August 16, 2023 • 53 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 14 - COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith not only has Trump’s Twitter DIRECT MESSAGES, he has Trump’s Twitter DELETED Direct Messages, and as we posited here last Thursday, he has Trump’s Twitter Unsent Direct Message DRAFTS. Court documents were unsealed revealing all this, but CNN and The New York Times saw the headline - and missed it. The Times wrote almost as an afterthought that the judge had authorized Jack Smith to receive quote “all direct messages sent from, received by or stored in draft form by the account.”
I speculated also about THIS last Thursday but I have to say seeing it as a reality takes my breath away. I mean DELETED direct messages are enough to fuel several books of Trump Scandal fan-fiction. But the DRAFTS could be far more nefarious. Drafts could be used – and there is no evidence that this is the case – the way terrorists used to use drafts in email 20 years ago -- as what the spies call a “dead-drop” by which you leave messages for anybody else who had the password, and then the messages are deleted.
Except - nothing is ever deleted.
No wonder Trump was pissed.
Back to Atlanta. Trump will present his irrefutable guaranteed 100 percent exonerating report on Presidential Election Fraud in Georgia, starting at 11 next Monday morning at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey - enter by the main gate, proceed towards the 1st Tee, then make a left at Ivana. Not only don't Republicans WANT him to yoke them with another relitigation on 2020 but he has apparently turned the preparation of this report to the woman who might rank 79th on his propagandist depth chart, Liz Harrington. The creepy one.
Fani Willis has punctured not just Trump's reality but also the fantasy around him. And we're going to see how bad it is at that press conference.
B-Block (23:18) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: And just like that, Herschel Walker is back in Georgia politics. And Tucker Carlson is finished: his biography TANKED. Wait - you don't know who Tucker Carlson WAS, do you? (26:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon throttles links to the NYT and Facebook. Suddenly DeSantis wants peace with Disney. And a co-anchor of mine leaves ESPN "so I can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.” She wouldn't know the difference between the First Amendment and ESPN's First Take.
C-Block (34:36) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: If we can, we need to help the Maui Humane Society (35:36) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A Times Square so dangerous that no restaurants were open there on weekend and 41 people were once arrested for stabbing a guy in the subway station. The story of my days at my second job: RKO Radio Network, 1981.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Jack
Smith not only has Trump's Twitter direct messages, he has
(00:26):
Trump's Twitter deleted direct messages, and, as we posited here
last Thursday, jack Smith also has Trump's Twitter unsent direct
message drafts. We will return to Atlanta presently. But CNN
and The New York Times last night confirmed the obvious
(00:47):
without realizing they were also confirming the tantalizingly important. More
court papers were unsealed, and yes, when Jack Smith got
that court order to scrape Trump's Twitter account, he was
looking for Trump's direct messages, of which CNN reports there
are many. The Times then got closer to the true
(01:08):
significance here quote. The lawyer for Twitter told Judge Howell
that the company had found both deleted and non deleted
direct messages associated with mister Trump's account, which would probably
explain Trump's use of the word atrocity when somebody finally
told him about this, which was apparently only last Sunday.
(01:28):
But then The Times writes, almost as an afterthought, that
the judge had authorized Jack Smith to receive quote all
direct messages sent from, received by, or stored in draft
form by the account. I speculated also about this last Thursday,
(01:49):
but I have to say seeing it in print as
a reality takes my breath away. I mean, deleted direct
messages are enough to fuel several books of Trump scandal
fan fiction. But the drafts, what have you left in
your drafts on Twitter or anywhere else? The drafts could
(02:11):
be far more nefarious. In fact, they could be intentionally nefarious.
Drafts could be used, and there is no evidence that
this is the case, but it could be. They could
be used the way terrorists used to use drafts in
emails twenty years ago, as what the spies call a
dead drop, by which you leave messages for anybody else
(02:33):
who happens to have your password, and then after the
message is read, it is deleted. Except nothing is ever deleted,
deleted something else Trump apparently only found out on Sunday night.
If nothing else, this is a reminder that as slovenly
(02:56):
and careless as Trump has been with his hundreds and
hundreds of crimes and the mile long trails he leaves
every day in office and out, there is always the
probability that there is further evidence which we don't know,
but which now Jack Smith does know, and in turn
(03:21):
and I have said this for a year. With Trump,
whatever we think it is, the odds are strong that
it is far, far worse. Now back to Atlanta, Trump
will present his irrefutable, guaranteed, one hundred percent exonerating report
on presidential election fraud in Georgia, starting at eleven next
(03:42):
Monday morning at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Enter by the main gate, proceeds towards the first tea
and then make a left at Ivana. The larger point
is that nearly every Republican does not want Trump to
again use up all the oxygen in the room on
relitigating twenty twenty for the millionth time, and to that
(04:04):
point directly. But the headline here is Trump has hit
the bottom of the conspiracy barrel. This new report that
he is flogging, one hundred pages of it is reported
lee the work of like the the seventy ninth string
propagandist on the Trump roster. Where once he had Roy Cohne,
(04:26):
where once waddled William Barr, and then John Dowd and
Ty Cobb, and even the dubious likes of Sarah Huckabee
and Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump has placed his future in
the hands of Liz Harrington. The New York Times quotes
(04:47):
unnamed sources who say this Georgia election fraud report and
I understand copies will be available at the Trump Bedminster
pro shop for forty nine to ninety five was at
least partly Liz Harrington's work, and she has been preparing
it four weeks. If her name is not famili to you,
once she was the blonde, fairly articulate, heavily hairstyled spokesperson
(05:11):
for the Republican National Committee. But then the slightly strange
look in her eyes got far stranger. It's hard to
precisely describe. It kind of looks as if she is
staring at you while desperately trying to not let you
realize that she sees a ghost right behind you. One day,
(05:35):
Lizzy's TV booking started to dry up and Liz Harrington
and that really disturbing look in her eyes disappeared. But
two years ago, after Trump left Washington, she reappeared, now
brunette on one side of her head and mostly blonde
on part of the other, then later all brunette, and
(05:55):
without being sexist or judgmental, you would no longer describe
her as heavily hairstyled to cut to the chase, she
now looks nuts and possibly hitnatized. Georgia has among the
most corrupt elections in the country, Liz Harrington tweeted last night,
a rare instance of her tweeting anything besides screenshots of
Trump's social media posts. And they haven't gotten better since
(06:18):
twenty twenty. They've gotten worse, which is interesting, But Trump's
point is only about twenty twenty. Then a PostScript, tune
in Monday, which is in fact what Republicans, even true
Trump believers, maybe not as crazy as this Harrington, but
even them, it's what they don't want there to be
(06:39):
anything Monday to tune in. Four three times Trump has
been indicted or re indicted on a federal level without
resorting to relitigating the election fraud confidence trick, but the
Georgia indictments are apparently irresistible to him on this point,
and he is going to hold a news conference at
which he will again yoke the GOP with the albatross
(07:01):
that is the twenty twenty election non scandal, when even
the craziest of its congressmen and candidates want to talk
about twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four and Joe
Biden and anything but another Trump scam now anything Fannie
willis left undone last Monday. Donald Trump will finish for
(07:24):
her next Monday. He has metaphorically hanged himself and taken
the Republican Party with him. He writes that it's quote
a large, complex, detailed, but irrefutable report. Report is in
all caps, like an email scammer would capitalize million dollars,
And all of a sudden, we are back to the
(07:46):
embryonic version of political Donald Trump insisting that his investigators
had found irrefutable evidence that Barack Obama was born in
I don't know wherever, Canada, and then insisting that his
new investigators had found really irrefutable evidence. Or, as the
old Monty Python joke goes, the object of this expedition
is to see if we can find any traces of
(08:09):
last year's expedition. Moreover, Trump actually slipped from his usually
precise and expert professor Harold Hill patter, and he gave
away the Cohn to the marks. Never give away the
con to the marks. The indictments are quote already election interference.
But if the trials are held before the election, then
(08:31):
it would be interference on a scale never seen in
our country. So the trials quote, should be brought after
the twenty twenty four presidential election. Oh. In other words,
the indictments are the worst thing in human history, and
the election interference is the worst thing in human history.
And the trials, oh, the trials, my god, they would
(08:54):
be worse than the worst thing in human history. But
if we have to have them after the election, is okay?
See my secretary for the dates. We know why he
would say that, But he just gave the Marks their
first clue that he will live up to the guidance
of Winston Churchill and never give in, never, never, never,
(09:18):
except this one time. How many of them understand the
clue is debatable. It was, of course the district attorney
who put the first hole in that Trump fantasy world
of victimhood and martyrdom and Paranoi because she indicted Trump
and eighteen others. But the whole premise has been that
(09:41):
Trump is being indicted, being prosecuted to keep him from
being president. Rudy Giuliani isn't running for president. He was indicted.
Mark Meadows isn't running for president. Trevion Cootie isn't running
for president, Misty Hampton isn't running for president. Sean still
Still isn't running for president. Robert Chile isn't running for president. Frankly,
(10:05):
that's all I know about. Robert Cheeley. Trump and his
fine monkeys were immediately reduced, and we saw this yesterday
in the morning. They were reduced to claiming that Fannie
Willis was now prosecuting Trump's supporters in Georgia and you
might be next. And as much as that might scare
the more childish members of the cult, the trade off
(10:26):
is not worth it. Trump is not the only target.
People who aren't even employed by him have been indicted,
and suddenly Trump has to fight for leg room up
on that imaginary cross he has so meticulously built for himself.
Fannie Willis did something Jack Smith hasn't even tried to do.
She's pierced not just the Trump reality by indicting it,
(10:50):
She's also punctured a lot of the fantasy. She's reduced
him from the solo martyr to just the head of
a group of con men and con women who've been
spending most of their lives living in a Trumpster's paradise.
(11:31):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. No, I'm not singing Trumpster's paradise,
all right, to think about it. Lesser headlines and details
out of the Atlanta and Florida cases. Atlanta, there is
actually another judge in that city besides Robert McBurney. Scott McAfee,
new to the Fulton County Superior Court bench, will handle
(11:51):
this case. He may be perfect. In fact, he may
represent a way out of judicial partisanship. He is a Republican,
but he was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp, who slammed
Trump again yesterday. But he used to be a prosecutor
working under the leadership of Fannie Willis. But but but
he used to clerk for two Georgia State Supreme Court justices,
(12:14):
both Republicans, and one of them wants clerk for antonin Scalia.
Judge McAfee has so many seeming conflicts of interests and
political taints that they cancel each other out. Meanwhile, defendant
Mark Meadows wants the whole case, or at least his
part of it, transferred to federal court because he claims
whatever he did he did while acting quote under color
(12:37):
of his federal office, which would be a good argument,
except that, as just securities Ryan Goodman notes in Act
ninety six of the indictment, they quote a Meadow's text
message to a Georgia State investigator. Is there a way
to speed up Fulton County's signature verification? Meadows wrote, in
order to have results before January sixth, if the Trump
(12:59):
campaign assists financially unquote, which is a horse bleep of
a different color, isn't it. Trump has yet to file
to get the trial moved to a federal court, and
it turns out he might not, because even if it
were transferred, it would still be considered a Georgia state
prosecution and not federal, and thus not subject to being
(13:21):
dismissed by the Department of Justice now or later, and
any guilty defendants in that case could not get pardons
from any president even if it is transferred to federal court.
On the other hand, there was a lot of confused
reporting Monday about a mandatory minimum statute on RICO charges
in Georgia, and I contributed a little bit to that.
I think while there is a minimum figure for a
(13:45):
prison sentence, there is also lurking in the Georgia law.
A judge option to convert actual prison time into probation.
And we are back with another edition of the popular
brain teaser trumpel where we try to identify the unidentified
co conspirators. Nobody won the first round. Number six from
(14:06):
the first round is still unidentified, so the prize total
rolls over to this one, but you have to guess
all thirty of them. There are some early no brainers.
Number eight is identified as somebody Rudy Giuliani retweeted with
the quote of the tweet that was tough. A quick
search proves that is the current Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones.
(14:28):
Number twenty is somebody at the infamous December eighteenth Oval
office shouting match. The former FBI man Pete Struck is
certain it is either Mike Flynn or the overstock guy
Patrick Byrne, and incidentally, there is widespread belief that Burne
may be cooperating. Number three was at a Giuliani Jenna
Ellis Sidney Powell press conference, and additional evidence says that
(14:51):
of several choices it's Boris Epstein. Now, since there are
still twenty seven slots to fill and not that many
conspirators who weren't indicted. You gotta guess Lindsey Graham and
Tom Fitten to be in here somewhere. There is some
indication Fitten has pride of place. He may be unidentified.
Co conspirator number one doesn't say anything about a two
(15:13):
tight polo shirt. Also this formality from the marri Lago
documents case. Carlos the OLIVERA finally has a Florida attorney.
Let's hear it for him. So thus he finally has
a plea and shockingly enough, it's not guilty. The rest
of this story to the moment is something difficult to
convey on a podcast. It is the smell of desperation.
(15:38):
The Trump circle and America's fascists in general seem to
be having a much harder time with Georgia than with
the federal indictments. And if you're wondering why, you can
probably figure it out by examining the online reaction to
the last line of Trump's post about the irrefutable Georgia
election report. Harrington l author with the seventy six trombones
(15:59):
and also the new monorail attached quote they only went
after those that fought to find the riggers unquote riggers,
riggers in caps. Can you guess what Trump's white supremacist
base is now using riggers as a synonym for the
(16:25):
reactions overall are kind of many worst persons. Tim Poole,
the guy in the beanie. Actually the P, I believe
is pronounced like an F, so that would be Tim
Fool responded to the indictments by tweeting civil war, and
then later answered another fascist by writing, you are in
a civil war. Ben Shapiro was entertainingly hoist on his
own petard. Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one
(16:48):
thing is for certain. The glass has now been broken
over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by
legal enemies. Running for office now carries the risk of
going to jail unquote, which oddly enough was advocated for
on a Larry King Show of all Things in twenty
fourteen by why by the same guy who just announced it,
(17:10):
Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I'm not sure we can incit Washington, but I think
that certainly something was done. Washington was relatively clean. But
if you look at George W. Bush, or if you
looked at Bill Clinton, or if you looked at Ronald Reagan, sure,
I mean the answer would be that you could, and
people should be wary.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I mean, this is sort.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Of the case that I'm making, is that we've become
so comfortable with the executive branch of the government abusing
its citizens and violating our rights and violating what their
structure to do under the law, that we've.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Just become used to it.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
And if we start treating them as criminals, maybe they'll
think twice before they act so criminally in the future.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Normally, Ben talks out of both sides of his mouth.
In far less time than nine years, Charlie Kirk, the
guy with the ever inflating Charlie Brownhead, told the Republicans
to threaten to shut down the entire government in response
to all this quote say that no spending is getting
passed until this crisis is resolved, and this effort to
criminalize the political opposition ceases, which seems like potent strategy
(18:07):
until you remember that most irreplaceable federal spending is done
in the Red States, and that any actual full government
financial shutdown would mean defaults and maybe bankruptcies in those
states within weeks, and maybe food shortages within months. But
you do you, Charlie. Alina Haba told Fox that she
(18:27):
disagrees with those warning Trump that the Atlanta indictments are
a perilous threat, quoting her, we do not agree that
it is a perilous threat because we actually have inside information.
She then said she could not say what the inside
information was. I think we all know what it was.
It's the Liz Harrington report.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
There's a ghost.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There's a ghost behind you. But the all time lulu
of comments so far is from no less a figure
than Marjorie Trador Green. If there was not going to
be an actual Trump prescoon for it's Monday, don't park there.
That's Evanna's grave, all right, give me five dollars, you
(19:11):
can park there. If there were no press conference scheduled Monday,
I would say this quote would be unbeatable in the
faux PA competition going forward. Either way, this quote is
still stunning. Fonnie Willis should be going after child sex
predators and traffickers.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Fannie Willis should be going after.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Murderers, rapists.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Fannie Willis should be going after rapists, marge rapists.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
She is.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Also of interest here. The new biography of Tucker Carlson
is out, and if you have not raced out to
buy it. Consider yourself part of the vast American majority.
It tanked, and I mean tanked. I'll tell you how
much it tanked. And Okay, obviously this is all already necessary.
I'll explain who Tucker Carlson is, who Tucker Carlson was.
(20:14):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman.
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Atlanta, there has been a Herschel Walker sighting.
(20:37):
For the first time since July second, he has tweeted something.
For the first time since February seventh, he has tweeted
something touching on politics and not sports or vacations. Don't
you remember he was the Republican candidate for the Senate
in Georgia last year. The new tweet, Wow, what is
(20:57):
going on here in the great state of Georgia? A
little bit more specific, herschel going on about your senate campaign,
about your son, about your other kids, about their new foundness,
about Matt Schlapp, about the greatest SoundBite of the twenty
(21:19):
twenty two election season. And you did mean election right.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Well, first of all, this election is more than Hersha Walker.
This erection is about the people. Well, first of all,
this election is more than Hersha Walker. This erection is
about the people. Well, first of all, this election is
war than Hersha Walker. This erection is about the people.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Well, first of all.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
This election is more than Hersha Walker. This erection is.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
About the wise words stand the test of time. Herschel dateline, Amazon,
The biography of Tucker Carlson is out. Remember Tucker Carlson
America hasn't answered that question, and the answer is who.
Publishers Weekly reports that the much hyped bio by worshipful
(22:02):
propagandist Chadwick Moore of Tucker Carlson sold in its first
week of availability three two and twenty seven copies, not
just on Amazon, that's everywhere, and that was good for
fifty seventh place among biographies. The kindle version didn't even
(22:22):
make the top one hundred on the Publisher's Weekly hardcover
nonfiction list. The Tucker Carlson bio was fifteenth. Well, there's
your problem right there. It would be number one on
the hardcover fiction list, still ahead on countdown. So I
(22:52):
get into the office and they say did you take
the subway? And I say no, I walked, and they
say good because a guy got stabbed in the subway
and I say yikes, and they say yeah, but they
caught the guys who did it. They arrested forty one
people life at a radio network in Times Square in
New York in nineteen eighty one. Next, first time for
(23:14):
the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger
effects specimens. You constitute today's worst persons in the world.
Bronze Elmo Elon Musk per the Washington Post, if you've
tried to link off Twitter to say, the New York
Times or Facebook or something at Blue Sky or Reuters
(23:34):
and the phone or the laptop just sat there, Twitter
had installed a five second delay. Throttling is the technical term,
because Musk, who if he wasn't paranoid wouldn't have any
personality at all, was mad at those sites Times, Blue Sky, Facebook, Reuters. Okay,
after the Post called this out, some of the throttling
(23:56):
was discontinued late yesterday, and that is your free speech
absolutist in action. Now. It is clear, though, when Musk
said absolutist, he thought it had something to do with
absolute Vodka runner up Ron DeSantis. Remember Ron de Santis,
Governor Florida. Still, I guess the twenty twenty three Scott
(24:19):
Walker Award winner, the one who fought with Disney, sued
Disney cut off their input into governance, trashed them, et cetera.
I guess either that is now rebounded against him or
it has lost its effectiveness because now Ronda has gone on.
CNBC says he appreciates working with Disney, that he and
his wife got married to Disney World, and he says,
(24:42):
let's just forget it. Quote we've basically moved on. Dromp
the lawsuit you'll have this night that ranks as number
one for no economy. Let's move forward. Bob Iger should
move forward. He should move Disney World forward to Puerto Rico.
But our winner, Sage Steele, announced she is leaving ESPN
(25:03):
after sixt teen years life updates. I have decided to
leave so I can exercise my first Amendment, writes more freely.
Ah here we ef and go. Sage Steele wouldn't know
the difference between the First Amendment and the ESPN show
First Take. What happened was she hadn't been on ESPN
(25:26):
for nearly two years after her slow habit of internally
trashing everybody she worked with, then externally trashing some of them,
then trashing COVID vaccines, then trashing COVID vaccine mandates, then
trashing Barack Obama, then trashing transgender women in sports, then
suing ESPN and Disney. That slow process got a little faster.
(25:49):
This June, it was reported ESPN had filed a motion
to dismiss her lawsuit against them because virtually all broadcasting
contracts make it clear they don't have to play you,
they only have to pay you. Steele was reportedly offered
five hundred and one thousand dollars to settle the lawsuit,
and her attorney said that had been rejected. But now
(26:10):
six weeks later, I have decided to leave so I
can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely. Okay, for
the millionth time. The First Amendment is about you being
punished for your speech by the government, not being punished
for your speech by you know, Chris Berman.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
What.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But Sage Steele would never accept that, because she knows
everything and everybody else knows nothing. I worked a couple
of sports centers with her in twenty eighteen, in twenty nineteen,
and at one point I asked an ESPN executive named
Dave Roberts why the essence of the show had been changed.
We used to look for moments in your days in
(26:55):
which one anchor would finish a story and the other
would start one, and the other could throw out a
quick aside or a sarcastic but friendly bit of snark
about what the other one had just said. But now
there were things called stamps, full sound blocks of play
by play calls or player comments that seemingly appeared every
time one of the anchors stopped talking and the other
(27:16):
one was about to start. I didn't mention Sage Steele's name,
but I did say the stamps were blocking us from
talking to each other, me and all of the co
anchors I worked with, And Dave Roberts answered, that's why
we have them. Have you heard our anchors talking to
each other? Have you heard Sage Steel trying to talk
to the other anchors? Given how little I actually worked
(27:37):
with her, there were a surprisingly large number of moments
when I got as another producer put it, Saged, here
are two of them. One of the top ESPN executives
did an interview in which he said I was the
greatest anchor Sports Center ever had debatable top five, three
two anyway? Who goes into that executive's office. But Sage
(28:02):
Steele quote, some of the night time people object to you,
calling him the greatest to do this, she told him.
He asked her who those nighttime people were, and she
wouldn't tell him. He not only told her that if
she wanted to change the all time rankings, maybe she
should do better on the show, but he then told
half the people in the company about what she had done.
(28:23):
And the other story is we were literally seconds to
air with me in New York and miss Steele in Bristol,
when the producer asked me to write like a ten
second version of a story that was just breaking to
headline the show as a quick tease. I wrote it,
and suddenly in my earpiece I could hear Sage Steele's
voice talking to that same show producer, and in that
(28:44):
voice was a mixture of rage and disbelief. What's this,
That's not how we do things. I talk first, make
him rewrite it. It had not occurred to her that
twenty seconds to air, they would have already opened her
microphone and I would be able to hear her. I
then said, Hi, Sage, and she said, and then dramatically
(29:09):
shifted tone, KAO, so good to hear your voice. Have
a great show. I have decided to leave so I
can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely using her
definition of First Amendment rights, which is talking trash at
work and not being responsible for any of it. It
is not physically possible that she could exercise them more
(29:32):
or more freely anywhere else on the planet, Sage, although
she would fit in nicely on Fox, except she and
Will Caine hated each other at ESPN Steal two Days,
worst person in the First Amendment word just ahead. So
(30:06):
you know Times Square right Disneyland, only it's in New
York and it has pizza. Could you imagine a Time
Square is so desolate and dangerous and full of porn
theaters that there were no restaurants open in Times Square
on the weekend. And I worked there, and I used
to have to bring in food from the rest of
the city for the whole office things. I promise not
(30:28):
to tell next first time to feature another dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. In fact,
it's a lot of dogs and cats and animals of
all kinds. At least three thousand of them missing, and
we don't have to claim that their plight is as
important as that of the humans who lost so much
in Hawaii. But the dogs and cats and the others
matter too. The Maui Humane Society is, as you would expect, inundated,
(30:52):
and the dogs and cats there now are the lucky ones.
They're trying to treat the injured and reunite the lost,
and they have started a fundraiser on Giving Grid with
what is not an especially ambitious goal, one thousand dollars.
Anything you can do to help will be gratefully accepted.
Find the Maui Humane Society at giving Grid, or I
will tweet out the link to the animals of Maui.
(31:15):
Thank you, and I thank you now from the files
of things I promised not to tell, and I recently
went past the building my second professional home, and I
was flooded with my memories of a place called the
(31:37):
RKO Radio Network. This is nineteen eighty and I'm nearing
my twenty second birthday, and I'm working real hard at
one radio network run by the United pres International Wire
Service in my second year and making around well nearly
twenty thousand dollars a year, and in September, a drunken
manager had tried to get me fired, tried to fire
(31:59):
me himself for being young, and I'll be damned if
I can remember, had consecutive days off there. This was
UPI in a nutshell. For my first few weeks there.
I thought whoever had decorated the newsroom had found the
floor tiles with the ugliest design pattern in history, and
that finally I saw a colleague grind his lit cigarette
(32:20):
into that floor, and only then did I realize that
was what the ugly design pattern was. Hundreds of ground
out cigarettes, years and years of ground out cigarettes in
the tiles. Anyway, the main advantage to working at UPI
was that everybody in what was then a flourishing radio
(32:41):
business knew UPI, and thus they knew you, and they
knew you were underpaid. The top all news radio station
in the country, WCBS in New York, had already asked
if I might be a candidate for a coming opening
in their sports department the previous spring. I'd actually interviewed
with two vice presidents at this thing. The yachtsman Ted Turner,
(33:02):
who owned the Atlanta Braves, was going to try to
start something he called cable news network, but they were
not initially interested in me, and after meeting with them,
I was certain they would never get it launched, let
alone get an audience for it. I was working there
literally fourteen months later. I had also been flown to Boston,
(33:22):
like they spent fifty five dollars on me by a
radio station that really wanted me to do a morning
sports shift for them, and they were offering forty thousand
dollars a year, twice my salary, and I was ready
to do it. And I was sitting in the office
in Boston trying to figure out where I could live
and how late I could sleep and still get there
in the morning. And then the news director said, now,
(33:43):
except if there's a big story, you can do the
afternoon sports cast from home over the phone, which is
when I realized I was supposed to do the morning
and the afternoon. I was essentially on the clock from
five am to six pm. And the forty thousand dollars
would have had to go to my sister because the
schedule would have killed me within three months. And then
(34:05):
there was this RKO Radio network UPI was in the
unique position of having RKO as a client, so RKO
heard and used our stuff all the time, and also
they had from their beginning used our UPI feed as
a kind of twenty four to seven constantly flowing turned
(34:26):
on spigot audition service. From the time I got to
UPI in July nineteen seventy nine, it seemed like one
radio paerson from UPI per month was hired away by RKO.
Sometime in the early autumn of nineteen eighty, I was
covering a New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden,
and the guy next to me, smoking a cigar inside
(34:47):
the garden, right in front of all the fans, turned
out to be the sports director of this RKO network.
In fact, he was the entirety of the RKO sports department.
But we're doubling in size. I'm going to start doing
weekend sportscasts, and I get to hire a new person
to do the weekends. It's a union shop, so it's
fifty one dollars a sports cast. After there's ten a weekend,
(35:08):
so you get twenty two for eighty dollars to reports
for reports from the field, and you'd be my backup.
Twenty two bucks from the field and a guarantee of
five to ten weekend and you got to come in
one day a week to book the stringers for the
weekend games. That'd be free, but the guarantee is twenty
six thousand dollars plus those twenty two dollars every time
(35:29):
you have file a report from the field. You're interested. Well,
I did some quick math. This was about forty percent
more money for about forty percent less work, and there
were no five am to six pm schedules. When the
sports director called me back a few weeks later to
offer me the gig, I did not hesitate. His name,
(35:51):
by the way, was Charlie Steiner. Charlie would later be
a colleague of mine at Sports Center, and then he
did the Yankees games, and now he does the Dodgers games,
and he's been a friend for forty two years. The
network itself was also space sage, shiny and new, and
it had carpets, whereas UPI had the stubbed out cigarettes decorps.
(36:12):
RKO was literally the first radio network in this country
to deliver all of its programs to its stations via satellite.
No more scratchy, hyper expensive phone lines. RKO came through
crystal Clear, and that was our pitch to the stations.
All the newscasts, all the sports casts, all the features
ended with the same tagline YA Satellite, This is the
(36:34):
RKO Radio Network, and then a spot for Hubba Bubba
Gum for my first few weeks there. Part of the
job also included doing two sportscasts today for RKO's local
station WOIR. The first time I went up in the
elevator to their studio, it dawned on me that it
was the exact same studio where seven years before I
(36:57):
had been invited by the great comedians Bob Elliott and
Ray Goulding along with my dad to sit and watch
in amazed appreciation as Bob and Ray did their show
on WOR. So basically, as of December nineteen eighty, I
had accomplished all of my childhood goals. The only problem
(37:18):
with the place was the location. RKO was on the
southeast corner of Times Square, probably the low watermark in
the history of Times Square. It was in fourteen forty
Broadway at the corner of fortieth Street. There was a
back door at forty first Street and sixth Avenue, right
across from Bryant Park. On those occasions when I filled
(37:39):
in for Charlie Steiner on the weekdays for his morning show,
which they would tape overnight. I would often be at
the studios until two or three am, and my walk
home was a little sketchy. In point of fact, I
would not walk home. I would run, I mean run, run.
From that back door at forty first and sixth, I'd
pass Bryant Park on my right as fast as I could,
(38:02):
passed all the drug dealers and other folks, then dart
on the north side of forty second between sixth and fifth,
and once you got to that corner of fifth and
forty second, you were back in civilization, with good street
lights and other people on the streets, no matter how
late the hour, or as we called them in New
York then witnesses. Occasionally I might have to walk in
(38:25):
Times Square itself, usually when it was daylight. What surrounded
me there was about as far from today's Disneyland East
Times Square as you could imagine. In fact, you could
not imagine. There were porn theaters everywhere. And it wasn't
just porn theaters. They were spaced part and in between
(38:46):
them other businesses existed. Porn peep shows, porn sex shops,
and porn video rental stores. I remember always making sure
I was walking on the outside edge of the street,
nearest the gutter, on the premise that in the event
somebody tried to mug me, I stood a much better
chance by running right out into automobile traffic. Besides which,
(39:07):
I used to worry that if I walked too close
to the porn theaters and the shows, and the shops
and the video stores one day, I might just get
stuck to the sidewalk. Time Square was so different in
nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one that I really can't
imagine that the annual income made there from anything but
(39:28):
porn and the RKO radio network was more than twenty
dollars a year. In total. There was nothing else, I
mean nothing. On weekends, walking over from my home on
the East Side, I would decide which fast food place
I'd be getting lunch from, somewhere on Fifth Avenue or Lex.
I'd go to the nearest payphone, I'd call the RKO
(39:48):
newsroom desk, and I would offer to bring in food
for everybody. For the simple reason that in Times Square
forty years ago, there were no restaurants open on weekends.
I'll say that again. In Times Square forty years ago,
on the weekends, all the restaurants that existed there were
(40:10):
closed during the day, and forget public transportation to Times Square.
I would finish my brisk, twenty five minute walk to
work one night in that frigid winter of nineteen eighty
eighty one and see my colleagues looking unusually pasty and drawn.
You didn't take the subway in, did you, asked one
(40:31):
of the editors, Tom Ryan. I looked at him like
it was crazy. Well good, some guy got stabbed by
the stairs closest to our building. I asked if he
was okay. No, he's not okay. He's dead. But they
got the guys who did it. They arrested fifty one people.
One guy got stabbed to death, fifty one people were arrested.
(40:51):
I asked if they had been restaging a reenactment of
the assassination of Julius Caesar. Still, the equipment was brand
new and easy to use, and the staff was all young.
We all had fun, and we had parties and every
but he lived in the city, and for the most part,
it was a pleasure to work there. And it was
way more lucrative even than Charlie Steiner had suggested. Those
(41:12):
twenty two dollars voice reports from the field. They piled
up fast. The baseball players went on strike that June
nineteen eighty one, and every time I covered a bargaining session,
I could be certain of at least another forty four dollars.
And if that doesn't sound like much, the rent on
my very nice studio apartment never got higher than four
hundred and ninety eight dollars a month. RKO's location also
(41:36):
provided me with some wacky logistical problems. I filled in
for Charlie on most holidays, plus I did the same
thing at a local radio station WIW. This made the
actual Christmas into my metaphorical Christmas. If I had to
fill in for both of these operations on the same day,
my schedule went like this, Get into RKO in Times
(41:59):
Square at maybe two AM, tape Charlie's morning show by
four AM, then Crosstown very quickly to wnew over on
Third Avenue and do those sportscasts live between five thirty
and nine, and then go home and maybe take a nap,
but not a long one because I would have to
be back at RKO by one pm to do Charlie's
afternoon show Rinse repeat, a lot of work. On the
(42:24):
other hand, just one week of those days paid the
rent for two months. On a wet New Year's Eve
nineteen eighty one, I treated myself to a cab to
go to RKO, which put me in the bizarre position
of getting into a cab on the East Side at
one thirty am New Year's Morning and saying take me
to Times Square and the driver saying, you missed it, buddy,
(42:45):
it's been nineteen eighty two for an hour and a half.
Nothing like being the only person going into Times Square
while one million people are leaving it drunk. Most of
the sportscasts I did at RKO or pretty textbook. But
there did come the day that I walked to fill
in for Charlie who was at Wimbledon. So this is
(43:07):
the summer of nineteen eighty one, and the newswires were
full of this story of some unnamed American radio reporter
getting into a brawl with a London tabloid writer at
a Wimbledon press conference, and it slowly evolved that the
reporter was Charlie, my boss, and we were going to
have to figure out a way to cover this. At first,
(43:30):
Charlie wanted to do it in the third person and
say the reporter did this, and the reporter said that,
And I said, you know, I really don't think we're
going to get away with that, given how much wire
copy I'm seeing here, Charlie, this is probably going to
be on the front page of the New York Times
in the morning. Sure enough, it was above the fold.
We're still unbeknownst to Charlie, his fight took place in
(43:50):
a corner of the Wimbledon press room, right under the
camera that fed out a shot of that room twenty
four to seven to every television network.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Sure enough, the last item on ABC's six thirty newscast
that night with Peter Jennings was a feature on Charlie
Steiner fighting with the British over how they broke up
the John McEnroe post match press conference, and he was
pissed off because that meant he wouldn't get any sound
bites from McEnroe. I managed to run home from RKO
(44:22):
and record the report by Dick schaff and when Charlie
got back from London, I loaned it to him. This
was in July nineteen eighty one. Charlie still hasn't given
me the tape back. Every time I see him, he
swears he's still looking for it. It's in a box somewhere.
But I'm beginning to think he may not be telling
me the whole truth about what happened to my video cassette.
(44:46):
But my favorite RKO story is about Charlie's sudden and
inexplicable obsession with the story during that nineteen eighty one
baseball strike I mentioned in the middle of this thing
which stopped the season for fifty days and was really
really the beginning of the end of that time when
baseball truly mattered in this country. When every day in
(45:07):
that strike, somebody on all the TV newscast set, and
the baseball strike is in its twenty third day, a
story broke that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees,
was going to meet with Baseball Commissioner Buy Qun and
a couple of other owners who realized that the work
stoppage was financial madness. As George told me years later,
he was losing about a million dollars in revenue every
(45:30):
day so that the Milwaukee Brewers could save five thousand
dollars in salaries every year. Well, my boss, Charlie Steiner,
decided he was going to scoop the world about this
secret Steinbrenner Kune meeting. So he told me to come
into the office on one of my off days and
work the phones. Work the phone. Sun. Two of us,
(45:51):
me and the newly hired producer, my friend John Martin,
were supposed to call everybody we knew and find out
for Charlie when these guys were meeting and where and
who would be there, and to not go home until
we had nailed down. Well, it was madness. I didn't
know anybody in baseball, let alone anybody who knew where
(46:12):
the owner of the Yankees was going to meet in
secret with the Commissioner of Baseball, let alone who knew
all that and would tell me. But I tried everybody
I could think of, and had already suggested to John
Martin that I was just going to start dialing ten
digits at random and asking whoever answered if they knew when.
After about eight hours of this, well past my dinner time,
(46:35):
I was on the phone with some executive of some
West Coast team when he said, hold on a minute,
I've got another call. And a moment later, from the
adjoining room in my office, I heard John Martin say,
mister Smith, Hi, this is John Martin from the RKO
Radio network. And yes, RKO Radio Network, Yes, I'll hold sir.
Mister Smith picked up my call again and said, is
(46:57):
this really two of you calling me about this crap
at the same time, from the same network, And I
said yes, and I apologie, and I told him I
was going home. If Charlie doesn't like it, I told
John he can fire me, so follow me on this
because I had missed dinner. When I got back to
my street on the East Side, I was famished. I
(47:19):
don't know nine o'clock, ten o'clock. The last two blocks
of my walk home was always identical. I'd come up
Third Avenue and then hang a right at the southeast
corner of Third Avenue and fifty fifth Street. I lived
at the other end of fifty fifth Street in your
second Avenue. But now I was going to go pick
up some pizza in a very nice place on the
northwest corner of this same block. I got the slices,
(47:43):
the lights changed. Now I was crossing towards the northeast
corner of fifty fifth and Third, which itself was the
home of a famous New York bar, PJ. Clarks. Ordinarily
I would never have been on that side of the
street at that hour, but there I was. And as
I slipped past the ancient front door, I saw the
side exit open on a burst of bright yellow light,
(48:04):
like in an Edward Hopper painting shoot out, onto a
limo waiting on fifty fifth Street. Then, as I walked,
carrying my box of pizza and wearing my RKO Radio
Network black jacket, who emerges from that light of that
side door at PJ. Clark's but George Steinbrenner in a tux.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
I gasped.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I tried to summon the courage to approach Steinbrenner as
he walked towards his limo and ask him about his
planned meeting with Commissioner Kun And just before I admitted
to myself that no, at the age of twenty two,
I did not have such courage, I saw Steinbrenner stop
at the limo, and I heard him yell back towards
the light shining through the still open side door to
Clark's Eddie Eddie, And with that Edward Bennett Williams, the
(48:54):
owner of the Baltimore Orioles, leaned out, also in a
tux and said, with evident exasperation, what now, George Steinbrener shot,
what time are you and I and Chiles meeting with
Bowie tomorrow? I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my luck.
Williams had not seen me. Steinbrenner had not seen me.
(49:17):
Williams sighed again for the tenth time. George nine nine
thirty in the morning, George nine thirty Booie's condo. I
now plastered myself against the wall of Clark's. I hope
they had not seen me at all, without so much
as asking the question. I had learned at the Orioles
owner and Chiles Eddie Chiles, the owner of the Texas Rangers.
(49:38):
They would be accompanying Steinbrenner to the meeting and it
would begin at nine thirty at the condominium of Commissioner
Buie Kun. And I was wondering if I could try
to fake Steinbrenner's voice and shout, Eddie, where's Booie's condo?
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Again?
Speaker 1 (49:51):
When suddenly I heard Steinbrenner say, Eddie, where's Booie's condo again.
By now Edward Bennett Williams had re lit a cigar
he was holding. George, write it down this time five
seventy five, Park, five seven five. I could barely breathe.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Good God.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
They had handed me everything but the cross street. Eddie, Eddie,
what's the cross street? Williams now swore, Oh, for f's sake,
George sixty third, sixty third in Park five seventy five
Park at nine thirty in the morning, Okay, Steinbrenner got
into the limo. It squealed off, the door closed. I
wrote what I had heard on the top of the
(50:37):
pizza box and took off at a dead run to
my apartment at the corner of fifty fifth and Second,
pausing only to take a quick bite of pizza. I
called John Martin back at the RCAO Radio Network. I
got it, John said, you got what I got everything
about the meeting. John said, I'll get the boss soon.
All three of us were on the phone. Charlie did
not believe I had gotten him any information, so I
(51:00):
laid it on thick. You're writing this down, boss, nine
thirty tomorrow morning. It's at Booie Kune's condo at five
seventy five Park that's the corner of sixty third, of course.
Then there was silence at Charlie's end of the phone.
Oh and uh, Edward Bennett Williams of the Orioles and
Eddie Child's of the Rangers. They'll be there too. I
(51:23):
don't know, Charlie, if it's just them or there are others,
but those four will certainly be there. Booi's condo, five
seventy five Cross Street is sixty third. Charlie started to
make a kind.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Of butt butt noise. But but, but how did you
find out? How on the hell did you actually find out?
Why do you think it's true? I had been waiting
for this for several moments, and my answer had been
rehearsed in my mind at least as far back as
my elevator ride up to my apartment. With the most
(51:59):
nonchalant I had ever mustard in my life, I answered
Charlie Steiner.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Well, Charlie, I ran into Steinbrenner at Clark's. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
(52:26):
Countdown has come to you from our studios high atop
the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Here the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, who are the countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
(52:47):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman theme
from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend John Dean. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(53:07):
Let's countdown for this the nine hundred and fifty second
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. Plenty of time left in this week.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
warrants till then, I'm Keith Olreman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and via satellite good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(53:44):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Jack
Smith not only has Trump's Twitter direct messages, he has
(00:26):
Trump's Twitter deleted direct messages, and, as we posited here
last Thursday, jack Smith also has Trump's Twitter unsent direct
message drafts. We will return to Atlanta presently. But CNN
and The New York Times last night confirmed the obvious
(00:47):
without realizing they were also confirming the tantalizingly important. More
court papers were unsealed, and yes, when Jack Smith got
that court order to scrape Trump's Twitter account, he was
looking for Trump's direct messages, of which CNN reports there
are many. The Times then got closer to the true
(01:08):
significance here quote. The lawyer for Twitter told Judge Howell
that the company had found both deleted and non deleted
direct messages associated with mister Trump's account, which would probably
explain Trump's use of the word atrocity when somebody finally
told him about this, which was apparently only last Sunday.
(01:28):
But then The Times writes, almost as an afterthought, that
the judge had authorized Jack Smith to receive quote all
direct messages sent from, received by, or stored in draft
form by the account. I speculated also about this last Thursday,
(01:49):
but I have to say seeing it in print as
a reality takes my breath away. I mean, deleted direct
messages are enough to fuel several books of Trump scandal
fan fiction. But the drafts, what have you left in
your drafts on Twitter or anywhere else? The drafts could
(02:11):
be far more nefarious. In fact, they could be intentionally nefarious.
Drafts could be used, and there is no evidence that
this is the case, but it could be. They could
be used the way terrorists used to use drafts in
emails twenty years ago, as what the spies call a
dead drop, by which you leave messages for anybody else
(02:33):
who happens to have your password, and then after the
message is read, it is deleted. Except nothing is ever deleted,
deleted something else Trump apparently only found out on Sunday night.
If nothing else, this is a reminder that as slovenly
(02:56):
and careless as Trump has been with his hundreds and
hundreds of crimes and the mile long trails he leaves
every day in office and out, there is always the
probability that there is further evidence which we don't know,
but which now Jack Smith does know, and in turn
(03:21):
and I have said this for a year. With Trump,
whatever we think it is, the odds are strong that
it is far, far worse. Now back to Atlanta, Trump
will present his irrefutable, guaranteed, one hundred percent exonerating report
on presidential election fraud in Georgia, starting at eleven next
(03:42):
Monday morning at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Enter by the main gate, proceeds towards the first tea
and then make a left at Ivana. The larger point
is that nearly every Republican does not want Trump to
again use up all the oxygen in the room on
relitigating twenty twenty for the millionth time, and to that
(04:04):
point directly. But the headline here is Trump has hit
the bottom of the conspiracy barrel. This new report that
he is flogging, one hundred pages of it is reported
lee the work of like the the seventy ninth string
propagandist on the Trump roster. Where once he had Roy Cohne,
(04:26):
where once waddled William Barr, and then John Dowd and
Ty Cobb, and even the dubious likes of Sarah Huckabee
and Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump has placed his future in
the hands of Liz Harrington. The New York Times quotes
(04:47):
unnamed sources who say this Georgia election fraud report and
I understand copies will be available at the Trump Bedminster
pro shop for forty nine to ninety five was at
least partly Liz Harrington's work, and she has been preparing
it four weeks. If her name is not famili to you,
once she was the blonde, fairly articulate, heavily hairstyled spokesperson
(05:11):
for the Republican National Committee. But then the slightly strange
look in her eyes got far stranger. It's hard to
precisely describe. It kind of looks as if she is
staring at you while desperately trying to not let you
realize that she sees a ghost right behind you. One day,
(05:35):
Lizzy's TV booking started to dry up and Liz Harrington
and that really disturbing look in her eyes disappeared. But
two years ago, after Trump left Washington, she reappeared, now
brunette on one side of her head and mostly blonde
on part of the other, then later all brunette, and
(05:55):
without being sexist or judgmental, you would no longer describe
her as heavily hairstyled to cut to the chase, she
now looks nuts and possibly hitnatized. Georgia has among the
most corrupt elections in the country, Liz Harrington tweeted last night,
a rare instance of her tweeting anything besides screenshots of
Trump's social media posts. And they haven't gotten better since
(06:18):
twenty twenty. They've gotten worse, which is interesting, But Trump's
point is only about twenty twenty. Then a PostScript, tune
in Monday, which is in fact what Republicans, even true
Trump believers, maybe not as crazy as this Harrington, but
even them, it's what they don't want there to be
(06:39):
anything Monday to tune in. Four three times Trump has
been indicted or re indicted on a federal level without
resorting to relitigating the election fraud confidence trick, but the
Georgia indictments are apparently irresistible to him on this point,
and he is going to hold a news conference at
which he will again yoke the GOP with the albatross
(07:01):
that is the twenty twenty election non scandal, when even
the craziest of its congressmen and candidates want to talk
about twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four and Joe
Biden and anything but another Trump scam now anything Fannie
willis left undone last Monday. Donald Trump will finish for
(07:24):
her next Monday. He has metaphorically hanged himself and taken
the Republican Party with him. He writes that it's quote
a large, complex, detailed, but irrefutable report. Report is in
all caps, like an email scammer would capitalize million dollars,
And all of a sudden, we are back to the
(07:46):
embryonic version of political Donald Trump insisting that his investigators
had found irrefutable evidence that Barack Obama was born in
I don't know wherever, Canada, and then insisting that his
new investigators had found really irrefutable evidence. Or, as the
old Monty Python joke goes, the object of this expedition
is to see if we can find any traces of
(08:09):
last year's expedition. Moreover, Trump actually slipped from his usually
precise and expert professor Harold Hill patter, and he gave
away the Cohn to the marks. Never give away the
con to the marks. The indictments are quote already election interference.
But if the trials are held before the election, then
(08:31):
it would be interference on a scale never seen in
our country. So the trials quote, should be brought after
the twenty twenty four presidential election. Oh. In other words,
the indictments are the worst thing in human history, and
the election interference is the worst thing in human history.
And the trials, oh, the trials, my god, they would
(08:54):
be worse than the worst thing in human history. But
if we have to have them after the election, is okay?
See my secretary for the dates. We know why he
would say that, But he just gave the Marks their
first clue that he will live up to the guidance
of Winston Churchill and never give in, never, never, never,
(09:18):
except this one time. How many of them understand the
clue is debatable. It was, of course the district attorney
who put the first hole in that Trump fantasy world
of victimhood and martyrdom and Paranoi because she indicted Trump
and eighteen others. But the whole premise has been that
(09:41):
Trump is being indicted, being prosecuted to keep him from
being president. Rudy Giuliani isn't running for president. He was indicted.
Mark Meadows isn't running for president. Trevion Cootie isn't running
for president, Misty Hampton isn't running for president. Sean still
Still isn't running for president. Robert Chile isn't running for president. Frankly,
(10:05):
that's all I know about. Robert Cheeley. Trump and his
fine monkeys were immediately reduced, and we saw this yesterday
in the morning. They were reduced to claiming that Fannie
Willis was now prosecuting Trump's supporters in Georgia and you
might be next. And as much as that might scare
the more childish members of the cult, the trade off
(10:26):
is not worth it. Trump is not the only target.
People who aren't even employed by him have been indicted,
and suddenly Trump has to fight for leg room up
on that imaginary cross he has so meticulously built for himself.
Fannie Willis did something Jack Smith hasn't even tried to do.
She's pierced not just the Trump reality by indicting it,
(10:50):
She's also punctured a lot of the fantasy. She's reduced
him from the solo martyr to just the head of
a group of con men and con women who've been
spending most of their lives living in a Trumpster's paradise.
(11:31):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. No, I'm not singing Trumpster's paradise,
all right, to think about it. Lesser headlines and details
out of the Atlanta and Florida cases. Atlanta, there is
actually another judge in that city besides Robert McBurney. Scott McAfee,
new to the Fulton County Superior Court bench, will handle
(11:51):
this case. He may be perfect. In fact, he may
represent a way out of judicial partisanship. He is a Republican,
but he was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp, who slammed
Trump again yesterday. But he used to be a prosecutor
working under the leadership of Fannie Willis. But but but
he used to clerk for two Georgia State Supreme Court justices,
(12:14):
both Republicans, and one of them wants clerk for antonin Scalia.
Judge McAfee has so many seeming conflicts of interests and
political taints that they cancel each other out. Meanwhile, defendant
Mark Meadows wants the whole case, or at least his
part of it, transferred to federal court because he claims
whatever he did he did while acting quote under color
(12:37):
of his federal office, which would be a good argument,
except that, as just securities Ryan Goodman notes in Act
ninety six of the indictment, they quote a Meadow's text
message to a Georgia State investigator. Is there a way
to speed up Fulton County's signature verification? Meadows wrote, in
order to have results before January sixth, if the Trump
(12:59):
campaign assists financially unquote, which is a horse bleep of
a different color, isn't it. Trump has yet to file
to get the trial moved to a federal court, and
it turns out he might not, because even if it
were transferred, it would still be considered a Georgia state
prosecution and not federal, and thus not subject to being
(13:21):
dismissed by the Department of Justice now or later, and
any guilty defendants in that case could not get pardons
from any president even if it is transferred to federal court.
On the other hand, there was a lot of confused
reporting Monday about a mandatory minimum statute on RICO charges
in Georgia, and I contributed a little bit to that.
I think while there is a minimum figure for a
(13:45):
prison sentence, there is also lurking in the Georgia law.
A judge option to convert actual prison time into probation.
And we are back with another edition of the popular
brain teaser trumpel where we try to identify the unidentified
co conspirators. Nobody won the first round. Number six from
(14:06):
the first round is still unidentified, so the prize total
rolls over to this one, but you have to guess
all thirty of them. There are some early no brainers.
Number eight is identified as somebody Rudy Giuliani retweeted with
the quote of the tweet that was tough. A quick
search proves that is the current Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones.
(14:28):
Number twenty is somebody at the infamous December eighteenth Oval
office shouting match. The former FBI man Pete Struck is
certain it is either Mike Flynn or the overstock guy
Patrick Byrne, and incidentally, there is widespread belief that Burne
may be cooperating. Number three was at a Giuliani Jenna
Ellis Sidney Powell press conference, and additional evidence says that
(14:51):
of several choices it's Boris Epstein. Now, since there are
still twenty seven slots to fill and not that many
conspirators who weren't indicted. You gotta guess Lindsey Graham and
Tom Fitten to be in here somewhere. There is some
indication Fitten has pride of place. He may be unidentified.
Co conspirator number one doesn't say anything about a two
(15:13):
tight polo shirt. Also this formality from the marri Lago
documents case. Carlos the OLIVERA finally has a Florida attorney.
Let's hear it for him. So thus he finally has
a plea and shockingly enough, it's not guilty. The rest
of this story to the moment is something difficult to
convey on a podcast. It is the smell of desperation.
(15:38):
The Trump circle and America's fascists in general seem to
be having a much harder time with Georgia than with
the federal indictments. And if you're wondering why, you can
probably figure it out by examining the online reaction to
the last line of Trump's post about the irrefutable Georgia
election report. Harrington l author with the seventy six trombones
(15:59):
and also the new monorail attached quote they only went
after those that fought to find the riggers unquote riggers,
riggers in caps. Can you guess what Trump's white supremacist
base is now using riggers as a synonym for the
(16:25):
reactions overall are kind of many worst persons. Tim Poole,
the guy in the beanie. Actually the P, I believe
is pronounced like an F, so that would be Tim
Fool responded to the indictments by tweeting civil war, and
then later answered another fascist by writing, you are in
a civil war. Ben Shapiro was entertainingly hoist on his
own petard. Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one
(16:48):
thing is for certain. The glass has now been broken
over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by
legal enemies. Running for office now carries the risk of
going to jail unquote, which oddly enough was advocated for
on a Larry King Show of all Things in twenty
fourteen by why by the same guy who just announced it,
(17:10):
Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I'm not sure we can incit Washington, but I think
that certainly something was done. Washington was relatively clean. But
if you look at George W. Bush, or if you
looked at Bill Clinton, or if you looked at Ronald Reagan, sure,
I mean the answer would be that you could, and
people should be wary.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I mean, this is sort.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Of the case that I'm making, is that we've become
so comfortable with the executive branch of the government abusing
its citizens and violating our rights and violating what their
structure to do under the law, that we've.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Just become used to it.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
And if we start treating them as criminals, maybe they'll
think twice before they act so criminally in the future.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Normally, Ben talks out of both sides of his mouth.
In far less time than nine years, Charlie Kirk, the
guy with the ever inflating Charlie Brownhead, told the Republicans
to threaten to shut down the entire government in response
to all this quote say that no spending is getting
passed until this crisis is resolved, and this effort to
criminalize the political opposition ceases, which seems like potent strategy
(18:07):
until you remember that most irreplaceable federal spending is done
in the Red States, and that any actual full government
financial shutdown would mean defaults and maybe bankruptcies in those
states within weeks, and maybe food shortages within months. But
you do you, Charlie. Alina Haba told Fox that she
(18:27):
disagrees with those warning Trump that the Atlanta indictments are
a perilous threat, quoting her, we do not agree that
it is a perilous threat because we actually have inside information.
She then said she could not say what the inside
information was. I think we all know what it was.
It's the Liz Harrington report.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
There's a ghost.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
There's a ghost behind you. But the all time lulu
of comments so far is from no less a figure
than Marjorie Trador Green. If there was not going to
be an actual Trump prescoon for it's Monday, don't park there.
That's Evanna's grave, all right, give me five dollars, you
(19:11):
can park there. If there were no press conference scheduled Monday,
I would say this quote would be unbeatable in the
faux PA competition going forward. Either way, this quote is
still stunning. Fonnie Willis should be going after child sex
predators and traffickers.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Fannie Willis should be going after.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Murderers, rapists.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Fannie Willis should be going after rapists, marge rapists.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
She is.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Also of interest here. The new biography of Tucker Carlson
is out, and if you have not raced out to
buy it. Consider yourself part of the vast American majority.
It tanked, and I mean tanked. I'll tell you how
much it tanked. And Okay, obviously this is all already necessary.
I'll explain who Tucker Carlson is, who Tucker Carlson was.
(20:14):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman.
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Atlanta, there has been a Herschel Walker sighting.
(20:37):
For the first time since July second, he has tweeted something.
For the first time since February seventh, he has tweeted
something touching on politics and not sports or vacations. Don't
you remember he was the Republican candidate for the Senate
in Georgia last year. The new tweet, Wow, what is
(20:57):
going on here in the great state of Georgia? A
little bit more specific, herschel going on about your senate campaign,
about your son, about your other kids, about their new foundness,
about Matt Schlapp, about the greatest SoundBite of the twenty
(21:19):
twenty two election season. And you did mean election right.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Well, first of all, this election is more than Hersha Walker.
This erection is about the people. Well, first of all,
this election is more than Hersha Walker. This erection is
about the people. Well, first of all, this election is
war than Hersha Walker. This erection is about the people.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Well, first of all.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
This election is more than Hersha Walker. This erection is.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
About the wise words stand the test of time. Herschel dateline, Amazon,
The biography of Tucker Carlson is out. Remember Tucker Carlson
America hasn't answered that question, and the answer is who.
Publishers Weekly reports that the much hyped bio by worshipful
(22:02):
propagandist Chadwick Moore of Tucker Carlson sold in its first
week of availability three two and twenty seven copies, not
just on Amazon, that's everywhere, and that was good for
fifty seventh place among biographies. The kindle version didn't even
(22:22):
make the top one hundred on the Publisher's Weekly hardcover
nonfiction list. The Tucker Carlson bio was fifteenth. Well, there's
your problem right there. It would be number one on
the hardcover fiction list, still ahead on countdown. So I
(22:52):
get into the office and they say did you take
the subway? And I say no, I walked, and they
say good because a guy got stabbed in the subway
and I say yikes, and they say yeah, but they
caught the guys who did it. They arrested forty one
people life at a radio network in Times Square in
New York in nineteen eighty one. Next, first time for
(23:14):
the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger
effects specimens. You constitute today's worst persons in the world.
Bronze Elmo Elon Musk per the Washington Post, if you've
tried to link off Twitter to say, the New York
Times or Facebook or something at Blue Sky or Reuters
(23:34):
and the phone or the laptop just sat there, Twitter
had installed a five second delay. Throttling is the technical term,
because Musk, who if he wasn't paranoid wouldn't have any
personality at all, was mad at those sites Times, Blue Sky, Facebook, Reuters. Okay,
after the Post called this out, some of the throttling
(23:56):
was discontinued late yesterday, and that is your free speech
absolutist in action. Now. It is clear, though, when Musk
said absolutist, he thought it had something to do with
absolute Vodka runner up Ron DeSantis. Remember Ron de Santis,
Governor Florida. Still, I guess the twenty twenty three Scott
(24:19):
Walker Award winner, the one who fought with Disney, sued
Disney cut off their input into governance, trashed them, et cetera.
I guess either that is now rebounded against him or
it has lost its effectiveness because now Ronda has gone on.
CNBC says he appreciates working with Disney, that he and
his wife got married to Disney World, and he says,
(24:42):
let's just forget it. Quote we've basically moved on. Dromp
the lawsuit you'll have this night that ranks as number
one for no economy. Let's move forward. Bob Iger should
move forward. He should move Disney World forward to Puerto Rico.
But our winner, Sage Steele, announced she is leaving ESPN
(25:03):
after sixt teen years life updates. I have decided to
leave so I can exercise my first Amendment, writes more freely.
Ah here we ef and go. Sage Steele wouldn't know
the difference between the First Amendment and the ESPN show
First Take. What happened was she hadn't been on ESPN
(25:26):
for nearly two years after her slow habit of internally
trashing everybody she worked with, then externally trashing some of them,
then trashing COVID vaccines, then trashing COVID vaccine mandates, then
trashing Barack Obama, then trashing transgender women in sports, then
suing ESPN and Disney. That slow process got a little faster.
(25:49):
This June, it was reported ESPN had filed a motion
to dismiss her lawsuit against them because virtually all broadcasting
contracts make it clear they don't have to play you,
they only have to pay you. Steele was reportedly offered
five hundred and one thousand dollars to settle the lawsuit,
and her attorney said that had been rejected. But now
(26:10):
six weeks later, I have decided to leave so I
can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely. Okay, for
the millionth time. The First Amendment is about you being
punished for your speech by the government, not being punished
for your speech by you know, Chris Berman.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
What.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But Sage Steele would never accept that, because she knows
everything and everybody else knows nothing. I worked a couple
of sports centers with her in twenty eighteen, in twenty nineteen,
and at one point I asked an ESPN executive named
Dave Roberts why the essence of the show had been changed.
We used to look for moments in your days in
(26:55):
which one anchor would finish a story and the other
would start one, and the other could throw out a
quick aside or a sarcastic but friendly bit of snark
about what the other one had just said. But now
there were things called stamps, full sound blocks of play
by play calls or player comments that seemingly appeared every
time one of the anchors stopped talking and the other
(27:16):
one was about to start. I didn't mention Sage Steele's name,
but I did say the stamps were blocking us from
talking to each other, me and all of the co
anchors I worked with, And Dave Roberts answered, that's why
we have them. Have you heard our anchors talking to
each other? Have you heard Sage Steel trying to talk
to the other anchors? Given how little I actually worked
(27:37):
with her, there were a surprisingly large number of moments
when I got as another producer put it, Saged, here
are two of them. One of the top ESPN executives
did an interview in which he said I was the
greatest anchor Sports Center ever had debatable top five, three
two anyway? Who goes into that executive's office. But Sage
(28:02):
Steele quote, some of the night time people object to you,
calling him the greatest to do this, she told him.
He asked her who those nighttime people were, and she
wouldn't tell him. He not only told her that if
she wanted to change the all time rankings, maybe she
should do better on the show, but he then told
half the people in the company about what she had done.
(28:23):
And the other story is we were literally seconds to
air with me in New York and miss Steele in Bristol,
when the producer asked me to write like a ten
second version of a story that was just breaking to
headline the show as a quick tease. I wrote it,
and suddenly in my earpiece I could hear Sage Steele's
voice talking to that same show producer, and in that
(28:44):
voice was a mixture of rage and disbelief. What's this,
That's not how we do things. I talk first, make
him rewrite it. It had not occurred to her that
twenty seconds to air, they would have already opened her
microphone and I would be able to hear her. I
then said, Hi, Sage, and she said, and then dramatically
(29:09):
shifted tone, KAO, so good to hear your voice. Have
a great show. I have decided to leave so I
can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely using her
definition of First Amendment rights, which is talking trash at
work and not being responsible for any of it. It
is not physically possible that she could exercise them more
(29:32):
or more freely anywhere else on the planet, Sage, although
she would fit in nicely on Fox, except she and
Will Caine hated each other at ESPN Steal two Days,
worst person in the First Amendment word just ahead. So
(30:06):
you know Times Square right Disneyland, only it's in New
York and it has pizza. Could you imagine a Time
Square is so desolate and dangerous and full of porn
theaters that there were no restaurants open in Times Square
on the weekend. And I worked there, and I used
to have to bring in food from the rest of
the city for the whole office things. I promise not
(30:28):
to tell next first time to feature another dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. In fact,
it's a lot of dogs and cats and animals of
all kinds. At least three thousand of them missing, and
we don't have to claim that their plight is as
important as that of the humans who lost so much
in Hawaii. But the dogs and cats and the others
matter too. The Maui Humane Society is, as you would expect, inundated,
(30:52):
and the dogs and cats there now are the lucky ones.
They're trying to treat the injured and reunite the lost,
and they have started a fundraiser on Giving Grid with
what is not an especially ambitious goal, one thousand dollars.
Anything you can do to help will be gratefully accepted.
Find the Maui Humane Society at giving Grid, or I
will tweet out the link to the animals of Maui.
(31:15):
Thank you, and I thank you now from the files
of things I promised not to tell, and I recently
went past the building my second professional home, and I
was flooded with my memories of a place called the
(31:37):
RKO Radio Network. This is nineteen eighty and I'm nearing
my twenty second birthday, and I'm working real hard at
one radio network run by the United pres International Wire
Service in my second year and making around well nearly
twenty thousand dollars a year, and in September, a drunken
manager had tried to get me fired, tried to fire
(31:59):
me himself for being young, and I'll be damned if
I can remember, had consecutive days off there. This was
UPI in a nutshell. For my first few weeks there.
I thought whoever had decorated the newsroom had found the
floor tiles with the ugliest design pattern in history, and
that finally I saw a colleague grind his lit cigarette
(32:20):
into that floor, and only then did I realize that
was what the ugly design pattern was. Hundreds of ground
out cigarettes, years and years of ground out cigarettes in
the tiles. Anyway, the main advantage to working at UPI
was that everybody in what was then a flourishing radio
(32:41):
business knew UPI, and thus they knew you, and they
knew you were underpaid. The top all news radio station
in the country, WCBS in New York, had already asked
if I might be a candidate for a coming opening
in their sports department the previous spring. I'd actually interviewed
with two vice presidents at this thing. The yachtsman Ted Turner,
(33:02):
who owned the Atlanta Braves, was going to try to
start something he called cable news network, but they were
not initially interested in me, and after meeting with them,
I was certain they would never get it launched, let
alone get an audience for it. I was working there
literally fourteen months later. I had also been flown to Boston,
(33:22):
like they spent fifty five dollars on me by a
radio station that really wanted me to do a morning
sports shift for them, and they were offering forty thousand
dollars a year, twice my salary, and I was ready
to do it. And I was sitting in the office
in Boston trying to figure out where I could live
and how late I could sleep and still get there
in the morning. And then the news director said, now,
(33:43):
except if there's a big story, you can do the
afternoon sports cast from home over the phone, which is
when I realized I was supposed to do the morning
and the afternoon. I was essentially on the clock from
five am to six pm. And the forty thousand dollars
would have had to go to my sister because the
schedule would have killed me within three months. And then
(34:05):
there was this RKO Radio network UPI was in the
unique position of having RKO as a client, so RKO
heard and used our stuff all the time, and also
they had from their beginning used our UPI feed as
a kind of twenty four to seven constantly flowing turned
(34:26):
on spigot audition service. From the time I got to
UPI in July nineteen seventy nine, it seemed like one
radio paerson from UPI per month was hired away by RKO.
Sometime in the early autumn of nineteen eighty, I was
covering a New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden,
and the guy next to me, smoking a cigar inside
(34:47):
the garden, right in front of all the fans, turned
out to be the sports director of this RKO network.
In fact, he was the entirety of the RKO sports department.
But we're doubling in size. I'm going to start doing
weekend sportscasts, and I get to hire a new person
to do the weekends. It's a union shop, so it's
fifty one dollars a sports cast. After there's ten a weekend,
(35:08):
so you get twenty two for eighty dollars to reports
for reports from the field, and you'd be my backup.
Twenty two bucks from the field and a guarantee of
five to ten weekend and you got to come in
one day a week to book the stringers for the
weekend games. That'd be free, but the guarantee is twenty
six thousand dollars plus those twenty two dollars every time
(35:29):
you have file a report from the field. You're interested. Well,
I did some quick math. This was about forty percent
more money for about forty percent less work, and there
were no five am to six pm schedules. When the
sports director called me back a few weeks later to
offer me the gig, I did not hesitate. His name,
(35:51):
by the way, was Charlie Steiner. Charlie would later be
a colleague of mine at Sports Center, and then he
did the Yankees games, and now he does the Dodgers games,
and he's been a friend for forty two years. The
network itself was also space sage, shiny and new, and
it had carpets, whereas UPI had the stubbed out cigarettes decorps.
(36:12):
RKO was literally the first radio network in this country
to deliver all of its programs to its stations via satellite.
No more scratchy, hyper expensive phone lines. RKO came through
crystal Clear, and that was our pitch to the stations.
All the newscasts, all the sports casts, all the features
ended with the same tagline YA Satellite, This is the
(36:34):
RKO Radio Network, and then a spot for Hubba Bubba
Gum for my first few weeks there. Part of the
job also included doing two sportscasts today for RKO's local
station WOIR. The first time I went up in the
elevator to their studio, it dawned on me that it
was the exact same studio where seven years before I
(36:57):
had been invited by the great comedians Bob Elliott and
Ray Goulding along with my dad to sit and watch
in amazed appreciation as Bob and Ray did their show
on WOR. So basically, as of December nineteen eighty, I
had accomplished all of my childhood goals. The only problem
(37:18):
with the place was the location. RKO was on the
southeast corner of Times Square, probably the low watermark in
the history of Times Square. It was in fourteen forty
Broadway at the corner of fortieth Street. There was a
back door at forty first Street and sixth Avenue, right
across from Bryant Park. On those occasions when I filled
(37:39):
in for Charlie Steiner on the weekdays for his morning show,
which they would tape overnight. I would often be at
the studios until two or three am, and my walk
home was a little sketchy. In point of fact, I
would not walk home. I would run, I mean run, run.
From that back door at forty first and sixth, I'd
pass Bryant Park on my right as fast as I could,
(38:02):
passed all the drug dealers and other folks, then dart
on the north side of forty second between sixth and fifth,
and once you got to that corner of fifth and
forty second, you were back in civilization, with good street
lights and other people on the streets, no matter how
late the hour, or as we called them in New
York then witnesses. Occasionally I might have to walk in
(38:25):
Times Square itself, usually when it was daylight. What surrounded
me there was about as far from today's Disneyland East
Times Square as you could imagine. In fact, you could
not imagine. There were porn theaters everywhere. And it wasn't
just porn theaters. They were spaced part and in between
(38:46):
them other businesses existed. Porn peep shows, porn sex shops,
and porn video rental stores. I remember always making sure
I was walking on the outside edge of the street,
nearest the gutter, on the premise that in the event
somebody tried to mug me, I stood a much better
chance by running right out into automobile traffic. Besides which,
(39:07):
I used to worry that if I walked too close
to the porn theaters and the shows, and the shops
and the video stores one day, I might just get
stuck to the sidewalk. Time Square was so different in
nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one that I really can't
imagine that the annual income made there from anything but
(39:28):
porn and the RKO radio network was more than twenty
dollars a year. In total. There was nothing else, I
mean nothing. On weekends, walking over from my home on
the East Side, I would decide which fast food place
I'd be getting lunch from, somewhere on Fifth Avenue or Lex.
I'd go to the nearest payphone, I'd call the RKO
(39:48):
newsroom desk, and I would offer to bring in food
for everybody. For the simple reason that in Times Square
forty years ago, there were no restaurants open on weekends.
I'll say that again. In Times Square forty years ago,
on the weekends, all the restaurants that existed there were
(40:10):
closed during the day, and forget public transportation to Times Square.
I would finish my brisk, twenty five minute walk to
work one night in that frigid winter of nineteen eighty
eighty one and see my colleagues looking unusually pasty and drawn.
You didn't take the subway in, did you, asked one
(40:31):
of the editors, Tom Ryan. I looked at him like
it was crazy. Well good, some guy got stabbed by
the stairs closest to our building. I asked if he
was okay. No, he's not okay. He's dead. But they
got the guys who did it. They arrested fifty one people.
One guy got stabbed to death, fifty one people were arrested.
(40:51):
I asked if they had been restaging a reenactment of
the assassination of Julius Caesar. Still, the equipment was brand
new and easy to use, and the staff was all young.
We all had fun, and we had parties and every
but he lived in the city, and for the most part,
it was a pleasure to work there. And it was
way more lucrative even than Charlie Steiner had suggested. Those
(41:12):
twenty two dollars voice reports from the field. They piled
up fast. The baseball players went on strike that June
nineteen eighty one, and every time I covered a bargaining session,
I could be certain of at least another forty four dollars.
And if that doesn't sound like much, the rent on
my very nice studio apartment never got higher than four
hundred and ninety eight dollars a month. RKO's location also
(41:36):
provided me with some wacky logistical problems. I filled in
for Charlie on most holidays, plus I did the same
thing at a local radio station WIW. This made the
actual Christmas into my metaphorical Christmas. If I had to
fill in for both of these operations on the same day,
my schedule went like this, Get into RKO in Times
(41:59):
Square at maybe two AM, tape Charlie's morning show by
four AM, then Crosstown very quickly to wnew over on
Third Avenue and do those sportscasts live between five thirty
and nine, and then go home and maybe take a nap,
but not a long one because I would have to
be back at RKO by one pm to do Charlie's
afternoon show Rinse repeat, a lot of work. On the
(42:24):
other hand, just one week of those days paid the
rent for two months. On a wet New Year's Eve
nineteen eighty one, I treated myself to a cab to
go to RKO, which put me in the bizarre position
of getting into a cab on the East Side at
one thirty am New Year's Morning and saying take me
to Times Square and the driver saying, you missed it, buddy,
(42:45):
it's been nineteen eighty two for an hour and a half.
Nothing like being the only person going into Times Square
while one million people are leaving it drunk. Most of
the sportscasts I did at RKO or pretty textbook. But
there did come the day that I walked to fill
in for Charlie who was at Wimbledon. So this is
(43:07):
the summer of nineteen eighty one, and the newswires were
full of this story of some unnamed American radio reporter
getting into a brawl with a London tabloid writer at
a Wimbledon press conference, and it slowly evolved that the
reporter was Charlie, my boss, and we were going to
have to figure out a way to cover this. At first,
(43:30):
Charlie wanted to do it in the third person and
say the reporter did this, and the reporter said that,
And I said, you know, I really don't think we're
going to get away with that, given how much wire
copy I'm seeing here, Charlie, this is probably going to
be on the front page of the New York Times
in the morning. Sure enough, it was above the fold.
We're still unbeknownst to Charlie, his fight took place in
(43:50):
a corner of the Wimbledon press room, right under the
camera that fed out a shot of that room twenty
four to seven to every television network.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Sure enough, the last item on ABC's six thirty newscast
that night with Peter Jennings was a feature on Charlie
Steiner fighting with the British over how they broke up
the John McEnroe post match press conference, and he was
pissed off because that meant he wouldn't get any sound
bites from McEnroe. I managed to run home from RKO
(44:22):
and record the report by Dick schaff and when Charlie
got back from London, I loaned it to him. This
was in July nineteen eighty one. Charlie still hasn't given
me the tape back. Every time I see him, he
swears he's still looking for it. It's in a box somewhere.
But I'm beginning to think he may not be telling
me the whole truth about what happened to my video cassette.
(44:46):
But my favorite RKO story is about Charlie's sudden and
inexplicable obsession with the story during that nineteen eighty one
baseball strike I mentioned in the middle of this thing
which stopped the season for fifty days and was really
really the beginning of the end of that time when
baseball truly mattered in this country. When every day in
(45:07):
that strike, somebody on all the TV newscast set, and
the baseball strike is in its twenty third day, a
story broke that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees,
was going to meet with Baseball Commissioner Buy Qun and
a couple of other owners who realized that the work
stoppage was financial madness. As George told me years later,
he was losing about a million dollars in revenue every
(45:30):
day so that the Milwaukee Brewers could save five thousand
dollars in salaries every year. Well, my boss, Charlie Steiner,
decided he was going to scoop the world about this
secret Steinbrenner Kune meeting. So he told me to come
into the office on one of my off days and
work the phones. Work the phone. Sun. Two of us,
(45:51):
me and the newly hired producer, my friend John Martin,
were supposed to call everybody we knew and find out
for Charlie when these guys were meeting and where and
who would be there, and to not go home until
we had nailed down. Well, it was madness. I didn't
know anybody in baseball, let alone anybody who knew where
(46:12):
the owner of the Yankees was going to meet in
secret with the Commissioner of Baseball, let alone who knew
all that and would tell me. But I tried everybody
I could think of, and had already suggested to John
Martin that I was just going to start dialing ten
digits at random and asking whoever answered if they knew when.
After about eight hours of this, well past my dinner time,
(46:35):
I was on the phone with some executive of some
West Coast team when he said, hold on a minute,
I've got another call. And a moment later, from the
adjoining room in my office, I heard John Martin say,
mister Smith, Hi, this is John Martin from the RKO
Radio network. And yes, RKO Radio Network, Yes, I'll hold sir.
Mister Smith picked up my call again and said, is
(46:57):
this really two of you calling me about this crap
at the same time, from the same network, And I
said yes, and I apologie, and I told him I
was going home. If Charlie doesn't like it, I told
John he can fire me, so follow me on this
because I had missed dinner. When I got back to
my street on the East Side, I was famished. I
(47:19):
don't know nine o'clock, ten o'clock. The last two blocks
of my walk home was always identical. I'd come up
Third Avenue and then hang a right at the southeast
corner of Third Avenue and fifty fifth Street. I lived
at the other end of fifty fifth Street in your
second Avenue. But now I was going to go pick
up some pizza in a very nice place on the
northwest corner of this same block. I got the slices,
(47:43):
the lights changed. Now I was crossing towards the northeast
corner of fifty fifth and Third, which itself was the
home of a famous New York bar, PJ. Clarks. Ordinarily
I would never have been on that side of the
street at that hour, but there I was. And as
I slipped past the ancient front door, I saw the
side exit open on a burst of bright yellow light,
(48:04):
like in an Edward Hopper painting shoot out, onto a
limo waiting on fifty fifth Street. Then, as I walked,
carrying my box of pizza and wearing my RKO Radio
Network black jacket, who emerges from that light of that
side door at PJ. Clark's but George Steinbrenner in a tux.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
I gasped.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I tried to summon the courage to approach Steinbrenner as
he walked towards his limo and ask him about his
planned meeting with Commissioner Kun And just before I admitted
to myself that no, at the age of twenty two,
I did not have such courage, I saw Steinbrenner stop
at the limo, and I heard him yell back towards
the light shining through the still open side door to
Clark's Eddie Eddie, And with that Edward Bennett Williams, the
(48:54):
owner of the Baltimore Orioles, leaned out, also in a
tux and said, with evident exasperation, what now, George Steinbrener shot,
what time are you and I and Chiles meeting with
Bowie tomorrow? I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my luck.
Williams had not seen me. Steinbrenner had not seen me.
(49:17):
Williams sighed again for the tenth time. George nine nine
thirty in the morning, George nine thirty Booie's condo. I
now plastered myself against the wall of Clark's. I hope
they had not seen me at all, without so much
as asking the question. I had learned at the Orioles
owner and Chiles Eddie Chiles, the owner of the Texas Rangers.
(49:38):
They would be accompanying Steinbrenner to the meeting and it
would begin at nine thirty at the condominium of Commissioner
Buie Kun. And I was wondering if I could try
to fake Steinbrenner's voice and shout, Eddie, where's Booie's condo?
Speaker 3 (49:50):
Again?
Speaker 1 (49:51):
When suddenly I heard Steinbrenner say, Eddie, where's Booie's condo again.
By now Edward Bennett Williams had re lit a cigar
he was holding. George, write it down this time five
seventy five, Park, five seven five. I could barely breathe.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
Good God.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
They had handed me everything but the cross street. Eddie, Eddie,
what's the cross street? Williams now swore, Oh, for f's sake,
George sixty third, sixty third in Park five seventy five
Park at nine thirty in the morning, Okay, Steinbrenner got
into the limo. It squealed off, the door closed. I
wrote what I had heard on the top of the
(50:37):
pizza box and took off at a dead run to
my apartment at the corner of fifty fifth and Second,
pausing only to take a quick bite of pizza. I
called John Martin back at the RCAO Radio Network. I
got it, John said, you got what I got everything
about the meeting. John said, I'll get the boss soon.
All three of us were on the phone. Charlie did
not believe I had gotten him any information, so I
(51:00):
laid it on thick. You're writing this down, boss, nine
thirty tomorrow morning. It's at Booie Kune's condo at five
seventy five Park that's the corner of sixty third, of course.
Then there was silence at Charlie's end of the phone.
Oh and uh, Edward Bennett Williams of the Orioles and
Eddie Child's of the Rangers. They'll be there too. I
(51:23):
don't know, Charlie, if it's just them or there are others,
but those four will certainly be there. Booi's condo, five
seventy five Cross Street is sixty third. Charlie started to
make a kind.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Of butt butt noise. But but, but how did you
find out? How on the hell did you actually find out?
Why do you think it's true? I had been waiting
for this for several moments, and my answer had been
rehearsed in my mind at least as far back as
my elevator ride up to my apartment. With the most
(51:59):
nonchalant I had ever mustard in my life, I answered
Charlie Steiner.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Well, Charlie, I ran into Steinbrenner at Clark's. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
(52:26):
Countdown has come to you from our studios high atop
the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Here the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, who are the countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
(52:47):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman theme
from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend John Dean. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(53:07):
Let's countdown for this the nine hundred and fifty second
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. Plenty of time left in this week.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
warrants till then, I'm Keith Olreman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and via satellite good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(53:44):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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