IS TRUMP BOMBING BOATS TO TEST IF HE CAN GET AWAY WITH BOMBING AMERICANS? - 10.16.25

SEASON 4 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Is Trump Bombing Boats off Venezuela to test to see if he can get away with Bombing Americans in America? I mean now he says he’s going to try to get away with Bombing Venezuelans in Venezuela.

If, 72 hours before Saturday’s No Kings protests around the country, we are at the stage – (and we are AT the stage) that Trump is threatening to invade Boston and San Francisco, and where Trump’s lackeys are calling everybody who disagrees with him “Antifa” and Trump has declared “Antifa” a quote “Domestic Terrorist Organization” – acronym DTO, and we’re at the stage where Trump has again this week – Tuesday morning – had the Secretary of Brylcreem blow up a probable sardine fishing boat in the Caribbean after declaring it was “affiliated with a “DESIGNATED Terrorist Organization” – acronym ALSO DTO… if we are blowing up people Trump and Trump alone gets to decide were in DESIGNATED DTO’s and in the process destroying ALL evidence for-or-against, how far in his madness and Stephen Miller’s evil are we from Trump blowing up people Trump and Trump alone gets to decide were in DOMESTIC D-T-O’s and in the process destroying ALL evidence for-or-against?

The huge leap from bombing DTO’s to bombing… DTO’s.

It's a big step. But it’s one even Trump, as his body disintegrates, can still manage.

Plus my ex Olivia Nuzzi has reportedly written a new book. So now you know what to get me for Christmas. I have title suggestions. They are not cordial ones.

B-Block (34:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox's Emily Compagno assumes anybody criticizing the appointment of Bari Weiss is an antisemite. Including critics who are Jewish. There is a MAGA celebrity chef named Andrew Gruel, from "Gravy Concepts" and he's one of Fox's Antifa experts. And then there is Governor Janet Mills of Maine who is trying to bigfoot Graham Platner and actually make Susan Collins the youngster in the race.

C-Block (46:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The actual anniversary was two weeks ago, but whenever the leaves start to fall I think of the 1993 launch of ESPN2. The inside saga of the night I achieved immortality by announcing "Good Evening And Welcome To The End Of Our Careers."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Is

(00:25):
Trump bombing boats off Venezuela to test to see if
he can get away with bombing Americans in America? I mean,
now he says he's going to try to get away
with bombing Venezuelan's on the ground in Venezuela. And he
also said yesterday he's thinking of invading Boston and San Francisco,

(00:45):
something to do with the Olympics. He's effing nuts. Still,
it worries me that the thought, let alone the statement
about him blowing up Americans in America hints of paranoia
and conspiracy theory. But here we go again. How many
of today's routine Trump daily rapes of American democracy were

(01:08):
dismissed as paranoia and conspiracy theory ten years ago, or
ten months ago, or ten weeks ago. If seventy two
hours before Saturday's No King's protests around the country, we
are at the stage, and we are at the stage
where Trump's lackeys are calling everybody who disagrees with him antifa.
And Trump has declared antifa a quote domestic terror organization

(01:32):
acronym DTO and Trump has again this week Tuesday morning,
had the secretary of Brill Cream blow up a boat
in the Caribbean after declaring it was affiliated with a
designated terrorist organization acronym also dto if we are blowing
up people anywhere, whom Trump and Trump alone gets to decide,

(01:54):
we're in designated DTOs and in the process we are
destroying all evidence for or against their guild or innocence.
How far in his madness and how far in Steven
Miller's evil are we from Trump blowing up people? Trump
and Trump alone gets to decide, we're in domestic DTOs
and in the process destroying all evidence for or against

(02:15):
their guilt or innocence. It's a big step dt O
to dto a big step, but it's one even Trump,
even as his body disintegrates before our eyes, can still
manage Miller, of course, of whom even Trump said, we

(02:36):
don't want to bring him up to tell his true feelings,
said the proverbial quiet part out loud and then now
infamous CNN studio to remote interview. We're in that nails
on a blackboard, valuable accent of his He insisted the
president under title ten to the US Cave has plenary
authority has and then he stopped as if he'd lost

(03:01):
contact with the studio. But likelier he just realized he
really effed up. He had to not say plenary. He
needed to pretend he'd lost contact with the studio. Plenary authority.
Plenary means abs solute, no checks, no balances, just Trump.

(03:24):
Title ten of the US Code, under Title ten of
the US Code has plenary authority has boo. Title ten
of the US Code is all of the laws pertaining
to all of the use of all of the military.
Miller said, Trump has absolute use of the military in war,

(03:46):
in peace, in murdering what are probably just fishermen. We're
probably just fishermen off Venezuela in order to throw red
meat to the base or fish at them, maybe to
test to see if he can get away with blowing
up Americans in America, things like oh, no King's protests,
or more realistically, after something like no King's protests collide

(04:10):
with something like an ice raid or any illegal trump
usurpation of a state National Guard again and its deployment
in someplace peaceful like San Francisco or Boston, where Trump
just wants to pick a fight so he can say
they shot first, and then he can say something like
under my standing authorities as commander in chief. This morning,

(04:31):
the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on
a vehicle affiliated with a domestic terrorist organization DTO. Conducting
Terrorism intelligence confirmed the vehicle was associated with illicit terrorist
networks and was transiting along a known DTO route. For

(04:53):
the record, that what I just read. That's Trump's message
from when he blowed up the latest narco terrorists or
sardine fisherman on Tuesday. I changed seven words. I think
it's way easier to do that when designated terrorist organizations
and domestic terrorist organizations have the same acronym. And boy,

(05:16):
is that not a coincidence? A reminder that a roundup
of victims by Ice in Chicago supposedly produced countless members
of the Venezuelan based gang Trend de Aragua, supposedly like
three dozen according to Stephen Millery. Then they actually counted,
and even Ice said the countless number turned out to
be one, which can be counted. Same city Tuesday morning. Ice,

(05:42):
come on, let's drop the pretense. It's Ices. Ices tear
gassed a crowd in a residential neighborhood. And oh, By
the way, thirteen of the passers by who needed treatment
after being tear gassed by the federal government were members
of the Chicago Police Department. See the problem really is
now that Trump does not have to play his Pandora's

(06:05):
box card the invoking of the Insurrection Act in order
to blow up those he and he alone gets to
decide are in DTOs or DTOs. You may recall that
he gave himself a weapon, and his marionettes in the
House and Senate did not even criticize him, let alone
stop him, and his secretary of shit posting responded by

(06:28):
in essence, forcing all reporters to ban themselves from the Pentagon.
Trump gave himself a weapon on the twenty fifth of
last month called National Security Presidential Memorandum seven, which, when implemented,
truly definitionally refashions America into a fascist dictatorship. This is
not one of those tough sounding but legally toothless executive orders,

(06:51):
the ones with the big nine inch high Trump signatures,
because he can't control his hand any better than that.
This is acronym NSPM seven. Somehow they could not make
dto fit here. This is an ominous policy memo, which
the White House insists carries quote the force of law.

(07:12):
Here we go with Stephen Miller and the plenary power
business and I'm sorry, I can't hear you anymore because
I shouldn't have said that, and I have to now
pretend your live shot failed. The boom. This memo was
addressed to the Secretaries of State, Homeland, and Treasury and
to the Attorney General. And it begins with by the
authority vested in me as President by the Constitution, meaning

(07:35):
if this is challenged, Trump will defend it to the
Supreme Court with the Federalist Society Article two inherent powers
bullshit and meaning that if you challenge it, he will
say you are anti constitution. And if he's really crazy
that day, he will say you are trying to overthrow
the Constitution. And it's dto kinetics. Strike time boom, swish,

(07:55):
Let's go to the videotape again. NSPM seven has been
written in such a way that Trump leaves he can
claim that anybody doing anything he decides is terrorism, is
a terrorist, or is funding terrorists, or is supporting terrorists.

(08:15):
I have read this list to you previously. You can
be det oed if you emit any of the following
quote Indica of violence, anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti Christianity.
Does that include saying Jesus H. Christ, support for the

(08:41):
overthrow of the United States government? Does that include voting
against Trump or saying he can't run for a third term?
Extremism on migration does that mean you're in favor of migration?
Extremism on race does that mean you believe the government

(09:01):
of the United States has been, is now or or
will in the future, be racist? Extremism on gender does
that mean women don't have to wear the bridesmaid's hats.
Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, okay,

(09:23):
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion,
and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. Well,
the one I'm clear on here is the one about morality,
because I think ultimately I hold the same views on
morality that Trump does, namely none. So I'm unclear on

(09:46):
that one. But let's see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine,
out of ten. Okay, I'll be seeing you. The excuse
for all this is the Charlie Kirk murder. I can't
decide a month later nearly if Kirk is our horsed vessel,
the Nazi youth leader murdered in nineteen thirty who became

(10:08):
their martyr, or if Kirk is the Reichstag fire. Maybe
he's both. Maybe he's horse Vessel, only he was inside
the Reichstag when it got struck. Kinetically when it got
dt oed. Trump's spoken word version of the Nazis music
of Martyrdom, the horse Vessel's Song reads quote. Heinous assassinations

(10:29):
and other acts of political violence in the United States
have dramatically increased in recent years. Even in the aftermath
of the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who
adhered to the alleged shooter's ideology Mormonism, embraced and cheered
this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence. Stephen Miller,

(10:52):
there's another reference to a shooting targeting and ice facility
in Dallas. Doesn't mention that the victims were detainees part
of a quote culmination of sophisticated organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats,
and violence designed to silence opposing speech limit political activity,
change our direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of

(11:13):
a democratic society, all which should have been followed by
They can't do that. Only we and the Trump administration
are allowed to do any of that. Just watch that
acronym dto for me, designated terrorist organization. Now it has

(11:35):
become also domestic terrorist organization. So how far are we
away from democratic terrorist organization? Thank you for your attention
to this matter. Whether Trump actually does this and tries

(12:23):
to blow up No King's rally, I can't tell you.
I do know. The gullibility of the media, even pretty
good self checking media like the Associated Press, continues to
get more and more appalling. The CBS News senior White
House reporter, boasting on her social media bio that she's
reporting what I know, not what I think, still wrote

(12:45):
quote another US strike on a drug boat near Venezuela.
Trump says it was lethal for six narco traffickers, but
no US forces injured. Could we have had a qualifier
in there? Jennifer Jacobs, an alleged possible possible drug boat
narco traffickers, alleged something other than you, swallowing Trump's evidence

(13:10):
free dto if he blows you up and says you
were in a terrorist vehicle. Should we throw in purported
or Trump claimed or naw? The Trumpists are also laying
the groundwork here, Tom Emmer, the Trump flunk you used
to head the NRC and is now the housewhip, is
really leaning in calling no kings the quote hate America

(13:34):
rally and somehow, as Scott Bessant has done, stitching together
the logic free conclusion that the Republican shutdown of the
government is the Democrats pandering to the hate America terrorist
end of the Democratic Party. Translation. Uh, Tom Emmer and

(13:55):
Scott Bessant are looney tunes, and of course they are
still enraged at being called Nazis and Nazi sympathizers and
anti semi and ethnic cleansers. Even after the mass leak
of texts between leaders of the Young Republicans, especially the
New York Young Republicans, especially the past president Peter Giunta

(14:17):
size xxxxxl chief of staff to Staten Island State assemblymen,
now fired from that job, to whom Politico attributed to
text concluding quote I love Hitler unquote and the text
can we fix the showers? Gash chambers don't fit the
Hitler esthetic from Joe Maligno, vice President at one point

(14:38):
of the New York State Young Republicans plus other assorted
Nazi imagery and lots of uses of the other N
word and slavery references, and photos of nearly all of
them with the former Congresswoman Elise Stephonic. Even Elis Stephonic
denounced them, but not Vice President JV. Vans the startlingly stupid, robotic,

(15:08):
utterly uncomfortable in his own skinned Vance dismissed all this
as a quote college group chat, even though these texts
were not from the College Republicans. That's a different group, JV.
These are from the Young Republicans, which means forty and under.
Most of these assholes have already lost most of their hair.

(15:31):
So some of the Young Republicans in the College group
chat endorsing all of the tenets about Nazism, right down
to the gas chambers they are. Some of them are
one year younger than JD. Vance and only eight years
younger than the article three asshole Mike Davis, who yesterday
called a Keem Jeffries quote George Soros's house slave. What's

(15:58):
the difference between the Young Republicans in the group chat,
and almost as young Republicans like Vance and da Vance
and Davis haven't gotten caught yet. Vance tried to turn
this into a debate over the j Jones Virginia text.
And by the way, I think that not only should
the Jay Jones Virginia text be condemned, but I think

(16:21):
Jones should have dropped out immediately, and it was stupid
that he didn't, and I think he still should. Vance's
quote this and then he prints the Jones text is
far worse than anything said in a college group chat.
Well that might be true. Of course, this isn't a
college group chat. These are the Republican organizations that just
have to deal with people under the age of forty,

(16:44):
like people slightly younger than you. And the guy who
said it could become the Attorney General of Virginia. I
refuse to join the pearl clutching. When powerful people call
for political violence, all right, So who's calling for the
political violence here? He seems to imply that's only Jay Jones,
when the other guy's you're talking about gas Chambers. On

(17:08):
the other hand, if anybody in American politics knows about
pearl clutching, it's JD. Vance, but we're really going to
play this game. We're gonna Oh no, your comment is
worse than my comment. This helpful list of as bad
as Jones comments was compiled by The Verge. John Gillette,
a Republican state representative for Arizona, called for Rep. Primila

(17:32):
Jeff Palell of the Democratic Washington to be hanged on
his ex account. Two Kansas Republicans alluded to quote joked
about shooting a former Democratic colleague on the floor of
the Kansas House. Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins threatened to jail
the mayor of Denver, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna threatened
to refer him for criminal charges. Arizona Republican Paul Gozar

(17:54):
shared an anime video depicting him killing Ocazio Cortes and
attacking then President Biden. And then there's all the lists
of denaturalization and Andy Eagles of Tennessee saying Zora Mamdani
should be stripped of his citizenship and deported, Marjorie Taylor Green,
Nancy Mace calling for ilhan Omar to be deported, et cetera,

(18:19):
et cetera. And this list leaves out Charlie Kirk saying
Joe Biden, then the President of the United States, is
quote a corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in
prison and or given the death penalty for his crimes
against America. That was about the time Kirk was calling
for public executions with guillotines and forcing twelve year olds
to watch them because Charlie Kirk was Jesus, and Jesus

(18:44):
saith let us force the twelve year olds to watch
Oh no, I just got dtoed for anti Christian points
of view, all of which in turn leads us to
the reality that at the we swear we are going
to transform Charlie Kirk from the racist, misogynist, fascist, authoritarian,
violence fantasizing psycho that he was in life into Jesus

(19:07):
if it kills us all memorial service at the White
House Ballroom and mini golf course at that event this
week that all of the admittedly awful and even inappropriate
things said about Charlie Kirk since his indefensible murder. Out
of all of them, the worst was said at the

(19:28):
memorial service by Trump.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Fired sniper rifles at ice agents and me. You know,
but I was I made a turn at a good time.
I made a turn at a good time. I turned
to the right. Charlie couldn't believe it, actually, he said,
and I, hell did you make that turn? I said,
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Translation. Trump prefers assassination attempt victims who don't forget to duck. Meanwhile,
after a couple of months where it seemed like he
was in hiding somewhere, Eric Twump is back and on
quite a role. He claimed he and Dadams have saved God,
which sounds like some Grinch TV show that he saw

(20:13):
once and can't quite remember the details. He did another
typical eWiC in which he said the quiet part out
loud twice. Quote, my father happens to be sitting back
in the Oval office with the House and the Senate,
and with the majority on the Supreme Court. Yeah, just
a pro tip more on twin number two. You're supposed
to pretend that the Supreme Court doesn't have a majority.

(20:38):
It's fair and balanced and judges everything on the merits.
Seeing Also, Elick, if Daddy owns all aspects of the government, necessarily,
if that government shuts down, it's only one person could
have shut it down, Dadams. Trump shut the government down.

(21:02):
Says Trump's son. Hard to believe that was not the
winner of all the things. Eerick said this week, he
said this to twice.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
They're demanding you turn off your security cameras right now.
And then you know, sure enough, we find out that
Jack Smith is planting Manila folders on the office of
my father, taking these, you know, glamorous photo shoots where
he has them all fanned out like a turkey.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
You know this was the lawfair, come on man timelines.
Raid on Mari Lago with the envelopes was August eighth,
twenty twenty two. Jack Smith wasn't appointed until November eighteenth,
twenty twenty two. Jack Smith didn't return from Europe to
the United States until early January twenty twenty three. There

(21:49):
may be one hope for US and for American democracy,
and that is this Dadams puts Ewick in charge of
all the DTOs. Hey guess who ain't winning the Nobel

(22:10):
Peace Prize next year either. How shameful it is to
have two hundred and fifty years of American history and
achievement climax with a half dead president without a functioning brain,
who judges women reporters to their faces on their looks
and watches only his Press secretary's lips and is interested

(22:34):
in peace in the Middle East only so he could
get a Nobel prize because he thinks they're valuable and prestigious.
Since his deal for eternal peace in the Middle East,
Israel has announced one of the bodies turned over Tuesday
by Hamas is not that of one of the hostages.
Hamas responded to the deal by beginning to execute men

(22:56):
in the street, and on day three, Trump vowed, if
Hamas doesn't disarm quote, we'll disarm them. Never mind that
Israel didn't disarm them in two years of carpet bombing
the Peace President for the Speakers of the Knesset and
the ever obliging Mike porn monitor Johnson, the Peace President

(23:17):
is being nominated for the Nobell for ending the Forever
Wars and sending fifty thousand troops to Gaza and troops
to Boston and San Francisco and blowing up boats and
on their way they can blow up more boats anything
they find near Venezuela and then say they're narco terrorist.

(23:38):
Who's going to check can't with no more pieces of
boat left cany and no more pieces of the guys
on them boats. All you need is the debris, which
reminds me I wanted to circle back to something this
reminded me of from my youth. It's as weird an

(23:59):
analogy as you'll ever hear about this, But when I
was a kid twelve thirteen years old, my baseball team
had a program called the Yankees con Edison Good Kids,
in which, in that time of what we thought was
burgeoning bad behavior in public by youngsters, youngsters at ball
games would be recognized were being well behaved. The ushers,

(24:23):
the people who used to take you to your seat
and be delighted by a tip of fifty cents or
a dollar, would select a few kids each game, and
every time they got a couple dozen kids, the kids
would all be invited to another game, and they'd get
to go stand in the bullpen with two or three
Yankee players and meet them and get autographs and get

(24:43):
a group photo. My sister was a Yankee good kid.
One night I was selected. I think I understood even
then that the likeliest cause of this was my dad
slipping one of those ushers. We knew five bucks. Again,
this is nineteen seventy two. Maybe it was one buck.
It was a simpler time, but I was not prepared

(25:07):
for what happened next. One of the ushers for one
of the other sections at the stadium came down to
sit with the ushers from our area who used to
fill the many empty seats near us at Yankee Stadium,
along with people like the groundskeepers and the lunch room staff,
because we were considered regulars, and we used to say
hello to everybody, and they used to say hello to us,

(25:27):
because Yankee Stadium used to be empty seventy thousand seats
and fifty five thousand empties. Anyway, this usher, who I
barely knew and who I did not really like, explained,
quote what a pain in the ass finding these goddamn
good kids was, and that he was almost finished he
just had to find and here he used what was

(25:50):
even then a shocking slur for hispanic. I was stunned.
I don't remember how the ballgame turned out. My father
reddened in front of me. The usher got up to leave,
or there might have been trouble. My father did not
take kindly to hearing things like this. He and I

(26:13):
talked about it in the car on the way home,
and we had pretty much exhausted the topic and how
there were people who would use those terms in public
if they thought the people around them would not report
them or did not belong to the group they were
slurring when a second issue dawned on me. So all
he was looking for, Dad was the nearest Latino kid,

(26:36):
so he could tell his bosses that there would be
a Latino kid among the good kids. And I said,
it didn't matter if the kid was good or bad,
or if that night all the good kids were Latino.
He just needed to find one. He just needed to
find the nearest one so he could tell his bosses that,
and they could tell their bosses that, and they could

(26:57):
tell their bosses that. My dad kind of looked spoke
over his shoulder while driving, kind of looked at me
in the backseat and said, and now, my son, congratulations
tonight you have become a man. Doesn't matter if those
are Narco terrorists or sardine fisherman or sardine fisherman who

(27:20):
helped the drug runners on the side, just so long
as heg sith can tell his boss that they blowed
him up and show him the video of the kinetic murder.
The kinetic trump murdered those guys, just as it wouldn't

(27:41):
matter to Trump if he decides to blow up some
Antifa only there they're just pro democracy kids in frog costumes.
Just so long as Steven Miller can show Trump the
video of that kinetic murder and why. Last bit of

(28:05):
comic relief Oliver Darcy of Status Reporting, Olivia has written
a book. Quote details are scarce, but Status has learned
that galleys have begun circulating quietly among a small select
group of readers. I wonder if Mike Johnson were to
read this book, if he's going to have to report

(28:26):
it to his son on his anti porn app to
continue Darcy. Newsy also addresses her relationship with Kennedy in
the book RFK Junior, the first time she has done
so publicly. I did tell her long ago before her
first article, which was about the the Anthony Wiener mayor

(28:50):
campaign the primary in two thousand and thirteen, twenty twelve,
twenty twelve. Maybe I told her, you're going to do
what with that story? You're going to write it on
a blog? No, no, no daily news will pay you
for this. Never write anything for free. Newsy also addresses

(29:11):
her relationship with Kennedy in the book, the first time
she has done so publicly. Well, this is the first
time somebody's paid her for it. All right, I have
some titles for her book, Me and the Velvet Frog.
I kind of stole part of that from Schoolly on
Blue Sky? Or how's this phoning it in? Or or

(29:36):
it's not sleeping with a source if it's just on
FaceTime or my favorite and this is considered really cheap
of me. I'm not proud of this. And when I
say not, I mean I am proud of this quote.
Why yes, my life did peak at age twenty two.

(30:02):
My main concern here is whether or not a Libyan
Newsy is smart enough to include a chapter in this
book about our dogs, not about me, not about people
who tried to help her in her life, not about
just about the dogs, because otherwise I can't think of
anything she can write that will minimize or humanize the

(30:27):
train wrecks she has caused in so many lives, and
the damage more importantly, but she personally, individually and totally
her own fault, has done to journalism and bluntly by
mainstreaming RFK Junior this country. Also of interest here the

(30:56):
worst person in the world is the progressive democratic governor
of a blue state. What you heard me? That's next?
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Oberman still

(31:35):
ahead on this episode of Countdown. Before we get too
far away from the actual anniversary date, let's take time,
shall we to revisit the worst launch in cable television history.
At least the worst launch in which the network launched
is still somehow alive thirty two years later, October nineteen

(31:59):
ninety three and the birth of ESPN two deuce and
boy was it a deuce. Good evening and welcome to
the end of our careers. Ahead in things I promised
not to tell except it's all on tape first, believe
it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about,

(32:20):
the roundup of the miscreens, morons and Don and kruegerfect
specimens who constitute two day's other worst persons in the world.
Good evening, You're welcome to you and Acre cries at
the bronze worst, Emily Compagno at fake News Channel. They
have a lot of dim bulbs there. I think they
breed them on a farm in Upstate Australia. But there

(32:42):
is an echelon of shallow, ludicrous hosts that transcend all
other echelons, the Kaylee mcinnaney, Harris Faulkner echelon in the
stupidity rankings, and one of them in this brood is
Emily Compagno Campanno. She and Fox attack those who are

(33:04):
criticizing Barry Weiss, the moron whom the Ellisons put in
charge of CBS News, And as I've pointed out by
reading the Elizabeth Lapato piece the other day, she's really
been sent there to take the fall as CBS News
winds down over the next decade or years, or it's
Barry Weiss, it could be months. But that's not how

(33:26):
they see it over there. Through the wonderful simple prism
that the Fox people talk about to themselves and the
world they offer to their cult, Barry Weiss, No, no,
Barry Weiss is being criticized not because she's an idiot
and a failure, but because she's Jewish quote Companio. This

(33:46):
kind of thing would make me laugh if there was
not an anti Semitic thread in there. Except the examples
of anti semitism Compagnon noted had no anti Semitism in
them or pro Semitism or religion or anything except people
like Jamel Bowie and Hannah Jones and Walker Bragman calling

(34:08):
her an unethical and talentless hack who has zero news experience.
Is that anti semitic and is a right wing operative?
So quote everyone at CBS News should quit in protest.
But it isn't even that subtle. We have to think
about and say, hey, wait a minute, that there's no
there's nothing, there's nothing to that whatsoever. Walker Bragman of

(34:33):
Accountability Journalism Institute, who I have quoted here before, is
one of the Barry Weiss critics whom Companio accuses of
being anti Semitic. He adds the Danumont here the finishing
touch quote. Did Fox News host Emily Companion just suggest
that I am a self hating Jew? I think she did. Yes,

(34:55):
that would be a yes. Mister Bragman is Jewish. Miss
Companio thinks because he's criticizing Barry Weiss, this makes him
anti semitic. Miss Companion is anti intelligence. She is in
fact a maroon. The runner up worse here a guy
named Andrew Gruel. What is the worst possible profession to choose?

(35:18):
If your name, if your family name is Gruel g
r u e l as in you know porridge. That's right,
become a self proclaimed celebrity chef. What kind of chef
are you? I'm a Gruel chef. In fact, my name
is Gruel. I specialize in Gruel.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Wait.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Reality is actually worse than that joke. I saw the clip,
I thought it was a joke. I literally thought this
was a Saturday Night Live parody complete with fake graphics,
because it read Fox News and Legacy Media downplays threat
of Antifa, and it identified the guest as chef Andrew Gruel,
American Gravy Concepts founder.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
Wow, Gravy Concepts. Wow, but not just gravy concepts. This
is the founder of gravy concepts, like the Einstein of.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Gravy, the guy behind gravy Concepts Oppenheimer at the IIG,
the International Institute of Gravy. Apparently he's a real guy,
one of these RFK junior drink raw milk. Who needs
that effing pasteur lunatics. Only he cooks for a living.

(36:39):
And he was explaining that Antifa is a threat and
everybody in it has quote cabbage brains. See he's a chef,
you get it. Cabbage chef, you get it. Yeah, Yeah,
you get it. Half of the Fox audience did not
get it. He was complaining about the picture chosen of
Trump by Time Magazine for its cover. Time Magazine, which
is now a right wing publication. The chef also put

(37:00):
out a retweet of Adam Carolla. You remember Adam Carolla.
He was Jim Kimmel's former on air partner, the one
who wasn't funny and didn't last in the business anyway.
Corolla suggested Katie Porter had quote mad cow disease, because
Corola is all class. The gravy gruel guy added in
a retweet that she should now launch a channel on

(37:22):
mootube because a guy like this gruel fella, who has
a five head and hair and a beard so badly
dyed it looked like he used gravy, he should be
telling us about the threats from a non existent organization,
and he should be making jokes about a politician's appearance
gravy concepts. Chef Gruel, Hi, I'm Chef Smallpox. Nice to

(37:49):
meet you. I shouldn't say that too loud. They'll put
him in the administration. But our winner, Janet Mills, the
governor of Maine, the Democratic governor of Maine, and she's
the worst today. She's been a fine governor, a good
Democrat in a growing, thriving, evermore blue state, and and
she just jumped the shark. She has declared her candidacy

(38:10):
for the Democratic nomination for the Senate from Maine to
try to unseat Susan Collins. Now, how could try to
unseat the deplorable, spineless, culpable American quizzling that is Susan
Collins be a bad thing? Well, sir, there is already
a viable Democrat in there ready to unseat the loathsome Susan.
I'm concerned, not enough to do anything, but I'm concerned Collins.

(38:35):
This viable Democrat is named Graham Plattner, and he's raised
four million dollars in less than two months. And he
is a rock ribbed progressive and forty one years old
and blue collar and part of the new generation. And
now we're all going to waste money and time and
focus and unity on a primary to get Janet Mills
a new job because she's term limited as governor. Because

(38:56):
what we really need in a critical election to kick
out Susan Collins, who is seventy two years old is
a Democratic candidate in Janet, miss who would be seventy
eight years old, who would be the oldest freshman senator
in history, because Chuck Schumer wants her there, because the
Democratic Party has descended into an old age pensioners club.

(39:18):
And guess what in a time when the Republicans have
nobody under the age of eighty except psychoes and Nazis
and militaristic sons of bitches, Democrats have a collection of energetic,
original thinking, dedicated, hardworking thirty and forty somethings and some
twenty somethings, and they should be in charge now because
it is the Chuck Schumers and sadly the Joe Biden's

(39:39):
of this party and of this age, who have helped
put America under the thumb of Donald ef fing Trump.
You guys failed, We guys failed. Time for us to
get out. I'll be sixty seven years old in January
if I live that long. And if you said, Keith,
we think you should run to replace Chuck Schumer, I'd
say thanks, I'm too old. I'm too old. And in

(40:04):
Maine we actually have somebody young and vibrant who resonates
in his state and isn't going to be seventy nine
the day takes the oath, and isn't going to be
a tepid Schumert, who, if she's sure he doesn't somehow
lose to Susan Collins and gets then reelected after being elected,
would turn ninety before the end of her second term.

(40:26):
We're talking about throwing out a forty one year old candidate,
assault of the Earth guy to get a senator who,
if elected to a second term, would be ninety. What
are we thinking here, Governor? You've done great, Go do
something else if you don't want to retire. I'm not
saying that sixty seven is time for everybody to retire.

(40:46):
I'm not saying that seventy nine is time for everybody
to retire. Keep going until you fall down, but go
be a mayor, run for the House of Representatives. Leave
the field clear for the person who will not somehow lose.
The age argument is Susan Collins, Governor Janet, She makes

(41:09):
Susan Collins seem young again. Mills how old? Satchel Page asked,
would you be if you didn't know how old you were,
you'd still be older than Susan Cowards Today's other worst
person in the world, to our number one story on

(41:40):
the countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I've
promised not to tell. And this one is going to
take a while. October one, nineteen ninety three, the launch
of ESPN two. I had already launched ESPN Radio for

(42:01):
them and was part of the law bunch of the
first regular hour long sports center. I was in year
two at CNN when they started. I was in year
two at MSNBC when they started. I was at year
two of the RKO Radio Network. Somehow the ESPN people

(42:21):
thought I was good at launches. No, no, not especially still,
they talked me into becoming the face of this first
of ESPN's endless offshoots, the first of the endless clones
of its television self. I wore a brown leather bomber jacket,
and I said the first words in the first actual program,

(42:44):
and they sounded something like this, good evening, and welcome
to the end of our careers. A three hour tour.
That's Mitch album, this is Susie Calber my new and
that's pretty much all anybody remembers of this unmitigated disaster.
ESPN two exists today. Of course and successfully, but it

(43:05):
only became successful when they stopped trying to make it
something different from original ESPN, and management, with genuine heartbreak,
accepted the idea that all the nation wanted was more ESPN,
not different kinds of ESPN that begat ESPN News, ESPNU,
ESPN plus ESPN, the Oho Tartart control ESPN. But that's

(43:29):
not what they wanted ESPN two to be. They wanted
it to be hip and cool, you know, for kids,
And they were going to make it hip and cool
and force it to be hip and cool if it
killed them and you and for that matter me. It
is why they took the co anchor of their most
successful sports center ever and broke up the partnership and

(43:53):
moved him to a new network that almost literally had
more people who thought they were in charge of it
than watched it. And why three months later, when Sports
Illustrated magazine chose ESPN two as the seventh worst thing
to happen in sports in the year nineteen ninety three,
only the seventh worst, we were grateful, and I then
scurried back to Sports Center and we all pretended like

(44:16):
ESPN two it never happened, and we almost never mentioned
it again, But the saga of why it went so
desperately and immediately wrong is worth telling in brief, and
if you will listen to it, I will tell you
something I have never admitted publicly before. Why when they
asked me to leave Sports Center after a very first

(44:37):
successful year on Sports Center to go do this Kakamami
new network thing, Why on earth? Given the choice, I
actually said, yes, nobody knows this. You will in a
few minutes. But first. By the time I went to
work there in nineteen ninety two, ESPN had finally moved

(44:59):
out of its perennial status of near bankruptcy and near
irrelevancy to profit and prominence. From a launch in nineteen
seventy nine through the mid nineteen eighties, the place had
always either had a new owner or a new schedule,
or a new plan to avert bankruptcy. When I joined
the fledgling sports department at CNN in nineteen eighty one,
I used to watch my high school classmate Chris Berman

(45:21):
do his show called Sports Center from what was obviously
a closet with one light, no air conditioning, and no teleprompter.
Sometimes it would be twenty minutes long. Sometimes it would
be two minutes long. Each time, I'd look at poor
Chris schitzing and looking a little claustrophobic, and I'd say, well,
hooray for CNN Sports. We're not the worst. But by

(45:43):
nineteen ninety two, ESPN had begun to be willing to
spend a little money to bring in a prominent local
sportscaster from Los Angeles me and give him the keys
to the eleven o'clock Sports Center. And this company, which
did not have any merchandise, did not sell anything with
its logo on it, finally decided to expand and launch

(46:04):
an all sports radio network, And when those plans did
not go very well, they spent a little extra money
and they talked me into moving to Connecticut three months
earlier than planned to launch the radio network, and it
was an instantaneous hit by early nineteen ninety three. Then
there were rumblings and then rumors, and finally an announcement
that they would build upon the radio success by starting

(46:25):
a second television network, ESPN and ESPN two. But and
from the beginning this was the point. It was not
going to be just another ESPN or the ESPN spillover
channel or the channel for when there's a great basketball
game and a great football game at the same time
and we want to cover both. It was going to

(46:46):
be different. There'd be live broadcasts of games, just like ESPN.
There'd be a studio sports show just like Sports Center,
but it'd be hip, you know, for kids in the
Sports Center newsroom. The assumption was the face of ESPN
two was going to be Mike to reach Mike had
had a very tough nineteen ninety two, and it seemed

(47:09):
like something that could re establish him in the company,
or if he had a tough nineteen ninety three, something
he could be jettison from if the whole thing went
up in flames. I heard Robin Roberts name mentioned once
or twice, and I don't know if they ever approached Robin,
and I think Tarico told me once they had mentioned
it to him, but never seriously. So when they called
me into my boss's office in the spring of nineteen

(47:30):
ninety three, I just assumed they were yelling at me
for something I said, since that's what they usually called
me in for, or called me and Dan Patrick in for,
or called Dan in just to yell at him for
something I had said. Instead, they offered me ESPN two.
We want you to be to ESPN two, said John Walsh,
who basically ran everything ESPN did that was not a ballgame.

(47:52):
We want you to beat for ESPN two what Chris
Berman is to ESPN. They explained that there would be
younger sports on their ex game stuff and mountain biking.
They kept talking about mountain biking and a lot of
stuff with trees, but that the flagship program would match
my sense of humor exactly, that it would be snarky

(48:13):
and flip and with it and hip and cool, you know,
for kids. They said they would let me continue on
Sports Center until August and then have me work for
two months helping them design and rehearse the new show.
They actually wanted my opinion, and they offered to give
me like a twenty five percent raise. Understand though ESPN

(48:34):
of nineteen ninety three would fight you over an eleven
dollars cab ride on an expense report. They would call
you into a meeting, they would spend thirty minutes on this.
They would then offer you eight dollars. A twenty five
percent raise was the nineteen ninety three ESPN equivalent of
Eternal Life. Still I had my doubts. For one thing,

(48:58):
as it was, we seemed to be pretty hip and
cool on Sports Center. As it was, Dan Patrick and
I had an on air relationship that you could not practice,
nor design, nor cast. It was just there or it wasn't.
We were the two guys in the World War One
bunker who knew that the Jerrys would eventually get us
right in the psalm, So all we could do was

(49:19):
first take out as many of them as we could
and sing and laugh while we did it. But I
had two reasons for saying yes anyway, and I'll save
the one I've never told anybody at all for the
end of this recollection. The other reason was, believe it
or not, I'm I'm a team player. I am not

(49:43):
the guy who will come in and lie on behalf
of the team. And I am not the guy who
will turn away and say nothing when the coach is
slapping the crap out of one of my teammates. But
if you say, we are management, we have thought this through.
We want you to leave Sports Center to go do
ESPN two and be hip and cool you know for kids,
I will say yes, plus money. Only they had not

(50:08):
thought it through as it proved. The first problem was
the new network that was supposed to be different from ESPN,
and the new show that was supposed to be different
from ESPN. Sports Center was going to be run by
John Walsh, the guy who ran SportsCenter and basically created
what you saw then and what you see now, And
to actually produce the show, he chose Mike Bogad, who

(50:30):
was the coordinating producer of the eleven o'clock Sports Center
that I was doing with Dan Patrick, and Norby Williamson,
who was the line producer of the eleven o'clock Sports
Center with me and Dan Patrick. And although they would
not give me a title other than anchor, the other
guy running it was me the co host of the
eleven o'clock Sports Center. To add to this crowd of rebellious,

(50:51):
innovative anti establishment thinkers who yesterday had been the establishment,
John Walsh hired the sports editor of the Boston Globe,
Vince Doria. To my mind, Vince would cover himself in
glory at ESPN by once proposing a really bad idea
the laugh track for the Nick Mackai comedy segments. And
when I said that's a really bad idea, it's still

(51:14):
a newscast. What if we have a laugh track someday
when some team's plane crashes. He said, you're right, I'm
thinking maybe I don't know as much about this TV
stuff as I thought I did. Will you tell me
the next time I have an idea that's that bad.
But at this point, Vince was thinking maybe we could
differentiate ESPN two from ESPN by showing baseball and basketball

(51:35):
box scores overnight. There was an opinion, and Vince held
it that we should be the Christian science monitor of
sportscasts on ESPN two, which was definitely not, you know,
for kids. The show producers they brought in were also mainstream.
My friend and producer Ron Grellik came in from Los Angeles.
He actually thought they meant the stuff about younger sports.

(51:57):
He bought a magazine rack and subscribed us to all
kinds of biking magazines and hiking magazines, and nobody ever
read them. They hired producers from Madison Square Garden Network.
They hired associate producers from Sports Center and made them
producers to join me on the anchor desk. They hired
a newspaper columnist from Detroit named Mitch Album, and they

(52:18):
hired all the local sportscasters they did not have room
for on SportsCenter, and among them was a guy named
Stu Stu Scott, and Stu was great, but Stu and
everybody else just came in and did regular sports casts,
just as if they'd been on regular flavor ESPN. Finally
to be my real co host they were going to hire, well,
we never found out who they were going to hire,

(52:39):
because one day the word came through that the chairman
of ABC Cap Cities, which owned ESPN and everything else,
had seen this weekend sportscaster in West Palm Beach doing
a tennis tournament of some sort or rain delay during
a tennis tournament or something, and thought she was great,
And overnight there was a bidding war for her, and
we had just hired her to be my co host.

(52:59):
And her name was Susie Calber. Everybody on this renegade network,
including me, he was thoroughly non renegade. It became rather
apparent rather quickly that management's understanding of what made something
cool and hip, you know, for kids, was you ready
what clothing we wore. This is the story of the

(53:23):
infamous leather jacket I wore the first night, which you
will hear when countdown continues. After this, back to the
number one story on the countdown and things I promised
not to tell on Saturday's twenty ninth anniversary of the
launch of ESPN two, or as I described it to

(53:44):
Kenny Maine for his podcast yesterday, the Titanic Only It's
on fire First, as I said, the organizing principle was
forced hipness, and the organizing principle of forced hipness was
the clothing we wore, and that brings us to the
primary image that still appears whenever the law buch of

(54:05):
ESPN two is broached or googled. My infamous brown leather
bomber jacket fall comes early to Bristol, Connecticut. And if
it were not cold enough there at the end of
September nineteen ninety three, there was also something wrong with
our new ESPN two studio. No matter what they did
to the air conditioning system in there, it was like

(54:26):
forty eight degrees all the time. So I was standing
outside one day trying to get warm, contemplating the succession
of train wrecks that had been our first five or
six pilot shows and dry runs, and I was wearing
my brown leather bomber jacket because it was cold. When
another of the many executive producers, John Lack, came over

(54:48):
to say hi, and he was in mid sentence when
he looked at the jacket and went stone cold, silent. Wait.
He finally said the word eureka forming over his head.
Would you could you? If I asked you, would you
wear that jacket on the show? I pretended to hesitate.

(55:10):
I realized only the jacket could save me from freezing
to death in our winter on the TV version of
The Donner Party, And so I said, I suppose, And
that's why I was wearing that jacket. It was cold
in the studio. Why they gave Steve Buckley from the
Boston Herald a baseball cap to wear on the air
for his segments and wear backwards. Why they put other

(55:31):
guys in football helmets and insisted that nobody wear a
tie ever, not even former Boston College football coach Jack Picknell.
That should be obvious, you know, for kids. It became
rapidly apparent that all ESPN two was ESPN dressed up differently.
I had a leather coat, The on screen graphics were

(55:52):
in lowercase letters only the camera was not on a tripod.
It was carried around by a cameraman who soon had
a bad back. The other problem was exemplified by that
fellow John Lack. He had run MTV News and he
actually had some ideas about differentiating presentation and content for
younger audiences. But by the time he suggested the jacket,

(56:15):
he also had a second message for me. Listen, he said,
I can't get through to these people. They tell me
I'm in charge, and then they tell me our first
new hip revolutionary story is going to be a profile
of Doug Flutie, the quarterback. And I say, how's that
different from Sports Center? And they look at me like
I'm crazy, and they say, he's playing in Canada. We'll
be doing a story about Canada. Who would believe we're

(56:35):
going to do a story about Canada? But I know
you get it, Keith. So when we're actually on the air,
you have to keep it different. You have to be
in charge. When we're on you are the executive producer.
This was extremely bad news because by my count, this

(56:57):
would have made me the fifteenth or sixteenth different person
who believed they were in charge. There was John Lack,
there was Wall Welsh, There was a new vice president
named Howard Katz. There was Vince Doria. There were the
two sports center guys, Norby and Bogie. There were the
line producers. There were a couple of consultants. There was
the president of ESPN, Steve Bornstein. There was the chairman
of ABC who had discovered Susie Cawber. There was the

(57:19):
guy who put in the state of the art air
conditioning system in the studio. There was the other guy,
Walter Cronkite's lighting director. As he kept telling us who
put in the state of the art lighting system, all
of us individually in charge, so nobody was in charge.
The night before the premiere, So September thirtieth, nineteen ninety three,

(57:41):
John Walsh, the Sports center man, saw me in the
hallway and said, listen, I just got some amazing information
from audience research. Do you know which show in all
of television has the highest percentage of viewers who are
aged eighteen to twenty four. This was an important question,
a relevant question because these were the kids, you know,

(58:01):
for kids. ESPN two had been created to get that
eighteen to twenty four year old audience. So I guess
the answer was, I don't know. Some show on MTV. No,
Walsh said, gleefully, it's SportsCenter, and I froze, and I said, wait, John,
if we already have the eighteen to twenty four year

(58:24):
old audience, why are we starting a new network to
get the eighteen to twenty four year old audience. Do
you really think they're gonna give up the show they
like and move to a new show on a new
channel just cause? And Walsh laughed and shrugged and shuffled
down the hallway, and I called a cab to take

(58:46):
me to the Hartford Airport so I could leave the country.
Only at the last minute I chickened out. The premiere
October first began with me, I swear this is true,
going to shave in my house and instead dropping and
breaking a mirror. The network signed on at seven with
the national anthem and some sort of statement from Chris

(59:07):
Berman blessing it, and then a very long sketch parody
of the then hit film The Fugitive, in which I
was the fugitive from Sports Center. Get it? The Fugitive
from Sports Center, You get it. Then the lights came on,
the poor guy with the camera staggered in and I said,
good evening, and welcome to the end of our careers.
The television sportswriter the Associated Press, John Nelson, was there

(59:30):
in the studio. He immediately flashed that quote to a
not waiting world, and ESPN two and Sports Night were born,
you know, for kids. The first night seemed okay, largely
because ESPN threw a party in the parking lot under
a gigantic tent, free food and booze, hundreds of staffers

(59:53):
and guests and celebrities and free booze. That place later
became known as the Tent of Consent. He don't ask me.
I was on the air for three hours. I had
nothing to do with this. Later that night, near the tent,
the network president stumbled crossing a little bridge over a
stream and wound up in the water. And he still

(01:00:16):
had a better night than we did. The shows bounced
from topic to topic and mood to mood, once with
Bill Pedo anchoring with me. Sports Night ran a mini
documentary on a high school basketball star who chose which
college to go to to play ball at entirely by
letter and telephone. Only when he arrived did he discover

(01:00:36):
he was the only white guy in an entirely black conference.
We showed the first ten minutes of this extraordinary story,
then we promised to show you the rest of it,
and then we welcomed a live studio guest, Eddie Layton,
the organist from Yankee Stadium. He played a few tunes,

(01:00:57):
and then we went back to part two of this
very grim documentary about this very dim basketball player, and
that hour was kind of good compared to the rest
of them. Eventually, we moved Sports Night from Friday, Saturday
and Sunday nights to Monday through Friday at five pm,
so Sports Night was on in the afternoons. Though it

(01:01:19):
was December, the limitless air conditioning continued. Susie Cawber began
to wear a blanket on her lap just out of
camera view. I begged to be returned to SportsCenter, and
they agreed, provided I gave back the rays and extended
my contract for a year and gave back a little
bit more. Sports Illustrated at that point, still the leading
and most influential sports media outlet in the world, warned

(01:01:42):
US it was going to list in its year end
issue the worst things to Happen in Sports in nineteen
ninety three, and we ESPN two were going to be
on it. And when the magazine came out, there on
the list, behind the stabbing of the tennis star Monica
Selis by a fan of her rival, Stepfie Groff, and
behind Michael Jordan's retirement, and behind a college football player
suing his coach because somebody else became the starting quarterback.

(01:02:03):
There we were, It's Illustrated's choice as the seventh worst
thing in Sports for nineteen ninety three. And the reaction
of the anchors and the staff and even the management
and all eighteen people were in charge of ESPN two
Sports Night was unanimous, Hooray, we're not the worst.

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
We're not the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
We're not the worst. In my last week anchoring the show,
we discovered that Walter Kronkite's lighting guy had never spoken
to the guy who put in the air conditioning system.
Walter Kronkite's lighting guy had focused the principal backlight in
his state of the art lighting system directly onto the

(01:02:41):
principal monitor for the other guy's state of the art
air conditioning system. So the state of the art air
conditioning system had spent six months thinking the temperature in
the studio was two hundred and seventeen degrees. They let
me go back to Sports Center, providing I gave back
all the extra money, and I happily did it and
a little more. Sports Night staggered on for a few

(01:03:03):
more weeks before being canceled, and all the talent Stuart Scott,
Susie Calber, Philpedo, and the guy they hired to replace
me when I escaped back to Sports Center, Kenny, Maine.
They all went on to do SportsCenter. As to ESPN two.
We all pretended that never happened. It's just a bad dream.
And then there was that other reason I had agreed

(01:03:26):
to try it. I have not told anybody this. I
don't even think I told the other person involved this.
But the night before ESPN management called me in and
said we'd like you to leave Sports Center and become
the face of ESPN two, a woman I worked with
at ESPN said yes, she would like to go out
with me, but that doing that while we worked together

(01:03:50):
would be a disaster. So after management's offer, I asked
her if my new schedule, which took me away from
her department, was sufficient professional distance so that she'd feel
comfortable dating, and she said yes, So I said yes,
and we started dating and that didn't work out either.

(01:04:26):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Oh my god, was that a mistake.
Most of our countdown music was arranged, performed, and produced
by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel are musical directors
of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass, on drums. Mister Chanelle handled

(01:04:46):
orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Is the Sports music who wrote
the ESPN two original theme. I'm wondering if that was
John who did all of the music for us and

(01:05:07):
for Ken Burns. It's an interesting combination. Was it John,
I'll have to look it up. Not John Shelby. He
was an outfielder, John, I'll go look it up. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today is my friend Stevie Vancent. Everything else was,

(01:05:28):
as always my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day two
hundred and seventy of America held hostage just ninety three
days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck, lame
brain term, unless he's removed sooner by maga Epstein or
that pavement patch on his hand, or an escalator or
the psychopathy test or tail and all, or who knows

(01:05:51):
what the next scheduled countdown is Monday till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

(01:06:13):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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