KAMALA GOES ON FOX? PROVES TRUMP IS A P**** A** B**** - 10.15.24 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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

Speaker 2 (00:20):
No Risk, All Reward.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Kamala Harris doing an interview on Fox with Brett Bhair
Tomorrow Night, pushes all the fascist buttons, all at once,
all on Trump, and she especially pushes the one button
that proves that. Would you like me to give the
direct quote? Yeah, please excuse my language, this is a

(00:46):
direct quote. But Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as
a pussy ass bitch. Harris goes on FNC, Trump is
again a pab Thank you, MVP. Can you imagine Trump
sitting down to be interviewed by Maddow or, for God's sakes,
even Andrea Mitchell or the Midas Network guys or me.

(01:08):
This is perfect. First of all, it will enrage Trump,
not just now, not just tomorrow, but for the rest
of the campaign, every moment. He cannot stop it. He
cannot stop his own insanity, He cannot hope to contain it.
There is an excellent chance it will literally push him
fully over the edge and he will start dropping n

(01:28):
words or speaking in a language of his own invention.
I mean entirely of his own invention, not the thirty
to thirty five percent unintelligible gibberish he speaks now. Trump
only found out about this in late afternoon yesterday, and
he promptly lost it. He attacked Fox as weak and soft,
He called Brettbear fair and balanced, and meant it as

(01:51):
an insult. On top of which Trump had already been
raging about Fox, letting liberals on its network think of it.
He wrote, I spend an hour with the wonderful Maria
Bardawomo to a beautiful job. And then a followed up
all day long by one sided negative Democrats, including Ian Sam's,
who virtually owns the network. Quote, you don't know who

(02:15):
Ian SAMs is? Do you? Well? You know who he
is now. He's senior advisor to the Harris campaign and
often the spokesperson, and he enrages Trump on top on
top of which Trump had in the wee hours of
Monday morning, at one twelve am on Columbus Day, he

(02:37):
had attacked the Vice president for not doing interviews and
not doing them well. I believe it is very important
that Kamala Harris pass a test on cognitive stamina and agility.
Her actions have led many to believe that there could
be something very wrong with her even sixty minutes and
CBS in order to protect Lion Kamalay illegally and unscrupulously

(02:59):
replaced an answer she had given, which was totally bonkers,
with another answer that had nothing to do with a question. Also,
she is slow and lethargic and answering even the easiest
of questions. I know, I know. Every Trump accusation is
a confession, slow and lethargic. You say, Sonny, and the

(03:20):
tell is always the same. It's usually everybody knows. But
the secondary tell when he needs something a little darker
and more mysterious and certainly more formal, is have led
many to believe. Her actions have led many to believable
there it is. Trump is so messing his pants that

(03:40):
no diaper can save him. Now and now there is
a chance that even the Washington Post in New York
Times political reporters will skip whatever DC cocktail party they
were going to on Wednesday nights in hopes of getting
into Politico's spotted column and start asking the Trump mouthpieces

(04:00):
and the Republicans why if she can go on Fox,
he can't go on MSNBC or the Washington Post Live
or to a New York Times cocktail party with Joe
and ag. This also, I think, finally puts a stake
through the she's not doing interviews Gnard. It's getting to

(04:23):
be almost annoying. She's doing too many interviews. In any event,
it transforms that entire issue into a journalistic bidding war. No,
there has been no sit down with the Post or
the New York Times editorial board or live with one
of the Sunday shows. But she's going on Fox. One
presumes editor con and publisher Salzburger of the Times are

(04:46):
just now being resuscitated after an attack of the vapors.
The approach to Vice President Harris now has to change
from bullying her, which is what the media has been
doing since the moment she became the nominee, to making
the best offer and pleading. Whatever that is to the
Harris campaign is almost irrelevant. She just accepted an interview

(05:08):
on fixed news. How demanding could she possibly be? Ironically,
there is a glimmer of sanity in the Trump response
to this news. He writes that the vice president quote
has wisely chosen Brent Baher. He's right, I'm not going

(05:31):
to say that again. I know this man, like all
of them, Brett Baar does not do his pretend newscast
every night just for the money, not even just for
the renown. He has a political agenda and the discovery
in Fox's disastrous seven hundred and eighty seven million dollar
dominion case, in which, for reasons of ratings and fascist waring,

(05:53):
Brett Bhaar insisted that after Fox called Arizona for Biden,
he demanded in a never denied email that it be rescinded.
It's hurting us. The sooner we pull it, even if
it gives us a major egg and put it back
in Trump's column, the better we are, in my opinion.
In other words, Bear wasn't just a contaminated ex journalist
on election night. He was a conspiracy theorist who just

(06:18):
knew Trump couldn't have lost Arizona and that Fox needed
to put the state back in Trump's column, even though
it had never been in Trump's column, no matter how
many egg it produced. But as I say, I know
this man. We have had conversations. He thinks he's Walter
Cronkite offered a broadcast Network nightly newscast, if there still

(06:42):
are any I didn't watch last night, he would leave Fox,
so fast that his three piece suit would still be
standing there on the Fox set in DC while he
was getting into a cab naked. He thinks he's Walter Cronkite.
He thinks he was viewed as Walter Cronkite, and then
this email came out and now fewer people think he's

(07:03):
Walter Cronkite. And interviewing the Democratic presidential candidate twenty days
before the election will make more people think he's Walter Cronkite. No,
by the way, the person Brett Bear most wants to think,
Brett Behar is Walter Cronkite, is Brett bar He's not
going to softball her, and he may QAnon her. But

(07:26):
here's the other thing. He has spent twenty five years
at Fox and fifteen years anchoring what the Foxes think
is the evening news, and he wants to be seen
as more presidential than Kamala Harris. He's Walter Cronkite, after all.

(07:47):
He wants to be seen as fair, even if he
doesn't know how to be fair. Plus twenty five years
at Fox like being locked in a cave, Robinson Crusoe
got home faster. How many times in twenty five years
do you think Brett Bear has interviewed anybody, let alone

(08:07):
a presidential candidate from the other party, who did not
defer to him or at least to his network or
pulled punches. I mean, it's one thing to juggle chainsaws.
Live TV every night for years is juggling chainsaws. It's
quite another thing to juggle chainsaws while they are on

(08:28):
fire and somebody is trying to prevent you from catching them.
And if you're wondering if Bear might trip up Harris,
worry more about Harris tripping up Bear, Madam Vice President.
If I may ask him some questions, what's he going
to do? Stop the interview? Ask him where Fox is

(08:51):
about covering the guys who joined Lara Trump's boat parade
while flying Trump flags and Nazi flags with swastikas on them.
Ask him where Fox is covering Trump's obvious mental decline,
whether he's had a stroke or he has a tumor.
Ask him where Fox is about Trump saying the military
should be deployed against his enemies, and that the military

(09:12):
should be deployed at the election three weeks from now.
Ask him where Fox is covering Trump's promise to invoke
the law that would let him imprison or expel all
Hispanics in this country based only on their race, or
imprison and expel all African Americans, or imprison and expel

(09:33):
all German Irish Americans named Bear. Come on, have a
little fun on behalf of the rest of us. Literally
poke the bear. There's something else in play here too,
in fascist world that Harris agreed to go on. Fox

(09:56):
just does not compute spontaneous combustion, the theory of human
spontaneous combustion. I'm betting by tomorrow we hear three hundred
and seventy eight incidents of it nationwide, All of them Maga,
the Jesse Waters and the gut Gregfelds of this world
cannot process this. They have to sell Fox, no Fox,

(10:19):
and they have no careers. I mean all the food
carts around Fox headquarters on Sixth Avenue, all those who
are already taken. There's nothing for Gutfeld or Waters to do.
But can they promote this interview? Can they mock her
without mocking Brett behar and the fabric of the network.

(10:39):
Can they insult her without hurting the ratings? These idiots
believe in dictatorship and in Trump, but not if it's
going to cost them their car service. Trust me. MSNBC
is full of these people too. They have to be
on TV. It has yet to be recognized officially, but

(11:03):
it is still an addiction. And as to their audience,
another win for Kamala Harris. They either know the vice
president is smart and quick.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Or they believe the world.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Has been fixed to make her look smart and quick. Fixed.
All of it's fixed, including the weather being controlled, but
only by the Democrats. The conspiracy theories were in full
blossom yesterday, long before Trump so belatedly responded to the news.
They'll give her the questions, she'll write the questions. There

(11:39):
won't be any questions. It's a body double. No, it's
a double of a body double. And Brett Bher that's
not Brett bhar that's also a body double. It's a
double body double. The likeliest outcome, of course, is that
the fact of the interview will continue to exceed anything
said in the interview. She went on Fox. Wow is fine.

(12:06):
That still makes it a win win win win win
win win win win win win win, And every minute
leading up to it, and every minute for days and
maybe weeks after it. We'll send us all back to
February eighth, twenty twenty three, a date which will live

(12:26):
in infamy if you're Trump. That was the day Congressman
Maxwell Frost blew up the Jamie Comer Twitter censors Conservatives
hearing starring Matt Freakin' Tayebi by making the unfortunate. Former
Twitter Content Moderation team member Anika Collier Nabaroli confirm that

(12:48):
within minutes of it being posted, Trump's White House demanded
the Twitter take down a Chrissy Teagan tweet, which Chrissy
Tagan tweet was that again, Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald
Trump as a pussy, as bitch, wiss, as glitch. Trump

(13:16):
also might be having some ground game problems. Hugo Lowell
from The Guardian reports the campaign sidekick app, which is
apparently what Trump ground game people are using, forces canvassers
who have slow Internet to use quote offline walk books,
which have no geo tracking feature. As a result, the

(13:37):
Trump campaign and America Pack have little way to know
whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or cheating. Huh.
Right wingers trying to get away with not doing work
and claiming they did. That's unpossible and a slightly bigger

(13:57):
problem if you missed it. George Conway has now posted
the link to sign up to be admitted to Trump's
rally at Madison Square Garden here in Fun City, a
week from next Sunday. It would be a shame if
all twenty thousand reservations were filled up by people who
were then mysteriously and unanimously unavoidably detained and couldn't go,

(14:22):
and they had five hundred people in the garden, when
five hundred people in the garden looks like the raisins
in rice pudding at a cheap diner. More importantly, The
New York Times notes there is a reason Trump is
going to be in the James Dolan German American Buned
nineteen thirty nine Nazi Hitler Rally Memorial Garden a weekend

(14:42):
two days before the election, when New York is not
in play. No matter how often he says it, New
York is not in play. Nuremberg Stock turns out not
to just be for you, unwashed civilians. There is a
Trump fundraiser within the Madison Square Nazi Garden rally, like

(15:04):
special seats and potential access to his sharpness himself. And
I mean, if you have to spend the day in
a non competitive state two Sundays before the election fundraising,
guess what you're losing plus these price points, Holy guacamole.

(15:28):
Five thousand dollars for the President's Club experience so called
because you get clubbed by the ex president, thirty five
thousand dollars for the MAGA twenty four experience. You can
talk economic anxieties with twenty three other magas and you
can all tell each other that they are the fault
of the brown people. Fifty thousand dollars or raising seventy

(15:53):
thousand dollars for the Club forty seven experience. And this
is what I almost feel sorry about for the ones
who buy it. Sad to say, that's just a picture
with the forty seventh President at her inauguration. One hundred
thousand dollars per ticket, or twice that raised. Two hundred

(16:13):
thousand dollars for Team America First Experience, Team America World
Police ef Ye free humping Marionettes for the kids, two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or twice that raised for
Team Trump twenty twenty four experience. And remember Team Trump

(16:35):
twenty twenty experience was the one Mike Pence bought. And lastly,
nine hundred and twenty four thousand, six hundred dollars for
the Ultramaga Experience, which lets you stand so close to
Trump that you can actually see how badly the furor

(16:56):
has put his makeup on. Also of interest here, so
maybe you know the names of the National Football League
teams in Pennsylvania, and maybe you don't. Maybe you know
the Pittsburgh Steelers play in Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia Eagles
play in Philadelphia. See how this works. But if you're

(17:20):
the Republican nominee for the Senate in Pennsylvania, shouldn't you check?
Shouldn't you be able to keep those two teams straight?
Shouldn't you be able to tell which is which? Shouldn't
you make sure there's never any doubt that you can
tell which team is which. Photos show the Eagles. Your
text goes here and it's about the Steelers. Oops, that's

(17:44):
next on this big show. I'm sorry, flashback, that's next.
This is countdown.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
There's his countdown with Keith old Woman's.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Telling ahead of us on this editionive countdown. While there
is still a chance that there will be another Subway Series,
another World Series of baseball between the New York Mets
and the New York Yankees, even though America collectively yawned
at the last one twenty four years ago when the
World Series was still a thing. While there's still a chance,

(18:36):
I'm going to tell the story now of my role
at the perimeters of the most famous event of that
last Subway Series, the night Roger Clemens of the Yankees
through the razors sharp end of Mike Piazza's broken bat
at Piazza in an attempt to kill him. That's if
you're a Mets fan, or he did no such thing

(18:58):
and simply mistook that piece of shattered bat for a
baseball and was getting it out of the way. If
you're a Yankee fan, or if like me, you were
in the dugout and Clemens actually more or less through
the bats straight at you, and then Piazza threatened to
sue you over the bat. That's just the beginning coming up,

(19:20):
the details in more things I promised not to tell. First,
there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning kruegriff
X specimens who constitute two days. Worst persons persons in
the world. It's my impression of the PA announcer at

(19:41):
Yankee Stadium. Get get out of the way, way the bronze.
The British NHS, the National Health Service. There are bad
ideas that can be explained, and bad ideas that can
be finessed, and bad ideas that can be taken back
to the drawing board and tried again. And then there
are the bad ideas that are so bad that you

(20:01):
have to stop them immediately, call a gigant antic news conference,
publicly shame and fire everybody connected to them, and then
stage a ceremonial bonfire in which you destroy all the
evidence that your bad idea ever happened. This is one
of the latter ones. King's College Hospital in Lambeth in

(20:24):
London has given a contract to rent patience wheelchairs.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
You heard me.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
They are renting wheelchairs to patients at the hospital. If
you come in in an ambulance you can use one
of the hospital's wheelchairs, that's okay. But if you stagger
in on your own, like after getting stabbed or shot
or run over or I don't know too much. Sardonic

(20:55):
British humor caused you to collapse or your neighbors drag
you in and leave you there and you can't walk.
They will not put you in a wheelchair. You get
pointed to what looks like a bike rack from say
City Bike in New York, or Bay Wheels in San Francisco,
or the luggage cart rental outfits at airports only for wheelchairs.

(21:17):
You have to have a credit card to unlock a
wheelchair or guess what you're crawling first four hours if
your wheelchair are free, but they do have your credit
card number, after which it's two pounds per hour. Since
after a fourteen year run of fascist rule in England,
waiting times at the NHS at King's College are up

(21:40):
to twelve hours. You are probably paying thirty two pounds
for a wheelchair, or you're hijacking a gurnee or something,
or buying one used on the street for thirty pounds.
The company involved in this wheel share, if you're looking
for them, it's wh e E l Share and the

(22:02):
hospital and the NHS have come up with the perfect
solution to the understandably bad publicity here. Wheelshare is letting
it be known that it will soon be adding value
to its pay or crawl service. It will soon be
covering its rent to chairs with corporate advertisements and logos

(22:23):
available at popular prices. As I said, fire everybody in public,
refund every charge and burn all of it.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Thrown her up.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Worser Hockey's Ottawa Senators who let down an entire nation yesterday, Well,
they only have partial responsibility for this. It's a doc
strike in Nova Scotia, That's part of it. But Ottawa
who told you to have your things shipped in from
some foreign country rather than have them made in Canada.

(22:59):
Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving because well, because our Thanksgiving is
Canadian fourth of July or something. I don't know. I
can't I can't keep it straight. And the Senators who
had the lone matinee on the national holiday had promised
their fans who went to their game a natural and
lovely celebration of the true meaning of Thanksgiving. A gravy boat.

(23:19):
A gravy boat that looks like the Ottawa senators Zamboni
ice cleaning machine. You got the picture in your mind,
like a Zamboni machine, A little Zamboni machine, only with
a little, tiny handle, a little circular thing you could
hold with your fingers and it's full of gravy. How Canadian.
But the Senators missed the goddamned boat. Apparently this is

(23:42):
a thing. It turns out NHL teams have been giving
out gravy boats that look like Zamboni ice cleaning machines
since at least twenty eighteen, when Chicago did it. There
are also ones from Nashville, from Detroit, Anaheim, La Washington.
But apparently this was going to be the first ever
Canadian Zamboni gravy boat. Ten thousand Ottawa senators gravy boats

(24:05):
are still in Halifax, sitting on the dock of the
bay watching the promotional opportunities roll away. And this promotional
opportunity ran aground, as it were, due to labor troubles.
And that's labor with a U call me ishmael. My
boat sank. The gravy boats didn't get there the end.

(24:26):
The Senators say, if they arrive in time, they'll give
them out for Christmas. But of course anything that soon
would be gravy. Fans at yesterday's game got instead of
the gravy boat a voucher for a coke and some popcorn,
which bluntly.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Is not the same goddamn thing.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
I mean, how am I supposed to use a coke
and some popcorn to pour my gravy on top after
I put the biscuit in the basket? But the winner
worst also kind of SPORTSI ish Dave McCormick, the Connecticut
guy who is somehow the republic candidate for the Senate
in Pennsylvania, probably because their last candidate for Senate in

(25:09):
Pennsylvania was doctor Oz, who lost over the issue of
the crud Ye Tay vegetable plate and lost to the
guy from the Twilight Zone episode Who's here to Serve Man.
Like every candidate ever, McCormick has made a pitch for
sports fans in his state, well the state he's running in,
it's not his state, and it did not go well.

(25:31):
Let me preface this in case you don't know, the
state of Pennsylvania has two National Football League teams, the
Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Philadelphia Eagles play
in Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh Steelers play right in Pittsburgh. And
that's all you really need to know. I mean, maybe

(25:53):
it's important that the Pittsburgh Steelers used to be the
Pittsburgh Football Pirates. But not really. This is what David
McCormick posted. Four photos of him at a time tailgate,
you know, the real purpose of football, to go out
and get drunk before the game in the parking lot.
And it's McCormick with a bunch of people in Eagles

(26:14):
green T shirts and Eagles dark green uniforms, and there're
men and their women, and there's him waving in him
wearing a Maga cat. Well, I met Maga cap. But
it could be he's wearing a Maga cat. These guys
would wear dead cats on their heads, wouldn't they. Anyway,
Pictures of him with Eagles fans, smiling and being an

(26:35):
Eagles fan, and he's wearing an Eagles fleece of some sort,
and it says fun tailgate in Philly today football emoji
excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders. Well that's
the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steelers play in Pittsburgh. I just

(26:57):
told you this. You said you understood McCormick. Now, this
is as stupid as it sounds, but perhaps not for
the reasons that first come to mind. It is possible
that this latest idiot fascist McCormick thinks he was at
a Philadelphia Steelers game. It's possible, I don't know. He
later finessed this to suggest he was going to go

(27:17):
tailgate with the Eagles fans and then go watch the
Steelers on TV in their game at Las Vegas. The
timing of his tweet actually supports this. He tweeted those
photos and the reference to the wrong team at four
thirty six pm Eastern. The Eagles had played at one
pm in Philadelphia and the Steelers were playing in Nevada

(27:40):
at four pm Eastern time. But the point is, even
if you aren't such a carpetbagger who isn't actually from
Pennsylvania that you think that the Pittsburgh team is the
same as the Philadelphia team and it's all sports ball,
why would you be so stupid as to post a
bunch of pictures with Eagles fans and not mention the
Eagles but only the Steelers. I mean, among other things,

(28:03):
Eagles fans hate Steelers fans. Even if you're not a moron,
you'll look like a moron. Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate from
Connecticut David by the way, for next time. The Steelers
and Eagles merged during World War two and they spent
the nineteen forty three season as the Steegles. So whatever

(28:25):
you do, don't call either one of the teams the Steegles.
And there used to be NFL teams in the Frankfort
section of Philly, and there was another one in Pottstown, PA.
And the bankrupt nineteen fifty two Dallas Texans eventually moved
their base of operations to Hershey, Pennsylvania. So don't mention
any of them. Please. How about this. How about when

(28:45):
you're unfamiliar with the state as you are with Pennsylvania,
next time you run in the damn state in which
you actually live. McCormick two days worse, Parson, And it

(29:09):
started on the night of October twenty second, two thousand
and it ended well, I'll let you know if and
when it ever ends. I was enjoying the second night
of one of my childhood dreams come true. I was
the host, not just of the telecast of the world series,
but it was an all New York City series, a
Mets versus Yankee series, a Subway series. I'd literally dreamt

(29:32):
of it since nineteen sixty seven. The manager of the
Yankees had been the first person I ever interviewed on
TV fifteen years earlier. I had worked with him in TV.
He was a friend of mine. I had just covered
the Mets through their playoff run and knew all of
their players. My face had been on an advertisement in
dead center field in the Mets Stadium for the entirety

(29:53):
of the year before, and the players.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
All knew me my name.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Where we were that night, Yankee Stadium was not only
where I saw my first baseball game, but was about
seven eighths of a mile from the the hospital in
which I had been born, and my first home was
four subway stops away. The night before this event, as
I hosted the start of the first game of this
Keith of palooza, I was supposed to introduce the public

(30:19):
a dress anouncer of Yankee Stadium, Bob Sheppard, whose voice
I had heard nearly every day since I was eight
years old, so he could then introduce the players and
this epic world series would begin. And it dawned on
me in the seconds before I was supposed to do
this that I literally had the power to stop the
two thousand World Series from ever happening if I just

(30:40):
kept talking and never actually said here is Bob Shephard, Well,
I could delay it briefly until they cut my mic
off and then fired me on the spot. Anyway, this
was Game two, and now that our pregame show was over,
and I had waved to my mother, who had seen
her first game at Yankee Stadium just ooh sixty six
years previously, and she was seated in the family seats

(31:02):
that were just nine rows up from our on field set.
I had crawled into the position I would assume for
the entire game as the dugout reporter. I was hunched
over on a stool squeezed between the far end of
the Yankee dugout and our Fox Sports first base camera.
A thin chicken wire fence separated me from the dugout himself.
In fact, it was a formality. I was more or

(31:24):
less in the dugout players, coaches, and that night, as
I settled in, my friend, the Yankee manager all came
over to say hello, Roger Clemens of the Yankees, who
I had also known since we were both rookies in
Boston Sports in nineteen eighty four. He lasted, I didn't.
Roger Clemens had struck out the first two Mets hitters,
Clemens was a strange man about whom I had heard

(31:46):
a strange tale of teammates in a college summer baseball
league who were all wearing their wallets in their uniform
pants back pockets during a game, because one of them
explained to a friend of mine, we have this crazy
kid Clemens from Texas on this team, and we don't
trust him. In I had found him a little nervous,

(32:07):
little standoffish, but doing his best to be professional. But
by now there were rumors swirling around Roger Clemens about
amphetamines and performance enhancing drugs, and you knew not to
talk to him before or after a game unless you
had to, and if you had to, you chose your
words very carefully, then made sure that whatever you did,
you had to start with something mundane, like the score

(32:29):
of the game, and if you could let him bring
up anything controversial or complex, he would then probably do it.
So now, as this game continued, after two batters had
struck out, Lee Mazilli, the former Mets star now Yankees coach,
another friend of mine was on the other side of
a little fence, and as Mets superstar Mike Piazza stepped

(32:50):
in as the third batter of the game, Mozilly leaned
in and said, conspiratorily, let's see if Roger flips him again.
In Midsummer two thousand, Roger Clemens had beamed Mike Piazza
with a fastball. There was a hospital visit involved. Nobody
was convinced it had not been intentional, or that Clemens
would not do it again, even though it was the
World Series. Mozilli and I leaned forward. Piazza was a

(33:13):
deeply complicated guy too. During the playoffs, he had walked
up to me and asked me if it was true
I was from New York, and then he quizzed me
about the relative merits of the suburbs, and then he
wanted to know if I had really taken up residence
in his favorite southern California hotel. And we talked for
fifteen minutes about that. The next night I saw him, smiled,
said hello, and he looked at me like I had
just sworn a vendetta against his family. For a long

(33:36):
time I thought it was me, until about ten years later,
the great Vin Scully said that Piazza was with the Dodgers,
and when they were both together there in Los Angeles,
Vin had had the identical experience with Piazza. Best friends
on the team bus one day, and then no indication
Piazza remembered even meeting him the next I mean that
was Ben Scully. Clemens, as it turned out, did not

(33:59):
throw a baseball at Piazza, but instead pitched him inside
in on his hands, and Piazza tried to stop a
swing that was half self defense, but instead the odd
angle and the force of the pitch shattered Piazza's bat.
The ball veered to the right, describing a circle into
foul territory. The head of the bat shot out towards
Clemens on the mound. A second piece flew briefly into

(34:21):
the infield. Piazza was left holding just the handle. And
it looked as foolish as that sounds, but lost in
this descriptions the fact that that all happened at once,
and even from our sign angle in the Yankee dugout,
it looked a mozillion me as if Piazza's bat had
simply exploded, like it was a trick device of some sort.
I saw Clemens reach for the baseball. I thought it

(34:44):
was the baseball right in front of him, and then
just as quickly, He and I at the same moment,
realized it was not the baseball. It was the barrel
of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just a little
darker than a baseball, but could in the heat of
an instant following a bat explosion, it could be mistaken
for a ball. So far, so good. But right then Clemens,

(35:04):
realizing it was part of a bat and not a ball,
promptly threw that part of the bat at me. Jesus Mas,
I said to Mizilly, why did Clemens throw that bat
barrel at me? The Yankee coach looked incredulously at me.
He didn't throw it you. He throw it at me.
That's what it looked like. We were lined up perfectly.
If Roger Clemens had thrown the barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say,

(35:28):
one hundred and twenty feet instead of just six or
seven feet, he would have hit either me or Lee Mozilly.
In the Yankee dugout. As it was, since nobody knew
exactly what was happening, Piazza had started to run down
to first base in case the ball was fair. He
didn't know where the ball was either. For that initial
split second, you really couldn't tell which flying object was

(35:52):
the ball, and also whether the ball was fair or foul.
So Roger Clemens's throw certainly looked like it was aimed
at Piazza as Piazza went down the first baseline, and
Piazza took umbrage, And there was another split second of
confusion when it looked like Piazza might charge out to
the mound to try to sock Clemens for this and
for the Midsummer beating. I said to Missilly, wait, did

(36:15):
he throw that bat at Piazza? Misilly just shook his head.
I don't think so. Hun Hell knows he's been here
two years. I haven't figured out anything he's done so far.
As the umpires then got involved, Clemens repeatedly tapped his
own chest, and not in a bragging way, but in
a kind of what looked like that's on me way.

(36:37):
Two bat boys collected the three main pieces of the
bat and a bunch of smaller shards, some of them
smaller than a toothpick. The Fox play by play man
threw it to me in the dugout well. I said,
I can tell you the Yankee dugout doesn't know what
happened or why Joe. Missilly laughed quietly and then hit
me in the arm. While I was on the air,
I postulated that Clemens was looking for a ball hit

(36:57):
back to him, instead found the piece of the bat
and then discarded that piece of the bats so we
could keep looking for the ball that he discarded, it
kind of where Piazza was running, might have been delivered,
might have been a coincidence. I do remember suggesting that
if Clemens had really aimed the bat at Piazza, that
from that distance, with the strength and accuracy of a

(37:18):
major league pitcher, he clearly would have hit him with it.
Piazza then promptly grounded out to end the inning, and
as Clemens came back towards the Yankee dugout where Mozilli
and I were, he again stopped to talk to the umpire,
who was Charlie Reliford. Over the noise of fifty six
thousand fans at Yankee Stadium, I couldn't hear a damn thing,
but it sure looked like Clemens was again saying that

(37:39):
was on me. I asked missillly if he could find
out if that's what Clemens was doing, and half an
inning later, Missilly reported that Clemens indeed thought for a
second it was the ball, and that he threw it
and then it was on him, and that it was
not intentional and it was not directed at Piazza. Now
I did something kind of stupid. I suggested to my
bosses that I should go ask the commissioner Baseball, who

(38:01):
in a World Series game had the power to eject
any place for any reason, although that power had not
actually been used since nineteen thirty four. What he thought
of all this? The producer said yes, And I thought
me and my big mouth, I now had to crawl
out of that little space between camera and dugout, and
I mean literally crawl hands and knees to exit back

(38:24):
into the seats via where the groundskeepers kept all the
extra dirt. I knew where in the stands the commissioner
was sitting. I went there. I got to him, I
asked him. He assured me there was no discipline coming
for Clemens, and they'd look at the tape of the
game again that night or in the morning, but he
really didn't think Clemens had tried to hit Piazza with
the bat. Well, they would look at the tape, and

(38:46):
they decided both that Clemens did not try to hit
Piazza with the bat, and that he should be fined
fifty thousand dollars for I don't know, not trying to
hit him with the bat. So I made it back
to the dugout, reversing my crawl like I was recreating
the movie The Great Escape. As it turned out, Piazza's
little squib shot that caused all the trouble with the

(39:08):
exploding bat was about the hardest thing they hit off
Clemens all night. Over eight innings, he struck out nine
Mets batters, he walked none, he gave up only two hits,
and he only hit one batter. And then, incredibly, after
Clemens left the game, the Yankees almost blew a six
to nothing lead. In the ninth inning, a Met outfielder
named Jay Payton hit a three run homer off future

(39:31):
Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the Mets had a
chance to tie the game or go ahead off Rivera
in the top of the ninth And then he got
out of it, and the final score was six to
five Yankees. And with the game over now it was
Keith interviews Clemens' time. I went to the pre arranged
spot at the other end of the Yankee Dugout, where
another friend of mine, the Yankees pr director, had guaranteed

(39:53):
me he would go and get Clemens and they would
emerge after Clemens left the clubhouse to do what was
a contractually obligated interview with Fox and me. Aparently, Roger
Clemens started making his way towards me the moment the
Yankees finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment,
security closed the only runway from the Yankee Dugout to

(40:16):
the clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as
an exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader. And while
Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every
one of its stations in the country, even on the
West Coast, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver kept showing

(40:38):
replays again and again and promising my interview with Roger Clemens,
Rudy Giuliani took his goddamn time leaving the field. His
idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I
half expected him to eat it. Instead, he stuffed it
in his jacket pockets. Juliani now waited for his entire entourage,
one of his wives, some of his I guess they

(41:01):
were friends, assorted political riff raff, and as my producer
screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani waited until
they were all together on the field, and finally he
marched them down into the dugout and up through the runway.
And after all this delay, Clemens came out and finally
I could ask him about throwing the bat shard at

(41:22):
or near piazza. And at that moment I remembered what
I had learned about Clemens in Boston. If you started
an interview with something controversial, he might very well walk away. If,
on the other hand, you did the boring game outcome question,
he would answer anything you asked, and he might even
bring up anything controversial himself. But you had to do
the stupid game stuff first, So which was harder work?

(41:46):
Roger I asked eight innings of two hit ball or
watching the Mets nearly tie it in the ninth. His
answer was not bad, but he did not bring up
the bats. So I asked another question about what he
thought of his performance in that game. Well, that did it.
He started talking about having to overcome his emotions in
the first inning, and I could say, well, since you
brought up the emotions the bat throwing incident, did you

(42:09):
throw that piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza. There
is a freeze frame from that interview in which Roger
Clemens eyes are bugged wide open. Well, Glemmons basically confirmed
what the guys in the dugout had told me. He
had told them. You can believe him or not, but
he thought the thing he grabbed was the ball, and
when it wasn't, he threw it away just in case

(42:30):
the ball was somewhere else near him and he had
to have a free hand with which to pick it up.
He explained the chest taps. He was indeed saying to
the umpire Umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his
apologies to the umps for throwing the bat. He said
he didn't even know where Piazza was at the point
he threw the bat. It was as straight and nonpartisan
and frankly as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile,

(42:55):
everybody else in that stadium, everybody else in that city,
everybody else in the Tri State area was convinced of
one of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to
impale Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat,
or the Mets were crybabies who could not tell that
Clemens obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza with

(43:16):
his own bat. There was no middle ground. I found
this out specifically the next day when the TV sports
columnist of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who was
a friend of mine, called to interview me about the interview.
Why didn't you ask him about the bat first? Nobody
cared about how he pitched? He threw a bat at Piazza.
I said, you're a Met fan, and I explained the

(43:38):
theory of not making Clemens end an interview before he
said what you needed to know. I went through the
whole thing I just recited here. It was amazing to
see those few days how every sports reporter and columnist
in New York self identified as either a Met fan
or ex Met fan, or a Yankee fan or x
Yankee fan. And you can still see it today, as

(43:58):
this story from twenty two years ago is recollected by
others they wrote what they felt as kids Clemens was
the victim, or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazza like
he was a dracula, and they had the wooden steak
to go through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently from

(44:21):
Joe Torre, the Yankee manager, another one of my friends,
that they all hid something from us that night, the
thing about emotions. After the incident in the first inning,
Roger Clemens went back to the Yankee clubhouse and started
to cry. This might have had something to do with
embarrassment or grief, But since he had noted that he
had had to check his emotions, I always thought, well,

(44:42):
he might have been a little overamped for that game,
naturally or otherwise. All right, So before I present anything
else out of chronological order, let me go back to
the moment. I thanked Roger Clemens for the interview and
threw it back to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in
the Fox booth. Because this is when the real trouble started.

(45:04):
They were pretty much done for the night, but I
had another two hours to go in a live postgame
show on Fox's cable sports network. We had about four
minutes until that show started and it suddenly occurred to
me that although this was not the most important event
in the history of the World Series, the bat would
become part of the iconography of baseball. I had been
at Yankee Stadium often enough over the years to know

(45:26):
the two kids who ran the visiting clubhouse, and right
then they were still packing up the Mets bats and
equipment and the Mets dugout. So I ran over and
asked the senior of them what happened to the pieces
of the piazza bat well. The guy explained that Bobby Valentine,
the Mets manager, had asked that one of the pieces
go to a friend of his in the stands, and he,

(45:48):
the clubhouse attendant, had handed it to the guy. A
second piece he believed was kept by the Yankees. He
wasn't sure about that. The third piece, the handle was
where was it? Where is it? He asked the other attendant.
It's here in the garbage, the kids said. I did
a double take. Garbage, Yeah, the kid said, under the
dugout bench, and there it was, stuffed in amid all

(46:09):
the empty bags of sunflower seeds and the crushed gatorade cups.
I said, what happens to it now gets thrown out.
They clean out the dugouts first. So I said, look,
can I borrow it? This would make a great prop
for our postgame show. And the attendant says sure, and
he pulls it out of the pile and hands it
to him, just about seven inches of a baseball bat,

(46:30):
and all there is is Piazza's uniform number thirty one
written in magic marker on the bottom. Listen. I said,
I won't be able to bring this back to you
for like two hours. We're on for two hours. Will
you still be in the clubhouse? And he said, are
you kidding? We have to be here at eight He
and I'll be out of here in ten minutes. And
I said, you want me to bring it back to
you for Game three? And he says, garbage. You're going

(46:52):
to bring back garbage, throw it out, keep it whatever,
what do I care? So I use the bat fragment
as a prop in the show repeatedly, and I stuck
it in my shoulder bag and I thought, I'm not
a scround, but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia
and I'd like to keep it. So either I'll auction
it off for charity and bid against myself or something,

(47:14):
or I'll make a donation to a baseball charity and
I'll keep it. And that was it. And two days later,
as the World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shaye Stadium,
I got a phone call from one of the PR
guys at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And
I said, no, not yet, And he says, Piazza told
the guy from Newsday that you stole his back and
he wants it back. And I said, what if I

(47:36):
hadn't asked about it, it would be on a garbage scale
right now, being towed out to be dumped in the
Atlantic Ocean. And he says maybe, but Piazza told this
John Hayman, he's going to sue you to get it back.
So now I go to the ballpark with extra excitement
on my plate. I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell
me he's going to sue me. So I go out
onto the field. I'm wondering how long it's going to

(47:58):
be before I run into Piazza. And like two minutes
after I step on the field, I turn around and
he's walking towards me, and he looks at me and
he says, hey, wild one the other night. Huh, say, listen,
when you lived at Shutters, did you ever eat at
Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat.
We're talking about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah,
but did you ever eat at Shae Jay's. And a

(48:19):
big smile from Piazza. Oh, man, I love Shade Jay's.
I love Jay. Give me your number this winner. When
I'm home, let's go eat at Shaye Jay's. And I said,
I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs.
Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand
dabs at a restaurant. And then he says, hey, sorry,
I gotta go ahead, have a good show. That was it.

(48:39):
He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see
each other on the field, he starts the conversation. No
mention of suing me, not one word. Next day in
the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's going to
sue me for stealing his bat. Next night, Game four
of the World Series, We're just about to go on
the air at the pregame show, and now Piazza comes

(49:00):
over again, coming in from the outfield. To the dugout,
and he says, Hey, this must be really cool to
do what you got are doing. Have a great show,
and by now the only thing I can think of.
He does not know I'm the same Keith Olderman. He
keeps threatening to sue. So the World Series ends and
the Yankees beat the Mets, and if you look for it,
there's this photo of the traditional postgame awarding of the

(49:20):
World Series Trophy and the Most Valuable Player award and
its commissioner, Bud Selig and Derek Jeter, the Yankees and me,
and just before it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner
of the Yankees. He's crying, leans in and I give
him a hug and reassure him. And he asked me
if my mother went to the game, and I said,
you know my mother, she'd never come to Shay Stadium.
She hates it more than you do. And he says,

(49:43):
I love her more than ever before.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
So the series ends, and it's not been that greatest series,
but it's been exciting, and it was the dream from
my childhood. And the Yankees have won and my friends
are happy, and I've not heard another word about this lawsuit.
Nothing for Mike Piazza. And I told the Fox people, well,
if I'm not going to hear anything more from that,
it's easy. I'm going to keep the bat and I'm

(50:07):
going to donate twenty five thousand dollars to this charity,
the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex ball players in
financial need, because A I'm not a scrounger. B it's
a great cause. C that's actually much more than the
bat handle would be worth on the open market. And
D the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team is bat

(50:27):
bat and that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat, you get it.
And then nothing for a month, whereupon Fox gets another letter,
now from Piazza's agent fellow named Monzon, and he threatens
to sue again, and that's the end of it. Never
heard from him again. So now it's the next year,
two thousand and one, and I'm back in New York

(50:48):
working for CNN doing the news, and I go to
a Mets game and I see Piazza and I give
him a big smile and I offer my hand and
I say, still any of those sand dabs from shayj
And he just stares at me and walks right past me,
and I see a cop I know who works next
to the Mets dugout, and the cop says, Mike has
been asking him about me, Zach Keith Olderman, the one

(51:08):
who stole my bat. So now I'm not just keeping
the bat. I want to sue Mike Piazza for being
a pain in the ass. And then nine to eleven happens,
and ball players are doing charity things, and sportscasters and
newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well, this

(51:28):
is the time when the baseball season resumes. I throw
the bat handle in my bag and I go out
to a Mets game and I go up to Piazza's
locker before the game and I pull the bat chard
out and I say, take this, Mike, auction it off
for charity. Let's do some good with this. Or if
it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll auction
it off. We can leave my name out of it,
whatever you want, however you want to do it. And

(51:49):
he looks at me like I've just insulted his mother
and says, no, it's too complicated, and he turns away,
and I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete
I have ever met. And just before the season ends,
I go to another Mets game. Now, this time it's
one of his teammates who takes me aside and says,
you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his

(52:11):
bat from the Clemens game last year. He says, he
still wants to sue you. Didn't you try to give
him the back back in the clubhouse to auction off.
Didn't I see that? And I say, yeah I did,
and he refused to take it, And the guy laughs
and he says, great player, excellent catcher. I love him,
strangest player I have ever met. Comes two thousand and two,

(52:32):
nothing happens. See Piazza at several Mets games. Nothing happens.
Two thousand and three, nothing happens.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Now.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
I can't pin the year down on this. It's one
of the Red Sox Yankees playoff series, either two thousand
and three or two thousand and four. And I'm leaving
the field as they're clearing the media off just before
the game starts, and I'm going out through the Red
Sox dugout literally at the same spot where the kid
handed me Piazza's bat handle. Three or four years earlier
where the trouble all began. And I see the new

(53:01):
owner of the Red Sox team approaching from the other
end of the dugout Keith John Henry, Nice to meet you.
Have you got a minute? And I said, well, yeah,
they're kicking the media off the field, so and he
laughs and he says I can take care of that,
and he yells at the plane closes cop and he
says he's with me, and the cop nods and John Henry,
the owner of the Red Sox, and I sit down
on the Red Sox bench before the start of a

(53:22):
Red Sox Yankees playoff game, and there are no other
reporters out there, and I think, Okay, what did I
say about the Red Sox? What is he pissed off about? Instead?
John Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza?
And I laugh and I say, sure, what about him?
And he says, you have part of his bat from

(53:44):
the World Series with Clemens right, And I say yeah,
and he says, tell me the whole story. So I
do what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's
what I was told, Thank you, Huh. I thought it
was me, so that other piece of the bat that
was handed to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game.
That friend is a great friend of mine, and after
nine elevee and he said, wouldn't it be great to

(54:06):
get Mike Piazza to sign this and then we can
auction it off for the victims' families or the cops
or some other charity. And he gives me the bat,
and I call the Mets and they approach Mike and
they call me and they say, Mike loves the idea
and I should come to one of the spring training
games and he'll sign it. So the next March, I
go to one of the Mets spring training games and
I go up to him in the clubhouse and I
introduce myself and he looks at me like I'm from Mars,

(54:27):
and I say, well, I brought the bat, and he says,
what bat? And I explained that we had arranged to
have him sign the bat from the World Series for
a nine to eleven charity and he erupts at me,
I'm not signing that bat sure for charity? You think
I was born yesterday? And now I say something to
John Henry, owner of the Red SOX like, welcome to
the club. Did he threaten to sue you too? And

(54:49):
he laughs and says yes. That's the next part of
the story. So while we're trying to straighten that out,
his agent calls me and asks if I will give
them the bat to auction off for charity. And I
say sure, and I go to another Mets game and
I go to the club and I have the bat again.
Now Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because
of pending litigation, but if I want him to, he'll

(55:13):
sign it for me. All I have to do is
come back a couple of weeks later. So this is
what I wanted to ask Keith. Is he the strangest
ballplayer you've ever met? Or is it just me? There's
one more part to this. Flash forward to twenty fourteen.
I still have the Piazza batthandle the one I unsuccessfully

(55:36):
tried to give back to Piazza. The middle portion, the
one John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza,
has been sold, with the proceeds going to charity. So
where is the third piece, the barrel of the bat,
the part that Clemens threw at Piazza if you're a
Met fan, or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza
if you're not a Met fan, And the answer finally

(55:56):
arrives in a sports memorabilia auction catalog that year, while
one of the visiting bat boys was handing the middle
part of the bat to a friend of Hobby Valentine
and John Henry's in the stands, the barrel, which landed
near the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the Yankee
bat boy who put it in the pile of Yankee
broken bats. And as it turned out right at that point,

(56:17):
the Yankee strengthened conditioning coach Jeff Mangold, who was on
the bench, said, wait a minute, that's the pile of
broken bats they're going to throw out. They shouldn't throw
it out. It's history. And he grabs that part of
the Piazza bat and puts it up in his home office.
And now it's fourteen years later and he wants to
auction it off for charity. So he auctions it off,
and I think, well, hell, it should be alongside the

(56:39):
other piece of the bat. My other piece of the bat,
the handle, So I win the auction. There it is
on my wall, complete with a baseball card showing Roger
Clemens about to throw the barrel. Reasons left to your imagination.
Two thirds of the famous bat. I'll sell it someday,
I'm sure, but I'll always have the memories, my memories

(57:02):
and John Henry's memories. And if you're wondering, No, unlike
John Henry and I, that Yankee strength coach, Jeff Mangold
never tried to give it back to Piazza or get
it signed by Piazza or auctioned off for charity with Piazza,
which means that, on top of everything else, Jeff Mangold
is smarter than John Henry and I put together. I've

(57:35):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Yeah, I still have
the bat. Follow me for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram,
and face twit. Once again, there is a Monday countdown
to write that down and please send this edition to

(57:55):
the podcast to somebody who does not know that they
need to listen, but they need to listen Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shaneil. The musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and formed most of our music. Mister Chanelle was on
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums.
I'm not sure who did the typewriter. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are

(58:18):
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
I mean the composition is Curtesy of ESPN Inc. I
don't think Mitch Warren Davis is courtesy of ESPN Inc.
AnyWho other music arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks.

(58:41):
Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
for today. Three weeks until the twenty twenty four presidential
election and the seventy ninth day since convicted felon dementia
J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Use the election, use the mental

(59:02):
health system, use presidential community to keep him from doing
it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news requires till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.

(59:31):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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KAMALA GOES ON FOX? PROVES TRUMP IS A P A B** - 10.15.24

Episode Transcript

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Keith Olbermann

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}KAMALA GOES ON FOX? PROVES TRUMP IS A P**** A** B**** - 10.15.24