Johnson
tried to seize the capital and overthrow the election by
violent revolution. Politico obtained the quote record, which, based on
(01:37):
the precision of the quotes, therein must be a recording
or a transcript of a recording, but Politico's not saying
that in any event, Johnson was as strong an advocate
in that meeting for the lie that the election was
rigged and the outcome in doubt and the Constitution on
Trump's side as Steve Bannon or Sean Hannity or any
proud boy. He is a bastard insurrectionist. It is well
(02:03):
known that Mike john led the effort to get House
Republicans to send an amicus brief to the Supreme Court
for Ken Paxton's authoritarian lawsuit on behalf of the state
of Texas, which was an attempt to get Clarence Thomas
and Samuel Alito and their fellow travelers to disenfranchise Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin because each state had voted for Joe Biden.
(02:26):
That evil compendium of sophistry was so manipulative, so full
of lawyer crap, that Congressman Mobrooks and Matt Gates would
later say that Trump should pardon Congressman Mike Johnson and
every other Congressman who signed the Mike Johnson brief. It
is not as well known that in the weeks prior
(02:48):
to the January sixth coup attempt, Trump and Johnson quote
traded phone calls and discussed legal strategy repeatedly. Johnson was
Trump's man on the inside, and finally, at the January
fifth Republican meeting, which turned out to be the House
insurrection pregame show, this record Politico obtained shows that Johnson
(03:10):
insisted to his colleagues that quote, it's not over yet,
and echoed things he'd said in public months before, like
I don't concede anything, and that the Dominion voting machines
had quote a software system that is used all around
the country that is suspect because it came from Ugo
Chavez's Venezuela unquote. I'll add the footnote here that talk
(03:31):
like that cost Fox News seven hundred and eighty seven
million dollars after Dominion sued them but did not sue
Mike Johnson. All Mike Johnson got was to become Speaker
of the House, which circles back to lawsuits and Johnson's
fervent conviction that the only reason, and he still feels
this way, that Trump did not overturn the twenty twenty
(03:53):
election was that he did not have good enough lawyers
he only had Rudy Giuliani. Back to the January fifth meeting,
which the Washington Post reports separately was at the House's
Visitor Center. Visitors to the House on January fifth irony There,
the Post says, Johnson constructed elaborate constitutional talking points to
(04:16):
use so his fellow Republican congressman could justify overturning an
election for constitutional reasons, not for fraud reasons, not for
usurpation reasons, per Politico. Johnson continued to argue on January
fifth that the next day the House had to object
to counting the electoral votes submitted by at least a
(04:38):
minimum number of states won by Joe Biden, and he
threw in somebody he thought was on his side and
Trump's side in the whole dispute God. Politico quotes Johnson
on January fifth as saying, this is a very weighty decision.
All of us have prayed for God's discernment. I know
I've prayed for each of you individually. Well he was
(05:03):
praying for Politico. Rep awarded was that they would all
join him in blocking certification. There was pushback at the
January fifth meeting from Republican congressman like Don Bacon and
Chip Roy. If you're wondering where the providence of the
quote record of this meeting that suddenly appeared after Johnson's election,
and where this all might have come from Politico quotes Huh,
(05:26):
chip Roy is telling Johnson on January fifth, quote, let
us not turn the last firewall for liberty we have
remaining on its head in a bit of populist rage
for political expediency. Golly, I can't guess who gave Politico
the record. Of course, chip Roy and Don Bacon both
voted for Mike Johnson yesterday. They all did. They all
(05:51):
voted for him a couple of presents. Nobody voted against him.
And it is in retrospect amazing that it even took
the idiots in the House GOP caucus that long to
find their Johnson with both hands, he checks all the boxes.
Full on election denihialist nihilists, as noted above, full on
(06:12):
homophobe wrote newspaper editorials advocating for the criminalization of gay sex.
Quote your race, creed, and sex are what you are,
while homosexuality and cross dressing are things you do. States
have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same sex deviate sexual intercourse,
full on forced breeder. He tweeted advocating jail time for
(06:36):
Louisiana doctors who provide reproductive care to women. Quote for
form an abortion and get imprisoned at hard labor for
one to ten years and find ten to one hundred
thousand dollars full on forcing of religion. He defended programs
at twenty five public universities like Louisiana State as In
State school that paid with taxpayer money for Christian chaplains
(07:02):
for their football teams. He insists the first requires student
led prayers in public schools. This guy is effing nuts,
full on Hunter Biden DOJ paranoid conspiracy theorist. He liked
tweets on the subject by Stephen Miller, Matt Gates, and others.
(07:22):
He demanded Biden administration officials testify three years after he
demanded the Trump administration officials ignore how subpoena is because
executive privilege. Full on theocrat. He's the former senior spokesman
for the ironically named Alliance Defending Freedom, which sues to
(07:42):
overturn abortion rights, to overturn LGBTQ rights. In order to
work for the Alliance, you must publicly take an oath
insisting that you believe God opposes gay people, abortion, transgender therapy,
anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ and God opposes divorce,
and most importantly, Mike Johnson is full on anonymous. Politico
(08:09):
asked Senator Tom Barrasso, number three Republican in the Senate,
about Johnson. I don't know him. I know what I've
read in the paper. CNN asked Susan Collins about working
with Johnson. She said she doesn't know him but was
going to google him this morning. My god, it actually
makes you yearn for Susan Collins saying something smarter than that, like,
(08:32):
I don't know, like Johnson has learned his lesson. And yet,
while Mike Johnson has ascended out of the wreckage of
the Republican Party and has already begun to enslave what
is left of it into fealty to Trump and MAGA,
while he's made it to the top by virtue of
having no public profile and no rap sheet and no enemies,
there is a hidden time bomb that could and I
(08:54):
emphasized this as a long shot. Only long shots seem
to be paying off lately. For America's fascists. There is
a hidden time bomb, a long shot that could undo
brand new, freshly minted speaker Mike Johnson because the House
rule on the vacate the chair motion that off Kevin McCarthy,
(09:15):
it's still there and it still requires only one member
to trigger all this all over again. One of the
largely unaddressed aspects of the disease that is Donald Trump
is the reality that there is almost no politician or
public figure he has not embraced then denounced, or denounced
(09:37):
then embraced. As I often point out as proof of
my theorem, Donald Trump once wrote a fan letter to me.
And apart from the fact that the Politico report about
the January fifth meeting confirms that at least one Republican
who voted for Mike Johnson yesterday seems to be ready
to unseat him tomorrow and release that report, Johnson has
(10:02):
another and in this time when we live through the
trumping looking glass, potentially far more lethal skeleton in his closet,
and it is this Mike Johnson criticized Donald Trump on
January sixth, during the insurrection, we heard.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
A tweet from the Commander in Chief of a moment
ago support our capitol, police and law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
He writes, they're truly on the side of our country.
Stay peaceful. Does he need to say more?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That's a good start. But you know, I do believe,
I mean, you know, I'm a supporter of the president now,
but this is the time for the commander in chief,
that the leader of the country, he still is, that
to step up and call for calm and speak in
the same tones, you know, to pull.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Us together to you and I and even most Republicans,
especially while the barbarians were at the gate looking for
congressmen and senators and vice presidents to hang. That that's
nothing to Trump. That would be utter and unforgivable disloyalty.
And it is unmistakably true that he has clearly never
(11:11):
heard that clip of the backbencher he just helped turn
into Speaker of the House, or it has never been
thrown in his face with the right framing. You do know, sir,
that this Johnson guy thought you didn't do enough to
stop the mob on January sixth. You do know that, sir,
don't you that he blamed you for doing enough? Sir,
(11:34):
Mike Johnson could very well still be Speaker of the
House three hundred and seventy seven days from now election
Day twenty twenty four. He could very well be there
on certification Day in twenty twenty five to try to
illegally subvert that presidential election. In a million different ways.
As he tried to illegally subvert the twenty twenty election,
he could betray this country again, and this time he
(11:55):
might not just merely survive a failed coup but get
away with his scheme. Or somebody might play that of
him and Bill Hemmer to Trump, and an hour later,
an even crazier Trump whore than Mike Johnson in Congress
could submit a motion to vacate the chair. And they'll
(12:18):
be throwing Mike Johnson's career over there on the pile
where the careers of Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and
Jim Jordan and Tom Error have already started to rot. Here,
When the hell is a judge in this country going
to put Trump in jail? Trump would later storm out
(12:41):
of the court muttering unbelievable to himself when the judge
turned down his demand that the case against him, in
which he is clearly incredibly guilty, be immediately dismissed, but
at lunchtime he takes the break in the civil fraud
trial in New York, holds an impromptu news conference on
the courthouse steps as he was told by Judge Angeron
not to, and five days after anger On find him
(13:04):
five grand for breaking the gag order by leaving up
online and attack on Ngeron's court clerk. Trump again attacks
the court clerk well judges.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Very yes, with the person who is very farnes sitting
along that at the.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Grass even than he is. The judge was furious. Trump's
ambulance chasers insisted the reference wasn't to the clerk but
to the the witness, Michael Cohen, and because they and
Trump have spent their lives inside the shadow of a
doubt and thus getting away with it whatever it is.
And Geron's fury resulted in Trump being fined ten thousand dollars.
(13:47):
Now I no longer believe anything about dementia j Trump.
I do not believe he has ten thousand dollars. But
the judges, like our layman judges in the news media,
are so terrified of appearing biased against him. What a
terrible thing. You're a judge, You're biased against the worst
criminal of the mayor and history. Shame, shame, shame on you.
(14:08):
They're so afraid of being judged as biased against him
that they are bending over backwards to treat him in
a way that you or I, or a drug dealer
or a murderer or somebody who merely owed thousands in
unpaid parking tickets would not be treated. Trump leaves up
an image of the post you ordered him to take down.
(14:31):
His lawyers say it was inadvertent. Screw them, screw him,
find him in contempt, and put him in jail for
the weekend. Then he comes out and attacks your clerk
to the news media. His lawyers say he never mentioned
anybody by name. In fact, he was returning to somebody else.
Screw them, screw him, find him in contempt, and put
him in jail for the week Or if you do
(14:54):
not have the courage to do that, if you do
not have the foresight to realize that all of our
other institutional protections against would be mad men dictators failed.
The news media has failed, the Congress has failed, the
electoral system has failed. If you cannot imprison him, if
you do not have the balls to imprison him for
things you would imprison me for then when you find him,
(15:17):
make sure he feels it, make sure his supporters feel it,
make sure it overwhelms every other story on the news
everywhere in the world. You want to play this game, Trump, Fine,
we will play it, and we will play it at
your level. You say, marri Lago is worth one billion,
five hundred million dollars. That's what this trial is all about. Fine,
mister Trump, for violating the gag order. You are hereby
(15:39):
find one billion, six hundred million dollars. Pay the clerk
on your way out, asshole. Also of interest here speaking
of horrors, Hoham and other Clarence Thomas scandal, but this
one was only worth two hundred and sixty seven thousand,
(16:00):
so it'll barely get a mention anywhere. The good news
they may have found the workaround for Tommy Tubberville's hold
on military promotions. The bad news the Mayor of New
York has said it again. He is the mayor of
New York because God made him mayor huge if true,
(16:23):
that's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
This is countdown with Keith Oldwoman. This is sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Alberman in sports the quick evolution of being a sports
fan and reporter. When you become a fan as a kid,
there are baseball managers so old that they were born
in in the previous century. At some point before you
get out of high school, probably somebody you saw play
baseball becomes a manager, and you suddenly feel old. By
(17:15):
your thirties, all of the managers used to be players
you saw play. By your fifties, all of the managers
used to be players you interviewed, or, if you're me,
people who tell you they used to watch you on
Sports Center when they were in the minor leagues. And
by my current age going on sixty five, the managers
who did not reach the managers as players until you
(17:38):
had already been a fan for a couple of years.
Those managers are retiring already. Johnny b Dusty Baker has
quit managing, bowing out after his Houston Astros lost the
American League Championship Series. He reached the majors as a
player in nineteen sixty eight. I first met him and
interviewed him at the nineteen seventy seven World Series. He
(18:00):
became a manager in nineteen ninety three. A year after
I started to host Sports Center. He managed the Giants,
the Cubs, the Reds, the Nationals, and finally the Astros
with whom he finally won a World Series last year.
He's seventy four years old. I don't believe he has
ever forgotten the name of anybody he has ever met
on a baseball field. I am not certain he is
(18:20):
a great strategic in game manager. But please find me
somebody who will say anything more critical of him than that,
and I will be very surprised. I'll also be surprised
if somebody does not try to talk him out of
retirement in the next few years. There's another category of
baseball manager, too, the guy who used to ride the
subway with I knew Bob Melvin a little bit when
(18:42):
he was a player and a manager, and then in
twenty ten he became a consultant for the New York Mets,
and by chance, we used to sit together during the games,
and we became fast friends. And we took the subway
from the ballpark, and he'd never been on it before,
and he loved it and started taking it all the time.
And I can now tell you that I even wrote
(19:03):
a letter of recommendation to a baseball owner on Bob's
behalf for a managerial job. He did not get their mistake,
and that Bob has been to my apartment for the
specific purpose of meeting my dogs. Bob is now going
to tie Dusty Baker with five different teams managed. The
record is only six. He will leave the San Diego
(19:24):
Padres to run the San Francisco Giants next season. What
is amazing is that Bob became a manager in two
thousand and three, and the only year he has not
been a major league manager was twenty ten, the year
he and I became commuter friends. And to dive into
the I'm So Old pool one last time on the
simple premise that it's gonna happen to you too, if
(19:47):
you're lucky. The ten nominees have been announced for the
twenty twenty four to Ford Frick Award, enshrinement in the
Baseball Hall of Fame for a baseball announcer, which should
be renamed the Vince Scully Award. Anyway, you're ready for
this list of ten. Joe Buck I worked with him
for the three seasons at Fox, including the two thousand
World Series. Joe Costigliono the Red Sox. I never worked
(20:10):
with him, but he and I were rookie Boston sportscasters
together thirty nine years ago. Gary Cohen of the Mets
not only a dear friend, but a decade ago Gary's
mother revealed we were second generation friends, that she had
been pre pubescent pals with my uncle Bill in the
Bronx on weeks Avenue in nineteen fricking forty three. Jacques
(20:34):
Ducet of the Expos I never met him, but I
heard him on Expo's French broadcast during vacations to Montreal
in nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy. Tom Hamilton of
the Cleveland Guardians, I actually don't know him. The late
Ernie Johnson, senior of the Braves. I worked with him
when I was at CNN, and he and the other
Braves announcers used to do stuff with us during the
off season. As fine a guy as his son. Ken
(20:57):
Korach of the A's amed him in spring training once
delightful guy, long talk about life. Mike Cruco and Dwayne
Kuiper of the San Francisco Giant it's friends of mine
since the nineties. Although Kuiper is mad at me at
the moment, possibly because I wrote the biography on his
nineteen seventy six baseball card, the front of which shows
a picture of somebody else. I texted with Mike Kruco
(21:18):
yesterday and Dan Shulman of the Blue Jays and ESPN,
and he and I first worked together in nineteen ninety
three when we tried to hire him away to join
us on ESPN Radio. Only ESPN was too cheap to
pay him to move from Toronto. And I texted with
him yesterday too. Ten nominees three I worked with four
(21:39):
good friends, So don't ask me who to vote for.
That's baseball. Thank you, Nancy Faust. And by the way,
(22:20):
why don't they have a section four organists at the
Baseball Hall of Fame? Huh? Asking for a friend? Still
(22:52):
ahead on countdown? You know what's been lost in American life?
The intricate, complicated, rehearsed, mean spirited, practical joke. It was
my pleasure forty one years ago this month to party
surveying the best one I have ever witnessed, in which
we got a guy from the New York Times to
believe that he had just missed the biggest sports story
(23:13):
of the year. The djanofsky prank in Things I promised
not to tell Next first time for the daily round
up of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world, runs Tommy
the Tuba Tubberville, the all ears senator from Alabama who
has been blocking nearly all military promotions while the Middle
(23:35):
East is at war and Ukraine is going on and
the Chinese continue to mess around in Asian waters, and
they may have shut him down. Bunch Bowl News reporting
that Senate Democrats are preparing a resolution to send to
the Senate Rules Committee that would allow the promotions, all
of them to go through except for members of the
Joint Chiefs or the Unified Combat Commands. All of these
(23:56):
promotions to be voted on in one bill, thus thwarting
Senator Dumbo. The Rules Committee will rule on how many
votes would be required. Punch Bowl reports Tuberville has heard
about the effort, and with those ears, how could he
have not had the runner up? Good old Supreme Court
justice and judicial prostitute Clarence Thomas. There's a scandal about
(24:19):
him and money. I know, I know you've heard this before.
Now this is a different scandal about him and money.
The New York Times says the Senate Finance Committee has
unearthed evidence about and is investigating the loan that good
old Claire took in nineteen ninety nine to buy that
RV that he loves so very much, because it puts
him out on the road so he can meet the
(24:39):
people whose lives he ruins for cash two hundred and
sixty seven thousand, two hundred and thirty dollars in a
loan for a motor coach alone from healthcare industry mogul
Anthony Welters, and in two thousand and eight, Welters simply
wrote off this loan two hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars.
(25:00):
It's unclear how much Thomas had paid back by then,
if anything of it. Thomas has refused to comment on
the Time story, but the far right apparently remains very
surprised that the rest of us are allowed to discuss this,
because they're the Supreme Court and they own us. Remember,
but our winner, New York Mayor Eric Adams, We've heard
(25:21):
this before. The mayor believes he was put in office
by God. I thank god, I'm the mayor right now.
And the more famous nonsense statement quote, there is no
way God created me for this moment if he did
not believe this was my moment. Whatever that means. Now,
(25:43):
those are great in their own way, but it's something
else when you actually hear him saying it while it
is being simultaneously translated into Spanish. Mayor Adams has gone
on a New York Spanish language religion show Radio Vision Christiana,
and he let one.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Rip I am mayor be because God gave me the
authority to be mayor soyl Cande barge Cane, and He
placed in the hearts of the voters to give me
that authority, he pus. Sometimes we miss how God operates.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
See, I don't mind you thinking God put you somewhere.
I don't mind if you believe. You don't believe you
think the universe is run by an omniscient walrus named Chumley.
Have fun. But see when you go public like this,
Mayor Adams, you make a dick out of yourself, out
of all of us here in big town. Because if
Chumley or God or whatever really did put you in
(26:47):
as Mayor of New York, that necessarily means that God
put all the other mayors of New York. In as
mayors of New York, God decided Rudy Giuliani was a
good call. He chose Fernando Wood, the pro secessionists, who
let two rival gangs of cops fight it out on
the steps of city Hall. God selected Jimmy Walker, who
(27:12):
was so corrupt that the bank stopped loaning the city
any money because he was stealing most of it, and
whose cops used to arrest innocent women and accuse them
of prostitution unless they paid them bribes, and who, when
they finally caught him, made a plea deal in which,
on top of everything else, he had to immediately get
on a cruise ship and leave the country for Europe
(27:33):
for years. See, mister mayor, if you want to think
that God puts you in office, go nuts. But if
he put you in office, that means he put all
them schmucks in office too. And maybe you have to wonder,
mister Adams, did he put you in office as some
sort of tribute to your greatness or as some kind
(27:53):
of punishment? Mayor, Eric, don't blame me. I voted for
the garbage commissioner. Lady Adams two days worse person in
the world. In March of nineteen eighty two, I went
(28:24):
from scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's national sports
correspondent based in New York. I have mentioned previously that
they rewarded me by offering me one thousand dollars less
a year than they were giving me freelance, which tells
you everything you need to know about working in television.
CNN also rewarded me by sending me to the first
(28:45):
meeting of the NFL Players Association and the NFL Management
Council to negotiate a new contract and avert a strike.
That year. Kind of missed that target, but while I
did lots of other stories in my first full year
at CNN, I was the football strike guy until that
strike was settled and a new deal was approved at
(29:07):
a mass meeting in Washington. And the mass meeting in
Washington currd just before Thanksgiving like forty years ago today,
and the damn story had started forty years ago last March.
There are probably fifty seven hundred stories worth telling you
of covering this thing nearly every day one way or
the other for eight months, but this one might be
(29:29):
my favorite. There were I think three other reporters at
that first bargaining session in New York in March of
nineteen eighty two. And if these are not the three
guys I'm thinking of, they became the three guys in
the subsequent meetings later in March, and then in April
when we had some in Washington, and throughout the early summer.
They were Bart Barnes of the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld
(29:51):
of the Associated Press, and Michael Janofski of the New
York Times. By October, the four of us had been
joined by maybe one hundred other reporters two hundred. The
problem with covering any strike, inside sports or outside of
it is you don't have a lot of news to cover,
and the only news story your editors or producers or
(30:13):
readers or viewers want anyway is this one is the
damn thing over yet, so there was a lot of
competition among all of us for those few news nuggets
and sources available to an ever increasing supply of reporters.
Though I have to say the others, at least the
originals were all great to me and I to them,
to the point that when they moved the talks to
(30:34):
the Hunt Valley Resort Complex in Maryland. United Press International
and the networks like US called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland.
But there was such a dearth of news that the
Associated Press insisted there was no such place as Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and we were all really in Cockeysville, Maryland. The same
story would come across the UPI wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
(30:57):
and the same story on the AP wire Cockysville, Maryland.
Then the Associated Press did a story on the dispute
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline Kakysville, just
so there'd be a dispute, just so he had something
to write about. He started laughing and walked away anyway. Janofsky,
(31:21):
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janofsky was a little abrasive, like literally
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
those gaggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, and the
(31:41):
only thing the owners and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Danovsky again. So one long night in the resort
they were using in Kokysville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of US media types and we started complaining
about Jenofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
(32:07):
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
swimming pool around a corner, down a one hundred foot
hallway into the lobby, which was the press room and
press conference venue. So we waited until we saw Janoski
go down that hall away from the main lobby and
around the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, and then
(32:30):
at least a dozen of us waited like Evil's school
kids in the main part of that hallway between the
swimming pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to
stand near the pool to alert us. So as Michael
Janoski of The New York Times turned the corner one
hundred feet away, he saw the NFLPA press aid literally
(32:50):
pushing some of us and everybody yelling, and him saying, fine,
it's true, it's true. It's over. Now I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
from us. There are arms flailing through the air, voice
is raised, a lot of oaths and swear words. In short,
we have convinced mister Janofsky of the Times that he
(33:13):
has just missed the end of the football strike. Janofsky
sprints the one hundred feet, grabs the union guy and says,
tell me, tell me, it's settled, it's over. Tell me.
And this man, Dave had also been a press staffer
in the Kennedy administration, and this was not his first
prank against a reporter. He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I
(33:36):
don't work for the NFLPA anymore. I just quit. If
you want this story, you better get it from the
executive director Ed Garvey or the president Gene Upshaw. So
now Janofski grabs Bart Barnes of the WAPPO, who had
to have been I don't know, ten years older than
Janofsky was, and he says, you have to tell me, Bart,
(33:56):
I'll pay you, at which point all of us lose it.
I mean me and the AP guy Ira, we broke character.
We doubled over with laughter. Now Djanofsky froze. Dave from
the Union laughed so hard he turned red, and Jenofsky
marched off, announcing he would get us and get us soon.
(34:19):
I don't think he ever did. Though. If I had
to do a phoner for CNN when Jenofsky was around
that lobby or any other other places we did this story,
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was leaves sports all together for safer and
(34:39):
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
(35:03):
all the damage I can do. He thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. If you
know anyone who does not listen to this podcast and
might enjoy it, first off, why secondly tell the others.
Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Shanelle arranged, produced,
(35:23):
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitarist, bass
and drums produced by Tko Brothers. Other music including Beethoven
stuff arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis. We called the Olderman theme
from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
(35:45):
from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad
and Better Call Saul at Airplane. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. That's countdown for this the oney twenty
fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now
(36:06):
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletin says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olreman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(36:28):
with Keith Olreman 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. So
House Republicans have fully embraced Donald J. Trump's tiny, ugly
(00:29):
Johnson one threatening social media posts from the man whose
only true skill is threatening social media posts. And these independent, rogue,
deep thinking men and women of the people fell right
in line and picked the Eddie Haskell of the Trump
Christo fascist, homophobic authoritarian theocracy, Mike Johnson of Louisiana to
(00:53):
lead their jackal pack. The man who once said, you
know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them
being rigged with this software by dominion, there's a lot
of merit to that was in the new Speaker was
in fact much deeper in the election subversion weeds than
generally known. Hours after his election, yesterday, sources produced a
(01:16):
quote record unquote of a closed door Republican meeting on
January fifth, twenty twenty one, one sunset before the more
violent of those who agreed with Trump and Speaker Johnson
tried to seize the capital and overthrow the election by
violent revolution. Politico obtained the quote record, which, based on
(01:37):
the precision of the quotes, therein must be a recording
or a transcript of a recording, but Politico's not saying
that in any event, Johnson was as strong an advocate
in that meeting for the lie that the election was
rigged and the outcome in doubt and the Constitution on
Trump's side as Steve Bannon or Sean Hannity or any
proud boy. He is a bastard insurrectionist. It is well
(02:03):
known that Mike john led the effort to get House
Republicans to send an amicus brief to the Supreme Court
for Ken Paxton's authoritarian lawsuit on behalf of the state
of Texas, which was an attempt to get Clarence Thomas
and Samuel Alito and their fellow travelers to disenfranchise Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin because each state had voted for Joe Biden.
(02:26):
That evil compendium of sophistry was so manipulative, so full
of lawyer crap, that Congressman Mobrooks and Matt Gates would
later say that Trump should pardon Congressman Mike Johnson and
every other Congressman who signed the Mike Johnson brief. It
is not as well known that in the weeks prior
(02:48):
to the January sixth coup attempt, Trump and Johnson quote
traded phone calls and discussed legal strategy repeatedly. Johnson was
Trump's man on the inside, and finally, at the January
fifth Republican meeting, which turned out to be the House
insurrection pregame show, this record Politico obtained shows that Johnson
(03:10):
insisted to his colleagues that quote, it's not over yet,
and echoed things he'd said in public months before, like
I don't concede anything, and that the Dominion voting machines
had quote a software system that is used all around
the country that is suspect because it came from Ugo
Chavez's Venezuela unquote. I'll add the footnote here that talk
(03:31):
like that cost Fox News seven hundred and eighty seven
million dollars after Dominion sued them but did not sue
Mike Johnson. All Mike Johnson got was to become Speaker
of the House, which circles back to lawsuits and Johnson's
fervent conviction that the only reason, and he still feels
this way, that Trump did not overturn the twenty twenty
(03:53):
election was that he did not have good enough lawyers
he only had Rudy Giuliani. Back to the January fifth meeting,
which the Washington Post reports separately was at the House's
Visitor Center. Visitors to the House on January fifth irony There,
the Post says, Johnson constructed elaborate constitutional talking points to
(04:16):
use so his fellow Republican congressman could justify overturning an
election for constitutional reasons, not for fraud reasons, not for
usurpation reasons, per Politico. Johnson continued to argue on January
fifth that the next day the House had to object
to counting the electoral votes submitted by at least a
(04:38):
minimum number of states won by Joe Biden, and he
threw in somebody he thought was on his side and
Trump's side in the whole dispute God. Politico quotes Johnson
on January fifth as saying, this is a very weighty decision.
All of us have prayed for God's discernment. I know
I've prayed for each of you individually. Well he was
(05:03):
praying for Politico. Rep awarded was that they would all
join him in blocking certification. There was pushback at the
January fifth meeting from Republican congressman like Don Bacon and
Chip Roy. If you're wondering where the providence of the
quote record of this meeting that suddenly appeared after Johnson's election,
and where this all might have come from Politico quotes Huh,
(05:26):
chip Roy is telling Johnson on January fifth, quote, let
us not turn the last firewall for liberty we have
remaining on its head in a bit of populist rage
for political expediency. Golly, I can't guess who gave Politico
the record. Of course, chip Roy and Don Bacon both
voted for Mike Johnson yesterday. They all did. They all
(05:51):
voted for him a couple of presents. Nobody voted against him.
And it is in retrospect amazing that it even took
the idiots in the House GOP caucus that long to
find their Johnson with both hands, he checks all the boxes.
Full on election denihialist nihilists, as noted above, full on
(06:12):
homophobe wrote newspaper editorials advocating for the criminalization of gay sex.
Quote your race, creed, and sex are what you are,
while homosexuality and cross dressing are things you do. States
have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same sex deviate sexual intercourse,
full on forced breeder. He tweeted advocating jail time for
(06:36):
Louisiana doctors who provide reproductive care to women. Quote for
form an abortion and get imprisoned at hard labor for
one to ten years and find ten to one hundred
thousand dollars full on forcing of religion. He defended programs
at twenty five public universities like Louisiana State as In
State school that paid with taxpayer money for Christian chaplains
(07:02):
for their football teams. He insists the first requires student
led prayers in public schools. This guy is effing nuts,
full on Hunter Biden DOJ paranoid conspiracy theorist. He liked
tweets on the subject by Stephen Miller, Matt Gates, and others.
(07:22):
He demanded Biden administration officials testify three years after he
demanded the Trump administration officials ignore how subpoena is because
executive privilege. Full on theocrat. He's the former senior spokesman
for the ironically named Alliance Defending Freedom, which sues to
(07:42):
overturn abortion rights, to overturn LGBTQ rights. In order to
work for the Alliance, you must publicly take an oath
insisting that you believe God opposes gay people, abortion, transgender therapy,
anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ and God opposes divorce,
and most importantly, Mike Johnson is full on anonymous. Politico
(08:09):
asked Senator Tom Barrasso, number three Republican in the Senate,
about Johnson. I don't know him. I know what I've
read in the paper. CNN asked Susan Collins about working
with Johnson. She said she doesn't know him but was
going to google him this morning. My god, it actually
makes you yearn for Susan Collins saying something smarter than that, like,
(08:32):
I don't know, like Johnson has learned his lesson. And yet,
while Mike Johnson has ascended out of the wreckage of
the Republican Party and has already begun to enslave what
is left of it into fealty to Trump and MAGA,
while he's made it to the top by virtue of
having no public profile and no rap sheet and no enemies,
there is a hidden time bomb that could and I
(08:54):
emphasized this as a long shot. Only long shots seem
to be paying off lately. For America's fascists. There is
a hidden time bomb, a long shot that could undo
brand new, freshly minted speaker Mike Johnson because the House
rule on the vacate the chair motion that off Kevin McCarthy,
(09:15):
it's still there and it still requires only one member
to trigger all this all over again. One of the
largely unaddressed aspects of the disease that is Donald Trump
is the reality that there is almost no politician or
public figure he has not embraced then denounced, or denounced
(09:37):
then embraced. As I often point out as proof of
my theorem, Donald Trump once wrote a fan letter to me.
And apart from the fact that the Politico report about
the January fifth meeting confirms that at least one Republican
who voted for Mike Johnson yesterday seems to be ready
to unseat him tomorrow and release that report, Johnson has
(10:02):
another and in this time when we live through the
trumping looking glass, potentially far more lethal skeleton in his closet,
and it is this Mike Johnson criticized Donald Trump on
January sixth, during the insurrection, we heard.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
A tweet from the Commander in Chief of a moment
ago support our capitol, police and law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
He writes, they're truly on the side of our country.
Stay peaceful. Does he need to say more?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That's a good start. But you know, I do believe,
I mean, you know, I'm a supporter of the president now,
but this is the time for the commander in chief,
that the leader of the country, he still is, that
to step up and call for calm and speak in
the same tones, you know, to pull.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Us together to you and I and even most Republicans,
especially while the barbarians were at the gate looking for
congressmen and senators and vice presidents to hang. That that's
nothing to Trump. That would be utter and unforgivable disloyalty.
And it is unmistakably true that he has clearly never
(11:11):
heard that clip of the backbencher he just helped turn
into Speaker of the House, or it has never been
thrown in his face with the right framing. You do know, sir,
that this Johnson guy thought you didn't do enough to
stop the mob on January sixth. You do know that, sir,
don't you that he blamed you for doing enough? Sir,
(11:34):
Mike Johnson could very well still be Speaker of the
House three hundred and seventy seven days from now election
Day twenty twenty four. He could very well be there
on certification Day in twenty twenty five to try to
illegally subvert that presidential election. In a million different ways.
As he tried to illegally subvert the twenty twenty election,
he could betray this country again, and this time he
(11:55):
might not just merely survive a failed coup but get
away with his scheme. Or somebody might play that of
him and Bill Hemmer to Trump, and an hour later,
an even crazier Trump whore than Mike Johnson in Congress
could submit a motion to vacate the chair. And they'll
(12:18):
be throwing Mike Johnson's career over there on the pile
where the careers of Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and
Jim Jordan and Tom Error have already started to rot. Here,
When the hell is a judge in this country going
to put Trump in jail? Trump would later storm out
(12:41):
of the court muttering unbelievable to himself when the judge
turned down his demand that the case against him, in
which he is clearly incredibly guilty, be immediately dismissed, but
at lunchtime he takes the break in the civil fraud
trial in New York, holds an impromptu news conference on
the courthouse steps as he was told by Judge Angeron
not to, and five days after anger On find him
(13:04):
five grand for breaking the gag order by leaving up
online and attack on Ngeron's court clerk. Trump again attacks
the court clerk well judges.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Very yes, with the person who is very farnes sitting
along that at the.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Grass even than he is. The judge was furious. Trump's
ambulance chasers insisted the reference wasn't to the clerk but
to the the witness, Michael Cohen, and because they and
Trump have spent their lives inside the shadow of a
doubt and thus getting away with it whatever it is.
And Geron's fury resulted in Trump being fined ten thousand dollars.
(13:47):
Now I no longer believe anything about dementia j Trump.
I do not believe he has ten thousand dollars. But
the judges, like our layman judges in the news media,
are so terrified of appearing biased against him. What a
terrible thing. You're a judge, You're biased against the worst
criminal of the mayor and history. Shame, shame, shame on you.
(14:08):
They're so afraid of being judged as biased against him
that they are bending over backwards to treat him in
a way that you or I, or a drug dealer
or a murderer or somebody who merely owed thousands in
unpaid parking tickets would not be treated. Trump leaves up
an image of the post you ordered him to take down.
(14:31):
His lawyers say it was inadvertent. Screw them, screw him,
find him in contempt, and put him in jail for
the weekend. Then he comes out and attacks your clerk
to the news media. His lawyers say he never mentioned
anybody by name. In fact, he was returning to somebody else.
Screw them, screw him, find him in contempt, and put
him in jail for the week Or if you do
(14:54):
not have the courage to do that, if you do
not have the foresight to realize that all of our
other institutional protections against would be mad men dictators failed.
The news media has failed, the Congress has failed, the
electoral system has failed. If you cannot imprison him, if
you do not have the balls to imprison him for
things you would imprison me for then when you find him,
(15:17):
make sure he feels it, make sure his supporters feel it,
make sure it overwhelms every other story on the news
everywhere in the world. You want to play this game, Trump, Fine,
we will play it, and we will play it at
your level. You say, marri Lago is worth one billion,
five hundred million dollars. That's what this trial is all about. Fine,
mister Trump, for violating the gag order. You are hereby
(15:39):
find one billion, six hundred million dollars. Pay the clerk
on your way out, asshole. Also of interest here speaking
of horrors, Hoham and other Clarence Thomas scandal, but this
one was only worth two hundred and sixty seven thousand,
(16:00):
so it'll barely get a mention anywhere. The good news
they may have found the workaround for Tommy Tubberville's hold
on military promotions. The bad news the Mayor of New
York has said it again. He is the mayor of
New York because God made him mayor huge if true,
(16:23):
that's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
This is countdown with Keith Oldwoman. This is sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Alberman in sports the quick evolution of being a sports
fan and reporter. When you become a fan as a kid,
there are baseball managers so old that they were born
in in the previous century. At some point before you
get out of high school, probably somebody you saw play
baseball becomes a manager, and you suddenly feel old. By
(17:15):
your thirties, all of the managers used to be players
you saw play. By your fifties, all of the managers
used to be players you interviewed, or, if you're me,
people who tell you they used to watch you on
Sports Center when they were in the minor leagues. And
by my current age going on sixty five, the managers
who did not reach the managers as players until you
(17:38):
had already been a fan for a couple of years.
Those managers are retiring already. Johnny b Dusty Baker has
quit managing, bowing out after his Houston Astros lost the
American League Championship Series. He reached the majors as a
player in nineteen sixty eight. I first met him and
interviewed him at the nineteen seventy seven World Series. He
(18:00):
became a manager in nineteen ninety three. A year after
I started to host Sports Center. He managed the Giants,
the Cubs, the Reds, the Nationals, and finally the Astros
with whom he finally won a World Series last year.
He's seventy four years old. I don't believe he has
ever forgotten the name of anybody he has ever met
on a baseball field. I am not certain he is
(18:20):
a great strategic in game manager. But please find me
somebody who will say anything more critical of him than that,
and I will be very surprised. I'll also be surprised
if somebody does not try to talk him out of
retirement in the next few years. There's another category of
baseball manager, too, the guy who used to ride the
subway with I knew Bob Melvin a little bit when
(18:42):
he was a player and a manager, and then in
twenty ten he became a consultant for the New York Mets,
and by chance, we used to sit together during the games,
and we became fast friends. And we took the subway
from the ballpark, and he'd never been on it before,
and he loved it and started taking it all the time.
And I can now tell you that I even wrote
(19:03):
a letter of recommendation to a baseball owner on Bob's
behalf for a managerial job. He did not get their mistake,
and that Bob has been to my apartment for the
specific purpose of meeting my dogs. Bob is now going
to tie Dusty Baker with five different teams managed. The
record is only six. He will leave the San Diego
(19:24):
Padres to run the San Francisco Giants next season. What
is amazing is that Bob became a manager in two
thousand and three, and the only year he has not
been a major league manager was twenty ten, the year
he and I became commuter friends. And to dive into
the I'm So Old pool one last time on the
simple premise that it's gonna happen to you too, if
(19:47):
you're lucky. The ten nominees have been announced for the
twenty twenty four to Ford Frick Award, enshrinement in the
Baseball Hall of Fame for a baseball announcer, which should
be renamed the Vince Scully Award. Anyway, you're ready for
this list of ten. Joe Buck I worked with him
for the three seasons at Fox, including the two thousand
World Series. Joe Costigliono the Red Sox. I never worked
(20:10):
with him, but he and I were rookie Boston sportscasters
together thirty nine years ago. Gary Cohen of the Mets
not only a dear friend, but a decade ago Gary's
mother revealed we were second generation friends, that she had
been pre pubescent pals with my uncle Bill in the
Bronx on weeks Avenue in nineteen fricking forty three. Jacques
(20:34):
Ducet of the Expos I never met him, but I
heard him on Expo's French broadcast during vacations to Montreal
in nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy. Tom Hamilton of
the Cleveland Guardians, I actually don't know him. The late
Ernie Johnson, senior of the Braves. I worked with him
when I was at CNN, and he and the other
Braves announcers used to do stuff with us during the
off season. As fine a guy as his son. Ken
(20:57):
Korach of the A's amed him in spring training once
delightful guy, long talk about life. Mike Cruco and Dwayne
Kuiper of the San Francisco Giant it's friends of mine
since the nineties. Although Kuiper is mad at me at
the moment, possibly because I wrote the biography on his
nineteen seventy six baseball card, the front of which shows
a picture of somebody else. I texted with Mike Kruco
(21:18):
yesterday and Dan Shulman of the Blue Jays and ESPN,
and he and I first worked together in nineteen ninety
three when we tried to hire him away to join
us on ESPN Radio. Only ESPN was too cheap to
pay him to move from Toronto. And I texted with
him yesterday too. Ten nominees three I worked with four
(21:39):
good friends, So don't ask me who to vote for.
That's baseball. Thank you, Nancy Faust. And by the way,
(22:20):
why don't they have a section four organists at the
Baseball Hall of Fame? Huh? Asking for a friend? Still
(22:52):
ahead on countdown? You know what's been lost in American life?
The intricate, complicated, rehearsed, mean spirited, practical joke. It was
my pleasure forty one years ago this month to party
surveying the best one I have ever witnessed, in which
we got a guy from the New York Times to
believe that he had just missed the biggest sports story
(23:13):
of the year. The djanofsky prank in Things I promised
not to tell Next first time for the daily round
up of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world, runs Tommy
the Tuba Tubberville, the all ears senator from Alabama who
has been blocking nearly all military promotions while the Middle
(23:35):
East is at war and Ukraine is going on and
the Chinese continue to mess around in Asian waters, and
they may have shut him down. Bunch Bowl News reporting
that Senate Democrats are preparing a resolution to send to
the Senate Rules Committee that would allow the promotions, all
of them to go through except for members of the
Joint Chiefs or the Unified Combat Commands. All of these
(23:56):
promotions to be voted on in one bill, thus thwarting
Senator Dumbo. The Rules Committee will rule on how many
votes would be required. Punch Bowl reports Tuberville has heard
about the effort, and with those ears, how could he
have not had the runner up? Good old Supreme Court
justice and judicial prostitute Clarence Thomas. There's a scandal about
(24:19):
him and money. I know, I know you've heard this before.
Now this is a different scandal about him and money.
The New York Times says the Senate Finance Committee has
unearthed evidence about and is investigating the loan that good
old Claire took in nineteen ninety nine to buy that
RV that he loves so very much, because it puts
him out on the road so he can meet the
(24:39):
people whose lives he ruins for cash two hundred and
sixty seven thousand, two hundred and thirty dollars in a
loan for a motor coach alone from healthcare industry mogul
Anthony Welters, and in two thousand and eight, Welters simply
wrote off this loan two hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars.
(25:00):
It's unclear how much Thomas had paid back by then,
if anything of it. Thomas has refused to comment on
the Time story, but the far right apparently remains very
surprised that the rest of us are allowed to discuss this,
because they're the Supreme Court and they own us. Remember,
but our winner, New York Mayor Eric Adams, We've heard
(25:21):
this before. The mayor believes he was put in office
by God. I thank god, I'm the mayor right now.
And the more famous nonsense statement quote, there is no
way God created me for this moment if he did
not believe this was my moment. Whatever that means. Now,
(25:43):
those are great in their own way, but it's something
else when you actually hear him saying it while it
is being simultaneously translated into Spanish. Mayor Adams has gone
on a New York Spanish language religion show Radio Vision Christiana,
and he let one.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Rip I am mayor be because God gave me the
authority to be mayor soyl Cande barge Cane, and He
placed in the hearts of the voters to give me
that authority, he pus. Sometimes we miss how God operates.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
See, I don't mind you thinking God put you somewhere.
I don't mind if you believe. You don't believe you
think the universe is run by an omniscient walrus named Chumley.
Have fun. But see when you go public like this,
Mayor Adams, you make a dick out of yourself, out
of all of us here in big town. Because if
Chumley or God or whatever really did put you in
(26:47):
as Mayor of New York, that necessarily means that God
put all the other mayors of New York. In as
mayors of New York, God decided Rudy Giuliani was a
good call. He chose Fernando Wood, the pro secessionists, who
let two rival gangs of cops fight it out on
the steps of city Hall. God selected Jimmy Walker, who
(27:12):
was so corrupt that the bank stopped loaning the city
any money because he was stealing most of it, and
whose cops used to arrest innocent women and accuse them
of prostitution unless they paid them bribes, and who, when
they finally caught him, made a plea deal in which,
on top of everything else, he had to immediately get
on a cruise ship and leave the country for Europe
(27:33):
for years. See, mister mayor, if you want to think
that God puts you in office, go nuts. But if
he put you in office, that means he put all
them schmucks in office too. And maybe you have to wonder,
mister Adams, did he put you in office as some
sort of tribute to your greatness or as some kind
(27:53):
of punishment? Mayor, Eric, don't blame me. I voted for
the garbage commissioner. Lady Adams two days worse person in
the world. In March of nineteen eighty two, I went
(28:24):
from scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's national sports
correspondent based in New York. I have mentioned previously that
they rewarded me by offering me one thousand dollars less
a year than they were giving me freelance, which tells
you everything you need to know about working in television.
CNN also rewarded me by sending me to the first
(28:45):
meeting of the NFL Players Association and the NFL Management
Council to negotiate a new contract and avert a strike.
That year. Kind of missed that target, but while I
did lots of other stories in my first full year
at CNN, I was the football strike guy until that
strike was settled and a new deal was approved at
(29:07):
a mass meeting in Washington. And the mass meeting in
Washington currd just before Thanksgiving like forty years ago today,
and the damn story had started forty years ago last March.
There are probably fifty seven hundred stories worth telling you
of covering this thing nearly every day one way or
the other for eight months, but this one might be
(29:29):
my favorite. There were I think three other reporters at
that first bargaining session in New York in March of
nineteen eighty two. And if these are not the three
guys I'm thinking of, they became the three guys in
the subsequent meetings later in March, and then in April
when we had some in Washington, and throughout the early summer.
They were Bart Barnes of the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld
(29:51):
of the Associated Press, and Michael Janofski of the New
York Times. By October, the four of us had been
joined by maybe one hundred other reporters two hundred. The
problem with covering any strike, inside sports or outside of
it is you don't have a lot of news to cover,
and the only news story your editors or producers or
(30:13):
readers or viewers want anyway is this one is the
damn thing over yet, so there was a lot of
competition among all of us for those few news nuggets
and sources available to an ever increasing supply of reporters.
Though I have to say the others, at least the
originals were all great to me and I to them,
to the point that when they moved the talks to
(30:34):
the Hunt Valley Resort Complex in Maryland. United Press International
and the networks like US called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland.
But there was such a dearth of news that the
Associated Press insisted there was no such place as Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and we were all really in Cockeysville, Maryland. The same
story would come across the UPI wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
(30:57):
and the same story on the AP wire Cockysville, Maryland.
Then the Associated Press did a story on the dispute
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline Kakysville, just
so there'd be a dispute, just so he had something
to write about. He started laughing and walked away anyway. Janofsky,
(31:21):
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janofsky was a little abrasive, like literally
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
those gaggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, and the
(31:41):
only thing the owners and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Danovsky again. So one long night in the resort
they were using in Kokysville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of US media types and we started complaining
about Jenofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
(32:07):
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
swimming pool around a corner, down a one hundred foot
hallway into the lobby, which was the press room and
press conference venue. So we waited until we saw Janoski
go down that hall away from the main lobby and
around the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, and then
(32:30):
at least a dozen of us waited like Evil's school
kids in the main part of that hallway between the
swimming pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to
stand near the pool to alert us. So as Michael
Janoski of The New York Times turned the corner one
hundred feet away, he saw the NFLPA press aid literally
(32:50):
pushing some of us and everybody yelling, and him saying, fine,
it's true, it's true. It's over. Now I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
from us. There are arms flailing through the air, voice
is raised, a lot of oaths and swear words. In short,
we have convinced mister Janofsky of the Times that he
(33:13):
has just missed the end of the football strike. Janofsky
sprints the one hundred feet, grabs the union guy and says,
tell me, tell me, it's settled, it's over. Tell me.
And this man, Dave had also been a press staffer
in the Kennedy administration, and this was not his first
prank against a reporter. He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I
(33:36):
don't work for the NFLPA anymore. I just quit. If
you want this story, you better get it from the
executive director Ed Garvey or the president Gene Upshaw. So
now Janofski grabs Bart Barnes of the WAPPO, who had
to have been I don't know, ten years older than
Janofsky was, and he says, you have to tell me, Bart,
(33:56):
I'll pay you, at which point all of us lose it.
I mean me and the AP guy Ira, we broke character.
We doubled over with laughter. Now Djanofsky froze. Dave from
the Union laughed so hard he turned red, and Jenofsky
marched off, announcing he would get us and get us soon.
(34:19):
I don't think he ever did. Though. If I had
to do a phoner for CNN when Jenofsky was around
that lobby or any other other places we did this story,
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was leaves sports all together for safer and
(34:39):
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
(35:03):
all the damage I can do. He thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. If you
know anyone who does not listen to this podcast and
might enjoy it, first off, why secondly tell the others.
Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Shanelle arranged, produced,
(35:23):
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitarist, bass
and drums produced by Tko Brothers. Other music including Beethoven
stuff arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis. We called the Olderman theme
from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
(35:45):
from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad
and Better Call Saul at Airplane. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. That's countdown for this the oney twenty
fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now
(36:06):
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletin says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olreman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(36:28):
with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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