June 15, 2023 • 40 mins
EPISODE 228: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump may have done the one thing that would force the ENTIRE Republican party to repudiate him: The Israelis Intelligence Corps and the Mossad reportedly think Donald Trump has damaged the security of the state of Israel. “Top brass in the Israeli defense establishment,” writes the intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent Yossi Melman in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, “are concerned that secret documents seized from (Trump) include material whose exposure has damaged Israel’s security.” Melman quotes two senior Israeli defense officials, one from the Mossad and the other from the Intelligence Corps as saying, quote: “It’s an absolutely reasonable possibility that some of the documents are about Israel and its capabilities, maybe even its nuclear program,” unquote. And reading between the lines, Melman and his sources never once mention the story of Trump reading the details of the Mark Milley plan to attack IRAN to Mark Meadows’ ghost-writers, so presumably what Israeli Intelligence fears is that Trump has damaged other elements of their nation’s security.
So ANOTHER fault line opens between Trump and Republican Sacred Cows: Trump versus Troops, Trump versus Law And Order, Trump Versus… Israel. Damaging the 21st Century Republican Party’s supposed allegiance to Israel is the most sacred of its cows because it is viscerally important to the party’s fanatical religious base. Polling from as recently as 2018 confirms that at least HALF of the Evangelicals don’t give two actual spits about ACTUAL Jews or the NATION of Israel. It is simply a tentpole belief of their cult that before all the bible-thumpers can go to Heaven in a rapture, all the Jews have to be in Jerusalem and be converted or die. The Republicans pretend allegiance to Israel in order to maintain ownership of the Evangelicals who need Jerusalem preserved so they can be converted when the alarm goes off at Rapture O’Clock.
Plus Pence takes a Nikki Haley style Trump-Endangered-The-Troops climbdown, Ryan Goodman thinks Smith has a backup play in New Jersey just in case things come acropper in the Florida trial, Judge Cannon has exactly 14 days of active Judge Stuff, Trump turned down a chance to make all this stuff go away.
And the story of the British TV producer who shouted "President Trump? Are you ready to go to jail?" during his creation of a false victory narrative at a Miami Cuban bakery after the arraignment Tuesday, takes a strange twist. The guy who got in her face and called her a "Stupid B----" has self-identified, and he's a former member of the Trump Government AND was involved in image polishing for Putin in America, Michael R. Caputo.
B-BLOCK (18:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: To finish off the Michael Caputo story and his world-class exit quote from the Trump Regime in 2020. Plus the Archives are mad at Trump AGAIN. Lindsey Graham makes another threat. And Fani Willis officially says she isn't postponing anything. (24:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk wants America to have a dictator who'll kill everybody; The New York Times and Fox News share dishonors over Trump's Tuesday; and why do all these supposedly anti-pedophilia right wingers say such creepy things about kids and kids' characters and sex? Why did Ben Shapiro talk about Bert and Ernie wearing "assless chaps"?
C-BLOCK (33:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: All the strikes are against 10-year old Slinky in the New York pound (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day in 1974 that I didn't go to Boston University because of...Howard Stern.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
may have done the one thing that would force the
(00:24):
entire Republican Party to repudiate him. The Israeli IDF, Intelligence
Corps and the Mossad reportedly think Donald Trump has damaged
the security of the nation of Israel. Quote top brass
in the Israeli Defense Establishment, writes the intelligence and strategic
(00:45):
affairs correspondent Yossi Melman in the Israeli newspaper Auretz, are
concerned that secret documents seized from Trump include material whose
exposure has damaged Israel's security. Melman outlines the extraordinary layering
of American and Israeli defense intelligence and even notes that
quote under special circumstances, Israel and American espionage agents and
(01:09):
commandos also engage in joint operations conducted in total secrecy,
jeopardized by a quote boastful chatterbox like Trump. More importantly,
Melman quotes two senior Israeli defense officials, one from the
Mosad and the other from the Intelligence Corps as saying, quote,
(01:30):
It's an absolutely reasonable possibility that some of the documents
are about Israel and its capabilities, maybe even its nuclear program,
unquote and reading between the lines. In this story, Melman
and his sources never once mentioned the tale of Trump
reading the details of the Mark Millie planned to attack
Iran to Mark Meadows ghostwriters. So presumably what Israeli intelligence
(01:56):
fears is that Trump has damaged other elements of their
nation's security. And now another fault line opens before us
between Trump and Republican sacred cow dogma, Trump versus troops,
Trump versus law and order, Trump versus Israel. All Republican
(02:18):
claims of adherents and loyalty to these three topics do
not hold up to scrutiny. Trump not only evaded military service,
he's called the US dead of World War One, suckers
and losers. The Republicans are simultaneously trying to militarize the police,
yet to fund the national detectives of the FBI, but
damaging the twenty first century Republican parties supposed allegiance to
(02:43):
Israel is the most sacred of all the cows because
it is viscerally important to the party's fanatical religious base.
Polling from as recently as twenty eighteen confirms that at
least half of all the evangelicals don't give two actual
spits about actual Jews or the actual nation of Israel.
(03:05):
This is simply a tent pole belief of their cult
that before all them Bible thumpers can go to Heaven
in a rapture, all the Jews have to be in
Jerusalem and they all have to be converted or die.
The Republicans pretend allegiance to Israel in order to maintain
ownership of the evangelicals who need Jerusalem preserved so that
(03:28):
they can be converted when the clock strikes rapture o'clock.
On the surface, the Israelis are as loyal to Trump
as he pretends to be to them, but that there
are deep doubts was confirmed when Benjamin Notat in Yahoo
became one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Joe
Biden on his election in twenty twenty, and Trump swore
(03:49):
like a Steve Adore. And those doubts, as Melman points
out in Aratz, stem from him damaging the Israeli defense.
Already in the spring of twenty seventeen, Trump bragged to
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and they're ambassador to Washington,
Sergei Kissliak, that he had gotten intelligence about ices from
(04:10):
quote a Middle Eastern ally. Within weeks, the Mossad had
evidence that, simply because Trump couldn't keep his big mouth shut,
Trump had endangered one of the Mosad agents. Later it
concluded there was also a chance Trump had compromised undisclosed
Israeli technology that had garnered the intelligence. So on top
(04:30):
of pending trial in New York and in Florida, Trump
may have gotten the Mosad mad at him. Nice work, Sparky,
And it is now unmistakably clear that other key Republicans
are looking for climb downs from the Trump train, and
he keeps providing them. All any GOP figure who wants
(04:52):
out now needs to say, is the Masad thinks Trump
has damaged Israeli security and Trump's evangelical support will begin
to fade and Trump will be on his way out.
Because another AP publican took another climb down yesterday, and
once again it was one of those three key third
rails who it was that wasn't shocking his vehemence. His
(05:16):
vehemence is kind of shocking. Quote the very prospect that
what is alleged here took place, Mike Pence said yesterday
on CNBC creating an opportunity where highly sensitive classified material
could have fallen into the wrong hands, even inadvertently. That
jeopardizes our national security unquote. But wait, there's more. Quote.
(05:39):
It puts at risk the men and women of our
armed forces. Mister Pence will order the Trump versus troops
please medium rare with the extra nikky Haley its personal dressing. Quote.
As the father and father in law of two men
that currently serve in the armed forces of the United States,
(06:02):
I will never diminish concerns over the handling of classified materials.
The documents that were alleged to be in the President's
possession describing defense capabilities of our country, potential vulnerabilities of
the United States and our allies. If these materials had
ever inadvertently made their way in the hands of foreign interests,
it would jeopardize the security of our country unquote. Oh
(06:26):
oh wait, there's more and more. Pence is going in
for a second helping of the nicky Haley it's personal
dressing quote, as well as the safety and security of
our armed forces. If that were not enough, Pence also
went on The Moron Show That's Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton and absolutely refused to guarantee Trump a pardon. They
(06:49):
insulted him. He laughed at them, they talked over him.
He talked over them. He kept saying day in court
and belief in the justice system, and they kept making
their usual oinking noises. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
praising Pence. I don't give a damn Pence. I'm just
underscoring the degree to which he is climbing down to
(07:11):
all the climb downs in the world from all the
old guard Republicans guarantee that Trump would not win the
GOP primaries. Of course, not that didn't guarantee it in
twenty sixteen, did it. But do you think if the
Republican hierarchy, including lots of folks who are still supporting
Trump right now, decided that to nominate him again would
be absolute and unavoidable electoral suicide for them, that they
(07:37):
would not do something anything to stop him from getting
their nomination, Because if he really breaks the bonds between
the Party and the troops and the party and law
and order and the Party and Israel, he takes all
of them down with him. And the day Donald Trump
guarantees that Kevin McCarthy or Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell
cannot get reelected. That is the day Trump disappears. I
(08:04):
mean Donald might even get the damn Mosad on his ass.
So all that is still percolating. There are developments too
today in the current case against Trump and the ones
that might be just around the corner. The continuing fly
in the ointment in Florida is looming larger and larger
with every new day. Now, The New York Times has
(08:25):
analyzed the trial record of Trump appoint judge Eileen Cannon
and basically discovered there is no trial record. Quote she
had not previously served as any kind of judge. Charlie
Savage rites, and because ninety eight percent of federal criminal
cases are resolved with plea deals, she has had only
a limited opportunity to learn how to preside over a trial.
(08:47):
The hard numbers two hundred and twenty four criminal cases
on her watch. Two hundred and twenty out of two
hundred and twenty four never went to trial. The four
that did were routine quote like a fellow who was
charged with illegally possessing a gun. In all, the four
cases added up to fourteen trial days unquote fourteen Canon
(09:12):
has been an actual judge doing actual judge things for
fourteen days. I wonder if anybody would be willing to
go explain to her, take her under their wing, and
tell her what she needs to do in this trial,
some Trump legal expert like Jeff Clark or Cash Patel
or Baked Alaska. If this case proceeds with Cannon at
(09:35):
the bench and Trump's influence on her factual or just
assumed prejudice towards him, one wonders if Jack Smith has
a backup plan. Oh, by the way, Ryan Goodman and
Andrew Weisman does think Jack Smith has a backup plan,
They write in The Atlantic, if you had another dog
in this case that did nothing in the night. The
Miami indictment Goodman and Weissman note conspicuously excludes many facts
(10:00):
surrounding Trump's actions in Bedminster, New Jersey. What boxes were
taken there, what they contained, how they were kept at
the golf club. Their silence suggests that there might be
more to come from the famously hard charging Smith and
his team of prosecutors. In short, they are suggesting that
the Special Council specifically did not indict Trump in Florida
(10:24):
for the reading of the Mark Milli Iran war plan
just in case something came a cropper in Florida, and
not just the prospect of a crooked judge like canon.
They note that unlike the wilful retention of the documents,
including the Milli Iran document, which obviously happened in Florida,
the telling of the Milli Iran story happened in Jersey.
(10:45):
Goodman and Weissman note two aspects of the Espionage Act,
which I've cited here previously. Quote one makes it a
crime to intentionally communicate national defense information to people not
authorized to receive it, and the other makes it a
crime to intentionally disclose classified information to the same So
if he just told the Meadows ghostwriters the Iran details
(11:09):
like the number of American troops that would have been involved,
or just to pick a country at random what Israel
would do in the scheme, but he did so without
giving them the classified document that would be communicating national
defense information. Jack Smith could proceed against Trump in New
Jersey for leaking national defense secrets. And if Trump's response
(11:30):
was I declassified that document, Smith could respond, sure, great,
whatever classified or unclassified, don't enter into it. There are
a lot of new small Trump details today, including the
day last fall when one of Trump's lawyers tried to
convince Trump to negotiate a deal with Merrick Garland that
would preclude charges. That was Christopher Kais, according to the
(11:52):
Washington Post, and Trump said no, I'm going to fight this.
There's also Lindsey Graham threatening America again over this, and
the National Archives getting pissed off at Trump again. And
please remember, pissing off the National archivists is ultimately what
got Trump arrested. And I will get to all that,
but I remain fascinated by the blessed irreverence and the
(12:15):
risk taking of the British TV producer Sophie Alexander at
her shouted question to Trump that briefly interrupted the Trump
celebration narrative inside a Cuban bakery after his arraignment Tuesday.
I'll repeat it briefly. We don't have any TV journalists
like her here now none. The last one was probably
(12:39):
Sam Donaldson, but that's not the point here today. Yesterday,
the guy who got in the face of Miss Alexander
of Sky News during the bruhaha in the bakery self
identified and as if this story were not interesting enough.
You will not believe who he turns out to be,
(12:59):
largely because a lot of us thought he was dead.
But just listen to this again, and listen carefully, and
wait for when you hear the guy who calls her
a stupid bee. President Trump, are you ready to go
to jail? That was Michael R. Kaputo, who at seven
(13:47):
fifty six Eastern time yesterday morning replied to somebody who
tweeted a freeze frame of the video asking if that
were him, by replying, quote, yes, tell your mommy. She
left her dog eared and underlined copy of communist manifesto
in the booth, and she's banned for life from Versailles.
That's the name of the bakery, quoting again, also she
(14:10):
smelled like feet. Puto spent the rest of the day
tweeting memes, most of which did not have relevance to
the incident, and insults that would embarrass a thirteen year
old on TikTok, I mean he was in multiple dozens
of replies and tweets by sunset. Does that name sound
at all familiar? Michael R. K. Puto worked in the
(14:32):
Trump government, worked in the Boris yeltsin government in Russia
worked pr to try to make Putin more popular in
the US. Was in Ukraine for a while, was the
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services who tried to
fix the COVID stats to make Trump look better. And
(14:52):
then he said left wing hit squads were going to
kill him. And finally, two days after that, he gave
one of the greatest exit lines in the history of
the United State dates government when he suddenly announced quote
that's next. This is kinda this is countdown with Keith Oberman.
(15:25):
Post scripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, date line, the Versailles Cafe Miami. Back to
the self identification of the former Trump HHS Assistant Secretary
Michael Koputo as the man who yelled stupid b in
the face of the Sky News reporter at the Trump
celebration Tuesday in Miami, and I left you hanging about
(15:48):
his matchless exit line when he finally quit in September
twenty twenty. This guy is like Roger Stone Light. Listen
to this resume and then I'll give you the quote.
Former Alie North associate and Carl Palladino, New York Governor
campaign manager and Bush senior campaign staffer and astro turfist
(16:09):
for Trump's bid to buy the Buffalo bills and longtime
sexist and racist Twitter troll. And he lived in Russia,
and he was an advisor to Boris Yeltsin's government and
Boris Yeltsin, And then he did work for a company
trying to improve the reputation of Vladimir Putin inside the US.
And he lived in Ukraine. And most infamously, he was
(16:29):
the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump.
You picture him, yet, this is the guy who tried
to alter all the reports on COVID from the CDC
the Centers for Disease Control to make them look better
for Trump. He tried to stop publication of the conclusion
that kids could transmit COVID or that chloroquin was useless.
(16:52):
Still not got him? How about his charge that CDC
scientists were engaged in sedition and were you know, trying
to kill him? On September thirteenth, twenty twenty, it was
this same guy, Capudo, who posted a video on Facebook
claiming the CDC was a quote resistant unit meeting in
(17:13):
coffee shops planning their next attacks. On Trump, he said
left wing quote hit squads are being trained all over
this country unquote, and he told people to buy ammunition,
and then came the wow, finish quote, you understand that
they're going to have to kill me. And unfortunately, I
think that's where this is going, and that's not even
(17:37):
the quote. Two days later, Capudo took medical leave from
the Trump administration, admitting this is the quote that his quote,
mental health has definitely failed. Oh and then he said
he had throat cancer that had spread and we all
felt sorry for him. And then Tuesday there he was
(17:59):
in the Versailles Bakery in Miami, gaunt, screaming at a
TV and then tweeting about it all day yesterday. And
evidently he's involved in running this new Spanish language version
of a kind of Newsmax called Americano Media and rage,
tweeting mental health has definitely failed. You say you, Nancy Faust, dateline, Washington,
(18:55):
Back to the origin point. The National Archives is done
listening to Trump surrogates lie about the Presidential Records Act.
Trump himself obviously, but also the ex Trump attorney Tim Parlatori,
who keeps insisting that the PRA has a clause in
it that says an ex president quote is supposed to
take the next two years after they leave office to
(19:15):
go through all these documents to figure out what's personal
and what's presidential. The National Archives is big mad again. Quote.
The PRA requires that all records created by presidents and
vice presidents be turned over the National Archives and Records
Administration NARA at the end of their administrations. There's no
(19:36):
history practice or provision in law for presidents to take
official records with them when they leave office to sort through,
such as for a two year period, as described in
some reports. As I said, you know what happened last
time the Archives got pissed. Trump got arrested. How's this
(19:56):
parlatory doing, Dateline Washington, how's Lindsey Graham doing. He's nuts, right,
or he's being blackmailed. Or he's nuts because he's being blackmailed.
Those are my guesses. Last year he threatened riots in
the street if Trump were indicted, and instead the other
day he got a Trump punk yelling at a British
TV producer. Yesterday he went back for more, quoting lindsay,
(20:19):
if the Special Council in dieth President Trump in Washington
d C for anything, related to January sixth, that will
be considered a major outrage by Republicans because you could
convict any Republican of anything in Washington. D c oh
No Republicans in the middle of a major outrage. Lindsey
Graham is outraged. What are you gonna do? Get Michael
(20:41):
Kapudo to go yell at Jack Smith, We get the
National archivists on you. Lastly, dateline Atlanta. As I mentioned yesterday,
despite New York State Attorney General Tis james contention that
all non federal prosecutions of Trump will now be paused,
Atlanta's police department sent one official to Miami Tuesday to
see how to protect the city in case in case
(21:04):
he's an died in Georgia as well, now comes a
formal announcement from the office of Fulton County d A.
Fannie Willis quote the federal indictments will not have any
impact on the Fulton County election investigation. Get on that
midnight train to Georgia. Donny still ahead on countdown. Nearly
(21:38):
five decades ago, I was talked out of going to
what I thought was my top choice university because of
Howard Stern things. I promised not to tell coming up
first to daily round up of the miscrants, morons and
Dunning Kruger Effet specimens who constitute two day's worst persons
in the world, The brons. Elon Musk, the boy is
(22:01):
not right in the head. Ninety nine percent of his
fanboys probably have no idea what he is proposing. With
a tweeted reply to his paid fanboy David Sachs, they
were exchanging complaints about government not doing what they wanted
it to do, when Sachs made a reference to ancient Rome,
and Musk replied, perhaps we just need a modern day
Sulla Sullah. Sullah was the first dictator as we understand
(22:27):
the term. He overthrew what was left of the Roman Republic.
He slaughtered civilians and political opponents to install himself as dictator.
He then made sure the army took an oath of
loyalty to him rather than to the Roman state, and
he was the role model for later disastrous dictators like
Julius Caesar and Caligula. And Musk wants one for America.
(22:49):
I think instead, what we need here is Elon Musk
to get a CT scan. The runners up Fox News
and The New York Times together again. One of the
saddest realities of news today, yesterday, and if there's any
left tomorrow, oh, is that one of the most rewarded
skills is can you turn off your morals and your
(23:10):
sense of the difference between facts and truth? If you can,
you get pushed up that editorial in Business Chain in
a hurry. What do I mean by this? Well, when
David Zaslav, the guy looking to find a new boss
of CNN for the second time and his two years
in charge of it, said that CNN was improved because quote,
Republicans weren't on the air during the McCarthy hearings. For
(23:31):
those four days, we had seventy five Republicans on the air.
Forty one went on us before they went on Fox.
And the reason is they're not going to get one
more vote on Fox. That's what I mean. No conception
of the news as anything but an end to itself,
as opposed to a way to improve and encourage, you know,
knowledge and freedom. Just ooh more Republicans or ooh, better graphics,
(23:54):
you know, the world. According to Chuck Todd, some people
think a dictatorship would be a bad idea, and they
all do it. Front page of the New York Times yesterday.
Three line, two column headline upper right, momentous scene in
Miami as Trump pleads not guilty. Three column glory photo
upper left, showing Trump confidently not falling down the jetway
(24:18):
stars from his plane with the giant American flag on
its tail just touching his shoulder. If you did not
know Trump had just become the first ex president to
be booked on federal charges and accused of endangering national
security and troops, you might have thought the dramatic headline
and photo was from the morning after he won the
(24:38):
twenty sixteen election, because somebody laying out the Times first
page tried to be neutral in the headline, and that
photography editor really liked that shot. Well. Sure, in this photo,
Trump is shown eating babies, But look at the light
shining in his eyes and the flag just touching his
shoulder near the babies. And then there's the Fox News
(25:01):
part of our runners up, Suzanne Scott, still, the CEO
of that organization. After an amazing trifecta, not only did
the irrepressibly stupid Brian Killmead introduced the channel's live coverage
of Trump from Bedminster Tuesday night by calling him the
President of the United States in a dog whistle to
election deniers. But just as his show ended and the
(25:22):
Sean Hannity pooh Flinging Hour began, Fox did a split
screen of Biden speaking at the White House and Trump
speaking in New Jersey, with the on screen caption reading quote,
wanna be dictator speaks at the White House after having
his political rival arrested. Fox says, kill Mead just slipped,
which is possible. He is a moron. Fox also said
(25:45):
the dictator chiron was taken down immediately and was addressed,
which is crap. It was up there for twenty seven seconds,
and for all we know, it was addressed by giving
whoever approved it a raise. Iwuld you like to do
the nine o'clock show? And then there was the chaser
to these two shots. Fox was carrying the White House
Press briefing yesterday when the Press Secretary was asked about
(26:08):
that dictator graphic, and in the middle of her answer,
they cut away. So anchor John Roberts, you know how
old John Roberts is. He's two hundred and six. So
John Roberts could sigh and then say quote, A Florida
family was caught off guard after discovering a massive crocodile
made itself home in their pool at two o'clock in
(26:32):
the morning. Apart from the fact that Fox is in
free fall right now and can't decide whether it wants
to embrace the kind of dictator Biden line so it
can compete again with the Newsmaxes, or it wants to
be considered an actual news organization like the one that
fired Tucker Carlson and settled the dominion case, the key
takeaway from these three mini stories is at any other
(26:54):
time in Fox's history, it would have been the lead
story in American journalism and one of the lead stories
of all kinds of news in the country. Then that's
the silver lining. The comparatively muted reaction to this underscore
is the fact of Fox's declining influence. But our winner
Ben Shapiro, the squeaky voice star of The Daily Wire,
(27:17):
going after Sesame Street for celebrating Pride Month, speculating that
the show will soon present quote Bert and Ernie in
assless chaps in the Sesame Street Pride Parade. Presumably that
will be the next step over at Sesame Street. Shapiro
thus continues a rather disturbing trend on all these fascist
(27:39):
streaming shows, his the one that belongs to Matt Walsh Blog,
Nick Fouentes's Tucker Carlson's Greg Gutfelds. They are all not
just obsessed with sexualizing children and using sexual terms like that,
but they immediately dive right into the deep end of
the imagery with phrases like Bert and Ernie in assless chaps,
(28:02):
Hey Bert, what are they talking about? Which show surprising
familiarity with such scenes and topics. Hmmm. By the way,
five seconds after saying that Ben Shapiro welcomed as his
guest Mike Pence, Mike Pence immediately thanked Shapiro for his
quote clarion voice and added I'm a fan of all
(28:22):
your work, and for several moments he continued to fawn
over Shapiro and kiss his assless chaps Ben Hood. Everybody
thinks of male fictional characters wearing assless chaps. It's not
just me or those other right wing perverts projecting Shapiro
today's worst person in the If there's ever been an
(28:46):
assless chap, it's Ben Shapiro, wor just ahead. So it
was October nineteen seventy four, and the other principal figure
(29:06):
in the story denies it was him. And I usually
hate such inexactitude, but I think the story is worth
it because the guy who denies it was him was
Howard Stern. Things I promise not to tell. Coming up first.
In each edition of Countown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help every dog. As it's day, we continue
at the crisis in New York City, with literally dozens
of dogs on the kill list in the city pound. Here,
(29:30):
Sleeky Dog is about ten. His behavior suggests he was
once a happy family pet who wound up on the streets.
He became suspicious of humans, but he now joyfully interacts
with them, even in the hellhole that is the shelter.
He's got all the strikes against him. He's got a
black coat, he's a senior dog. He does not like
other dogs. He's emaciated, and there are health issues. He
(29:52):
needs our pledges to help a rescue pull him out
of there and save him. You can find Slinky Dog
on my Twitter feed, and if you can pledge, please
do so. But even just your retweet may help him.
I thank you, and Slinky Dog thanks you as well.
(30:23):
I was fifteen years old and just starting my college visits.
My dad and I flew the very inexpensive Eastern Shuttle
to Boston and Commonwealth Avenue and the Boston University School
of Public Communications, which had surprised us by not only
offering me early admission when I had not requested it,
but which upon arrival knocked us over by saying they
wanted to offer me a merit scholarship, a free ride,
(30:48):
all expenses paid. To be fair, I was the editor
of the high school newspaper and editor of the yearbook,
sports director of the radio station. I'd been in the
drama group. I had researched and had published a baseball
reference book earlier that year, and I was the associate
editor of the first guide to Sports Memorabilia. And I
had an internship lined up in the public relations department
(31:08):
of the Boston Celtics. So the admission was not much
of a surprise. The merit scholarship, let me tell you,
the merit scholarship appealed fantastically to my father. My dad
had already been socked for five years of private school
because I was too bored to do well in public school,
(31:29):
and now he was facing college money. This was new
territory in Olberman Land. Nobody that we knew of on
either side of my family had graduated from a four
year college since one of my great grandfathers got a
degree in wrought iron design round about eighteen eighty five,
and my dad had been offered a scholarship at a
(31:50):
top architecture college and could not afford to take it.
They were so poor he had to go to work
right out of high school or his brother had no
chance of finishing high school. Free college and a good
one in the field his son wanted to go into.
Dad liked this very much. The tour of what was
(32:11):
then called the School of Public Communications went well. It
was early fall, and there are a few places in
the Northeast that do not look their best in early fall.
We were in the middle of Boston, but there were trees.
It was far from home, but it was down the
block from Fenway Park. I think the admissions director took
us into the main studio of the Boston University AM
(32:34):
station and introduced us to the disc jockey or pointed
at him or something, and then the admissions director left.
He must have, because what followed in the studio was
not what that guy wanted me to hear. The disc
jockey was a gaunt, kind of greasy looking kid, with
hair down to the floor and the attitude of an
inquisitor working on too little sleep. He claimed to be
(32:57):
a junior to me. He looked to be about thirty
years old. We were not introduced by name, or if
we were, I had forgotten his by the time he
finished saying it. Where you're from, kid, Westchester? I told him, Oh, yeah,
I'm from Long Island. You got a problem with that,
I said, na, I had relatives on Long Island. Good answer,
So you're applying here. I told him about the merit scholarship. Uh,
(33:22):
Lottie da some kind of phenom. I explained about the
Celtics internship. Listen, kid, you sound like you know what
you're doing, so don't make the same mistake I did.
The first two years. You don't get to take any
radio or TV classes, just general studies. I suddenly remembered
having read that. I asked him, what was the point
(33:43):
of just repeating high school for two more years? Exactly? Okay,
you get it. And what's worse, the grad students they
control the real radio station. It's like organized crime. Here
see this radio station, this crapshack. You can only hear
this in the dorms. And it took me three years
just to get two shows a week here Tuesdays and
Thursday's Middays. Nobody's in the dorms midday. Total waste of
(34:06):
my time and my exceptional talent. And so far the
classes are crap. So maybe what you do is keep
the internship, but ditch the scholarship. I think it was
at this point that my father said we had to
get to the airport. He did not want me hearing
more about ditching the scholarship. My college admissions strategy had
(34:32):
been this, maybe just go to the best school and
let the radio and TV stuff come to me, but
maybe go to a school that was really good in
radio and TV and let the education just come to me.
Then there was this Celtics internship, confusing things even further,
and now the offer of the free ride from BU.
So my radio TV schools were BU with Ethacic College
(34:55):
as the safety, and my good schools were forgive me.
Harvard and Cornell is my safety, which is kind of
unfair because my graduating class in high school I had
like seventy kids in it, and four of us were
applying to Harvard, and two of them had four point
zero grade averages dating back to the womb, and I didn't.
And my only chance they were going to accept me
would be because I would be only sixteen. Bu was
(35:18):
obviously a yes if they were going to pay for it.
Ithico was a yes. But I got a tour of
the dorms and the elevators were full of trash. This
is not a euphemism, this is not a value judgment.
The elevators had ankle high garbage in them. Cornell had
a communications program, but I couldn't find out much about it,
and I couldn't find out much about the radio station
(35:40):
except that it was not dominated by grad students. Plus
Cornell had accepted me, and as I expected, Harvard had not.
And not that this still bothers me, but I remember
that the letter was dated April ninth, nineteen seventy five,
and it was waiting for me in the mail when
I got back from the Yankees home opener on the
afternoon of Saturday, April twelve. Not that it still bothers me.
Freaking Harvard, so I had like a week to choose
(36:02):
between Cornell and a scholarship to b U. And then
somewhere I read a story about how they had found
a kid dead in the hallway of that big freshman
dorm we'd seen in Boston, and I told my dad
I would thus never be comfortable there, And of course
that was just crap. I kept flashing back to what
the kid on the carrier current BU radio station with
(36:22):
the streamy hair down to the floor told me, and
I kept thinking I'm not going to get any radio experience.
Until late nineteen seventy seven, I just couldn't do it,
and so I went to Cornell and Dad started writing checks.
And before I get to the punchline of this one,
I have to mention sophomore year. My dad drives me
(36:43):
and my stuff up to Cornell and he gets turned
around looking for my dorm, and I say, yeah, the
good part is where we are. If you take the
next left, we'll be at the Cornell Architecture School, and
whereupon he cuts me off and says, yeah, I know.
It's Randhall, next left, second building on the right. I said,
how do you know that? He says, Remember I told
you I was offered an architecture scholarship, but I couldn't
(37:03):
take it because we didn't have any money, and your
uncle Bill wouldn't have been able to finish high school.
And I said yeah, and he said yeah. The scholarship
was to hear. During all the time I wrestled with
which colleges to apply to, let alone, which one to
go to. My dad never told me that. Probably the
first time I had respect for him as one sort
(37:25):
of adult to another, and I still do anyway, fifteen
years later or whenever it was, I'm doing sports in
Los Angeles and late on a Saturday night, the syndicated
version of some New York radio shock jock show comes
on the TV and I look and it's the Don't
Make My Mistake kid kid from Boston University in nineteen
(37:46):
seventy four. His name turns out to be Howard Stern,
and he looks exactly the same. Years pass and for
some reason, when Howard Stern leaves AM radio to put
his show on satellite. The first day of the satellite show,
he invites people from TV networks and newspapers to cover
the big switch, and from NBC he asks for me.
(38:10):
So I got up and I go and I get
a moment with him, and I do a shtick for
my MSNBC show and then I say, listen, we've met
and he says nah, and I tell him and he says,
I don't remember meeting you, and I say, of course not.
I was fifteen and we were not really introduced, and
I mean, I had no idea it was you until
I saw you on TV. And he says it can't be.
And I say, when you were a junior at BU,
(38:32):
didn't you do only Tuesday and Thursday middays on the
carrier current station? And weren't you already bitter about it
and bitter about management? And he says, yeah, but I
don't remember meeting you. And so this was January two
thousand and six, and every time our paths have crossed since,
we basically have repeated this conversation live or by text
or whatever. And he insists, yeah, but I don't remember
(38:54):
meeting you. And I have to explain that we didn't
meet by name and I was much shorter than and
he says something like how would that work? And sooner
or later I just give up. But it was him.
I met Howard Stern in nineteen seventy four when he
was twenty years old and I was fifteen, and he
personally talked me out of going to Boston University. Thank you, Howard,
(39:18):
and nicely as things worked out with Cornell and the
best radio training ground in the country that Cornell contained
and contains. Yes, I'm still bitter about Harvard. I swear
(39:44):
it was him. I mean, who else could it have been.
I've done all the damage I can do Here. Here
are our credits. Most of the music arrange produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel. They are
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced
by Tkobra. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
(40:07):
by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Ulberman
theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
was by friend Stevie Van Zandt and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this. The
eight hundred nine ninety first day since Donald Trump's first
(40:28):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(40:48):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
may have done the one thing that would force the
(00:24):
entire Republican Party to repudiate him. The Israeli IDF, Intelligence
Corps and the Mossad reportedly think Donald Trump has damaged
the security of the nation of Israel. Quote top brass
in the Israeli Defense Establishment, writes the intelligence and strategic
(00:45):
affairs correspondent Yossi Melman in the Israeli newspaper Auretz, are
concerned that secret documents seized from Trump include material whose
exposure has damaged Israel's security. Melman outlines the extraordinary layering
of American and Israeli defense intelligence and even notes that
quote under special circumstances, Israel and American espionage agents and
(01:09):
commandos also engage in joint operations conducted in total secrecy,
jeopardized by a quote boastful chatterbox like Trump. More importantly,
Melman quotes two senior Israeli defense officials, one from the
Mosad and the other from the Intelligence Corps as saying, quote,
(01:30):
It's an absolutely reasonable possibility that some of the documents
are about Israel and its capabilities, maybe even its nuclear program,
unquote and reading between the lines. In this story, Melman
and his sources never once mentioned the tale of Trump
reading the details of the Mark Millie planned to attack
Iran to Mark Meadows ghostwriters. So presumably what Israeli intelligence
(01:56):
fears is that Trump has damaged other elements of their
nation's security. And now another fault line opens before us
between Trump and Republican sacred cow dogma, Trump versus troops,
Trump versus law and order, Trump versus Israel. All Republican
(02:18):
claims of adherents and loyalty to these three topics do
not hold up to scrutiny. Trump not only evaded military service,
he's called the US dead of World War One, suckers
and losers. The Republicans are simultaneously trying to militarize the police,
yet to fund the national detectives of the FBI, but
damaging the twenty first century Republican parties supposed allegiance to
(02:43):
Israel is the most sacred of all the cows because
it is viscerally important to the party's fanatical religious base.
Polling from as recently as twenty eighteen confirms that at
least half of all the evangelicals don't give two actual
spits about actual Jews or the actual nation of Israel.
(03:05):
This is simply a tent pole belief of their cult
that before all them Bible thumpers can go to Heaven
in a rapture, all the Jews have to be in
Jerusalem and they all have to be converted or die.
The Republicans pretend allegiance to Israel in order to maintain
ownership of the evangelicals who need Jerusalem preserved so that
(03:28):
they can be converted when the clock strikes rapture o'clock.
On the surface, the Israelis are as loyal to Trump
as he pretends to be to them, but that there
are deep doubts was confirmed when Benjamin Notat in Yahoo
became one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Joe
Biden on his election in twenty twenty, and Trump swore
(03:49):
like a Steve Adore. And those doubts, as Melman points
out in Aratz, stem from him damaging the Israeli defense.
Already in the spring of twenty seventeen, Trump bragged to
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and they're ambassador to Washington,
Sergei Kissliak, that he had gotten intelligence about ices from
(04:10):
quote a Middle Eastern ally. Within weeks, the Mossad had
evidence that, simply because Trump couldn't keep his big mouth shut,
Trump had endangered one of the Mosad agents. Later it
concluded there was also a chance Trump had compromised undisclosed
Israeli technology that had garnered the intelligence. So on top
(04:30):
of pending trial in New York and in Florida, Trump
may have gotten the Mosad mad at him. Nice work, Sparky,
And it is now unmistakably clear that other key Republicans
are looking for climb downs from the Trump train, and
he keeps providing them. All any GOP figure who wants
(04:52):
out now needs to say, is the Masad thinks Trump
has damaged Israeli security and Trump's evangelical support will begin
to fade and Trump will be on his way out.
Because another AP publican took another climb down yesterday, and
once again it was one of those three key third
rails who it was that wasn't shocking his vehemence. His
(05:16):
vehemence is kind of shocking. Quote the very prospect that
what is alleged here took place, Mike Pence said yesterday
on CNBC creating an opportunity where highly sensitive classified material
could have fallen into the wrong hands, even inadvertently. That
jeopardizes our national security unquote. But wait, there's more. Quote.
(05:39):
It puts at risk the men and women of our
armed forces. Mister Pence will order the Trump versus troops
please medium rare with the extra nikky Haley its personal dressing. Quote.
As the father and father in law of two men
that currently serve in the armed forces of the United States,
(06:02):
I will never diminish concerns over the handling of classified materials.
The documents that were alleged to be in the President's
possession describing defense capabilities of our country, potential vulnerabilities of
the United States and our allies. If these materials had
ever inadvertently made their way in the hands of foreign interests,
it would jeopardize the security of our country unquote. Oh
(06:26):
oh wait, there's more and more. Pence is going in
for a second helping of the nicky Haley it's personal
dressing quote, as well as the safety and security of
our armed forces. If that were not enough, Pence also
went on The Moron Show That's Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton and absolutely refused to guarantee Trump a pardon. They
(06:49):
insulted him. He laughed at them, they talked over him.
He talked over them. He kept saying day in court
and belief in the justice system, and they kept making
their usual oinking noises. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
praising Pence. I don't give a damn Pence. I'm just
underscoring the degree to which he is climbing down to
(07:11):
all the climb downs in the world from all the
old guard Republicans guarantee that Trump would not win the
GOP primaries. Of course, not that didn't guarantee it in
twenty sixteen, did it. But do you think if the
Republican hierarchy, including lots of folks who are still supporting
Trump right now, decided that to nominate him again would
be absolute and unavoidable electoral suicide for them, that they
(07:37):
would not do something anything to stop him from getting
their nomination, Because if he really breaks the bonds between
the Party and the troops and the party and law
and order and the Party and Israel, he takes all
of them down with him. And the day Donald Trump
guarantees that Kevin McCarthy or Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell
cannot get reelected. That is the day Trump disappears. I
(08:04):
mean Donald might even get the damn Mosad on his ass.
So all that is still percolating. There are developments too
today in the current case against Trump and the ones
that might be just around the corner. The continuing fly
in the ointment in Florida is looming larger and larger
with every new day. Now, The New York Times has
(08:25):
analyzed the trial record of Trump appoint judge Eileen Cannon
and basically discovered there is no trial record. Quote she
had not previously served as any kind of judge. Charlie
Savage rites, and because ninety eight percent of federal criminal
cases are resolved with plea deals, she has had only
a limited opportunity to learn how to preside over a trial.
(08:47):
The hard numbers two hundred and twenty four criminal cases
on her watch. Two hundred and twenty out of two
hundred and twenty four never went to trial. The four
that did were routine quote like a fellow who was
charged with illegally possessing a gun. In all, the four
cases added up to fourteen trial days unquote fourteen Canon
(09:12):
has been an actual judge doing actual judge things for
fourteen days. I wonder if anybody would be willing to
go explain to her, take her under their wing, and
tell her what she needs to do in this trial,
some Trump legal expert like Jeff Clark or Cash Patel
or Baked Alaska. If this case proceeds with Cannon at
(09:35):
the bench and Trump's influence on her factual or just
assumed prejudice towards him, one wonders if Jack Smith has
a backup plan. Oh, by the way, Ryan Goodman and
Andrew Weisman does think Jack Smith has a backup plan,
They write in The Atlantic, if you had another dog
in this case that did nothing in the night. The
Miami indictment Goodman and Weissman note conspicuously excludes many facts
(10:00):
surrounding Trump's actions in Bedminster, New Jersey. What boxes were
taken there, what they contained, how they were kept at
the golf club. Their silence suggests that there might be
more to come from the famously hard charging Smith and
his team of prosecutors. In short, they are suggesting that
the Special Council specifically did not indict Trump in Florida
(10:24):
for the reading of the Mark Milli Iran war plan
just in case something came a cropper in Florida, and
not just the prospect of a crooked judge like canon.
They note that unlike the wilful retention of the documents,
including the Milli Iran document, which obviously happened in Florida,
the telling of the Milli Iran story happened in Jersey.
(10:45):
Goodman and Weissman note two aspects of the Espionage Act,
which I've cited here previously. Quote one makes it a
crime to intentionally communicate national defense information to people not
authorized to receive it, and the other makes it a
crime to intentionally disclose classified information to the same So
if he just told the Meadows ghostwriters the Iran details
(11:09):
like the number of American troops that would have been involved,
or just to pick a country at random what Israel
would do in the scheme, but he did so without
giving them the classified document that would be communicating national
defense information. Jack Smith could proceed against Trump in New
Jersey for leaking national defense secrets. And if Trump's response
(11:30):
was I declassified that document, Smith could respond, sure, great,
whatever classified or unclassified, don't enter into it. There are
a lot of new small Trump details today, including the
day last fall when one of Trump's lawyers tried to
convince Trump to negotiate a deal with Merrick Garland that
would preclude charges. That was Christopher Kais, according to the
(11:52):
Washington Post, and Trump said no, I'm going to fight this.
There's also Lindsey Graham threatening America again over this, and
the National Archives getting pissed off at Trump again. And
please remember, pissing off the National archivists is ultimately what
got Trump arrested. And I will get to all that,
but I remain fascinated by the blessed irreverence and the
(12:15):
risk taking of the British TV producer Sophie Alexander at
her shouted question to Trump that briefly interrupted the Trump
celebration narrative inside a Cuban bakery after his arraignment Tuesday.
I'll repeat it briefly. We don't have any TV journalists
like her here now none. The last one was probably
(12:39):
Sam Donaldson, but that's not the point here today. Yesterday,
the guy who got in the face of Miss Alexander
of Sky News during the bruhaha in the bakery self
identified and as if this story were not interesting enough.
You will not believe who he turns out to be,
(12:59):
largely because a lot of us thought he was dead.
But just listen to this again, and listen carefully, and
wait for when you hear the guy who calls her
a stupid bee. President Trump, are you ready to go
to jail? That was Michael R. Kaputo, who at seven
(13:47):
fifty six Eastern time yesterday morning replied to somebody who
tweeted a freeze frame of the video asking if that
were him, by replying, quote, yes, tell your mommy. She
left her dog eared and underlined copy of communist manifesto
in the booth, and she's banned for life from Versailles.
That's the name of the bakery, quoting again, also she
(14:10):
smelled like feet. Puto spent the rest of the day
tweeting memes, most of which did not have relevance to
the incident, and insults that would embarrass a thirteen year
old on TikTok, I mean he was in multiple dozens
of replies and tweets by sunset. Does that name sound
at all familiar? Michael R. K. Puto worked in the
(14:32):
Trump government, worked in the Boris yeltsin government in Russia
worked pr to try to make Putin more popular in
the US. Was in Ukraine for a while, was the
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services who tried to
fix the COVID stats to make Trump look better. And
(14:52):
then he said left wing hit squads were going to
kill him. And finally, two days after that, he gave
one of the greatest exit lines in the history of
the United State dates government when he suddenly announced quote
that's next. This is kinda this is countdown with Keith Oberman.
(15:25):
Post scripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, date line, the Versailles Cafe Miami. Back to
the self identification of the former Trump HHS Assistant Secretary
Michael Koputo as the man who yelled stupid b in
the face of the Sky News reporter at the Trump
celebration Tuesday in Miami, and I left you hanging about
(15:48):
his matchless exit line when he finally quit in September
twenty twenty. This guy is like Roger Stone Light. Listen
to this resume and then I'll give you the quote.
Former Alie North associate and Carl Palladino, New York Governor
campaign manager and Bush senior campaign staffer and astro turfist
(16:09):
for Trump's bid to buy the Buffalo bills and longtime
sexist and racist Twitter troll. And he lived in Russia,
and he was an advisor to Boris Yeltsin's government and
Boris Yeltsin, And then he did work for a company
trying to improve the reputation of Vladimir Putin inside the US.
And he lived in Ukraine. And most infamously, he was
(16:29):
the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump.
You picture him, yet, this is the guy who tried
to alter all the reports on COVID from the CDC
the Centers for Disease Control to make them look better
for Trump. He tried to stop publication of the conclusion
that kids could transmit COVID or that chloroquin was useless.
(16:52):
Still not got him? How about his charge that CDC
scientists were engaged in sedition and were you know, trying
to kill him? On September thirteenth, twenty twenty, it was
this same guy, Capudo, who posted a video on Facebook
claiming the CDC was a quote resistant unit meeting in
(17:13):
coffee shops planning their next attacks. On Trump, he said
left wing quote hit squads are being trained all over
this country unquote, and he told people to buy ammunition,
and then came the wow, finish quote, you understand that
they're going to have to kill me. And unfortunately, I
think that's where this is going, and that's not even
(17:37):
the quote. Two days later, Capudo took medical leave from
the Trump administration, admitting this is the quote that his quote,
mental health has definitely failed. Oh and then he said
he had throat cancer that had spread and we all
felt sorry for him. And then Tuesday there he was
(17:59):
in the Versailles Bakery in Miami, gaunt, screaming at a
TV and then tweeting about it all day yesterday. And
evidently he's involved in running this new Spanish language version
of a kind of Newsmax called Americano Media and rage,
tweeting mental health has definitely failed. You say you, Nancy Faust, dateline, Washington,
(18:55):
Back to the origin point. The National Archives is done
listening to Trump surrogates lie about the Presidential Records Act.
Trump himself obviously, but also the ex Trump attorney Tim Parlatori,
who keeps insisting that the PRA has a clause in
it that says an ex president quote is supposed to
take the next two years after they leave office to
(19:15):
go through all these documents to figure out what's personal
and what's presidential. The National Archives is big mad again. Quote.
The PRA requires that all records created by presidents and
vice presidents be turned over the National Archives and Records
Administration NARA at the end of their administrations. There's no
(19:36):
history practice or provision in law for presidents to take
official records with them when they leave office to sort through,
such as for a two year period, as described in
some reports. As I said, you know what happened last
time the Archives got pissed. Trump got arrested. How's this
(19:56):
parlatory doing, Dateline Washington, how's Lindsey Graham doing. He's nuts, right,
or he's being blackmailed. Or he's nuts because he's being blackmailed.
Those are my guesses. Last year he threatened riots in
the street if Trump were indicted, and instead the other
day he got a Trump punk yelling at a British
TV producer. Yesterday he went back for more, quoting lindsay,
(20:19):
if the Special Council in dieth President Trump in Washington
d C for anything, related to January sixth, that will
be considered a major outrage by Republicans because you could
convict any Republican of anything in Washington. D c oh
No Republicans in the middle of a major outrage. Lindsey
Graham is outraged. What are you gonna do? Get Michael
(20:41):
Kapudo to go yell at Jack Smith, We get the
National archivists on you. Lastly, dateline Atlanta. As I mentioned yesterday,
despite New York State Attorney General Tis james contention that
all non federal prosecutions of Trump will now be paused,
Atlanta's police department sent one official to Miami Tuesday to
see how to protect the city in case in case
(21:04):
he's an died in Georgia as well, now comes a
formal announcement from the office of Fulton County d A.
Fannie Willis quote the federal indictments will not have any
impact on the Fulton County election investigation. Get on that
midnight train to Georgia. Donny still ahead on countdown. Nearly
(21:38):
five decades ago, I was talked out of going to
what I thought was my top choice university because of
Howard Stern things. I promised not to tell coming up
first to daily round up of the miscrants, morons and
Dunning Kruger Effet specimens who constitute two day's worst persons
in the world, The brons. Elon Musk, the boy is
(22:01):
not right in the head. Ninety nine percent of his
fanboys probably have no idea what he is proposing. With
a tweeted reply to his paid fanboy David Sachs, they
were exchanging complaints about government not doing what they wanted
it to do, when Sachs made a reference to ancient Rome,
and Musk replied, perhaps we just need a modern day
Sulla Sullah. Sullah was the first dictator as we understand
(22:27):
the term. He overthrew what was left of the Roman Republic.
He slaughtered civilians and political opponents to install himself as dictator.
He then made sure the army took an oath of
loyalty to him rather than to the Roman state, and
he was the role model for later disastrous dictators like
Julius Caesar and Caligula. And Musk wants one for America.
(22:49):
I think instead, what we need here is Elon Musk
to get a CT scan. The runners up Fox News
and The New York Times together again. One of the
saddest realities of news today, yesterday, and if there's any
left tomorrow, oh, is that one of the most rewarded
skills is can you turn off your morals and your
(23:10):
sense of the difference between facts and truth? If you can,
you get pushed up that editorial in Business Chain in
a hurry. What do I mean by this? Well, when
David Zaslav, the guy looking to find a new boss
of CNN for the second time and his two years
in charge of it, said that CNN was improved because quote,
Republicans weren't on the air during the McCarthy hearings. For
(23:31):
those four days, we had seventy five Republicans on the air.
Forty one went on us before they went on Fox.
And the reason is they're not going to get one
more vote on Fox. That's what I mean. No conception
of the news as anything but an end to itself,
as opposed to a way to improve and encourage, you know,
knowledge and freedom. Just ooh more Republicans or ooh, better graphics,
(23:54):
you know, the world. According to Chuck Todd, some people
think a dictatorship would be a bad idea, and they
all do it. Front page of the New York Times yesterday.
Three line, two column headline upper right, momentous scene in
Miami as Trump pleads not guilty. Three column glory photo
upper left, showing Trump confidently not falling down the jetway
(24:18):
stars from his plane with the giant American flag on
its tail just touching his shoulder. If you did not
know Trump had just become the first ex president to
be booked on federal charges and accused of endangering national
security and troops, you might have thought the dramatic headline
and photo was from the morning after he won the
(24:38):
twenty sixteen election, because somebody laying out the Times first
page tried to be neutral in the headline, and that
photography editor really liked that shot. Well. Sure, in this photo,
Trump is shown eating babies, But look at the light
shining in his eyes and the flag just touching his
shoulder near the babies. And then there's the Fox News
(25:01):
part of our runners up, Suzanne Scott, still, the CEO
of that organization. After an amazing trifecta, not only did
the irrepressibly stupid Brian Killmead introduced the channel's live coverage
of Trump from Bedminster Tuesday night by calling him the
President of the United States in a dog whistle to
election deniers. But just as his show ended and the
(25:22):
Sean Hannity pooh Flinging Hour began, Fox did a split
screen of Biden speaking at the White House and Trump
speaking in New Jersey, with the on screen caption reading quote,
wanna be dictator speaks at the White House after having
his political rival arrested. Fox says, kill Mead just slipped,
which is possible. He is a moron. Fox also said
(25:45):
the dictator chiron was taken down immediately and was addressed,
which is crap. It was up there for twenty seven seconds,
and for all we know, it was addressed by giving
whoever approved it a raise. Iwuld you like to do
the nine o'clock show? And then there was the chaser
to these two shots. Fox was carrying the White House
Press briefing yesterday when the Press Secretary was asked about
(26:08):
that dictator graphic, and in the middle of her answer,
they cut away. So anchor John Roberts, you know how
old John Roberts is. He's two hundred and six. So
John Roberts could sigh and then say quote, A Florida
family was caught off guard after discovering a massive crocodile
made itself home in their pool at two o'clock in
(26:32):
the morning. Apart from the fact that Fox is in
free fall right now and can't decide whether it wants
to embrace the kind of dictator Biden line so it
can compete again with the Newsmaxes, or it wants to
be considered an actual news organization like the one that
fired Tucker Carlson and settled the dominion case, the key
takeaway from these three mini stories is at any other
(26:54):
time in Fox's history, it would have been the lead
story in American journalism and one of the lead stories
of all kinds of news in the country. Then that's
the silver lining. The comparatively muted reaction to this underscore
is the fact of Fox's declining influence. But our winner
Ben Shapiro, the squeaky voice star of The Daily Wire,
(27:17):
going after Sesame Street for celebrating Pride Month, speculating that
the show will soon present quote Bert and Ernie in
assless chaps in the Sesame Street Pride Parade. Presumably that
will be the next step over at Sesame Street. Shapiro
thus continues a rather disturbing trend on all these fascist
(27:39):
streaming shows, his the one that belongs to Matt Walsh Blog,
Nick Fouentes's Tucker Carlson's Greg Gutfelds. They are all not
just obsessed with sexualizing children and using sexual terms like that,
but they immediately dive right into the deep end of
the imagery with phrases like Bert and Ernie in assless chaps,
(28:02):
Hey Bert, what are they talking about? Which show surprising
familiarity with such scenes and topics. Hmmm. By the way,
five seconds after saying that Ben Shapiro welcomed as his
guest Mike Pence, Mike Pence immediately thanked Shapiro for his
quote clarion voice and added I'm a fan of all
(28:22):
your work, and for several moments he continued to fawn
over Shapiro and kiss his assless chaps Ben Hood. Everybody
thinks of male fictional characters wearing assless chaps. It's not
just me or those other right wing perverts projecting Shapiro
today's worst person in the If there's ever been an
(28:46):
assless chap, it's Ben Shapiro, wor just ahead. So it
was October nineteen seventy four, and the other principal figure
(29:06):
in the story denies it was him. And I usually
hate such inexactitude, but I think the story is worth
it because the guy who denies it was him was
Howard Stern. Things I promise not to tell. Coming up first.
In each edition of Countown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help every dog. As it's day, we continue
at the crisis in New York City, with literally dozens
of dogs on the kill list in the city pound. Here,
(29:30):
Sleeky Dog is about ten. His behavior suggests he was
once a happy family pet who wound up on the streets.
He became suspicious of humans, but he now joyfully interacts
with them, even in the hellhole that is the shelter.
He's got all the strikes against him. He's got a
black coat, he's a senior dog. He does not like
other dogs. He's emaciated, and there are health issues. He
(29:52):
needs our pledges to help a rescue pull him out
of there and save him. You can find Slinky Dog
on my Twitter feed, and if you can pledge, please
do so. But even just your retweet may help him.
I thank you, and Slinky Dog thanks you as well.
(30:23):
I was fifteen years old and just starting my college visits.
My dad and I flew the very inexpensive Eastern Shuttle
to Boston and Commonwealth Avenue and the Boston University School
of Public Communications, which had surprised us by not only
offering me early admission when I had not requested it,
but which upon arrival knocked us over by saying they
wanted to offer me a merit scholarship, a free ride,
(30:48):
all expenses paid. To be fair, I was the editor
of the high school newspaper and editor of the yearbook,
sports director of the radio station. I'd been in the
drama group. I had researched and had published a baseball
reference book earlier that year, and I was the associate
editor of the first guide to Sports Memorabilia. And I
had an internship lined up in the public relations department
(31:08):
of the Boston Celtics. So the admission was not much
of a surprise. The merit scholarship, let me tell you,
the merit scholarship appealed fantastically to my father. My dad
had already been socked for five years of private school
because I was too bored to do well in public school,
(31:29):
and now he was facing college money. This was new
territory in Olberman Land. Nobody that we knew of on
either side of my family had graduated from a four
year college since one of my great grandfathers got a
degree in wrought iron design round about eighteen eighty five,
and my dad had been offered a scholarship at a
(31:50):
top architecture college and could not afford to take it.
They were so poor he had to go to work
right out of high school or his brother had no
chance of finishing high school. Free college and a good
one in the field his son wanted to go into.
Dad liked this very much. The tour of what was
(32:11):
then called the School of Public Communications went well. It
was early fall, and there are a few places in
the Northeast that do not look their best in early fall.
We were in the middle of Boston, but there were trees.
It was far from home, but it was down the
block from Fenway Park. I think the admissions director took
us into the main studio of the Boston University AM
(32:34):
station and introduced us to the disc jockey or pointed
at him or something, and then the admissions director left.
He must have, because what followed in the studio was
not what that guy wanted me to hear. The disc
jockey was a gaunt, kind of greasy looking kid, with
hair down to the floor and the attitude of an
inquisitor working on too little sleep. He claimed to be
(32:57):
a junior to me. He looked to be about thirty
years old. We were not introduced by name, or if
we were, I had forgotten his by the time he
finished saying it. Where you're from, kid, Westchester? I told him, Oh, yeah,
I'm from Long Island. You got a problem with that,
I said, na, I had relatives on Long Island. Good answer,
So you're applying here. I told him about the merit scholarship. Uh,
(33:22):
Lottie da some kind of phenom. I explained about the
Celtics internship. Listen, kid, you sound like you know what
you're doing, so don't make the same mistake I did.
The first two years. You don't get to take any
radio or TV classes, just general studies. I suddenly remembered
having read that. I asked him, what was the point
(33:43):
of just repeating high school for two more years? Exactly? Okay,
you get it. And what's worse, the grad students they
control the real radio station. It's like organized crime. Here
see this radio station, this crapshack. You can only hear
this in the dorms. And it took me three years
just to get two shows a week here Tuesdays and
Thursday's Middays. Nobody's in the dorms midday. Total waste of
(34:06):
my time and my exceptional talent. And so far the
classes are crap. So maybe what you do is keep
the internship, but ditch the scholarship. I think it was
at this point that my father said we had to
get to the airport. He did not want me hearing
more about ditching the scholarship. My college admissions strategy had
(34:32):
been this, maybe just go to the best school and
let the radio and TV stuff come to me, but
maybe go to a school that was really good in
radio and TV and let the education just come to me.
Then there was this Celtics internship, confusing things even further,
and now the offer of the free ride from BU.
So my radio TV schools were BU with Ethacic College
(34:55):
as the safety, and my good schools were forgive me.
Harvard and Cornell is my safety, which is kind of
unfair because my graduating class in high school I had
like seventy kids in it, and four of us were
applying to Harvard, and two of them had four point
zero grade averages dating back to the womb, and I didn't.
And my only chance they were going to accept me
would be because I would be only sixteen. Bu was
(35:18):
obviously a yes if they were going to pay for it.
Ithico was a yes. But I got a tour of
the dorms and the elevators were full of trash. This
is not a euphemism, this is not a value judgment.
The elevators had ankle high garbage in them. Cornell had
a communications program, but I couldn't find out much about it,
and I couldn't find out much about the radio station
(35:40):
except that it was not dominated by grad students. Plus
Cornell had accepted me, and as I expected, Harvard had not.
And not that this still bothers me, but I remember
that the letter was dated April ninth, nineteen seventy five,
and it was waiting for me in the mail when
I got back from the Yankees home opener on the
afternoon of Saturday, April twelve. Not that it still bothers me.
Freaking Harvard, so I had like a week to choose
(36:02):
between Cornell and a scholarship to b U. And then
somewhere I read a story about how they had found
a kid dead in the hallway of that big freshman
dorm we'd seen in Boston, and I told my dad
I would thus never be comfortable there, And of course
that was just crap. I kept flashing back to what
the kid on the carrier current BU radio station with
(36:22):
the streamy hair down to the floor told me, and
I kept thinking I'm not going to get any radio experience.
Until late nineteen seventy seven, I just couldn't do it,
and so I went to Cornell and Dad started writing checks.
And before I get to the punchline of this one,
I have to mention sophomore year. My dad drives me
(36:43):
and my stuff up to Cornell and he gets turned
around looking for my dorm, and I say, yeah, the
good part is where we are. If you take the
next left, we'll be at the Cornell Architecture School, and
whereupon he cuts me off and says, yeah, I know.
It's Randhall, next left, second building on the right. I said,
how do you know that? He says, Remember I told
you I was offered an architecture scholarship, but I couldn't
(37:03):
take it because we didn't have any money, and your
uncle Bill wouldn't have been able to finish high school.
And I said yeah, and he said yeah. The scholarship
was to hear. During all the time I wrestled with
which colleges to apply to, let alone, which one to
go to. My dad never told me that. Probably the
first time I had respect for him as one sort
(37:25):
of adult to another, and I still do anyway, fifteen
years later or whenever it was, I'm doing sports in
Los Angeles and late on a Saturday night, the syndicated
version of some New York radio shock jock show comes
on the TV and I look and it's the Don't
Make My Mistake kid kid from Boston University in nineteen
(37:46):
seventy four. His name turns out to be Howard Stern,
and he looks exactly the same. Years pass and for
some reason, when Howard Stern leaves AM radio to put
his show on satellite. The first day of the satellite show,
he invites people from TV networks and newspapers to cover
the big switch, and from NBC he asks for me.
(38:10):
So I got up and I go and I get
a moment with him, and I do a shtick for
my MSNBC show and then I say, listen, we've met
and he says nah, and I tell him and he says,
I don't remember meeting you, and I say, of course not.
I was fifteen and we were not really introduced, and
I mean, I had no idea it was you until
I saw you on TV. And he says it can't be.
And I say, when you were a junior at BU,
(38:32):
didn't you do only Tuesday and Thursday middays on the
carrier current station? And weren't you already bitter about it
and bitter about management? And he says, yeah, but I
don't remember meeting you. And so this was January two
thousand and six, and every time our paths have crossed since,
we basically have repeated this conversation live or by text
or whatever. And he insists, yeah, but I don't remember
(38:54):
meeting you. And I have to explain that we didn't
meet by name and I was much shorter than and
he says something like how would that work? And sooner
or later I just give up. But it was him.
I met Howard Stern in nineteen seventy four when he
was twenty years old and I was fifteen, and he
personally talked me out of going to Boston University. Thank you, Howard,
(39:18):
and nicely as things worked out with Cornell and the
best radio training ground in the country that Cornell contained
and contains. Yes, I'm still bitter about Harvard. I swear
(39:44):
it was him. I mean, who else could it have been.
I've done all the damage I can do Here. Here
are our credits. Most of the music arrange produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel. They are
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced
by Tkobra. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
(40:07):
by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Ulberman
theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
was by friend Stevie Van Zandt and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this. The
eight hundred nine ninety first day since Donald Trump's first
(40:28):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(40:48):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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