December 6, 2023 • 52 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 85: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith's Shocker: He will prosecute Trump on the premise that the January 6th Coup Attempt started in 2012. A new filing with the Judge indicates Smith will argue he tried to push this country over the edge and into violent revolution and dictatorship in November and December of 2020 and January 2021, Donald Trump was NOT RESPONDING to what he falsely believed was a stolen election. And he was NOT RESPONDING to faulty legal advice. And he was not RESPONDING to changing partial vote counts. And he was not RESPONDING to unexpected outcomes in swing states. It was all a plan. An EIGHT YEAR OLD plan. A well-rehearsed plan.
The “Rigged Election” lie of 2020 began in 2012… when Trump tweeted after Obama’s re-election, quote: “He lost the popular vote by a lot; We should have a revolution in this country…" “We should march on Washington and stop this…” “The election is a sham and a travesty…” And - most familiarly - “Let’s fight like hell.”
Plus, Smith introduces an unidentified co-conspirator, a Trump staffer who tried to start a riot to derail the counting of ballots in Detroit on November 4, 2020, and was the go-between from the campaign to the actual rioters in the arena.
Plus: the same day I suggest using the insurrection act against Trump, Steve Bannon and Kash Patel promise to jail journalists and Democrats and destroy government, and the Speaker of the House says he will release all remaining January 6 video but blur the faces of people on it so they cannot be prosecuted. It's literally lawless obstruction of justice.
We are, AGAIN, at the political equivalent of the moment in the movie Rosemary’s Baby when Mia Farrow shakes off the drugs and the anesthetics and the gaslighting and shouts “This is no dream! This is really happening!”
Use the tools we have, no matter how blunt they are, rather than leave them to be used against us.
B-Block (27:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Johnson signs off on impeachment, Nehls admits it's being done just to give Trump "ammo," Gomer Comer stumbles over his explanation, Mitt Romney, grandson of a political refugee from Mexico, wants a sealed border, Nancy Mace loses another reason to get out of bed in the morning. (31:30) IN SPORTS: I'm going to assume Ohtani is NOT going anywhere that's been in the news. And taxpayer dollars to get a football team into a playoff? (37:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Julie Kelly doesn't understand laws, Thomas Massie does an antisemitism, and Ronna McDaniel is the latest to not know who was president in 2020.
C-Block (41:52) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tales of Ted Turner and me and the unlikely guy who wrote me a fan letter about a previous story I did on Ted.
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. As
he tried to push this country over the edge and
into violent revolution and dictatorship in November and December of
(00:28):
twenty twenty and January of twenty twenty one. Donald Trump
was not responding to what he falsely believed was a
stolen election. And he was not responding to faulty legal
advice from faulty lawyers. And he was not responding to
changing partial vote counts, and he was not responding to
(00:48):
unexpected outcomes in swing states. It was all a plan,
an eight year old plan, a well rehearsed eight year
old plan. Jack Smith has now filed a motion indicator
he will prosecute Trump for January sixth, at least in part,
on the premise that all that Trump did in late
(01:10):
twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one was not some
sort of organic response to an election that he seriously
thought was or could have been stolen from him. It
was just a play from his playbook, one that he
had been rehearsing and refining and repeating since November of
twenty twelve, one that he had run in November of
(01:33):
twenty twenty in Detroit, one that he had run repeatedly
during the twenty sixteen campaign when he said it was
rigged against him and he would not confirm he would
accept the results. One that he had first stitched together
inside his diseased mind and enacted only as just another
celebrity nut job on Twitter after the election of twenty twelve.
(01:58):
Smith has also submitted specific evidence about an unindicted co
conspirator and witness that the rest of us don't know about,
a co conspirator tied directly into that Trump rehearsal for
January sixth, part of the coup plot that most of
us had forgotten about the stop the count near riot
(02:19):
during vote counting at the TCF Center in Detroit on
November fourth, twenty twenty Those details in a moment, but first,
let's go through the mind bending reality that Trump's bid
to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, actually began on November sixth,
twenty twelve. Smith, in the filing underscores that reality in
(02:44):
his submission to Judge Chuckkin. It is at the heart
of the copious evidence that Trump is a serial recidivist
election denier, starting with his remarkable chain of tweets from
election night twenty twelve, some of which Trump deleted. More
he did not remember eleven years ago to mention Jay,
(03:05):
Trump was politically seen as Scott Adams or Kevin Sorbo,
a crackpot with some name recognition. So few noticed after
Barack Obama's re election victory over Mitt Romney when Trump tweeted, quote,
the phony electoral College made a laughing stock out of
(03:26):
our nation, the loser one. Few noticed when he tweeted
the election is a total sham and a travesty. We
are not a democracy. Few noticed when he tweeted our
country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble like never before.
And few noticed when he tweeted the electoral college is
a disaster for democracy. And those are the milder tweets
(03:52):
the background. There are four more, which I have included
in my commentaries as long ago as during the twenty
sixteen campaign, which presented in this light in the continuity
in insurrection and anti America violence that is now eleven
years old, that startled even me to read them again.
(04:13):
Trump's twenty twenty coup attempt was so non spontaneous, so
non unrehearsed, non organic, that those last four tweets bemoaning
Obama's reelection even used the same language that would become
all too familiar to the rest of us eight years
and two months later. Quote he lost the popular vote
(04:36):
by a lot. We should have a revolution in this country.
And if you missed his point there quote more votes
equals a loss revolution. Quote we can't let this happen.
We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our
(04:56):
nation is totally divided unquote. And then, most chillingly of
all words, he RepA heated almost exactly as he sent
his minions into the Capitol to actually try to destroy
democracy on January sixth, twenty twenty one. From November twenty twelve.
Quote Let's fight like hell. Let's fight like hell. The
(05:23):
Capitol riot began inside Trump Tower eleven years and one
month ago, as an impotent old fat man named Donald
Trump railed against the president who had once humiliated him
at a White House correspondence dinner. And it is in
the genius of Jack Smith and his team. Molly Gaston
appears to have written this new filing to Chutkin that
(05:45):
we see the otherwise invisible thread all of Trump's defenses.
I was just doing what a president should do when
he believes an election has been compromised. I was just
listening to the advice given me by my lawyers. I
was just responding to unfolding events. All of that was bullshit.
(06:07):
All of it, in fact, was backfill bullshit. All of
it was gaslighting bullshit. The nightmare of twenty twenty one
began in Donald Trump's mind and on his phone in
twenty twelve. And now there is a new conspirator. The
(06:30):
Michigan stopped the count riot. But what now I know?
I know, I completely memory hold that one myself. Smith
filed an outline of new evidence with Judge Chuckkin yesterday,
submitted because it is not charged in the indictment that
it was and as yet unidentified Trump campaign employee participating
(06:51):
as a count observer who tried to arrange a riot
at the main Michigan counting facility. That as soon as
the trumpests saw that the count was trending towards Biden,
he texted a Trump lawyer and quote encouraged rioting and
other methods of obstruction unquote. This was at the same
(07:12):
time Trump was tweeting, a terrible thing was happening in Michigan,
and suddenly social media was flooded with calls for volunteers
to go to the TCF Center in Detroit. Smith's filing
reads that Trump's agent was quote seeking to cause a
riot to disrupt the count. Nearly happened too, in what
(07:35):
looked like a bad stage revival of the Brooks Brothers
riot in Florida during Bush Gore in two thousand. A
whole lot of pasty white guys showed up and filled
the rotunda of the conference center, and they started chatting,
stopped the count, and banging on the windows that separated
them from, you know, the actual volunteers, the mostly black
(07:56):
Michigan election workers. Happily bureaucracy came to the rescue. Building
management basically the rioters out called the cops, and within
three hours the place was cleared of trumpst operatives who
we now know were there to start a riot. Sound familiar,
(08:19):
but most importantly, Smith's evidence that this was directly manipulated
by one of Trump's quote agents is new. It is
as new as Trump's plots to convince others to believe
all presidential elections are crooked, is not new. Of course,
(08:43):
those Trump tweets also testify to the validity of a
point I made yesterday. Speaking of nightmares, we are again
at the political equivalent of the moment in the movie
Rosemary's Baby when Mia Farrow shakes off the drugs and
the anesthetics and the gas lighting and shouts, this is
no dream, this is really happening. I know there was
(09:05):
some blowback to my proposal yesterday that President Biden could
still invoke the Insurrection Act today, detain Trump and the
rest of the twenty twenty coup conspiracy and the twenty
twenty five conspiracy in the twenty sixteen conspiracy, and then
having safely put them away, terminate the Insurrection Act like
(09:28):
ninety ninety five minutes later. Because if you are like
me and you know, like democracy, the idea of going
beyond it to save it seems inconsistent, messy, also QAnon ish,
even if Abraham Lincoln did do nothing but stuff like
(09:49):
that for four years without interruption. On the other hand,
even I did not expect the Speaker of the House
of Representatives to follow up on the day of my
modest proposal by publicly announcing he would obstruct justice and
release the remain of the January sixth video so the
fascists could build their own phony narrative. But first he
(10:10):
would blur the faces of insurrectionists who tried to overtake
the capital during the electoral College certification. Blur their faces
so that, and he said this, the Department of Justice
could not use the unreleased video to prosecute them. He
actually said that. And I will get to Mike Johnson,
who not only announced he will commit the crime of
(10:30):
obstruction and hire more people to also commit the crime
of obstruction, but reminded us in so doing of his
own role in the Trump coup attempt. I'll get to
him in a moment. But first, I also did not
expect that the day I suggested using the Insurrection Act
now against Trump rather than leaving it in place so
that Trump can get the chance to use it against America,
(10:53):
I really did not expect that no less than four
of the people who I would detain were at my call,
would come out publicly the same day and more or
less confirm my thesis. My thesis is as follows, this
is going to happen in America. It is going to
happen in the next two years. People are going to
(11:16):
be detained, political opponents are going to be prosecuted. The
Insurrection Act is going to be invoked. The only questions
are are these nauseating and mostly unprecedented events going to
occur in defenseive democracy? Or are they going to be
(11:37):
used to destroy democracy? Are we going to detain or
are we going to be detained. There's going to be
a big fight with rocks right now. We own all
the rocks. Are we going to use them or are
(11:57):
we going to say we are too noble to use
these rocks. So even though we would use them judicial
and with the minimum amount of rocks, we'll just leave
them here so that later the psychopathic fascists can use them.
(12:19):
Cash Patel went on Steve Bannon's Hitler Cast and Yes,
Steve Bannon explains Cash Pattel would probably be CIA director
under Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Do you feel confident that you will be able to
deliver the goods that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability?
And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us,
and all the producers to watch us.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
This is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
You cannot have a constitutional Republic and allow what these
deep staters have done to the country. The deep state,
the administration state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned
in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart brick
by brick, and the people that did these evil deeds
will be held accountable and prosecuted criminal prosecutions.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Cash.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA,
but do you believe that you can deliver the goods
on this and pretty short in a pretty short order
of the first couple of months, so we can get
rolling on prosecutions.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yes, we got the Benchfard Bandon and you know those guys.
I'm not going to go out there and say their
names right now, so the radical left wing media can
terrorize them. But excuse me. The one thing we learned
in the Trump administration the first go round is we
got to put in all America patriots top to bottom,
and we got them for law enforcement, we got them
for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations, we
(13:40):
got them for DoD CIA everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And the one thing.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
We will do that they never will do is we
will follow the facts and the law and go to
courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who
have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually
issuing them as lawfare.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
We will go.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Out and find the conspiratories, not just in government, but
in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the
people in the media who lied about American citizens, who
helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come
after you. Whether it's criminal or civilly, we'll figure that out.
But yeah, we're putting you all on.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Noticing any questions you want to leave the Insurrection Act
to those two psychopaths jailing reporters, suing the ones they
choose not to jail, specifically prosecuting the staff of Mourning
Joe and No, as much as I want to, I
(14:35):
won't even make the joke about how appealing that sounds.
We have to keep Joe Scarborough safe from the fascists
who he happily mainstreamed in twenty fifteen and sixteen. Whatever
the reason, the likeliest is. This is not philosophy nor
(14:55):
cash Patel and Steve Bannon's preferred form of government. This
is just two losers' chances to rule the world. These
mad men morons like Patel and Bannon intend to destroy
this country using the tools built into our system, which
(15:18):
we could first use to stop them. They intend, they promise.
You just heard them promise to shut down the free press.
They intend, they promise. You just heard them promise to
prosecute anybody who had the nerve to say Donald Trump
had the nerve to break the law, dragging anybody from
(15:40):
the Department of Justice or the Democratic Party into stacked courtrooms,
and in so doing not even having to say to
the judges, go along with us, or you will be
the next ones prosecuted, because that message will have already
been conveyed. See. The reason people compare Bannon and Patel
to Nazis is this corruption of the justice system upon
(16:02):
which their ecstatic delusions of your rest. It is the
same corruption of the justice system upon which Hitler's dictatorship
was built. Once you have all the courts, you can
not only do anything, but you can have what seems
to be an outside authority declare it legal. The other
(16:25):
component is, of course, institutionalized gas lighting. And that's where
the other developments are coming that pertained to my modest proposal.
I mentioned yesterday that over the weekend, Trump had directed
his primary weapon the accused must accuse the accuser. He
had directed it against the growing awareness within the Biden
administration and the Biden campaign that highlighting the genuine Trumpian
(16:49):
threat to representative government and democracy must be an essential
component in their campaign. Now it is Trump claiming they've
made up signs claiming Biden is destroying democracy. Ah, but
yesterday they took the next step. It was the hapless
Byron York of the Washington Examiner who gave away more
(17:10):
than he could possibly understand when he suggested that because
the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington
Post and some other places all wrote pieces about Trump's
menace on the same day, that must be some kind
of coordinated plot. It was then the moronic but still
dangerous Matt Gates who took it to the next step
after that and said, sure, it's a plot. It's a
(17:31):
plot to stochastically encourage violence against Trump. And Gates said
this on the Sebastian Gorka Show Sebastian Gorka, who on
the night of Trump's inauguration in twenty seventeen, wore an
actual badge, an actual tunic, and an actual ring linked
(17:51):
to Hungarian Nazi sympathizers. I don't know where we get
the nerve to say they're Nazis. All they're saying is
Donald Trump Nazi Nazi, Nazi fascism, dictator shape. It looks
like that is the campaign platform for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I think it's even worse. I think that they are
green lighting assassination. You know, when you hear people talk
about Trump as Hitler or as some sort of authoritarian tyrant,
they're trying to justify violence against him and violence against
his supporters, and it is sickening and unamerican. I condemn
it in the strongest possible terms.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Leaving aside the absurdity of accusing anybody of green lighting
assassination against Trump. When Trump green lights assassination against a
dozen judges and prosecutors and critics before he falls out
of bed in the morning, Gates does not seem to
know that one of the articles he's claiming is part
(18:51):
of this plot against Trump. The one from the Washington
Post with the clever image of Trump's mask being torn
away to reveal a Roman emperor looks like a cross
between Julius Caesar and Vespasian. The article titled a Trump
dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending that one
(19:12):
that one that's part of the plot against Trump. Trump
went on truth Social and posted a link to it,
just in case anybody missed it, because after all, the
title a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable is to Trump
a bigger compliment than no, your hair looks great. By
the way, Sebastian Gorka's show, it's on Salem Radio, Salem
(19:37):
NBC's partner on the Republican Debate that it aired last month,
co moderated by Hugh Hewitt of Salem and Kristin Welker. Well,
Kristin Welker, congratulations two degrees of Sebastian Gorka, you're a
Nazi adjacent. Oh and by the way, Thank God's CNN
is under new non Chris licked paste eating management. They
(20:00):
will only be hosting two Republican presidential town halls next
week live ones, an hour live of Ron DeSantis Live
next Tuesday Live, and then an hour live of v
Vake Ramaswami Live a week from tonight live. But don't worry,
they have Abby Philip there to push back the Ramaswami
tsunami of lies with her bare hands, and that sincere
(20:24):
look in her eyes. Tonight on CNN A Live Hour
with the Devil, Charles Barkley and Gail King hosts back
to the point. Just didn't see the Republicans doubling down
on the January sixth was a normal tourist visit bullshit
(20:47):
either same day as my modest proposal, and no, I
know it was a coincidence. Still, this from Speaker Mike
Johnson about releasing the January sixth video that shows nothing
was a shock. Of course, it would have been more
of a shock if Mike Johnson hadn't been Trump's leading
agent inside the coop attempts in the House.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
We trust House Republicans trust the American people to draw
their own conclusions. They should not be dictated by some
narrative and accept that as fact so they can review
the tapes themselves. We're going through a methodical process of
releasing them as quickly as we can. As you know,
we have to blur some of the faces of persons
who participated in the events of that day because we
(21:26):
don't want them to be retaliated against and UH and
to be charged.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
By the DJ See that's obstruction of justice. Moreover, Johnson
is proudly announcing he's committing obstruction of justice. Now to
some degree, it's less serious and more performative than that.
I mean, the FBI has all that video. On the
other hand, nearly all of the actual prosecutions of the
(21:50):
January sixth revolutionaries were prompted by well crowd sourcing, so
blurring the faces might reduce our leading criminal investigation of
January sixth. Your neighbors and the folks down at the VFW. Also,
(22:13):
as Adam Kinsinger asked, Mike, I thought you said the
violent ones were all Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and
I'll add an FBI plants and probably Hunter Biden. Blur
the faces, Mike, why you're at it? Probably a good idea.
If you get all the images of yourself from January sixth,
then you blur that face too, all in all the
(22:35):
images from January sixth, the Trump because he's guilty as sin.
And if our tradition of defending democracy by handling it
only with archival quality white linen gloves, except for mister
Lincoln's presidency, of course, if that has to be replaced
for a little time with soiled work gloves, so be
(22:58):
it Donald Trump. To circle back to the new Jack
Smith filing Donald Trump professional election denier established twenty twelve.
Donald Trump has to be imprisoned before he can destroy
what's left of this nation. And I say this calmly
and with no call for violence, but I no longer
(23:21):
really care too much about exactly how we put him. There.
Also of interest here, Mike Johnson is not just a
Trump tool, He's a Russian tool. And so on the
same topic Ukraine. Just when I thought he might not
(23:41):
be as much of an ask clown as I'd always
thought he was, so is Mitt Romney. Plus an admission
from a Republican congressman. They want to impeach Biden, so
Trump can say, see, Biden was impeached too. I'm not
the only one. And I think I know what's going
on with the show, Hey Otani stuff. Not which team
(24:03):
he's going to play for next year, but which teams
he's not gonna play for. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Oberman host. Scripts to the news,
(24:25):
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Capitol
Hill speaker Johnson, the smarmy little worm has okay to
vote on a Biden impeachment inquiry. Apparently the first article
will be his son bought a Ford truck. The thing
is such a joke that Congress and Troy Knells of Texas,
(24:48):
owned and operated by Trump, has given up even pretending
he has explained this charade to USA Today on the record.
Impeaching Biden would give Trump quoting nails now, a little
bit of ammo to fire back unquote another word so
he can say Biden was impeached too. Because the entire
(25:09):
country sits at the whim of a mentally imbalanced, rapidly
deteriorating would be dictator, and at the whim of Congressman
Jamie Comer, who is not imbalanced and is not deteriorating
because he's got nothing to deteriorate from. He's just a
yokel Congressman. Are we supposed to believe that? I mean,
(25:32):
they think everyone ignorant.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
They assume that the majority of Americans at the end
of the day are going to be financially iterate.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Chairman Gomer, the phrase you were going for there was
financially illiterate. Only you said financially literate, because you are
completely illiterate dateline Kiev, President Zelenski and Ukraine canceled a
(26:01):
zoom call scheduled yesterday with Senators in advance of the
make or break vote on aid to that country. Speaker Johnson,
Russian stooge, wrote back to the White House Office of
Management and Budget that aid to Ukraine is quote dependent
upon enactment of transformative change to our nation's border security laws.
He was promptly slammed for that by Senate Majority Leader McConnell,
(26:23):
but not by Senator Mitt Romney, who used to be
an American but is now just another putent puppet holding
Ukraine hostage and stating, quote, Dems one one hundred and
six billion GOP wants a closed border, that's the trade,
but clueless Dems want to negotiate the border bill not
going to happen. Is an open border more important to
(26:44):
Dems than Ukraine and Israel unquote? I always laugh when
Mitt Romney talks about the border with Mexico. Mitt Romney's
father was born in Mexico. He was born there because
his family had fled there because they were polygamists and
the locals here in the US of A wanted to
kill them. The only reason they ever returned to this
(27:05):
country from the Romney family compound in Mexico was that
the Mexican government had become so unstable that the Romneys
had to flee for political asylum across the Mexican border. Punchline,
Mitt Romney is only here because my grandfathers did not
(27:25):
turn their back on the plight of MIT's grandfather and
Dateline South Carolina, Washington's conservative paper of the Examiner reports
that Congresswoman Nancy I skipped morning sex to come to
this prayer breakfast. Mace has lost three senior staffers, all
of them Trump Practice dictatorship alumni. Three staffers in the
(27:49):
past week alone. Wow, she's misplaced them. To lose one
is unfortunate. To lose three looks like carelessness. The paper
reports Mace fired her chief of staff, then the deputy
chief of staff quit. Now the legislative director is leaving
at the end of the month. My sympathies Congresswoman Mace.
I suppose this makes it much much harder to get
(28:13):
out of bed in the morning. This is sports Senate wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aulberman
(28:39):
in sports. Dateline Nashville Tennessee Shoe a Otani has signed
an autograph. Sorry, some very strange things are happening in
the saga of the baseball free agent pitcher and dh who,
had he not needed Tommy John surgery on his pitching arm,
(29:00):
might have gotten a free agent salary of one hundred
million dollars a year and been wor every penny of it.
Early on, Otani's camp indicated it would hold it against
any team that leaked that it had met with him.
Yet here we go. First, there was the story that
he met Monday with the Toronto Blue Jays at their
camp at dun Eden and Florida. And I love Toronto
(29:22):
and the Jays people are great, but you were trying
to impress show Hey Otani, so you met him at
dun Eden, Florida, at your training camp, a facility that
has been painted like once since nineteen seventy seven. Then
even weirder, yesterday, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts at
(29:42):
the Baseball Winter Meetings publicly stated on the record that
he had met with Otani in the last few days.
His bosses refused to make any comment on what their
own manager said on the record. There are also a
couple of reports out of the Bay Area that the
Giants also met with Otani. There's a vague story about
negotiations with the Chicago Cubs too, But remember he's holding
(30:05):
it against any team that reveals they have met with him.
Wants this secret until he decides, which would mean the Jays,
the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cubs, they're all out of
the bidding, which would mean they all forgot about that rule,
which would mean they're morons. See here's what I think
is happening. And for all I know, he could have
signed with the Dodgers between when I recorded this and
(30:27):
now when you are hearing it. I think the J's
and Dodgers and the Giants and the Cubs know he
is not going to sign with them. So each of
them leaked that they met with him so that their
fans will get excited that he might sign with them,
and when he doesn't, their fans will get mad at him,
not at the club. The New York Mets, of course,
(30:49):
did it perfectly. The Mets pretty much said they were
not interested in Oatani, and now Mets fans are even
madder than usual at their management. Same thing for the Mariners,
the Red Sox, and the Rangers. The Rangers who may
be World champions but don't have a TV contract and
thus don't have any money. Seems kind of logical that O'tani,
who is a low key guy who wants total control
(31:09):
of his life and how much publicity he does or
does not get every single day, who has already adjusted
to an American community once and doesn't seem like he
wants to go through that again. Seems like he's going
to stay where he's been. The Los Angeles Angels, by
the way, those Los Angeles, California Angels of Anaheim, Azusa
(31:31):
and Cuckamonga. In what might be related news, they also
say they are not trading Mike Trout and Dateline. Tallahassee,
Florida State's football team was left out of the College
Football Playoff, and they're all ticked about it. That's the
college Football Playoff, which was supposed to end people getting
(31:53):
riled up about this version of professional football. In any event,
Governor Ron Dessentis of Florida says his state will contribute
a million dollars for any litigation expenses involved in suing
to I don't know, get Florida state into the playoffs,
your tax dollars in action. Now. If you're wondering why
(32:14):
DeSantis would do anything this dumb, please note this is
the first time in at least a week that there
is a story coming out of the Florida government that
is not about elevator shoes or three ways with Moms
for Liberty. Thank you, Nancy Faust still ahead of us
(33:28):
on countdown. I've been thinking a lot lately about Ted Turner,
and about the day I wanted to sock him and
he wanted to sock me, and he wanted to fire me.
And a later day when I got a fan letter
about a story I did about Ted from well, you
won't believe who the fan letter was from. Coming up
been things I promised not to tell. First time for
(33:50):
the daily round up of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world,
the Bronze worse. Julie Kelly one of these Trump suckers
from the ironically named American Gitanus Organization. She writes in
the structure of journalism, but without the facts, the ethics,
(34:10):
or the knowledge. Kelly clipped something from a Tanya Chutkin
ruling on a Trump motion which read, quote, the court
must take the allegations in the indictment as true unquote.
Kelly captioned this and someone explain innocent until proven gualanty
to dance firing behind Jadge. Apart from the casual racism
(34:31):
and the white supremacism, several lawyers pointed out that the
giant hole in Julie Kelly's inferior education includes one really
big problem related to this. Let me quote Brad Heath.
Trump had filed a motion to dismiss the entire January
sixth case. So, as he writes, when deciding a motion
to dismiss, a federal judge is required to accept the
(34:53):
allegations in the indictment as true, regardless of the judge's
place of birth. Julie Kelly, by the way, as a
graduate of Eastern Illinois University, and they have my condolences bio.
Also note she's a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Not anymore. She ain't meet the runners up worser, Congressman
(35:13):
Thomas Massey. Now he's got a track record a mile
long conspiracy. Theorist Q adjacent racist insurrectionist. But even so,
it was kind of startling to see his social media
post using the Drake red ski jacket meme with the
label Congress these Days and Drake holding up his hand
and making a sour face towards the words American patriotism
(35:38):
and then smiling towards the words Zionism. If I were
trying to prove in court the Congressman Massy is an
anti Semite, that would be exhibit number one. But our
winner the worst Ronald McDaniel, Republican National Committee Chair. And look,
I want that party to be run by the dumbest
people possible, I really do. But even in that context,
(36:01):
I do not know how she keeps her job. I
mentioned in the A Bloc the latest Trump the accused
must accuse the accuser twist, accusing Biden of trying to
kill democracy. They actually sent Rona out to give an
example of this on Fox News, and she screwed it
up completely because the problem is Rona McDaniel is a Romney,
therefore she's a freaking idiot. Quote. This is a Biden
(36:25):
White House that was meeting with social media companies dictating
what they put on their platforms before the twenty twenty election.
This is a white House that killed the Hunter Biden's
story that we now know is true, that prevented voters
from knowing that before the twenty twenty election. Oh, for
Christ's sake, already, madam, leaving the Hunter Biden story being
(36:48):
true part because it ain't. You do know who the
president was in twenty twenty, right any guesses? No, it
was not Joe Biden. It was your boss, Rona. You
just accused Trump and his white House of killing your
Hunter Biden's story. You also revealed you can't count Ronna
(37:13):
Romney McDaniel higher number of names than IQ points two days,
worst person in the world, to the number one story
(37:36):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And before the fortieth anniversary
of this event recedes into the forgotten past, I have
one more story to tell you about covering the nineteen
eighty two National Football League players strike, and this is
less about the strike itself and more about the man
for whom I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had
(37:59):
put CNN on the air just two years earlier, and
his sports guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a
job as their New York Sports reporter even earlier than
that May of nineteen eighty and when I did not
get it, I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced
there was no way they would ever get CNN on
the air, no chance. Ever. Obviously I did not account
(38:20):
for Ted Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going their
freelance in nineteen eighty one, as I have related in
some detail here, when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the
New York Sports Reporter, had to get out of town
fast at the existence of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later,
as the nineteen eighty two NFL strike loomed, they had
made me staff and given me a contract, first, offering
(38:42):
me one thousand dollars less a year than they were
paying me freelance. Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged
the absurdity of that mathematical proposition. So I was invested
already whining about Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the
football players walked out and strike in September nineteen eighty two,
and that strike was my beat every day from March
(39:02):
to November or so. After the strike began, we sent
up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson,
about the effect that the strike would have on TV
Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as
the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson
wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so
many interviews already about this strike that if you actually
(39:25):
come up with a question I haven't been asked already,
I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.
Give us what the job? A job interview? At least
fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps man. Not
exactly a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled
tape and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of
(39:45):
the strike, do you wish CBS Sports did not have
the Super Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed,
and he took off his mic and he went over
to his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in
three caps, will you? And he sat back down. He said,
you guys, did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and
it's like the only question that really interests You're still rolling.
(40:07):
Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful
answer about how as long as the season was not canceled,
it was probably better to have the next Super Bowl
because people would be so grateful that after the strike
they wound up playing in any way. So now a
week goes by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions
between the players and the owners are taking place in
(40:28):
a Manhattan hotel, the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump
with a nice lobby. All that matters to me is
the Lows with the dump and the nice lobby is
literally three blocks from my apartment. The players and the
owners just march through a long hallway into private rooms.
That's all we see of them. It is not heavy lifting.
(40:49):
There are nice seats at least in that lobby. But
it is enlivened one day by news that our boss,
Ted Turner has asked the union if he can come
in and meet with their twenty odd player negotiating team
because he wants to pitch them on something. He was
in fact do there yesterday but was unavoidably detained. The
rumor the players told me never confirmed, was that while
(41:12):
changing planes in Chicago, Turner and an air hostess had
ensconced themselves in a dumpster or the other version was
in a janitor's closet for twelve hours of whoopee, and
that's why he was a day late. Anyway, I walk
into the Lows that morning, and if somehow I had
not been able to recognize my camera crew, sure enough
(41:34):
it is the same two guys who had been with
me at Neil Pilson's office at CBS when I asked
him the question he had not been asked before, earning
us free CBS sports caps, and the cameraman and the
deck operator are of course wearing their CBS sports caps
and understand. In nineteen eighty two, CNN was not an upstart.
It was not the feisty outsider, It was not the
(41:55):
future of news. We were called pretend TV. It was
said that CNN stood for Chicken Noodle News. One day,
I called somebody up and asked for press credentials for
Cable News Network, and the guy said, Cable News Network
the ether people own the newsstands downtown. I had no
(42:15):
idea what he was talking about, so I went to
one of the newsstands and I asked the guy who
owns this place, and He pointed to a plaque and
it said owned by Cabell News Company. The Cabell News Company,
owner of downtown newsstands, was better known than Cable News Network.
We got scoffed at in some arenas and venues like
(42:36):
Madison Square Garden in New York. Our crews were not
admitted because they were not in the Union. So the
CBS sports caps were an important, albeit borrowed touch of
legitimacy and dignity, especially for my cameraman and my deck guy.
So the three of us position ourselves in that long
haul in the lobby waiting for my boss, Ted Turner,
(42:57):
me holding the mic with the big red CNN logo
on the mic flag, and the crew wearing their gaudy
CBS sports caps and in Ted walks emerging from the
brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering in from behind him from
the street like this was a perfectly lit movie scene.
And he sees me and recognized me and smiles and
(43:17):
comes over and beams hot, damn, it's my CNN crew,
And he shakes my hand and we roll tape and
I start to asking my first question, and suddenly the
joy drains from his face and he stops me. Oh,
did what they wearing on their heads? He gestures at
the cameraman and the deck guy, and I explained the Baxter.
I don't give a damn who gave him them. This
(43:38):
is the CNN crew. They wearing CBS sports caps. Get
them off they damn heads. And he pushes me, I
mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now, even then,
I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner and twenty
five pounds heavier at least, and maybe I can live
with my employer embarrassing me in public, but I do
(43:59):
not have to let him shove me in front of
all the other reporters. So for a second, I think
I'm just gonna run down the hall and catch him
and horse collar the bastard from behind. About a year
into my TV career, I have already accepted that there
are positives to television, but I've also already learned nearly
all the negatives. And not three months earlier, I had
(44:20):
gone over to ABC to interview with them about going
back to do radio sports. Seems to me, given what
I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to the ground
and then quitting TV forever, would be a pretty appropriate farewell,
and then one word popped in my head. Rent Ah, right, right, Rent,
(44:44):
So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair
in thought, if not an action, Ted Turner was right,
look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing
CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who,
by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he
kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I
still had a store to do that day, and that
(45:05):
crew was going to have to go back into the
room where Turner would be meeting with the players about
an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would
give us some video to use of their meeting, and
simply having my guys take their caps off was not
going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back
to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch
or swag produced in the first two years of CNN,
(45:28):
something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers.
I must have had one hundred of them in my
place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes
and cartons of them in the New York Bureau, which
was funny enough as it was, since I don't think
all the people who worked at CNN in New York
in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway,
(45:52):
I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just
the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's Hotel,
and just as they were calling for the crews to
come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting
with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over
the CBS logos on my guy's caps, and to my delight,
they stuck in place a little large, but it worked.
(46:14):
Minutes later, the boys came out of the meeting room
and the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video
back and had me watch it through the viewfinder of
the camera. As soon as they had walked in, Turner
started to give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one
of the NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew.
There's your CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing,
(46:36):
and now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew,
all right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
players broke up an hour later, I got a message
from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
from the main lobby so he could give me give
CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
(46:59):
so the striking players could make a little money on
the side that he could televise and there would be
a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
which would have meant the players would have all become
free agents. Ted wanted them, all of them, every player
in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
(47:20):
He would create a twenty four team league. He would
give the Union half ownership of every team, he would
find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
a breathtaking scheme. Anyway. Turner was all smiles when he
came out of the meeting to tell me before he
met with the rest of the press, and he said,
(47:41):
great with the hat, good work, but I have to
get you guys some real c and ed sports has
for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by
the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
if there was anything he hadn't told me. And as
(48:01):
he went out the doors to his car, he said
see and I said, don't forget the hats, and Ted
Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I have
ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple of
days before Christmas, I get a call from my boss
in Atlanta, I mean justs got a box of one
(48:23):
hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office. I
don't know what the hell this is all about, but
his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we should
call you. I was very proud of making the correct
choice between correcting a mistake and getting us all hats
and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the
(48:44):
players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
on assignment. Seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
on the PA system and asked all the fans to
(49:05):
go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
The other game was in the Los Angeles Coliseum. They
drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like
five hundred five hundred fans in the La Colisseum. Five
hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But
(49:28):
it was the name of his ad hoc league with
these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with
me forty years later. Ted named it himself. I'm pretty
sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed
it until I made a big deal about it. Ted
Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football
(49:48):
League the quote all Star Season, and I said, perfect.
The acronym you have built for it is a s S.
(50:13):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studios at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters
in New York. Someday I will read you the fan
letter I got when I did a story about Ted
Turner and going into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame or
something on ESPN two twenty fourteen or so. Countdown. Musical
(50:38):
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle arranged, produced, and
performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass,
and the drums. Produced by TKO Brothers. See, it was
who the letter was from that makes it particularly interesting,
And it was like keep up the great work, and
then had this big signature at the bottom and it
was yeah, other music, including You'd never believe he sent it.
(51:00):
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And was written by Mitch
Warren Davis. It's called the Olderman Theme from ESPN two.
Speaking of the fan letter about the Ted Turner thing,
I was on ESPN two when I did this long
commentary about it in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He
should have been in there already, he should be going in twice.
(51:22):
And the guy wrote me a fan letter saying I
was exactly right quoted it quoted the whole thing about
he should have two awards. Our satirical and fifthy music.
You never believe who sent it. Our satirical and fifthy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's
countdown for this the one thousand and sixty five fifth day.
(51:44):
I'm so excited about telling you who the letter was
from that I screwed that up one thousand and sixty
fifth day since the guy who wrote me the fan
letter about Ted Turner dementia, Jay Trump made his first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the Insurrection Act against him now while we still can.
(52:07):
I'll even contribute my letter to the display when we
keep him in that naval brig somewhere for the rest
of his life. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, Bolton
says the News Warren still then on Keith Olderman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, Yes Trump mote road be a
fan letter and good Luck Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(52:31):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. As
he tried to push this country over the edge and
into violent revolution and dictatorship in November and December of
(00:28):
twenty twenty and January of twenty twenty one. Donald Trump
was not responding to what he falsely believed was a
stolen election. And he was not responding to faulty legal
advice from faulty lawyers. And he was not responding to
changing partial vote counts, and he was not responding to
(00:48):
unexpected outcomes in swing states. It was all a plan,
an eight year old plan, a well rehearsed eight year
old plan. Jack Smith has now filed a motion indicator
he will prosecute Trump for January sixth, at least in part,
on the premise that all that Trump did in late
(01:10):
twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one was not some
sort of organic response to an election that he seriously
thought was or could have been stolen from him. It
was just a play from his playbook, one that he
had been rehearsing and refining and repeating since November of
twenty twelve, one that he had run in November of
(01:33):
twenty twenty in Detroit, one that he had run repeatedly
during the twenty sixteen campaign when he said it was
rigged against him and he would not confirm he would
accept the results. One that he had first stitched together
inside his diseased mind and enacted only as just another
celebrity nut job on Twitter after the election of twenty twelve.
(01:58):
Smith has also submitted specific evidence about an unindicted co
conspirator and witness that the rest of us don't know about,
a co conspirator tied directly into that Trump rehearsal for
January sixth, part of the coup plot that most of
us had forgotten about the stop the count near riot
(02:19):
during vote counting at the TCF Center in Detroit on
November fourth, twenty twenty Those details in a moment, but first,
let's go through the mind bending reality that Trump's bid
to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, actually began on November sixth,
twenty twelve. Smith, in the filing underscores that reality in
(02:44):
his submission to Judge Chuckkin. It is at the heart
of the copious evidence that Trump is a serial recidivist
election denier, starting with his remarkable chain of tweets from
election night twenty twelve, some of which Trump deleted. More
he did not remember eleven years ago to mention Jay,
(03:05):
Trump was politically seen as Scott Adams or Kevin Sorbo,
a crackpot with some name recognition. So few noticed after
Barack Obama's re election victory over Mitt Romney when Trump tweeted, quote,
the phony electoral College made a laughing stock out of
(03:26):
our nation, the loser one. Few noticed when he tweeted
the election is a total sham and a travesty. We
are not a democracy. Few noticed when he tweeted our
country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble like never before.
And few noticed when he tweeted the electoral college is
a disaster for democracy. And those are the milder tweets
(03:52):
the background. There are four more, which I have included
in my commentaries as long ago as during the twenty
sixteen campaign, which presented in this light in the continuity
in insurrection and anti America violence that is now eleven
years old, that startled even me to read them again.
(04:13):
Trump's twenty twenty coup attempt was so non spontaneous, so
non unrehearsed, non organic, that those last four tweets bemoaning
Obama's reelection even used the same language that would become
all too familiar to the rest of us eight years
and two months later. Quote he lost the popular vote
(04:36):
by a lot. We should have a revolution in this country.
And if you missed his point there quote more votes
equals a loss revolution. Quote we can't let this happen.
We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our
(04:56):
nation is totally divided unquote. And then, most chillingly of
all words, he RepA heated almost exactly as he sent
his minions into the Capitol to actually try to destroy
democracy on January sixth, twenty twenty one. From November twenty twelve.
Quote Let's fight like hell. Let's fight like hell. The
(05:23):
Capitol riot began inside Trump Tower eleven years and one
month ago, as an impotent old fat man named Donald
Trump railed against the president who had once humiliated him
at a White House correspondence dinner. And it is in
the genius of Jack Smith and his team. Molly Gaston
appears to have written this new filing to Chutkin that
(05:45):
we see the otherwise invisible thread all of Trump's defenses.
I was just doing what a president should do when
he believes an election has been compromised. I was just
listening to the advice given me by my lawyers. I
was just responding to unfolding events. All of that was bullshit.
(06:07):
All of it, in fact, was backfill bullshit. All of
it was gaslighting bullshit. The nightmare of twenty twenty one
began in Donald Trump's mind and on his phone in
twenty twelve. And now there is a new conspirator. The
(06:30):
Michigan stopped the count riot. But what now I know?
I know, I completely memory hold that one myself. Smith
filed an outline of new evidence with Judge Chuckkin yesterday,
submitted because it is not charged in the indictment that
it was and as yet unidentified Trump campaign employee participating
(06:51):
as a count observer who tried to arrange a riot
at the main Michigan counting facility. That as soon as
the trumpests saw that the count was trending towards Biden,
he texted a Trump lawyer and quote encouraged rioting and
other methods of obstruction unquote. This was at the same
(07:12):
time Trump was tweeting, a terrible thing was happening in Michigan,
and suddenly social media was flooded with calls for volunteers
to go to the TCF Center in Detroit. Smith's filing
reads that Trump's agent was quote seeking to cause a
riot to disrupt the count. Nearly happened too, in what
(07:35):
looked like a bad stage revival of the Brooks Brothers
riot in Florida during Bush Gore in two thousand. A
whole lot of pasty white guys showed up and filled
the rotunda of the conference center, and they started chatting,
stopped the count, and banging on the windows that separated
them from, you know, the actual volunteers, the mostly black
(07:56):
Michigan election workers. Happily bureaucracy came to the rescue. Building
management basically the rioters out called the cops, and within
three hours the place was cleared of trumpst operatives who
we now know were there to start a riot. Sound familiar,
(08:19):
but most importantly, Smith's evidence that this was directly manipulated
by one of Trump's quote agents is new. It is
as new as Trump's plots to convince others to believe
all presidential elections are crooked, is not new. Of course,
(08:43):
those Trump tweets also testify to the validity of a
point I made yesterday. Speaking of nightmares, we are again
at the political equivalent of the moment in the movie
Rosemary's Baby when Mia Farrow shakes off the drugs and
the anesthetics and the gas lighting and shouts, this is
no dream, this is really happening. I know there was
(09:05):
some blowback to my proposal yesterday that President Biden could
still invoke the Insurrection Act today, detain Trump and the
rest of the twenty twenty coup conspiracy and the twenty
twenty five conspiracy in the twenty sixteen conspiracy, and then
having safely put them away, terminate the Insurrection Act like
(09:28):
ninety ninety five minutes later. Because if you are like
me and you know, like democracy, the idea of going
beyond it to save it seems inconsistent, messy, also QAnon ish,
even if Abraham Lincoln did do nothing but stuff like
(09:49):
that for four years without interruption. On the other hand,
even I did not expect the Speaker of the House
of Representatives to follow up on the day of my
modest proposal by publicly announcing he would obstruct justice and
release the remain of the January sixth video so the
fascists could build their own phony narrative. But first he
(10:10):
would blur the faces of insurrectionists who tried to overtake
the capital during the electoral College certification. Blur their faces
so that, and he said this, the Department of Justice
could not use the unreleased video to prosecute them. He
actually said that. And I will get to Mike Johnson,
who not only announced he will commit the crime of
(10:30):
obstruction and hire more people to also commit the crime
of obstruction, but reminded us in so doing of his
own role in the Trump coup attempt. I'll get to
him in a moment. But first, I also did not
expect that the day I suggested using the Insurrection Act
now against Trump rather than leaving it in place so
that Trump can get the chance to use it against America,
(10:53):
I really did not expect that no less than four
of the people who I would detain were at my call,
would come out publicly the same day and more or
less confirm my thesis. My thesis is as follows, this
is going to happen in America. It is going to
happen in the next two years. People are going to
(11:16):
be detained, political opponents are going to be prosecuted. The
Insurrection Act is going to be invoked. The only questions
are are these nauseating and mostly unprecedented events going to
occur in defenseive democracy? Or are they going to be
(11:37):
used to destroy democracy? Are we going to detain or
are we going to be detained. There's going to be
a big fight with rocks right now. We own all
the rocks. Are we going to use them or are
(11:57):
we going to say we are too noble to use
these rocks. So even though we would use them judicial
and with the minimum amount of rocks, we'll just leave
them here so that later the psychopathic fascists can use them.
(12:19):
Cash Patel went on Steve Bannon's Hitler Cast and Yes,
Steve Bannon explains Cash Pattel would probably be CIA director
under Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Do you feel confident that you will be able to
deliver the goods that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability?
And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us,
and all the producers to watch us.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
This is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
You cannot have a constitutional Republic and allow what these
deep staters have done to the country. The deep state,
the administration state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned
in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart brick
by brick, and the people that did these evil deeds
will be held accountable and prosecuted criminal prosecutions.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Cash.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA,
but do you believe that you can deliver the goods
on this and pretty short in a pretty short order
of the first couple of months, so we can get
rolling on prosecutions.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yes, we got the Benchfard Bandon and you know those guys.
I'm not going to go out there and say their
names right now, so the radical left wing media can
terrorize them. But excuse me. The one thing we learned
in the Trump administration the first go round is we
got to put in all America patriots top to bottom,
and we got them for law enforcement, we got them
for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations, we
(13:40):
got them for DoD CIA everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And the one thing.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
We will do that they never will do is we
will follow the facts and the law and go to
courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who
have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually
issuing them as lawfare.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
We will go.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Out and find the conspiratories, not just in government, but
in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the
people in the media who lied about American citizens, who
helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come
after you. Whether it's criminal or civilly, we'll figure that out.
But yeah, we're putting you all on.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Noticing any questions you want to leave the Insurrection Act
to those two psychopaths jailing reporters, suing the ones they
choose not to jail, specifically prosecuting the staff of Mourning
Joe and No, as much as I want to, I
(14:35):
won't even make the joke about how appealing that sounds.
We have to keep Joe Scarborough safe from the fascists
who he happily mainstreamed in twenty fifteen and sixteen. Whatever
the reason, the likeliest is. This is not philosophy nor
(14:55):
cash Patel and Steve Bannon's preferred form of government. This
is just two losers' chances to rule the world. These
mad men morons like Patel and Bannon intend to destroy
this country using the tools built into our system, which
(15:18):
we could first use to stop them. They intend, they promise.
You just heard them promise to shut down the free press.
They intend, they promise. You just heard them promise to
prosecute anybody who had the nerve to say Donald Trump
had the nerve to break the law, dragging anybody from
(15:40):
the Department of Justice or the Democratic Party into stacked courtrooms,
and in so doing not even having to say to
the judges, go along with us, or you will be
the next ones prosecuted, because that message will have already
been conveyed. See. The reason people compare Bannon and Patel
to Nazis is this corruption of the justice system upon
(16:02):
which their ecstatic delusions of your rest. It is the
same corruption of the justice system upon which Hitler's dictatorship
was built. Once you have all the courts, you can
not only do anything, but you can have what seems
to be an outside authority declare it legal. The other
(16:25):
component is, of course, institutionalized gas lighting. And that's where
the other developments are coming that pertained to my modest proposal.
I mentioned yesterday that over the weekend, Trump had directed
his primary weapon the accused must accuse the accuser. He
had directed it against the growing awareness within the Biden
administration and the Biden campaign that highlighting the genuine Trumpian
(16:49):
threat to representative government and democracy must be an essential
component in their campaign. Now it is Trump claiming they've
made up signs claiming Biden is destroying democracy. Ah, but
yesterday they took the next step. It was the hapless
Byron York of the Washington Examiner who gave away more
(17:10):
than he could possibly understand when he suggested that because
the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington
Post and some other places all wrote pieces about Trump's
menace on the same day, that must be some kind
of coordinated plot. It was then the moronic but still
dangerous Matt Gates who took it to the next step
after that and said, sure, it's a plot. It's a
(17:31):
plot to stochastically encourage violence against Trump. And Gates said
this on the Sebastian Gorka Show Sebastian Gorka, who on
the night of Trump's inauguration in twenty seventeen, wore an
actual badge, an actual tunic, and an actual ring linked
(17:51):
to Hungarian Nazi sympathizers. I don't know where we get
the nerve to say they're Nazis. All they're saying is
Donald Trump Nazi Nazi, Nazi fascism, dictator shape. It looks
like that is the campaign platform for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I think it's even worse. I think that they are
green lighting assassination. You know, when you hear people talk
about Trump as Hitler or as some sort of authoritarian tyrant,
they're trying to justify violence against him and violence against
his supporters, and it is sickening and unamerican. I condemn
it in the strongest possible terms.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Leaving aside the absurdity of accusing anybody of green lighting
assassination against Trump. When Trump green lights assassination against a
dozen judges and prosecutors and critics before he falls out
of bed in the morning, Gates does not seem to
know that one of the articles he's claiming is part
(18:51):
of this plot against Trump. The one from the Washington
Post with the clever image of Trump's mask being torn
away to reveal a Roman emperor looks like a cross
between Julius Caesar and Vespasian. The article titled a Trump
dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending that one
(19:12):
that one that's part of the plot against Trump. Trump
went on truth Social and posted a link to it,
just in case anybody missed it, because after all, the
title a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable is to Trump
a bigger compliment than no, your hair looks great. By
the way, Sebastian Gorka's show, it's on Salem Radio, Salem
(19:37):
NBC's partner on the Republican Debate that it aired last month,
co moderated by Hugh Hewitt of Salem and Kristin Welker. Well,
Kristin Welker, congratulations two degrees of Sebastian Gorka, you're a
Nazi adjacent. Oh and by the way, Thank God's CNN
is under new non Chris licked paste eating management. They
(20:00):
will only be hosting two Republican presidential town halls next
week live ones, an hour live of Ron DeSantis Live
next Tuesday Live, and then an hour live of v
Vake Ramaswami Live a week from tonight live. But don't worry,
they have Abby Philip there to push back the Ramaswami
tsunami of lies with her bare hands, and that sincere
(20:24):
look in her eyes. Tonight on CNN A Live Hour
with the Devil, Charles Barkley and Gail King hosts back
to the point. Just didn't see the Republicans doubling down
on the January sixth was a normal tourist visit bullshit
(20:47):
either same day as my modest proposal, and no, I
know it was a coincidence. Still, this from Speaker Mike
Johnson about releasing the January sixth video that shows nothing
was a shock. Of course, it would have been more
of a shock if Mike Johnson hadn't been Trump's leading
agent inside the coop attempts in the House.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
We trust House Republicans trust the American people to draw
their own conclusions. They should not be dictated by some
narrative and accept that as fact so they can review
the tapes themselves. We're going through a methodical process of
releasing them as quickly as we can. As you know,
we have to blur some of the faces of persons
who participated in the events of that day because we
(21:26):
don't want them to be retaliated against and UH and
to be charged.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
By the DJ See that's obstruction of justice. Moreover, Johnson
is proudly announcing he's committing obstruction of justice. Now to
some degree, it's less serious and more performative than that.
I mean, the FBI has all that video. On the
other hand, nearly all of the actual prosecutions of the
(21:50):
January sixth revolutionaries were prompted by well crowd sourcing, so
blurring the faces might reduce our leading criminal investigation of
January sixth. Your neighbors and the folks down at the VFW. Also,
(22:13):
as Adam Kinsinger asked, Mike, I thought you said the
violent ones were all Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and
I'll add an FBI plants and probably Hunter Biden. Blur
the faces, Mike, why you're at it? Probably a good idea.
If you get all the images of yourself from January sixth,
then you blur that face too, all in all the
(22:35):
images from January sixth, the Trump because he's guilty as sin.
And if our tradition of defending democracy by handling it
only with archival quality white linen gloves, except for mister
Lincoln's presidency, of course, if that has to be replaced
for a little time with soiled work gloves, so be
(22:58):
it Donald Trump. To circle back to the new Jack
Smith filing Donald Trump professional election denier established twenty twelve.
Donald Trump has to be imprisoned before he can destroy
what's left of this nation. And I say this calmly
and with no call for violence, but I no longer
(23:21):
really care too much about exactly how we put him. There.
Also of interest here, Mike Johnson is not just a
Trump tool, He's a Russian tool. And so on the
same topic Ukraine. Just when I thought he might not
(23:41):
be as much of an ask clown as I'd always
thought he was, so is Mitt Romney. Plus an admission
from a Republican congressman. They want to impeach Biden, so
Trump can say, see, Biden was impeached too. I'm not
the only one. And I think I know what's going
on with the show, Hey Otani stuff. Not which team
(24:03):
he's going to play for next year, but which teams
he's not gonna play for. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Oberman host. Scripts to the news,
(24:25):
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Capitol
Hill speaker Johnson, the smarmy little worm has okay to
vote on a Biden impeachment inquiry. Apparently the first article
will be his son bought a Ford truck. The thing
is such a joke that Congress and Troy Knells of Texas,
(24:48):
owned and operated by Trump, has given up even pretending
he has explained this charade to USA Today on the record.
Impeaching Biden would give Trump quoting nails now, a little
bit of ammo to fire back unquote another word so
he can say Biden was impeached too. Because the entire
(25:09):
country sits at the whim of a mentally imbalanced, rapidly
deteriorating would be dictator, and at the whim of Congressman
Jamie Comer, who is not imbalanced and is not deteriorating
because he's got nothing to deteriorate from. He's just a
yokel Congressman. Are we supposed to believe that? I mean,
(25:32):
they think everyone ignorant.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
They assume that the majority of Americans at the end
of the day are going to be financially iterate.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Chairman Gomer, the phrase you were going for there was
financially illiterate. Only you said financially literate, because you are
completely illiterate dateline Kiev, President Zelenski and Ukraine canceled a
(26:01):
zoom call scheduled yesterday with Senators in advance of the
make or break vote on aid to that country. Speaker Johnson,
Russian stooge, wrote back to the White House Office of
Management and Budget that aid to Ukraine is quote dependent
upon enactment of transformative change to our nation's border security laws.
He was promptly slammed for that by Senate Majority Leader McConnell,
(26:23):
but not by Senator Mitt Romney, who used to be
an American but is now just another putent puppet holding
Ukraine hostage and stating, quote, Dems one one hundred and
six billion GOP wants a closed border, that's the trade,
but clueless Dems want to negotiate the border bill not
going to happen. Is an open border more important to
(26:44):
Dems than Ukraine and Israel unquote? I always laugh when
Mitt Romney talks about the border with Mexico. Mitt Romney's
father was born in Mexico. He was born there because
his family had fled there because they were polygamists and
the locals here in the US of A wanted to
kill them. The only reason they ever returned to this
(27:05):
country from the Romney family compound in Mexico was that
the Mexican government had become so unstable that the Romneys
had to flee for political asylum across the Mexican border. Punchline,
Mitt Romney is only here because my grandfathers did not
(27:25):
turn their back on the plight of MIT's grandfather and
Dateline South Carolina, Washington's conservative paper of the Examiner reports
that Congresswoman Nancy I skipped morning sex to come to
this prayer breakfast. Mace has lost three senior staffers, all
of them Trump Practice dictatorship alumni. Three staffers in the
(27:49):
past week alone. Wow, she's misplaced them. To lose one
is unfortunate. To lose three looks like carelessness. The paper
reports Mace fired her chief of staff, then the deputy
chief of staff quit. Now the legislative director is leaving
at the end of the month. My sympathies Congresswoman Mace.
I suppose this makes it much much harder to get
(28:13):
out of bed in the morning. This is sports Senate wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aulberman
(28:39):
in sports. Dateline Nashville Tennessee Shoe a Otani has signed
an autograph. Sorry, some very strange things are happening in
the saga of the baseball free agent pitcher and dh who,
had he not needed Tommy John surgery on his pitching arm,
(29:00):
might have gotten a free agent salary of one hundred
million dollars a year and been wor every penny of it.
Early on, Otani's camp indicated it would hold it against
any team that leaked that it had met with him.
Yet here we go. First, there was the story that
he met Monday with the Toronto Blue Jays at their
camp at dun Eden and Florida. And I love Toronto
(29:22):
and the Jays people are great, but you were trying
to impress show Hey Otani, so you met him at
dun Eden, Florida, at your training camp, a facility that
has been painted like once since nineteen seventy seven. Then
even weirder, yesterday, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts at
(29:42):
the Baseball Winter Meetings publicly stated on the record that
he had met with Otani in the last few days.
His bosses refused to make any comment on what their
own manager said on the record. There are also a
couple of reports out of the Bay Area that the
Giants also met with Otani. There's a vague story about
negotiations with the Chicago Cubs too, But remember he's holding
(30:05):
it against any team that reveals they have met with him.
Wants this secret until he decides, which would mean the Jays,
the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cubs, they're all out of
the bidding, which would mean they all forgot about that rule,
which would mean they're morons. See here's what I think
is happening. And for all I know, he could have
signed with the Dodgers between when I recorded this and
(30:27):
now when you are hearing it. I think the J's
and Dodgers and the Giants and the Cubs know he
is not going to sign with them. So each of
them leaked that they met with him so that their
fans will get excited that he might sign with them,
and when he doesn't, their fans will get mad at him,
not at the club. The New York Mets, of course,
(30:49):
did it perfectly. The Mets pretty much said they were
not interested in Oatani, and now Mets fans are even
madder than usual at their management. Same thing for the Mariners,
the Red Sox, and the Rangers. The Rangers who may
be World champions but don't have a TV contract and
thus don't have any money. Seems kind of logical that O'tani,
who is a low key guy who wants total control
(31:09):
of his life and how much publicity he does or
does not get every single day, who has already adjusted
to an American community once and doesn't seem like he
wants to go through that again. Seems like he's going
to stay where he's been. The Los Angeles Angels, by
the way, those Los Angeles, California Angels of Anaheim, Azusa
(31:31):
and Cuckamonga. In what might be related news, they also
say they are not trading Mike Trout and Dateline. Tallahassee,
Florida State's football team was left out of the College
Football Playoff, and they're all ticked about it. That's the
college Football Playoff, which was supposed to end people getting
(31:53):
riled up about this version of professional football. In any event,
Governor Ron Dessentis of Florida says his state will contribute
a million dollars for any litigation expenses involved in suing
to I don't know, get Florida state into the playoffs,
your tax dollars in action. Now. If you're wondering why
(32:14):
DeSantis would do anything this dumb, please note this is
the first time in at least a week that there
is a story coming out of the Florida government that
is not about elevator shoes or three ways with Moms
for Liberty. Thank you, Nancy Faust still ahead of us
(33:28):
on countdown. I've been thinking a lot lately about Ted Turner,
and about the day I wanted to sock him and
he wanted to sock me, and he wanted to fire me.
And a later day when I got a fan letter
about a story I did about Ted from well, you
won't believe who the fan letter was from. Coming up
been things I promised not to tell. First time for
(33:50):
the daily round up of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world,
the Bronze worse. Julie Kelly one of these Trump suckers
from the ironically named American Gitanus Organization. She writes in
the structure of journalism, but without the facts, the ethics,
(34:10):
or the knowledge. Kelly clipped something from a Tanya Chutkin
ruling on a Trump motion which read, quote, the court
must take the allegations in the indictment as true unquote.
Kelly captioned this and someone explain innocent until proven gualanty
to dance firing behind Jadge. Apart from the casual racism
(34:31):
and the white supremacism, several lawyers pointed out that the
giant hole in Julie Kelly's inferior education includes one really
big problem related to this. Let me quote Brad Heath.
Trump had filed a motion to dismiss the entire January
sixth case. So, as he writes, when deciding a motion
to dismiss, a federal judge is required to accept the
(34:53):
allegations in the indictment as true, regardless of the judge's
place of birth. Julie Kelly, by the way, as a
graduate of Eastern Illinois University, and they have my condolences bio.
Also note she's a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Not anymore. She ain't meet the runners up worser, Congressman
(35:13):
Thomas Massey. Now he's got a track record a mile
long conspiracy. Theorist Q adjacent racist insurrectionist. But even so,
it was kind of startling to see his social media
post using the Drake red ski jacket meme with the
label Congress these Days and Drake holding up his hand
and making a sour face towards the words American patriotism
(35:38):
and then smiling towards the words Zionism. If I were
trying to prove in court the Congressman Massy is an
anti Semite, that would be exhibit number one. But our
winner the worst Ronald McDaniel, Republican National Committee Chair. And look,
I want that party to be run by the dumbest
people possible, I really do. But even in that context,
(36:01):
I do not know how she keeps her job. I
mentioned in the A Bloc the latest Trump the accused
must accuse the accuser twist, accusing Biden of trying to
kill democracy. They actually sent Rona out to give an
example of this on Fox News, and she screwed it
up completely because the problem is Rona McDaniel is a Romney,
therefore she's a freaking idiot. Quote. This is a Biden
(36:25):
White House that was meeting with social media companies dictating
what they put on their platforms before the twenty twenty election.
This is a white House that killed the Hunter Biden's
story that we now know is true, that prevented voters
from knowing that before the twenty twenty election. Oh, for
Christ's sake, already, madam, leaving the Hunter Biden story being
(36:48):
true part because it ain't. You do know who the
president was in twenty twenty, right any guesses? No, it
was not Joe Biden. It was your boss, Rona. You
just accused Trump and his white House of killing your
Hunter Biden's story. You also revealed you can't count Ronna
(37:13):
Romney McDaniel higher number of names than IQ points two days,
worst person in the world, to the number one story
(37:36):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And before the fortieth anniversary
of this event recedes into the forgotten past, I have
one more story to tell you about covering the nineteen
eighty two National Football League players strike, and this is
less about the strike itself and more about the man
for whom I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had
(37:59):
put CNN on the air just two years earlier, and
his sports guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a
job as their New York Sports reporter even earlier than
that May of nineteen eighty and when I did not
get it, I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced
there was no way they would ever get CNN on
the air, no chance. Ever. Obviously I did not account
(38:20):
for Ted Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going their
freelance in nineteen eighty one, as I have related in
some detail here, when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the
New York Sports Reporter, had to get out of town
fast at the existence of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later,
as the nineteen eighty two NFL strike loomed, they had
made me staff and given me a contract, first, offering
(38:42):
me one thousand dollars less a year than they were
paying me freelance. Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged
the absurdity of that mathematical proposition. So I was invested
already whining about Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the
football players walked out and strike in September nineteen eighty two,
and that strike was my beat every day from March
(39:02):
to November or so. After the strike began, we sent
up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson,
about the effect that the strike would have on TV
Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as
the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson
wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so
many interviews already about this strike that if you actually
(39:25):
come up with a question I haven't been asked already,
I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.
Give us what the job? A job interview? At least
fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps man. Not
exactly a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled
tape and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of
(39:45):
the strike, do you wish CBS Sports did not have
the Super Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed,
and he took off his mic and he went over
to his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in
three caps, will you? And he sat back down. He said,
you guys, did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and
it's like the only question that really interests You're still rolling.
(40:07):
Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful
answer about how as long as the season was not canceled,
it was probably better to have the next Super Bowl
because people would be so grateful that after the strike
they wound up playing in any way. So now a
week goes by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions
between the players and the owners are taking place in
(40:28):
a Manhattan hotel, the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump
with a nice lobby. All that matters to me is
the Lows with the dump and the nice lobby is
literally three blocks from my apartment. The players and the
owners just march through a long hallway into private rooms.
That's all we see of them. It is not heavy lifting.
(40:49):
There are nice seats at least in that lobby. But
it is enlivened one day by news that our boss,
Ted Turner has asked the union if he can come
in and meet with their twenty odd player negotiating team
because he wants to pitch them on something. He was
in fact do there yesterday but was unavoidably detained. The
rumor the players told me never confirmed, was that while
(41:12):
changing planes in Chicago, Turner and an air hostess had
ensconced themselves in a dumpster or the other version was
in a janitor's closet for twelve hours of whoopee, and
that's why he was a day late. Anyway, I walk
into the Lows that morning, and if somehow I had
not been able to recognize my camera crew, sure enough
(41:34):
it is the same two guys who had been with
me at Neil Pilson's office at CBS when I asked
him the question he had not been asked before, earning
us free CBS sports caps, and the cameraman and the
deck operator are of course wearing their CBS sports caps
and understand. In nineteen eighty two, CNN was not an upstart.
It was not the feisty outsider, It was not the
(41:55):
future of news. We were called pretend TV. It was
said that CNN stood for Chicken Noodle News. One day,
I called somebody up and asked for press credentials for
Cable News Network, and the guy said, Cable News Network
the ether people own the newsstands downtown. I had no
(42:15):
idea what he was talking about, so I went to
one of the newsstands and I asked the guy who
owns this place, and He pointed to a plaque and
it said owned by Cabell News Company. The Cabell News Company,
owner of downtown newsstands, was better known than Cable News Network.
We got scoffed at in some arenas and venues like
(42:36):
Madison Square Garden in New York. Our crews were not
admitted because they were not in the Union. So the
CBS sports caps were an important, albeit borrowed touch of
legitimacy and dignity, especially for my cameraman and my deck guy.
So the three of us position ourselves in that long
haul in the lobby waiting for my boss, Ted Turner,
(42:57):
me holding the mic with the big red CNN logo
on the mic flag, and the crew wearing their gaudy
CBS sports caps and in Ted walks emerging from the
brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering in from behind him from
the street like this was a perfectly lit movie scene.
And he sees me and recognized me and smiles and
(43:17):
comes over and beams hot, damn, it's my CNN crew,
And he shakes my hand and we roll tape and
I start to asking my first question, and suddenly the
joy drains from his face and he stops me. Oh,
did what they wearing on their heads? He gestures at
the cameraman and the deck guy, and I explained the Baxter.
I don't give a damn who gave him them. This
(43:38):
is the CNN crew. They wearing CBS sports caps. Get
them off they damn heads. And he pushes me, I
mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now, even then,
I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner and twenty
five pounds heavier at least, and maybe I can live
with my employer embarrassing me in public, but I do
(43:59):
not have to let him shove me in front of
all the other reporters. So for a second, I think
I'm just gonna run down the hall and catch him
and horse collar the bastard from behind. About a year
into my TV career, I have already accepted that there
are positives to television, but I've also already learned nearly
all the negatives. And not three months earlier, I had
(44:20):
gone over to ABC to interview with them about going
back to do radio sports. Seems to me, given what
I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to the ground
and then quitting TV forever, would be a pretty appropriate farewell,
and then one word popped in my head. Rent Ah, right, right, Rent,
(44:44):
So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair
in thought, if not an action, Ted Turner was right,
look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing
CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who,
by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he
kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I
still had a store to do that day, and that
(45:05):
crew was going to have to go back into the
room where Turner would be meeting with the players about
an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would
give us some video to use of their meeting, and
simply having my guys take their caps off was not
going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back
to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch
or swag produced in the first two years of CNN,
(45:28):
something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers.
I must have had one hundred of them in my
place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes
and cartons of them in the New York Bureau, which
was funny enough as it was, since I don't think
all the people who worked at CNN in New York
in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway,
(45:52):
I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just
the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's Hotel,
and just as they were calling for the crews to
come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting
with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over
the CBS logos on my guy's caps, and to my delight,
they stuck in place a little large, but it worked.
(46:14):
Minutes later, the boys came out of the meeting room
and the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video
back and had me watch it through the viewfinder of
the camera. As soon as they had walked in, Turner
started to give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one
of the NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew.
There's your CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing,
(46:36):
and now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew,
all right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
players broke up an hour later, I got a message
from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
from the main lobby so he could give me give
CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
(46:59):
so the striking players could make a little money on
the side that he could televise and there would be
a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
which would have meant the players would have all become
free agents. Ted wanted them, all of them, every player
in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
(47:20):
He would create a twenty four team league. He would
give the Union half ownership of every team, he would
find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
a breathtaking scheme. Anyway. Turner was all smiles when he
came out of the meeting to tell me before he
met with the rest of the press, and he said,
(47:41):
great with the hat, good work, but I have to
get you guys some real c and ed sports has
for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by
the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
if there was anything he hadn't told me. And as
(48:01):
he went out the doors to his car, he said
see and I said, don't forget the hats, and Ted
Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I have
ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple of
days before Christmas, I get a call from my boss
in Atlanta, I mean justs got a box of one
(48:23):
hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office. I
don't know what the hell this is all about, but
his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we should
call you. I was very proud of making the correct
choice between correcting a mistake and getting us all hats
and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the
(48:44):
players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
on assignment. Seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
on the PA system and asked all the fans to
(49:05):
go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
The other game was in the Los Angeles Coliseum. They
drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like
five hundred five hundred fans in the La Colisseum. Five
hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But
(49:28):
it was the name of his ad hoc league with
these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with
me forty years later. Ted named it himself. I'm pretty
sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed
it until I made a big deal about it. Ted
Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football
(49:48):
League the quote all Star Season, and I said, perfect.
The acronym you have built for it is a s S.
(50:13):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studios at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters
in New York. Someday I will read you the fan
letter I got when I did a story about Ted
Turner and going into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame or
something on ESPN two twenty fourteen or so. Countdown. Musical
(50:38):
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle arranged, produced, and
performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass,
and the drums. Produced by TKO Brothers. See, it was
who the letter was from that makes it particularly interesting,
And it was like keep up the great work, and
then had this big signature at the bottom and it
was yeah, other music, including You'd never believe he sent it.
(51:00):
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And was written by Mitch
Warren Davis. It's called the Olderman Theme from ESPN two.
Speaking of the fan letter about the Ted Turner thing,
I was on ESPN two when I did this long
commentary about it in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He
should have been in there already, he should be going in twice.
(51:22):
And the guy wrote me a fan letter saying I
was exactly right quoted it quoted the whole thing about
he should have two awards. Our satirical and fifthy music.
You never believe who sent it. Our satirical and fifthy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's
countdown for this the one thousand and sixty five fifth day.
(51:44):
I'm so excited about telling you who the letter was
from that I screwed that up one thousand and sixty
fifth day since the guy who wrote me the fan
letter about Ted Turner dementia, Jay Trump made his first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the Insurrection Act against him now while we still can.
(52:07):
I'll even contribute my letter to the display when we
keep him in that naval brig somewhere for the rest
of his life. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, Bolton
says the News Warren still then on Keith Olderman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, Yes Trump mote road be a
fan letter and good Luck Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(52:31):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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