June 7, 2023 • 42 mins
EPISODE 220: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Mark Meadows has flipped. There’s no other possible conclusion. The news has been coming for weeks. Per ABC, Meadows testified to the Jack Smith Election Grand Jury and to the Jack Smith Documents Grand Jury. And 20 members of the Trump Secret Service detail - past or present - have been subpoenaed to testify in Washington, while we begin to see what the third Smith Grand Jury in Miami is all about and how it might but Trump on trial there and not Washington.
And this all explains both why Bloomberg reports "Trump representatives in recent weeks have asked for recommendations of Washington-based counsel with trial experience…” and why Trump returned yesterday to stochastic terrorism. He made social media posts demanding that his thugs "fight" to prevent his indictment, just as he told the crowd on the Ellipse in Washington on January 6 to "fight" the certification. Dismiss Trump and his animal-like cunning and destructive skill at your peril and OUR peril. What you think you see in him is as bad as you think it is. Or worse. Always. Always. On January 6th. Yesterday. The Truth Social posts were made in hopes of getting somebody to attack Jack Smith or Merrick Garland or someone. The Trump thinking is not complex: "This other creature is in my way. Destroy this other creature."
B-Block (17:32) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Chris Licht does it again! ANOTHER presidential town hall - and how you can get one. And when is the parade for CNN Media Reporter Oliver Darcy and will he be riding in the front car or in the metaphorical hearse in the back? (21:29) IN SPORTS: Don't delude yourself. The PGA golf tour did not "merge" with LIV Golf. It sold itself to the Saudis, after a year of talking about Saudi blood money. It's despicable and it will either be prevented, or it will destroy the sport in the country. And Jacob deGrom is probably out of baseball until Opening Day 2025. Who didn't see that coming? (26:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's condescending, proselytizing Harris Faulkner of Fox - and her pronouns are D,U,M,B.
C-Block (32:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of a great pitcher like Jacob deGrom, I actually once covered for one of the great pitchers of all-time, a jerk named Roger Clemens, because while he almost got in a fight with a fan during the World Series and I got it on tape, it truly wasn't his fault. So I suppressed the tape and cost myself a job.
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. Meadows flipped.
There's no other possible explanation. The news has been coming
(00:27):
for weeks. All other conclusions seem to have been sealed
off when the Iran War recording of Trump turned up
and it was made for an autobiography ghostwriter, and the
autobiography was of Mark Meadows, and thus the tape belonged
to Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows, The New York Times wrote
last Night has testified before a federal grand jury hearing
evidence in the investigations being led by the Special Council's Office.
(00:51):
According to two people briefed on the matter, Times said
it didn't know when Meadows testified, nor whether it was
to the Jack Smith election grand Jury or the Jack
Smith Documents grand Jury, but happily ABC News came to
the rescue. Quote. Sources say Meadows answered questions on both
Trump's efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election and Trump's
(01:13):
alleged mishandling of classified documents. It was on May twenty
fourth that CNN first pointed towards the Trump scandal's version
of Sherlock Holmes and the Dog That Did Nothing in
the night, going all the way back to two weeks ago.
Quote a source close to Trump's legal team said Trump's
(01:34):
lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team
and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing
in the investigation. We've all heard the same rumors, one
Trump advisor told CNN. No one really knows what he's doing, though, well,
now we know what he's doing. He's nailing Trump by Felicia.
(01:57):
There was one more nugget in the Times piece, and
it helps to explain why Trump turned to stochastic terrorism yesterday,
which I will We'll get back to in a moment.
Times has a quote from a Meadows attorney without commenting
on whether or not mister Meadows has testified before the
grand jury or in any other proceeding. Mister Meadows has
maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has
(02:19):
a legal obligation to do so. Tell the truth. What
a disloyal rat think? Huh? Trump's legal problems are beginning
to multiply in the same way. You may be too
young to remember this, but I'm not that Richard Nixons
did thirty nine long years ago. It's that time worn
(02:42):
analogy that I love. The guy is walking down the
street carrying seven boxes when he can really only handle
six boxes. He drops a box. He bends over to
pick it up, but in the process he drops two
more boxes. Sooner rather than later, all of the boxes
will be on the street. That's Trump thoughts and prayers,
(03:04):
the other problems. The Times just dropped this in passing
into a separate story about that bonus Jack Smith grand
jury in Florida that nobody had known about. Among those
who have appeared before the Washington Grand Jury in the
past few months or have been subpoenaed by it, people
familiar with the investigation said, are more than twenty members
of mister Trump's Secret Service security detail. Nothing else in
(03:30):
the whole story about the Secret Service, not one word. Now,
we all know about the testimony from the January sixth
committee about Trump tyme to take the wheel of the
beast away from a Secret Service agent so he could
lead the insurrection or witness it or whatever quote. I'm
the f in President, take me up to the Capitol now.
(03:52):
So maybe it's that and the whole coup thing. Maybe
it's about all those deleted Secret Service text messages, or
maybe it's classified document stuff, because if you notice the
phrasing in The Times, it just says more than twenty
members of mister Trump's Secret Service security detail. It does
not say those who were in the detail when Trump
(04:13):
was still in the White House twenty twenty one and previous.
It does not say the current secret Service detail that
protects him now from everybody except himself. And that Florida
grand jury is now coming into focus, although it is
still profoundly fuzzy. Firstly, it is in Miami. Secondly, it
(04:34):
is unsurprisingly about the stolen classified documents. Thirdly, it has
heard at least one witness last month and was to
hear from another one today Wednesday. Nothing else. Although the
possible reasons for a Florida grand jury continue to be constructed,
and other than geographical convenience for witnesses, the leading theory
(04:56):
seems to be that it would give Jack Smith the
flexibility to bring charges against Trump and others in Washington
and Florida, or Washington or Florida. The Times has a
former classified documents prosecutor named Brandon Van Grack, who says
it's common in situations involving classified information when prosecutors are
(05:19):
uncertain of venue to ground an investigation in Washington, Virginia,
or Maryland. The point is, just because it starts there
doesn't mean it has to end there. You don't know
what your potential venue hooks are until you've completed a
thorough investigation. To mister van Grack's point, that revelation of
(05:41):
the US military plans for war in Iran, that document
being shown to those people who didn't have the classification
to read it or know about it. That would have
happened in Florida. The crime was in Florida. There is
one more news note before we get back to the
second coup attempt. Yesterday, Bloomberg News reporting that Trump is
(06:05):
searching for new lawyers. Of course, all of human history
divides neatly into those times when Trump has just hired
new lawyers and those times when he is trying to
hire new lawyers. Quote. Trump representatives in recent weeks have
asked for recommendations of Washington based Council with trial experience,
(06:27):
which brings us to Trump's other preparations for indictment. By
Jack Smith, You know stochastic terrorism. If you heard my
updated version of this podcast Tuesday afternoon, you know the GISTs.
But it bears repeating, in large part because we really
should not stop being outraged and furious about calls to
(06:51):
overthrow the government. It is kind of amazing that this
did not even merit a think piece somewhere yesterday. I
appreciate that we seem to be on some sort of
odd even system on whether or not the media should
give any weight to try Trump's terrorism. And it's an
even numbered month, so no, not. At the moment. My
feeling is the response should be sending a swat team
(07:12):
to marri A Lago and arresting the bastard now. Because
the language of his eruption Tuesday morning contained one key
code word that unleashed January sixth, The word was fight. Quote.
It's about election interference, began a Trump social media post
at eight twelve eastern daylight time Tuesday morning. It ended,
(07:35):
they are using the DOJ and FBI against me to
rig misspelled and capitalized rig the twenty twenty four election.
They'll hit Hunter with something small to make their strike
on me look fair. Nothing about these fascists is fair
or honest. Fight and the word fight capital letters, followed
by an exclamation point. Two minutes later, a second post
(07:58):
election interference. Don't let it happen. This was his call
to his mob, just as that same word fight was
the cue to the mob on January sixth, and just
as on January sixth, it is stochastic terrorism. And if
Trump dies in prison because he stole documents and defrauded
(08:20):
his own rubes over a stolen election he knew was
not stolen, I will still be disappointed that they did
not convict him for these frontal assaults by proxy on
representative government in this country. He is a thug, a scumbag,
and a moral worm, a psychopath who sees the people
around him solely in terms of what they can do
(08:42):
for him. And just remember that in that speech on
the ellipse on January sixth, he used some form of
the word fight sixteen different times, and sixteen different times
was nearly enough to knock democracy to the ground. In
the fight that followed, we fight, Trump said that cataclysmic day,
(09:04):
we fight like and if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country anymore. This country,
especially the media in this country, wants all of that
to just go away, like the pandemic just wants to
forget it. Ever, happened, just wants to jump back into
those nice safe grooves of the three or four different
(09:25):
disaster stories. Media understands in this country, understands how to
cover the four or five different political stories. It understands
and understands how to cover. They don't want to cover
what he actually expected people to do yesterday. They don't
want to face the reality that he expected when he
(09:45):
hits send on those that somebody would try to stop
Jack Smith from indicting him by violence. They do not
want to emphasize his insanity that the rage in those
posts was then followed by at least five posts in
which he congratulated himself on predicting the golf merger and wrote,
(10:08):
isn't that what you want? And of president somebody who
can predict the future? This is madness. It remains madness.
He is a madman. It does no good to ignore it.
And the rest of us who believe that the word
terrorist should become synonymous with the name Trump, and that
the connection should be reinforced daily, we are in a
decided minority, and we should not be stochastic. Terrorism does
(10:33):
not have to be subtle, and it does not have
to be deciphered and it does not have to be
a surprise. And Donald Trump committed it on January sixth,
twenty twenty one, in Washington, and he committed it again
yesterday on his social media And we all need to
be saying this. I have been saying this since at
least February twenty seventh, twenty twenty. Looking for something else,
(10:55):
I found this in my computer the other day. It
is from a report I had written that day for
all people, Jeff Shell, the disgraced CEO of NBC, who
wanted me to rejoin MSNBC. It was written as we
were mapping out how to make that happen. This passage
followed a paragraph about how I had first met Trump
(11:16):
in nineteen eighty three and how I had known him personally,
but thankfully not well since two thousand and seven or so.
I wrote to Jeff Schell, I think I know something
Nobody else in the field of political commentary has yet realized.
The turbulence of the last five years will only be
preamble to what will greet us on the morning of
(11:37):
November four, twenty twenty, regardless of the electoral outcome. Presuming
Trump is not somehow precluded from running, there are only
three prospective realities. One he has been reelected. Two he
has lost narrowly, is demanding a recount, is suing and
is being backed by the GOP. Three he has lost
(12:01):
narrowly or otherwise, but is claiming for a odd deceit
or foreign intervention. He will not concede, and he will
try to retain power in the courts or by declaring
a national emergency, or possibly by utilizing the military. I
include that not because I'm the only one who saw
(12:21):
that coming. Thousands saw that coming. I include that because
it reminds us to dismiss Trump and his animal like
cunning and destructive skill. At your peril and our peril.
What you think you see in him is as bad
(12:42):
as you think it is, or worse. Always always. On
January sixth, yesterday, the truth social posts were made in
hopes of getting somebody to attack Jack Smith or Merrick
Garland or Joe Biden or somebody. The Trump thinking is
not complex. This other creature is in my way. Destroy
(13:07):
the other creature in my way. There is good news
from his panic, from his stochastic terrorism. There now can
be no doubt that Trump has concluded, perhaps even that
he has been told that he is to be indicted
imminently by the Special Council, and it just cannot be
(13:34):
imminent enough. Also of interest here today, all of American golf,
all of world professional golf, has just been sold to
Saudi Arabia. This is not hyperbole. The same people who
spent a year fighting against the attempted takeover of the
(13:55):
golf business by the Saudis of talking about Saudi blood
money and nine to eleven and Jamal Kashogi, they just
sold the PGA Tour to the Saudis. And don't believe
it for a moment when people tell you it's a merger,
because it's not a merger. The Saudis bought the PGA Tour,
and some of the PGA golfers who help run the
PGA Tour are trying to forestall an ethical disaster so
(14:18):
bad that you might as well change the name of
its founding organization from the Pro Golfers Association to the
Pro Terrorism Association. That's of interest, and Chris Licht has
done it again at CNN. Another stunt town hall. That's next.
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman pot
(14:42):
scripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, date lines, CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York Man.
If only CNN viewers wanted to watch twenty four to
seven coverage of CNN's chief executive officer twisting slowly, slowly
in the wind, and CNN would carry it. To paraphrase
William Holden in the movie Network, it'd wipe that fing
(15:03):
MSNBC right off. The story continues. Now it is the
New York Post reporting that Chris Licked has quote been
calling anchors who have never spoken to him before in
a bid to shore up support one employee at a time.
The paper also claims it sources say CNN might fire
Licked over the July fourth holiday, and it named two
(15:26):
upper levels CNN executives as candidates to replace him. The
Los Angeles Times reports that quote, the top conversation internally
is how much longer Licked can last in the job.
According to several insiders who were not authorized to discuss
the matter publicly, something actually happened at CNN yesterday, and
this is so Chris Licked it will make you spit
(15:48):
out some ozempic. Next Monday, CNN will air a live
presidential town hall moderated by Anderson Silo's Cooper, and the
town hall is with Chris Christy, who had owned he
announced he was actually inexplicably running for the Republican nomination
(16:09):
literally hours before. So if you want a free hour
of TV time on CNN, just announce you are running
for president and call Chris Lickt. The number is Plaza
seven eight eight sixty six. But the real news story
at CNN is a man named Oliver Darcy. I've spoken
of him before. He is the media reporter who was
(16:31):
the first and for a week, the lone CNN voice
to even mildly criticize Licht's waterloo the Trump town Hall.
He survived. He went on vacation as planned, He came
back from vacation, and he came back in time to
issue his late night media newsletter right after the Atlantic
piece about Licht ran. The title of the first of
(16:51):
these newsletters was read Lickt Flashing, which reads better than
it sounds. The third paragraph reads quote. The embarrassing piece,
which reverberated all weekends throughout the media industry, called in
serious question Lickt's judgment, his ability to lead the network staff,
and his overall professional capabilities as CNN's top executive. Not
(17:15):
much further in CNN's media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote this
about reaction inside his own network quote, there is one
near universal sentiment that has been communicated to me. Lickt
has lost the room. I spent the summer of nineteen
ninety eight talking like this about my bosses at MSNBC
(17:35):
and NBC News. But on the other hand, I was
trying to get one of them to fire me so
I could go back into sports for five times my
NBC salary. This, this is courage, though one would think
it will still ultimately be licked or Darcy at CNN
within a month or two, but not both. Either way,
(17:57):
they can hold an Oliver Darcy parade. If Lickt gets fired,
Darcy can sit atop the front car and the parade
and wave to grateful CNN staffers. If not, you can
ride in the back and that big long Cadillac that
doesn't have any you know windows. This is Sports Center Wait,
(18:31):
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports for a Field of Endeavor, in which the
horrist of all the hoary cliches is on any given Sunday,
any team can beat any other team. Few things in
sports are actually surprises, let alone shocks, but there was
(18:54):
universal shock yesterday when the PGA Golf Tour announced it
had merged with Live Golf, after a year in which
the PGA rightly decried players who joined LIB as taking
blood money from Saudi Arabia. Well, it turns out it's
only blood money if they're getting it, not if PGA
Commissioner j Monaghan is getting it. The move was announced
(19:16):
before almost anybody it effects knew about it. That includes sponsors,
networks that televise golf, and most importantly PGA players. The problems,
of course, are it is blood money and worse, the
PGA and LIV did not merge. The Public Investment Fund
of Saudi Arabia, led by that Prince, with the international
(19:36):
collection of murderers at his disposal, bought the PGA Tour.
The Saudis have bought the PGA Tour. The Saudi Fund
will have the right of first refusal on all future
investments in the combined new operation, and that ultimately gives
it the right to squeeze out all non Saudi influence.
Golf is now Saudi Arabian PGA commissioner Monahan tried to
(20:00):
explain this to players that the tour stop in Toronto yesterday,
nearly all of whom and reacted violently. There is still
a chance the players on the PGA's board could muster
enough support to quash the thing. In the interim, golf
fans are left with a moral dilemma, and golf fans
tend not to do well with moral dilemmas. They did
not fight back against golf's literal quota system for memberships
(20:22):
at clubs like Augusta National, where they hold the deplorable
Masters tournament. Well now, no American sports fan can in
good conscience participate or pay for or watch any PGA event,
no matter how hallowed it might be within the sports world.
Within moments of the announcement of the Saudi takeover of
American golf, nine to eleven, Families United wrote to the
(20:44):
Department of Justice asking it to step up its investigation
of the Saudis related to the terrorism. On nine to
eleven AD, it issued a statement condemning the merger in
the strongest terms, and then a podcaster named James Heskey
summed it up with one joke grim telling and all
too true quote. As part of the merger, the PGA
(21:06):
will control holes one to eight and twelve eighteen. The
Saudis do nine to eleven. In the no surprise Sports News,
the Texas Rangers announced Jacob de Grom, the pitcher, will
undergo Tommy John surgery to repair a tear in his
collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. He will miss all
(21:27):
of this year and almost certainly all of next year.
Last year, there was a delicate balancing act going on
here in New York, where the Mets live, whether to
give their homegrown ace, de Gram, the hero of their
fan base, the huge long term contract he wanted, even
though he had missed much of the previous two seasons
with injuries but without surgeries. This is the leading marker
(21:51):
for the likelihood of a pitcher succumbing to a future
serious injury. The Mets chose not to give de Graham
the money, in part because he's already had one Tommy
John operation. But the Texas Rangers did give de Graham
the money, all of the money, and they broke out
to a thirty nine and twenty record this season, second
bastion all of baseball and now they are committed to
(22:12):
paying Jacob de Gram one hundred and eighty five million
dollars through the year twenty twenty seven, and for the
first seventy million, they will likely have gotten thirty innings pitched.
But they were great innings. And also, what did we
see here, great agent ing, thank you Disco, Nancy Faust.
(22:55):
Maybe de Gram can pass the time off by buying
the seemingly homeless Oakland A's ownership had starved the team
in Oakland and seemingly made a commitment to take Nevada taxpayers'
money to go build themselves a stadium there. But a
funny thing has happened in Las Vegas. The bill aimed
at giving the As three hundred and eighty million for
their billion and a half dollar ballpark in Sin City
(23:18):
stalled in the Nevada legislature. It was not voted on
before the deadline, so the A's and the lingo of
the town have crapped out. Coming up, speaking of all
(23:40):
time great baseball pitchers like Jacob de Gram in two
years from now, I once covered one and covered for him,
the guy who came this close to having a fistfight
with a fan during the World series, and my network
caught it on tape, and I owned the tape, and
I covered for him, not because he deserved my help,
(24:01):
but because the videotape did not show that he did not.
Aren't the fight things I promise not to tell? Literally?
Coming up first, the daily round up of the misgrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. The Bronze. Harris Faulkner of Fox
News one of the most inexplicably self righteous, shallow people
(24:23):
in American media. She is a propagandist of Fox quote
news unquote, and she is as just to pick an
apt current analogy, as dim as a sunset during Canadian
wildfire haze Armie Bratt. Her Twitter handle and her Twitter
name are both in all caps, and she is ceaselessly
(24:45):
holier than thou. And Fox Now has given her a
shot in Tucker Carlson's old primetime because the only two
people left were her and me. By the way, remember
Tucker Carlson. Anyway, Faulkner did not disappoint. She disappointed. She
was complaining about this war on religion, which is really
(25:06):
funny because the world gives religion more tolerance than anything else.
I mean, it's not facts, it's beliefs, which you're fine,
but it can't and hasn't been proven. And almost all
of the religions are based on books written by anonymous
authors or rewritten by other anonymous authors. And yet we
tolerate constant references to religion in our lives, from songs
(25:29):
to interruptions for prayers to tax exemptions for churches. Anyway,
that's not how she sees it. Harris Faulkner says you
should say grace or whatever for meals at restaurants in public,
and that once when she tried, they threw her out. Quote,
I've been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing
(25:50):
my head in prayer hands in America. Sadly, she would
not give a more specific address or a day when
it happened, or a witness, or would she answer any
questions about it that followed from members of the media,
Or didn't your religious figures over there say something about
bearing false witness? They runner up, Why it's Harris Faulkner
(26:13):
of Fox News. Again, while she wasn't done chastising the
wicked ways of twenty first century America Land. This is
about the whole gender thing. Quote. The Lord has determined
I am a woman, My pronouns are USA. Once again,
the jury is in. The Lord has also determined that
(26:33):
conservatives will never understand what the hell pronouns actually are. Harris,
you should ask the Lord for an education. But our winner, Wow,
it's Harris Faulkner of Fox News, the trifecta. While she
was instructing us when to pray and how to eat
and what her pronouns are, I think she said dumb
(26:57):
all that time the big banner graphic placed right across
her holy blessed condescension quote. American can and will be
put back together again American? Not America can and will
be put back together again. American can and will be
(27:17):
put back together American? Harris, What kind of American doesn't
check the graphics and lets her network misspell America? Why
didn't you walk out of that place too? Faulkner to
Day's Worst Person and not Now to the number one
(27:49):
story on the Countdown and my favorite subject, me and
Things I promised not to tell And this one literally
fits that title. I not only promised not to tell this,
I lost a job because I wouldn't tell it. I
am proud of my journalistic ethics, and sometimes, well a
lot of times I boast too much about them. But
I invoked them once on October twenty fifth, nineteen ninety nine.
(28:13):
And if I had not, and if I had wanted
to do any job anywhere for twenty three years, I
would still be hosting the Fox Baseball Game of the
Week and the upcoming World Series on Fox. But I
couldn't because there are facts and then there is truth,
and often they are different things. I'm covering the nineteen
(28:33):
ninety nine World Series for Fox's first attempt to compete
with ESPN. I'm also the Fox Baseball host and I'm
the senior correspondent of Fox Sports News. So we are
going live from the field after each World Series game
for like two hours. The Yankees froze the Braves in
the first two games of that World Series in Atlanta,
and then on the off day, the travel day, Monday morning,
(28:55):
the twenty fifth, the producers and crew flew out before
sunrise to set up at Yankee Stadium, and the rest
of us lazy quote talent unquote, we flew out at midday.
As we landed in New York. I got a call
from the lead producer who said, don't go to the hotel. First,
come right to the ballpark. Something amazing has just happened,
and I need you to decide to do whatever we're
(29:17):
going to do about it. So I go, and as
the October sun is beginning to set over Yankee Stadium,
I get this story. As the Yankee players have left
the workout to go home and get a good night's sleep,
maybe before Game three the next day, Roger Clemens of
the Yankees has gotten into an argument with a fan.
With a Yankees fan at the old Yankee Stadium, players
(29:41):
had to walk a very short gauntlet, maybe one hundred
feet from the ballpark exit to the player's parking lot.
In retrospect, this seems kind of crazy, but fans could
wait behind police barricades and yell and cheer and seek
autographs and start arguments. And as Roger Clemens steps out
of the stadium, golfvisor atop his head, his thoughts turning
(30:03):
to his first World Series appearance in thirteen years, his
start in Game four, which could very well be the
game in which the Yankees would sweep the Braves and
win the World series, the climax of a long odyssey
that has just brought him to New York that season,
a fan starts screaming at him that he has no
right to be there. If you wanted to come here,
you could have come here in ninety six, but you
(30:23):
didn't want to be here. For all I know, this
is one of the guys who was yelling at Ted
Cruz Sunday night at Yankee Stadium. Anyway, Roger Clemens is
not Ted Cruz. He's six foot four, two hundred and five.
Then he had a hair trigger temper, and, as we
suspected then and heard later, was reportedly hopped up on
steroids and amphetamines at least on game days. Amazingly, the
(30:46):
fan was bigger than he was, much bigger, and the
fan clearly started it. Clemens jousted with him verbally, but
backed away. He then walked away and got into his
waiting car and was about to be driven off when
the fans said something about Roger Clemens's kids. Well, Clemens
got back out of the The fans somehow got around
(31:06):
the police barricades, and immediately the two of them were
face to face, their noses almost touching four fingers. Jabbing
at each other's chests and faces. They were a split
second away from a brawl. Another smaller fan tried to
interrupt Clemens by repeating, it's not worth it, Roger, It's
not worth it. And finally somebody grabbed the six foot
seven fan and Clemens beat red, backed away again, shouted
(31:31):
a few epithets, and it was over. It was a story,
It was dramatic, and it was made for New York's
tabloid newspapers, and it was in the middle of the
World Series, and there were no reporters present, but it
was on videotape. Yet another fan had one of those
early handheld nineteen ninety nine digital camcorders and he was
(31:54):
just recording the players leaving the ballpark and he recorded this,
and the fan wanted to sell somebody the tape. The
guy showed our producer the video, and our producer verified
it showed the near fight. The fan wanted two thousand
dollars in cash, plus a ticket to Game five of
the series. I was the only person from Fox there
(32:15):
who had any game tickets, and the guy was adamant
no ticket. He would wait until the sportscasters from the
local station set up for their live shots later that day.
He would offer the tape to each of them. Oh
and he also wanted the tape back after we were
done with it. So I did not wait. I said, yes,
let me round up two grand in cash in the
(32:36):
Bronx in the street outside the empty Yankee Stadium in
the dark. Give me the tape. I'll give you the money.
Tomorrow we'll meet here at four PM, and I'll give
you the tape back and a ticket to Game five.
So now we have to get him the cash. Now,
I grew up in that Yankee Stadium, and before then,
I grew up in the Bronx. I know where everything is.
(32:57):
So I go to the hidden ATM behind home Plate
and I withdraw the maximum that machine will give me
two hundred dollars. We're still a little short. I now
go to every reporter and every producer Fox has at
this World series until I find nine of them willing
to do just what I did. I write them checks
made out to cash for two hundred bucks each, and
(33:19):
now I've got two thousand dollars in twenties in the
ronks in the street outside empty Yankee Stadium in the dark.
It occurs to me as I'm giving the guy the
money that legally I have bought the tape, not Fox me.
It's my money. Most importantly, it's my ticket. No deal
without the ticket. So now that it's not being sold
(33:42):
to anybody else, just me, the producer says, by the way,
when the guy showed me the tape, it does not
start at the beginning of the fight. And I say
uh oh, and he says yeah, And I say, we
got to look at this before we feed it to
headquarters in LA because the moment they get this tape,
they're going to run it non stop tonight and non
stop tomorrow and non stop Wednesday. Plus we are Fox,
(34:06):
we own the New York Post. They will put color
stills from this videotape on the front page and the
back page and a nice colorful middle spread. This is
when my phone rings and it is my immediate boss.
His name is Tarnsio, and Tarensio never wanted to hire me,
(34:27):
and I never wanted to work for him. And oh,
by the way, he has not had a job in
television that I've been able to find out about since.
And he's heard that I have this tape and he
sees it as his ticket to success within Fox and
he's telling me about his plans to get it on
Fox News and in the Post and worldwide through Rupert Murdock.
And I say, we don't even know what's on this
tape yet, and our truck doesn't have anything to play
(34:48):
it on, so we're going to have to go to
an electronics store and buy a camcorder and figure this out.
And this Tarnsio interrupts me and starts swearing at me. Now,
despite what is often written, I am not the caricature
of the angry employee that my reputation might suggest to you.
But if you swear at me, I'm not going to
(35:11):
get more reasonable, am I? I Am going to get
less reasonable. So it is at this point then I
tell Tarenzio that the owner of the tape is me,
and I'm going to make these decisions, not him, and
that I'm going to hang up now so I can
go look at the tape first. My producer and I
go to one of the seven hundred electronics stores along
(35:32):
Seventh Avenue in Midtown, the ones that have been holding
going out of business sales continuously since the year nineteen eighty.
I am not exaggerating. Every week or so, I passed
the exact store where we bought that digital camquarder in
nineteen ninety nine. The store is still there. The store
is going out of business. Sales also still there. We
sit down at a nice restaurant, order a nice meal,
(35:53):
and we look at the tape and the video is
amazingly well shot. But there is that one fatal problem.
Our amateur videographer didn't miss the start of the confrontation
between Clemens and the fan. He has hit record only
as Clemens is getting back out of his car. You
do not see the fans starting it, yelling at him.
(36:15):
You do not see the fan threatening Clemens. You do
not see the fans swearing at Clemens's kids. What you see,
beautifully framed by the way against the setting sun of
a late October evening, is Roger Clemens just getting out
of a car, without any visible provocation, going over and
shoving his finger in the face of some random Yankee
(36:35):
fan in a Yankees hat. Now there are at least
forty moments in this video that could be turned into
beautiful color photographs for the New York Post, and everything
Clemens says to the fan is clearly audible, and so
too is everything. The fan says back, But anybody seeing
that video, no matter how much preamble we could possibly
(36:56):
give it, no matter how carefully we reconstructed how the
fan started it, how he escalated it, how Clemens backed away,
the fan ReLit the fuse, how this was not Roger
Clemens's fault, no matter how well we did that, if
you saw this video, you would say, well, no, that's
Roger Clemens's fault. It's human nature. With great disappointment, I
(37:18):
said to my producer, damn it, journalistically, we can't run this.
We're hanging Clemens if we run this. This is like
the only time in his life it hasn't been his fault.
But this is not his fault. My producer let out
a long sigh, and God, you said that. I want
to run it more than anything else in the world,
but we can't. And I said, there are facts, and
(37:41):
then there is the truth. What we have on this
tape is facts. What we do not have is truth. Unfortunately,
my phone rang now it was my boss's boss, Tarenzio's boss.
His name was Arthur Smith. He was a Canadian. He
called people things like schmndrick and schmoo. I liked him
a lot. Okay, Bobby, he says, what's going on? I
(38:01):
explained to him, and he quickly said, you're right, but
your boss wants me to get that tape from you
or fire you or something. He's screaming about how we're
going to get scooped on this story when we have
the only video. Give me a way out of this, Bobby.
So I gave him a way out. I said, look,
I'll go to my folks house in the suburbs tomorrow.
I'll make a couple copies of this video and I
will erase the original tape. Then I'll go to Yankee Stadium.
(38:24):
I'll have a copy of this video in my pocket,
and if there is a hint, a hint that anybody
else has this story, I will go right to the
truck and feed you the whole tape immediately, and I
won't even charge you the two thousand dollars I spent
to get it. And he says, I like this, that's
a good way out, But how are you going to
know if anybody else is onto the story? And I
(38:46):
told them, look, the Yankees won't want this story to
get out and I will use this fact against them.
I will use this fact to get them to tell
me if anybody has asked them about the story. I mean.
The public relations director is a childhood friend of mine.
We will work together on this because we have facts,
but we do not have truth. And he said, stop
saying that, you sound like a Schmendrick. So the next
(39:08):
morning I go to the Folks. I use my father's
collection of videotape machines, and I make three copies, one
for me to carry, one for me to give to
the Yankees, and one to leave in the hands of
a neutral outside observer. My mother and we go to
Yankee Stadium and I explained to this thing to this
friend of twenty five years of mine, the PR director,
and all he says is thank you, and he swears
(39:30):
he will warn me if he hears in anything about
any other reporter having this story is even rumored. Two
hours later, he comes up to me. Jack Curry from
the New York Times asked to talk to Roger. He's
heard he's going to talk to Roger. As Roger walks
back to the clubhouse, you could maybe follow them before
you feed the tape. And I said, yeah, that sounds good,
(39:51):
and I followed them, and Clemens lies through his teeth
to Jack Curry and says it was nothing, and no,
they didn't have their fingers in each other's faces, and
Curry believes him, and Clemens goes into the Yankee clubhouse
and Jack Curry wheels around and says, nice eavestro, and
I say, I'm really sorry, you're right, but I'll explain
to you why I had to do it. But I'll
explain it to you much much later. And the next morning,
(40:14):
the morning of the day that we'll see Roger Clemens
win his first World Series game after sixteen years of trying.
As the Yankee sweep the Braves in the World Series,
there is a very brief mention on page forty something
of the New York Times about the shouting match with
the fan, and there's no picture, and nobody notices the story,
and Clemens lies in it throughout. And the next spring
I see Jack Curry and he is still angry with me,
(40:37):
and so I hand him a copy of the videotape
and I say, this is why I had to know
what you knew about Clemens. And he goes and he
watches it somewhere and he comes back to me and
he's all smiles and he says, how did you get
away with not running this? And I tell him the
story and he says, but Clemens lied to me. And
(40:59):
I say, Clemens lies to everybody. That's not the point.
And he says, yeah, there's difference between facts and truth.
And I say, ooh, there's a difference between facts and truth. Hey,
that's good. Let me write that down. I'll play that
(41:27):
whole tape somewhere someday. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studio at the world headquarters of the Olberman
Broadcasting Empire in New York. Here are the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass
(41:49):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
Sports Music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Music will comes by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything
(42:10):
else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and eighty third day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we
still can, like later today, maybe the next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(42:41):
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. Meadows flipped.
There's no other possible explanation. The news has been coming
(00:27):
for weeks. All other conclusions seem to have been sealed
off when the Iran War recording of Trump turned up
and it was made for an autobiography ghostwriter, and the
autobiography was of Mark Meadows, and thus the tape belonged
to Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows, The New York Times wrote
last Night has testified before a federal grand jury hearing
evidence in the investigations being led by the Special Council's Office.
(00:51):
According to two people briefed on the matter, Times said
it didn't know when Meadows testified, nor whether it was
to the Jack Smith election grand Jury or the Jack
Smith Documents grand Jury, but happily ABC News came to
the rescue. Quote. Sources say Meadows answered questions on both
Trump's efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election and Trump's
(01:13):
alleged mishandling of classified documents. It was on May twenty
fourth that CNN first pointed towards the Trump scandal's version
of Sherlock Holmes and the Dog That Did Nothing in
the night, going all the way back to two weeks ago.
Quote a source close to Trump's legal team said Trump's
(01:34):
lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team
and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing
in the investigation. We've all heard the same rumors, one
Trump advisor told CNN. No one really knows what he's doing, though, well,
now we know what he's doing. He's nailing Trump by Felicia.
(01:57):
There was one more nugget in the Times piece, and
it helps to explain why Trump turned to stochastic terrorism yesterday,
which I will We'll get back to in a moment.
Times has a quote from a Meadows attorney without commenting
on whether or not mister Meadows has testified before the
grand jury or in any other proceeding. Mister Meadows has
maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has
(02:19):
a legal obligation to do so. Tell the truth. What
a disloyal rat think? Huh? Trump's legal problems are beginning
to multiply in the same way. You may be too
young to remember this, but I'm not that Richard Nixons
did thirty nine long years ago. It's that time worn
(02:42):
analogy that I love. The guy is walking down the
street carrying seven boxes when he can really only handle
six boxes. He drops a box. He bends over to
pick it up, but in the process he drops two
more boxes. Sooner rather than later, all of the boxes
will be on the street. That's Trump thoughts and prayers,
(03:04):
the other problems. The Times just dropped this in passing
into a separate story about that bonus Jack Smith grand
jury in Florida that nobody had known about. Among those
who have appeared before the Washington Grand Jury in the
past few months or have been subpoenaed by it, people
familiar with the investigation said, are more than twenty members
of mister Trump's Secret Service security detail. Nothing else in
(03:30):
the whole story about the Secret Service, not one word. Now,
we all know about the testimony from the January sixth
committee about Trump tyme to take the wheel of the
beast away from a Secret Service agent so he could
lead the insurrection or witness it or whatever quote. I'm
the f in President, take me up to the Capitol now.
(03:52):
So maybe it's that and the whole coup thing. Maybe
it's about all those deleted Secret Service text messages, or
maybe it's classified document stuff, because if you notice the
phrasing in The Times, it just says more than twenty
members of mister Trump's Secret Service security detail. It does
not say those who were in the detail when Trump
(04:13):
was still in the White House twenty twenty one and previous.
It does not say the current secret Service detail that
protects him now from everybody except himself. And that Florida
grand jury is now coming into focus, although it is
still profoundly fuzzy. Firstly, it is in Miami. Secondly, it
(04:34):
is unsurprisingly about the stolen classified documents. Thirdly, it has
heard at least one witness last month and was to
hear from another one today Wednesday. Nothing else. Although the
possible reasons for a Florida grand jury continue to be constructed,
and other than geographical convenience for witnesses, the leading theory
(04:56):
seems to be that it would give Jack Smith the
flexibility to bring charges against Trump and others in Washington
and Florida, or Washington or Florida. The Times has a
former classified documents prosecutor named Brandon Van Grack, who says
it's common in situations involving classified information when prosecutors are
(05:19):
uncertain of venue to ground an investigation in Washington, Virginia,
or Maryland. The point is, just because it starts there
doesn't mean it has to end there. You don't know
what your potential venue hooks are until you've completed a
thorough investigation. To mister van Grack's point, that revelation of
(05:41):
the US military plans for war in Iran, that document
being shown to those people who didn't have the classification
to read it or know about it. That would have
happened in Florida. The crime was in Florida. There is
one more news note before we get back to the
second coup attempt. Yesterday, Bloomberg News reporting that Trump is
(06:05):
searching for new lawyers. Of course, all of human history
divides neatly into those times when Trump has just hired
new lawyers and those times when he is trying to
hire new lawyers. Quote. Trump representatives in recent weeks have
asked for recommendations of Washington based Council with trial experience,
(06:27):
which brings us to Trump's other preparations for indictment. By
Jack Smith, You know stochastic terrorism. If you heard my
updated version of this podcast Tuesday afternoon, you know the GISTs.
But it bears repeating, in large part because we really
should not stop being outraged and furious about calls to
(06:51):
overthrow the government. It is kind of amazing that this
did not even merit a think piece somewhere yesterday. I
appreciate that we seem to be on some sort of
odd even system on whether or not the media should
give any weight to try Trump's terrorism. And it's an
even numbered month, so no, not. At the moment. My
feeling is the response should be sending a swat team
(07:12):
to marri A Lago and arresting the bastard now. Because
the language of his eruption Tuesday morning contained one key
code word that unleashed January sixth, The word was fight. Quote.
It's about election interference, began a Trump social media post
at eight twelve eastern daylight time Tuesday morning. It ended,
(07:35):
they are using the DOJ and FBI against me to
rig misspelled and capitalized rig the twenty twenty four election.
They'll hit Hunter with something small to make their strike
on me look fair. Nothing about these fascists is fair
or honest. Fight and the word fight capital letters, followed
by an exclamation point. Two minutes later, a second post
(07:58):
election interference. Don't let it happen. This was his call
to his mob, just as that same word fight was
the cue to the mob on January sixth, and just
as on January sixth, it is stochastic terrorism. And if
Trump dies in prison because he stole documents and defrauded
(08:20):
his own rubes over a stolen election he knew was
not stolen, I will still be disappointed that they did
not convict him for these frontal assaults by proxy on
representative government in this country. He is a thug, a scumbag,
and a moral worm, a psychopath who sees the people
around him solely in terms of what they can do
(08:42):
for him. And just remember that in that speech on
the ellipse on January sixth, he used some form of
the word fight sixteen different times, and sixteen different times
was nearly enough to knock democracy to the ground. In
the fight that followed, we fight, Trump said that cataclysmic day,
(09:04):
we fight like and if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country anymore. This country,
especially the media in this country, wants all of that
to just go away, like the pandemic just wants to
forget it. Ever, happened, just wants to jump back into
those nice safe grooves of the three or four different
(09:25):
disaster stories. Media understands in this country, understands how to
cover the four or five different political stories. It understands
and understands how to cover. They don't want to cover
what he actually expected people to do yesterday. They don't
want to face the reality that he expected when he
(09:45):
hits send on those that somebody would try to stop
Jack Smith from indicting him by violence. They do not
want to emphasize his insanity that the rage in those
posts was then followed by at least five posts in
which he congratulated himself on predicting the golf merger and wrote,
(10:08):
isn't that what you want? And of president somebody who
can predict the future? This is madness. It remains madness.
He is a madman. It does no good to ignore it.
And the rest of us who believe that the word
terrorist should become synonymous with the name Trump, and that
the connection should be reinforced daily, we are in a
decided minority, and we should not be stochastic. Terrorism does
(10:33):
not have to be subtle, and it does not have
to be deciphered and it does not have to be
a surprise. And Donald Trump committed it on January sixth,
twenty twenty one, in Washington, and he committed it again
yesterday on his social media And we all need to
be saying this. I have been saying this since at
least February twenty seventh, twenty twenty. Looking for something else,
(10:55):
I found this in my computer the other day. It
is from a report I had written that day for
all people, Jeff Shell, the disgraced CEO of NBC, who
wanted me to rejoin MSNBC. It was written as we
were mapping out how to make that happen. This passage
followed a paragraph about how I had first met Trump
(11:16):
in nineteen eighty three and how I had known him personally,
but thankfully not well since two thousand and seven or so.
I wrote to Jeff Schell, I think I know something
Nobody else in the field of political commentary has yet realized.
The turbulence of the last five years will only be
preamble to what will greet us on the morning of
(11:37):
November four, twenty twenty, regardless of the electoral outcome. Presuming
Trump is not somehow precluded from running, there are only
three prospective realities. One he has been reelected. Two he
has lost narrowly, is demanding a recount, is suing and
is being backed by the GOP. Three he has lost
(12:01):
narrowly or otherwise, but is claiming for a odd deceit
or foreign intervention. He will not concede, and he will
try to retain power in the courts or by declaring
a national emergency, or possibly by utilizing the military. I
include that not because I'm the only one who saw
(12:21):
that coming. Thousands saw that coming. I include that because
it reminds us to dismiss Trump and his animal like
cunning and destructive skill. At your peril and our peril.
What you think you see in him is as bad
(12:42):
as you think it is, or worse. Always always. On
January sixth, yesterday, the truth social posts were made in
hopes of getting somebody to attack Jack Smith or Merrick
Garland or Joe Biden or somebody. The Trump thinking is
not complex. This other creature is in my way. Destroy
(13:07):
the other creature in my way. There is good news
from his panic, from his stochastic terrorism. There now can
be no doubt that Trump has concluded, perhaps even that
he has been told that he is to be indicted
imminently by the Special Council, and it just cannot be
(13:34):
imminent enough. Also of interest here today, all of American golf,
all of world professional golf, has just been sold to
Saudi Arabia. This is not hyperbole. The same people who
spent a year fighting against the attempted takeover of the
(13:55):
golf business by the Saudis of talking about Saudi blood
money and nine to eleven and Jamal Kashogi, they just
sold the PGA Tour to the Saudis. And don't believe
it for a moment when people tell you it's a merger,
because it's not a merger. The Saudis bought the PGA Tour,
and some of the PGA golfers who help run the
PGA Tour are trying to forestall an ethical disaster so
(14:18):
bad that you might as well change the name of
its founding organization from the Pro Golfers Association to the
Pro Terrorism Association. That's of interest, and Chris Licht has
done it again at CNN. Another stunt town hall. That's next.
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman pot
(14:42):
scripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, date lines, CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York Man.
If only CNN viewers wanted to watch twenty four to
seven coverage of CNN's chief executive officer twisting slowly, slowly
in the wind, and CNN would carry it. To paraphrase
William Holden in the movie Network, it'd wipe that fing
(15:03):
MSNBC right off. The story continues. Now it is the
New York Post reporting that Chris Licked has quote been
calling anchors who have never spoken to him before in
a bid to shore up support one employee at a time.
The paper also claims it sources say CNN might fire
Licked over the July fourth holiday, and it named two
(15:26):
upper levels CNN executives as candidates to replace him. The
Los Angeles Times reports that quote, the top conversation internally
is how much longer Licked can last in the job.
According to several insiders who were not authorized to discuss
the matter publicly, something actually happened at CNN yesterday, and
this is so Chris Licked it will make you spit
(15:48):
out some ozempic. Next Monday, CNN will air a live
presidential town hall moderated by Anderson Silo's Cooper, and the
town hall is with Chris Christy, who had owned he
announced he was actually inexplicably running for the Republican nomination
(16:09):
literally hours before. So if you want a free hour
of TV time on CNN, just announce you are running
for president and call Chris Lickt. The number is Plaza
seven eight eight sixty six. But the real news story
at CNN is a man named Oliver Darcy. I've spoken
of him before. He is the media reporter who was
(16:31):
the first and for a week, the lone CNN voice
to even mildly criticize Licht's waterloo the Trump town Hall.
He survived. He went on vacation as planned, He came
back from vacation, and he came back in time to
issue his late night media newsletter right after the Atlantic
piece about Licht ran. The title of the first of
(16:51):
these newsletters was read Lickt Flashing, which reads better than
it sounds. The third paragraph reads quote. The embarrassing piece,
which reverberated all weekends throughout the media industry, called in
serious question Lickt's judgment, his ability to lead the network staff,
and his overall professional capabilities as CNN's top executive. Not
(17:15):
much further in CNN's media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote this
about reaction inside his own network quote, there is one
near universal sentiment that has been communicated to me. Lickt
has lost the room. I spent the summer of nineteen
ninety eight talking like this about my bosses at MSNBC
(17:35):
and NBC News. But on the other hand, I was
trying to get one of them to fire me so
I could go back into sports for five times my
NBC salary. This, this is courage, though one would think
it will still ultimately be licked or Darcy at CNN
within a month or two, but not both. Either way,
(17:57):
they can hold an Oliver Darcy parade. If Lickt gets fired,
Darcy can sit atop the front car and the parade
and wave to grateful CNN staffers. If not, you can
ride in the back and that big long Cadillac that
doesn't have any you know windows. This is Sports Center Wait,
(18:31):
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports for a Field of Endeavor, in which the
horrist of all the hoary cliches is on any given Sunday,
any team can beat any other team. Few things in
sports are actually surprises, let alone shocks, but there was
(18:54):
universal shock yesterday when the PGA Golf Tour announced it
had merged with Live Golf, after a year in which
the PGA rightly decried players who joined LIB as taking
blood money from Saudi Arabia. Well, it turns out it's
only blood money if they're getting it, not if PGA
Commissioner j Monaghan is getting it. The move was announced
(19:16):
before almost anybody it effects knew about it. That includes sponsors,
networks that televise golf, and most importantly PGA players. The problems,
of course, are it is blood money and worse, the
PGA and LIV did not merge. The Public Investment Fund
of Saudi Arabia, led by that Prince, with the international
(19:36):
collection of murderers at his disposal, bought the PGA Tour.
The Saudis have bought the PGA Tour. The Saudi Fund
will have the right of first refusal on all future
investments in the combined new operation, and that ultimately gives
it the right to squeeze out all non Saudi influence.
Golf is now Saudi Arabian PGA commissioner Monahan tried to
(20:00):
explain this to players that the tour stop in Toronto yesterday,
nearly all of whom and reacted violently. There is still
a chance the players on the PGA's board could muster
enough support to quash the thing. In the interim, golf
fans are left with a moral dilemma, and golf fans
tend not to do well with moral dilemmas. They did
not fight back against golf's literal quota system for memberships
(20:22):
at clubs like Augusta National, where they hold the deplorable
Masters tournament. Well now, no American sports fan can in
good conscience participate or pay for or watch any PGA event,
no matter how hallowed it might be within the sports world.
Within moments of the announcement of the Saudi takeover of
American golf, nine to eleven, Families United wrote to the
(20:44):
Department of Justice asking it to step up its investigation
of the Saudis related to the terrorism. On nine to
eleven AD, it issued a statement condemning the merger in
the strongest terms, and then a podcaster named James Heskey
summed it up with one joke grim telling and all
too true quote. As part of the merger, the PGA
(21:06):
will control holes one to eight and twelve eighteen. The
Saudis do nine to eleven. In the no surprise Sports News,
the Texas Rangers announced Jacob de Grom, the pitcher, will
undergo Tommy John surgery to repair a tear in his
collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. He will miss all
(21:27):
of this year and almost certainly all of next year.
Last year, there was a delicate balancing act going on
here in New York, where the Mets live, whether to
give their homegrown ace, de Gram, the hero of their
fan base, the huge long term contract he wanted, even
though he had missed much of the previous two seasons
with injuries but without surgeries. This is the leading marker
(21:51):
for the likelihood of a pitcher succumbing to a future
serious injury. The Mets chose not to give de Graham
the money, in part because he's already had one Tommy
John operation. But the Texas Rangers did give de Graham
the money, all of the money, and they broke out
to a thirty nine and twenty record this season, second
bastion all of baseball and now they are committed to
(22:12):
paying Jacob de Gram one hundred and eighty five million
dollars through the year twenty twenty seven, and for the
first seventy million, they will likely have gotten thirty innings pitched.
But they were great innings. And also, what did we
see here, great agent ing, thank you Disco, Nancy Faust.
(22:55):
Maybe de Gram can pass the time off by buying
the seemingly homeless Oakland A's ownership had starved the team
in Oakland and seemingly made a commitment to take Nevada taxpayers'
money to go build themselves a stadium there. But a
funny thing has happened in Las Vegas. The bill aimed
at giving the As three hundred and eighty million for
their billion and a half dollar ballpark in Sin City
(23:18):
stalled in the Nevada legislature. It was not voted on
before the deadline, so the A's and the lingo of
the town have crapped out. Coming up, speaking of all
(23:40):
time great baseball pitchers like Jacob de Gram in two
years from now, I once covered one and covered for him,
the guy who came this close to having a fistfight
with a fan during the World series, and my network
caught it on tape, and I owned the tape, and
I covered for him, not because he deserved my help,
(24:01):
but because the videotape did not show that he did not.
Aren't the fight things I promise not to tell? Literally?
Coming up first, the daily round up of the misgrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. The Bronze. Harris Faulkner of Fox
News one of the most inexplicably self righteous, shallow people
(24:23):
in American media. She is a propagandist of Fox quote
news unquote, and she is as just to pick an
apt current analogy, as dim as a sunset during Canadian
wildfire haze Armie Bratt. Her Twitter handle and her Twitter
name are both in all caps, and she is ceaselessly
(24:45):
holier than thou. And Fox Now has given her a
shot in Tucker Carlson's old primetime because the only two
people left were her and me. By the way, remember
Tucker Carlson. Anyway, Faulkner did not disappoint. She disappointed. She
was complaining about this war on religion, which is really
(25:06):
funny because the world gives religion more tolerance than anything else.
I mean, it's not facts, it's beliefs, which you're fine,
but it can't and hasn't been proven. And almost all
of the religions are based on books written by anonymous
authors or rewritten by other anonymous authors. And yet we
tolerate constant references to religion in our lives, from songs
(25:29):
to interruptions for prayers to tax exemptions for churches. Anyway,
that's not how she sees it. Harris Faulkner says you
should say grace or whatever for meals at restaurants in public,
and that once when she tried, they threw her out. Quote,
I've been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing
(25:50):
my head in prayer hands in America. Sadly, she would
not give a more specific address or a day when
it happened, or a witness, or would she answer any
questions about it that followed from members of the media,
Or didn't your religious figures over there say something about
bearing false witness? They runner up, Why it's Harris Faulkner
(26:13):
of Fox News. Again, while she wasn't done chastising the
wicked ways of twenty first century America Land. This is
about the whole gender thing. Quote. The Lord has determined
I am a woman, My pronouns are USA. Once again,
the jury is in. The Lord has also determined that
(26:33):
conservatives will never understand what the hell pronouns actually are. Harris,
you should ask the Lord for an education. But our winner, Wow,
it's Harris Faulkner of Fox News, the trifecta. While she
was instructing us when to pray and how to eat
and what her pronouns are, I think she said dumb
(26:57):
all that time the big banner graphic placed right across
her holy blessed condescension quote. American can and will be
put back together again American? Not America can and will
be put back together again. American can and will be
(27:17):
put back together American? Harris, What kind of American doesn't
check the graphics and lets her network misspell America? Why
didn't you walk out of that place too? Faulkner to
Day's Worst Person and not Now to the number one
(27:49):
story on the Countdown and my favorite subject, me and
Things I promised not to tell And this one literally
fits that title. I not only promised not to tell this,
I lost a job because I wouldn't tell it. I
am proud of my journalistic ethics, and sometimes, well a
lot of times I boast too much about them. But
I invoked them once on October twenty fifth, nineteen ninety nine.
(28:13):
And if I had not, and if I had wanted
to do any job anywhere for twenty three years, I
would still be hosting the Fox Baseball Game of the
Week and the upcoming World Series on Fox. But I
couldn't because there are facts and then there is truth,
and often they are different things. I'm covering the nineteen
(28:33):
ninety nine World Series for Fox's first attempt to compete
with ESPN. I'm also the Fox Baseball host and I'm
the senior correspondent of Fox Sports News. So we are
going live from the field after each World Series game
for like two hours. The Yankees froze the Braves in
the first two games of that World Series in Atlanta,
and then on the off day, the travel day, Monday morning,
(28:55):
the twenty fifth, the producers and crew flew out before
sunrise to set up at Yankee Stadium, and the rest
of us lazy quote talent unquote, we flew out at midday.
As we landed in New York. I got a call
from the lead producer who said, don't go to the hotel. First,
come right to the ballpark. Something amazing has just happened,
and I need you to decide to do whatever we're
(29:17):
going to do about it. So I go, and as
the October sun is beginning to set over Yankee Stadium,
I get this story. As the Yankee players have left
the workout to go home and get a good night's sleep,
maybe before Game three the next day, Roger Clemens of
the Yankees has gotten into an argument with a fan.
With a Yankees fan at the old Yankee Stadium, players
(29:41):
had to walk a very short gauntlet, maybe one hundred
feet from the ballpark exit to the player's parking lot.
In retrospect, this seems kind of crazy, but fans could
wait behind police barricades and yell and cheer and seek
autographs and start arguments. And as Roger Clemens steps out
of the stadium, golfvisor atop his head, his thoughts turning
(30:03):
to his first World Series appearance in thirteen years, his
start in Game four, which could very well be the
game in which the Yankees would sweep the Braves and
win the World series, the climax of a long odyssey
that has just brought him to New York that season,
a fan starts screaming at him that he has no
right to be there. If you wanted to come here,
you could have come here in ninety six, but you
(30:23):
didn't want to be here. For all I know, this
is one of the guys who was yelling at Ted
Cruz Sunday night at Yankee Stadium. Anyway, Roger Clemens is
not Ted Cruz. He's six foot four, two hundred and five.
Then he had a hair trigger temper, and, as we
suspected then and heard later, was reportedly hopped up on
steroids and amphetamines at least on game days. Amazingly, the
(30:46):
fan was bigger than he was, much bigger, and the
fan clearly started it. Clemens jousted with him verbally, but
backed away. He then walked away and got into his
waiting car and was about to be driven off when
the fans said something about Roger Clemens's kids. Well, Clemens
got back out of the The fans somehow got around
(31:06):
the police barricades, and immediately the two of them were
face to face, their noses almost touching four fingers. Jabbing
at each other's chests and faces. They were a split
second away from a brawl. Another smaller fan tried to
interrupt Clemens by repeating, it's not worth it, Roger, It's
not worth it. And finally somebody grabbed the six foot
seven fan and Clemens beat red, backed away again, shouted
(31:31):
a few epithets, and it was over. It was a story,
It was dramatic, and it was made for New York's
tabloid newspapers, and it was in the middle of the
World Series, and there were no reporters present, but it
was on videotape. Yet another fan had one of those
early handheld nineteen ninety nine digital camcorders and he was
(31:54):
just recording the players leaving the ballpark and he recorded this,
and the fan wanted to sell somebody the tape. The
guy showed our producer the video, and our producer verified
it showed the near fight. The fan wanted two thousand
dollars in cash, plus a ticket to Game five of
the series. I was the only person from Fox there
(32:15):
who had any game tickets, and the guy was adamant
no ticket. He would wait until the sportscasters from the
local station set up for their live shots later that day.
He would offer the tape to each of them. Oh
and he also wanted the tape back after we were
done with it. So I did not wait. I said, yes,
let me round up two grand in cash in the
(32:36):
Bronx in the street outside the empty Yankee Stadium in
the dark. Give me the tape. I'll give you the money.
Tomorrow we'll meet here at four PM, and I'll give
you the tape back and a ticket to Game five.
So now we have to get him the cash. Now,
I grew up in that Yankee Stadium, and before then,
I grew up in the Bronx. I know where everything is.
(32:57):
So I go to the hidden ATM behind home Plate
and I withdraw the maximum that machine will give me
two hundred dollars. We're still a little short. I now
go to every reporter and every producer Fox has at
this World series until I find nine of them willing
to do just what I did. I write them checks
made out to cash for two hundred bucks each, and
(33:19):
now I've got two thousand dollars in twenties in the
ronks in the street outside empty Yankee Stadium in the dark.
It occurs to me as I'm giving the guy the
money that legally I have bought the tape, not Fox me.
It's my money. Most importantly, it's my ticket. No deal
without the ticket. So now that it's not being sold
(33:42):
to anybody else, just me, the producer says, by the way,
when the guy showed me the tape, it does not
start at the beginning of the fight. And I say
uh oh, and he says yeah, And I say, we
got to look at this before we feed it to
headquarters in LA because the moment they get this tape,
they're going to run it non stop tonight and non
stop tomorrow and non stop Wednesday. Plus we are Fox,
(34:06):
we own the New York Post. They will put color
stills from this videotape on the front page and the
back page and a nice colorful middle spread. This is
when my phone rings and it is my immediate boss.
His name is Tarnsio, and Tarensio never wanted to hire me,
(34:27):
and I never wanted to work for him. And oh,
by the way, he has not had a job in
television that I've been able to find out about since.
And he's heard that I have this tape and he
sees it as his ticket to success within Fox and
he's telling me about his plans to get it on
Fox News and in the Post and worldwide through Rupert Murdock.
And I say, we don't even know what's on this
tape yet, and our truck doesn't have anything to play
(34:48):
it on, so we're going to have to go to
an electronics store and buy a camcorder and figure this out.
And this Tarnsio interrupts me and starts swearing at me. Now,
despite what is often written, I am not the caricature
of the angry employee that my reputation might suggest to you.
But if you swear at me, I'm not going to
(35:11):
get more reasonable, am I? I Am going to get
less reasonable. So it is at this point then I
tell Tarenzio that the owner of the tape is me,
and I'm going to make these decisions, not him, and
that I'm going to hang up now so I can
go look at the tape first. My producer and I
go to one of the seven hundred electronics stores along
(35:32):
Seventh Avenue in Midtown, the ones that have been holding
going out of business sales continuously since the year nineteen eighty.
I am not exaggerating. Every week or so, I passed
the exact store where we bought that digital camquarder in
nineteen ninety nine. The store is still there. The store
is going out of business. Sales also still there. We
sit down at a nice restaurant, order a nice meal,
(35:53):
and we look at the tape and the video is
amazingly well shot. But there is that one fatal problem.
Our amateur videographer didn't miss the start of the confrontation
between Clemens and the fan. He has hit record only
as Clemens is getting back out of his car. You
do not see the fans starting it, yelling at him.
(36:15):
You do not see the fan threatening Clemens. You do
not see the fans swearing at Clemens's kids. What you see,
beautifully framed by the way against the setting sun of
a late October evening, is Roger Clemens just getting out
of a car, without any visible provocation, going over and
shoving his finger in the face of some random Yankee
(36:35):
fan in a Yankees hat. Now there are at least
forty moments in this video that could be turned into
beautiful color photographs for the New York Post, and everything
Clemens says to the fan is clearly audible, and so
too is everything. The fan says back, But anybody seeing
that video, no matter how much preamble we could possibly
(36:56):
give it, no matter how carefully we reconstructed how the
fan started it, how he escalated it, how Clemens backed away,
the fan ReLit the fuse, how this was not Roger
Clemens's fault, no matter how well we did that, if
you saw this video, you would say, well, no, that's
Roger Clemens's fault. It's human nature. With great disappointment, I
(37:18):
said to my producer, damn it, journalistically, we can't run this.
We're hanging Clemens if we run this. This is like
the only time in his life it hasn't been his fault.
But this is not his fault. My producer let out
a long sigh, and God, you said that. I want
to run it more than anything else in the world,
but we can't. And I said, there are facts, and
(37:41):
then there is the truth. What we have on this
tape is facts. What we do not have is truth. Unfortunately,
my phone rang now it was my boss's boss, Tarenzio's boss.
His name was Arthur Smith. He was a Canadian. He
called people things like schmndrick and schmoo. I liked him
a lot. Okay, Bobby, he says, what's going on? I
(38:01):
explained to him, and he quickly said, you're right, but
your boss wants me to get that tape from you
or fire you or something. He's screaming about how we're
going to get scooped on this story when we have
the only video. Give me a way out of this, Bobby.
So I gave him a way out. I said, look,
I'll go to my folks house in the suburbs tomorrow.
I'll make a couple copies of this video and I
will erase the original tape. Then I'll go to Yankee Stadium.
(38:24):
I'll have a copy of this video in my pocket,
and if there is a hint, a hint that anybody
else has this story, I will go right to the
truck and feed you the whole tape immediately, and I
won't even charge you the two thousand dollars I spent
to get it. And he says, I like this, that's
a good way out, But how are you going to
know if anybody else is onto the story? And I
(38:46):
told them, look, the Yankees won't want this story to
get out and I will use this fact against them.
I will use this fact to get them to tell
me if anybody has asked them about the story. I mean.
The public relations director is a childhood friend of mine.
We will work together on this because we have facts,
but we do not have truth. And he said, stop
saying that, you sound like a Schmendrick. So the next
(39:08):
morning I go to the Folks. I use my father's
collection of videotape machines, and I make three copies, one
for me to carry, one for me to give to
the Yankees, and one to leave in the hands of
a neutral outside observer. My mother and we go to
Yankee Stadium and I explained to this thing to this
friend of twenty five years of mine, the PR director,
and all he says is thank you, and he swears
(39:30):
he will warn me if he hears in anything about
any other reporter having this story is even rumored. Two
hours later, he comes up to me. Jack Curry from
the New York Times asked to talk to Roger. He's
heard he's going to talk to Roger. As Roger walks
back to the clubhouse, you could maybe follow them before
you feed the tape. And I said, yeah, that sounds good,
(39:51):
and I followed them, and Clemens lies through his teeth
to Jack Curry and says it was nothing, and no,
they didn't have their fingers in each other's faces, and
Curry believes him, and Clemens goes into the Yankee clubhouse
and Jack Curry wheels around and says, nice eavestro, and
I say, I'm really sorry, you're right, but I'll explain
to you why I had to do it. But I'll
explain it to you much much later. And the next morning,
(40:14):
the morning of the day that we'll see Roger Clemens
win his first World Series game after sixteen years of trying.
As the Yankee sweep the Braves in the World Series,
there is a very brief mention on page forty something
of the New York Times about the shouting match with
the fan, and there's no picture, and nobody notices the story,
and Clemens lies in it throughout. And the next spring
I see Jack Curry and he is still angry with me,
(40:37):
and so I hand him a copy of the videotape
and I say, this is why I had to know
what you knew about Clemens. And he goes and he
watches it somewhere and he comes back to me and
he's all smiles and he says, how did you get
away with not running this? And I tell him the
story and he says, but Clemens lied to me. And
(40:59):
I say, Clemens lies to everybody. That's not the point.
And he says, yeah, there's difference between facts and truth.
And I say, ooh, there's a difference between facts and truth. Hey,
that's good. Let me write that down. I'll play that
(41:27):
whole tape somewhere someday. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studio at the world headquarters of the Olberman
Broadcasting Empire in New York. Here are the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass
(41:49):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
Sports Music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Music will comes by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything
(42:10):
else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and eighty third day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we
still can, like later today, maybe the next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(42:41):
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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