NOLA D.A.: ARREST NOEM, HOMAN, FOR CHILD TRAFFICKING - 4.28.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 121: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The District Attorney for New Orleans Jason Williams must indict and issue arrest warrants for Tom Homan, Kristi Noem (Now With 8 Action Adventure Dress-Up Outfits) and the other members of the ICE Gestapo who disappeared a two-year old New Orleans born girl and sent her to Honduras - possibly making up a story that her Honduran-born mother wanted to take her with her - AND also abducted and renditioned a four-year old US Citizen toddler with Stage 4 Medication and sent her and her mother to Honduras, too.

The charges should be led by Child Trafficking, kidnapping, violation of 5th and 14th Amendment rights, and be predicated on the fact that ICE has degenerated into a violent gang threatening the safety of Americans. Throw the RICO act at the Brownshirts.

The event was so egregious, so redolent of Moral Cannibalism, that the Trump Appointee judge who brought the case to public attention and tried to stop it referred in his writings to their plane being above "The Gulf of America." But he also voiced his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."

Indictments of Noem and the others may be fruitless. But it will at least symbolize that democracy will at least fight back against what Trump is doing: which is verging on Ethnic Cleansing.

MEANWHILE IN WISCONSIN the ICE stormtroopers who arrested a judge in her courtroom for not collaborating with a raid should themselves be arrested. And unlike Trump, authorities there will not have to fabricate or pervert laws to do so.

PLUS I'll analyze Trump's sudden pathetic pleadings to Putin, his bat guano crazy interview with Time, and most imperatively, his writing that he suspects Putin is "just tapping me along." There is no indication anywhere that this phrase "tapping me along" has ever been used by anybody else, ever. There is every indication Trump's mind may have now degenerated further into the stage where he is making up his own words and phrases.

B-Block (36:00) Dedicated to Karoline Leavitt whose first and last names both contain the letters for the word "lie." Trump himself gets a bronze for boasting about spending $58,000 of his own money on behalf of the country while he syphons off millions daily. The runner-up is Ed Martin and his embrace, then disengagement, from the world's stupidest looking Hitler cosplayer. But the winner again is Bill Maher, who perpetuates his career-ending decision to go to the White House for dinner with Trump. He claims Larry David's soon-to-be-Pulitzer-Prize winning satire of the event has insulted "six million dead Jews" because of the comparison between Trump and Hitler: "I think the minute you play the ‘Hitler’ card, you’ve lost the argument." Ooops. It's a shame Bill's memory is so damaged. Guess who played the Hitler card, made the comparison to Trump, and thus presumably lost the argument? Twice? On his own show? IN 2015?

C-Block (46:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Someone mentioned the great Cornell astronomer and planetary scientist and 26-time Tonight Show guest Carl Sagan and I was flashed back. Sure enough, it was 47 years ago last week that he won a Pulitzer Prize. Our Cornell radio station called him for an interview and he said yes, on one condition: "Is your sportscaster Keith there? I want him to do it. He gets it." This would be the first time I ever interviewed anybody famous, and he requested me, even though we'd never met. I'm as stunned now as I was then, and I'll explain why it happened.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Orleans
Parish District's Attorney Jason Williams must indict and issue arrest

(00:27):
warrants for the White House ICE henchman Tom Holman and
his boss ICE director Todd Lyons and his boss, Homeland
Security Secretary Christy Nome now with eight action dress up outfits,
and for that matter, for her boss, President Donald ted
Bundy Trump. The charges Attorney General Williams must bring someone

(00:49):
estimated there could be twenty seven different charges include kidnapping
of a United States citizen, deprivation of Fifth and fourteenth
Amendment rights, and child trafficking. Because Trump and Nome and
Lions and Homan and the agents involved, and in fact,
the entire of Trump's government of the undead, by the
undead for the undead, kidnapped a two year old child,

(01:13):
a native of this country, a native of Louisiana, a
native of New Orleans and Friday. They deported her, renditioned her,
in fact to Honduras because they were sending her Honduran
born mother there, and the mother allegedly wanted the child
with her, although there is mounting circumstantial evidence that this

(01:34):
is untrue, that this is a Trump administration lie designed
to cover up the fact that somebody disconnected a call
from the mother to the child's father as he frantically
began to talk about getting lawyers involved. No hearing, no lawyers,
no ethics, no responsibility, no morality, no attempt to verify

(01:55):
whether a note about the mother's intent written in Spanish
was actually written by her, or even that it exists,
not even time for the father to talk to the
mother for more than one minute before Trump's gestapo broke
virtually every law and violated virtually every word of the Constitution,

(02:15):
and the toddler, identified only by her initials VML, was
not alone. Two mothers and three young children were disappeared
out of New Orleans late last week, according to the
ACLU of New Orleans. The ACLU says all are US citizens.
The ACLU says one of the children four years old

(02:37):
as a rare form of cancer in stage four, and
the child was deported without medical consultation and without their medication.
The ACLU says one of the mothers is pregnant. It
is child trafficking, Mister Attorney General. People need to be arrested,
Mister Attorney General. That is your job, sir, and you

(02:58):
are a Democrat, therefore you are not a Trump whore.
His bullies need to be metaphorically kicked in the groin
because the United States of America is now officially kidnapping
its own infants one's born in this country and with
the full rights of citizenship, and sending them to foreign
countries on hearsay. And you, mister Attorney General, are an

(03:22):
official of the government of the fifty third largest city
in this country, and one of your constituents was just kidnapped,
and she's two years old, and you goddamn better do
something about it. Indict them and have them arrested, preferably
dragged into court in New Orleans by their feet. More practically,

(03:45):
indict them and issue warrants for their arrest, knowing full
well that dress up Barbie Nome would ever be seen
in Louisiana again if you do this, nor will the others.
But you can drag in the local ice goons, and
even if the whole thing gets thrown out in two hours,
you will have at least done something to indicate that

(04:07):
democracy is going to fight back. And after we have
seen that Trump's fascists are not just fascists, they are
worse than we expected. You will show we are not
going to continue to roll over as the degenerates in
Ice now reportedly go on to a military base and

(04:28):
grab a serviceman's immigrant wife while she is on duty
at sea, and while the kilmar Abrego Garcias and the
gay hairdressers, and the two year old New Orleans girl
known by the initials VML, and the four year old
New Orleans girl with cancer get disappeared like we were
living in Chile in nineteen seventy three. If the Trump

(04:50):
administration of Nazi adjacents can make up a law to
allow them to walk into a Wisconsin courtroom and arrest
a local judge because she would not hand over someone
who was there in her court room to receive actual
American justice hand that person over to a bunch of
armed thugs, then the Ice thugs in New Orleans are

(05:13):
fair game for arrests, as is the leadership, as is
the painting witch Gnome, as is the psychopath at the
head of the dictatorship, And whoever arrested the Milwaukee judge
should themselves be arrested for obstructing illegal proceeding and menacing
an officer of the court. Just consider the raw facts

(05:34):
of the abduction of VML as if it were in
the prism of inside the Trump cult, an innocent two
year old American girl stolen by her Honduran mother and
taken to Honduras and nobody stopped them, they would indict
Hillary Clinton. In an America where the judges are subject

(05:59):
to arrest by Ice as part of Stephen Miller's paranoid
fever dream that we are under attack by by anybody,
then Gnome and Trump and the rest of these shit
stains are also subject to arrest as part of a gang,
a kidnapping gang, a human trafficking gang. And by the way,

(06:28):
obviously the case in New Orleans would be better handled
by the Louisiana Attorney General Liz Morrill. But all you
need out of her bio to abandon all hope is
former Executive Council to Governor Bobby Jindall. I don't know, Madam,
Attorney General. Surprise me. The judge in the case of VML,

(06:50):
who tried to stop this horror, who protested this, who
publicized this, is Terry Dowdy, the chief judge of the U.
S District Court of the Western District of Louisiana. And
he is not only a Trump appointee, but he is
such a Trump appointee that he wrote that he had
become aware independently that by the time he tried to
talk to the mother in the case, the plane she

(07:10):
was in was already quote above the Gulf of America
unquote even he gets it. Judge Dowdy also scheduled a
hearing for sixteen May quote in the interest of dispelling
our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US
citizen with no meaningful process, and just for that tears

(07:36):
of gratitude well in my eyes. But no, Trump, don't
do anything about the US born child with cancer you
just sent to Honduras without even a hearing. Don't do
anything about VML now arrest the judge in Wisconsin trying
to keep people, any people. I don't give it f
where they were born, out of the hands of these sadists.

(07:59):
You have given uniforms and weapons too. Don't question that
report Publican senators, don't question that Speaker Mike Closets Johnson,
don't question that flag waving imbeciles, kidnapping American babies with
cancer and arresting the judges who try to stop such
moral cannibalism as you and Trump march towards ethnic cleansing

(08:24):
in America. Remember, Republicans, as this unfolds, before the rest
of us stop you, your only hope is that all
or most of the world's religions are wrong, because if
they are not wrong, you are all going to hell.

(09:14):
Of course, as ever, the cruelty, the moral cannibalism is
the point. After Judge Dugan in Milwaukee was arrested, the
second choice attorney general, the one who, by the Trump
terrorist's own definition, is a dei hire, Pam Bondi went
out and said of America's judges, the judges the backbone

(09:35):
of our nation and the group that includes the shrinking
subset of those officials who actually put the law first
in this country. Bondi said, quote, they are deranged. She insisted,
we are sending a very strong message. We will come
after you, and we will prosecute you. We will find you.

(09:55):
It amazes me even now as I read this that
Pam Bondy and the others who have applauded the arrest
of one judge and the placing of symbolic crosshairs over
the lives of all the other judges in the country,
including the ones they like. Bondy and the other idiots
have not once considered that the road they are on,

(10:16):
the road to complete authoritarianism, where all the judges serve
only if they rubber stamp all the Trump commandments. That
road goes across countless bridges that may or may not
support them, or may or may not still be there,
or may or may not even exist. What happens to you, Pambondi,

(10:38):
What happens to you Cash Patel? What happens to you
Tom Holman? If you don't get to the other side
of that goddamned bridge. What is the one thing you
are guaranteed to see when Trump falls and America is
restored to the United States of America? What is the
one thing you will see a judge? I haven't spent

(11:05):
a lot of time in courtrooms in my life, thank goodness,
but I did once sue the company part owned by
the former Vice President of the United States for the
fifty million dollars he and his co owner owed me.
And one of the many pieces of advice one of
my lawyers gave me that led to such a gloriously
successful outcome there was don't piss off the judge. But

(11:31):
for now, of course, pissing off the judge is Pambondi's purpose,
the first purpose of her useless, bleached fifty six years
long or more life, Pissing them off and moreover, scaring them,
Scaring the judges by arresting one in Wisconsin, Scaring their

(11:56):
own staff by firing their senior trade official, George Bogden
because he went to Les Taylor's wedding six years ago,
Scaring political opponents by ordering the investigation of the pro
democracy fundraising outlet Act Blue, Scaring would be donors to

(12:17):
the campaigns of actual American candidates by twisting the fact
that Act Blues sight successfully caught and rejected foreign donation
attempts and turning that into an international influence plot, as
opposed to Trump just taking billions directly in international influence
through his companies and the gyrations of the stock market.

(12:41):
Scaring those who would defend those persecuted by Ice and
the other Trump brownshirts by having rapacious idiots like Sebastian
Gorka claimed that defending them is aiding and abetting criminals,
Scaring the actual leaders of the opposition party, like Representative
Acasio Cortes, by virtually accusing them of the crime of

(13:02):
defending the accused and having your own propaganda outlets literally
accuse them of that and scaring those who would speak
out against Trump in any way by circling back to
that idiot Gorka's claim that to do so is sudging
with the tedodists. These will fail. These will fail. We

(13:29):
will not be scared. We will be enraged. These will fail,
And the Bondies and the Gnomes and the Gorkas will
be charged for whatever laws they may have broken, and
they will get defense attorneys, and we will not try

(13:52):
to prosecute the defense attorneys, and they will get defenders,
and we will not try to prosecute those who defend
them in public. And they will be charged by the
people they are now trying to scare, and they will
come before judges, hopefully Judge Dougan. I would settle for

(14:21):
Judge Doughty. But their real threat here is that in
the time before they fail, they will succeed in chilling
the debate. Those for whom the consequences can be real
and devastating may hesitate to fight back on behalf of
justice and the law and the nation, journalists in a

(14:42):
time of corporate journalistic failure and cowardice and greed, judges
in a time of political assassination threats by the right
and that other most dangerous group to the far right
two and four year old Americans from New Orleans. The

(15:03):
Trump terrorism is that the hesitation will be enough to
give Trump the time to do as much damage to
this country as possible, because that is how he should
be perceived and reported on. It doesn't matter if he's
doing this damage on behalf of another nation. Doesn't matter
if he has reached the nineteen eighty four stage and
decided the object of power is power. It doesn't matter

(15:25):
if he's doing it because he's insane. It doesn't matter
why he's destroying the nation. It only matters that he
is destroying the nation and depending on institutions and individuals
that would defend that nation to fold. And if you
don't think they will fold, ask Zuckerberg and Bezos and

(15:46):
the Washington Post and Columbia University and ABC and Bob
Iger and CBS, which is reportedly going to let a
mediator judge Trump's lawsuit this week. The one demanding bribes.
I'm sorry the one demanding damages because the sixty minutes
interview of Kamala Harris damaged him in the election that

(16:11):
he checks Notes one. It remains irrelevant, but it is
explanatory and could be useful. The other possibility that Trump

(16:31):
is destroying this nation because those around him are not
letting him see the new Associated Press poll where his
approval is thirty nine and his net approval disapproval is
now nineteen points underwater, and all the specific policy measures
are underwater, and he is instead being told he really

(16:51):
is saving this nation, and his semi human mind seems
to be able to process the value of being perceived
as savior. That they are telling him these things. Over
here in the real world, we call this lying to
him was underscored anew by this batshit crazy interview with

(17:15):
Time Magazine. I mean batshit crazy, even in the Trump
world of twenty four to seven. Batshit crazy. I could
parse this for literally weeks, but the Time magazine interview
suggests that the primary rule in the new Trump crazy
machine is to tell him whatever is likely as to

(17:36):
keep him from yelling at you. The Supreme Court ruled
nine nothing that in the case of kilmar Abrego Garcia,
the administration had to facilitate and effectuate the Maryland father's
return with a deadline of three weeks ago. Today, since
it has done the exact opposite, Trump was asked by

(17:58):
Time magazine if he is therefore disobeying the Supreme Court,
which he is. Quote, that's not what my people told me.
They didn't say it was. They said it was the
nine to nothing was entirely different. Clearly, they never told
him about the facilitate and effectuate part. Only that the
court did not literally use a phrase like we ordered

(18:21):
Trump to bring him back to the United States immediately.
These moments of clarity clarity about how they are handling Trump,
not clarity from Trump, for God's sakes, they fall from
the Time interview like dust falling off the top shelf.
Quote one final question, mister President, you were showing us

(18:44):
the new paintings you have behind us. You put all
these new portraits. One of them includes John Adams. John
Adams said, we're a government ruled by laws, not by men.
Do you agree with that? Trump? John Adams said that
where was the painting right here? We're a government ruled

(19:07):
by laws, not by men. Well, I think we're a
government ruled by law. But you know, somebody has to
administer the law. So therefore men, certainly, men and women
certainly play a role in it. I wouldn't agree with
it one hundred percent. We are a government where men
are involved in the process of law, and ideally you're
going to have honest men like me. John Adams said

(19:31):
that where was the painting? Oh my god. On the
bright side, he seemed to know who John Adams was. Quote.
You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization
of the Justice Department under Biden. You recently signed memos. Well, sure,

(19:52):
but you wouldn't be if this were Biden. Well, first
of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was
grossly incompetent time. We spoke to him last year, mister
President Trump. Huh, we spoke to him a year ago. Trump.
How did he do? Trump? You can read the interview yourself, Olderman.

(20:14):
As an aside, I wouldn't bet on that. Trump not
too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well.
He didn't do well at all. He didn't do well
at anything, And he cut that interview off to being
a matter of minutes, and you weren't asking questions like
you're asking me. Rule one of Trump, there's always a
nemesis when he has lost, failed, or has no other answer.

(20:38):
Just bring up the nemesis. When Trump started to go
crazy and run for president as revenge, it was against Obama,
so everything was Obama. Then he realized sometime during twenty
sixteen that he wasn't running against Obama. He was actually
running against somebody named Hillary Clinton who knew, so everything
became Hillary. Then he realized Biden was the front runner

(21:01):
for twenty twenty, not Hillary. And since then, especially since
he lost to Biden, since Biden humiliated him, and since
therefore most of Trump is forever frozen in that moment
trying to undo the loss. Therefore, nemesis is now Biden.
This came up again about Ukraine. You remember his pathetic

(21:24):
bleeding at Putin which didn't work. I'm not happy with
the Russian strikes on Kiev, not necessary and very bad timing.
Vladimir stop, Vladimir stop. Having failed to settle Ukraine in
a day or let's see counting in the ninety nine
of them, he had to blame Biden. Let me parse

(21:50):
this next thing for the Biden part, and other notable inferences.
This is the truth social post ready about Ukraine quote,
this is sleepy Joe Biden's war, not mine. All right, Well,
there's the Biden part already. It was a loser from

(22:12):
day one and should have never happened, and wouldn't have
happened if I were president at the time. I'm just
trying to clean up the mess that was left to
me by Obama and Biden, and what a mess it is.
With all that being said, there was no reason for
Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities, and
towns over the last few days. Even Chuck Grassley had

(22:35):
written President Trump, please put the toughest of sanctions on Putin.
You ought to see from clear evidence that he is
playing America as a patsy. Back to the Trump tweet,
it makes me think that maybe Putin doesn't want to
stop the war. He's just tapping me along. CBS News

(22:57):
further shot its pants yesterday, putting the Russian Foreign Minister
Lavrov a snake on face the nation, seriously on face
the nation. I don't know if that was part of
the Sherry Redstone bribe deal with Trump, or if that
was Trump's reply from Putin, if Lavrov basically saying f

(23:24):
U Trump was Putin's way of saying I didn't like
that post, which ended, as you will recall, with him
suggesting that maybe Putin has to be dealt with differently
through banking or secondary sanctions. Too many people are dying.

(23:45):
This could be in summation, a setup for Putin to
allow Putin to propose his own deal in Ukraine, still
utterly unacceptable, but maybe ten percent less unacceptable than all
of his current demands. Whereupon Trump says he got Pootin
and to make a deal. Owen Zelensky rejected it. But ultimately,

(24:11):
perhaps the most interesting thing in that entire post, perhaps
the most frightening thing in that entire post, perhaps the
most revelatory thing in that entire post, is that one
phrase in there makes me think that maybe he doesn't
want to stop the war, He's just tapping me along.

(24:34):
I am thirteen years younger than Trump, but I am
from the same metropolitan area. The generation before me grew
up here as his generation before him did. I went
to a private school that played sports against the military
school they were forced to send him to instead. Of

(24:57):
the Juvie Home juvenile detention Home. I went to Ivy
League University as he did, and for vastly different reasons.
I probably actually went to fewer classes than he did.
In my defense, I graduated in seven semesters. Also, I
cut a lot, and like him, I have lived in

(25:20):
New York or the immediate suburbs for roughly fifty three years,
including the last twenty four uninterruptedly. I have also studied
and loved language and slang and slanguage for the whole
of my life. And I have never before heard the

(25:41):
phrase he's just tapping me along, Nor can I find
any reference to it anywhere. I thought, well, maybe that's
a British expression. It is not. Maybe it translates from
the German or the Russian. It does not. I mean,

(26:01):
it could be a regional variant specific to Jamaica estates
in Queens, New York. It could be a variant of
the slang meaning of tapping. Tapping is a little sleeker
sounding version of blinking and related terms. But I don't know.
I've never heard this phrase before. There's no evidence, if

(26:26):
you do a search for it, that anybody has ever
used this phrase before. I mean, anybody. Maybe it's pre Internet,
maybe it's a famous phrase from Queens in nineteen fifty seven.
But he writes it with the same confidence that everybody
knows what he means, in which he writes all his

(26:47):
otherwise simple, childish communications. There is no doubt in his
own quote mind unquote that everybody knows. Everybody says ten
times a day, He's just tapping me along. Martha, You're
just tapping me along. You're just tapping me along, Officer.

(27:12):
I think, and I will so far unsuccessfully hold my
glee until this is confirmed that Trump has in fact
manufactured this phrase inside his disordered, damaged mind. If you
remember kofeve CoV f EFI was a major typo or

(27:36):
maybe narcole xp or maybe he was typing it out
on Twitter, slipped, fell his head, hit send the end.
But tapping me along, that's from a language only Trump
has ever heard. I think his illness or injury or

(27:57):
malformation or whatever it is, might might might have just
reached the stage where he he is making up his
own words, speaking in tongues. Personal neologism, a phasia, accelerating

(28:20):
mental or intellectual malfunction. You know that moment when your
brain starts tapping you along. I have once been in
the company of a relative who was suffering from acute

(28:45):
attack of bipolarity and began to make up his own words.
It is one of the more terrifying things to have
ever witnessed. And even he did not say, you're just
tapping me along. Headlines on Day ninety nine of America
held hostage the Trump dictatorship. If the Canadian Liberals beat

(29:07):
the Conservatives in the election today, remember to thank Trump
and thank the fact that the creepy Conservative candidate has
some kind of weird iguana thing going where he can't
fully open his eyes. In the Maga answer to the
White House Correspondence dinner Saturday, like you needed to answer that,
the scum drank cocktails with what passes for witty names

(29:30):
in their world. None of them were named just tapping
me along, although I would have given them credit for
doing that. One of the drinks was called leakers and Liars,
meaning the Maga were drinking what happens when you take
a leak fitting And yes, Trump fell asleep at the

(29:51):
Pope's funeral, upright on camera, with his rubbery lips beginning
to slide apart and this week's Milania did not wake
him well. Given the choice, would you also of interest?

(30:17):
Here in this all new edition, Bill Maher comes back
at Larry David, saying Larry's implication that going to the
White House for dinner with Trump was like going to
the old Chancellery for dinner with Hitler. Bill says you
should never invoke Hitler and says Larry had insulted six
million dead Jews, which might be an answer if Bill
Maher had not made the exact same comparison on his

(30:41):
own show in twenty fifteen. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. On this

(31:16):
all new edition of Countdown. Somebody wrote something in fond
remembrance of doctor Carl Sagan the other day and it
reminded me and I had forgotten about this that forty
seven years ago. Last week he won the Pulitzer Prize,
and when our radio station at Cornell called him on
the off chance he'd do an interview with us since

(31:37):
he was also at Cornell, he said yes, but only
if it's with your sportscaster Keith. I was nineteen totally unknown,
and he became the first famous person I ever interviewed.
Why he asked for me explained next in things I

(31:57):
promised not to tell. First of all, eve it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about the roundup
of the misgrints, orons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute the latest other worst persons in the Cosmos world.
Let me dedicate this to Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. They

(32:20):
are talking about promoting her to a cabinet position. I
do not think it is a coincidence that this is
because perhaps her first name contains the letters of the
word lie and her last name contains the letters of
the word lie. Here's a tip to the news network

(32:42):
stop airing her so called press briefings live. Exceeding even
the Sean Spicers and Dana Perinos of this world, she
is lying well over half the time. It is pure
propaganda and racism and idiotic and moral cannibalism. As I

(33:04):
suggest earlier. Kudos to the BBC, which, after ninety plus
days of carrying these things lives, seems to have figured
out this whole idea and now just replays later on
anything she says that is either relevant or true. It's
usually about a twelve second clip. The domestic networks continue
to run it live at least on occasion because it

(33:26):
is the cheapest possible live programming. And in say MSNBC's case,
do you prefer this or forty five minutes of Katie Terror?
I have already submitted my answer to the judges. Anyway,
the bronze works. It goes to Trump, President Scrooge McDuck himself.

(33:49):
He does something stupid or cheap or both, and his
stupid cheap supporters go crazy over it. He's installing two
one hundred foot flag poles at the White House to
further ruin the landscaping. All I know he intends to
put them one atop the other. But he's paying for

(34:11):
them himself. Oh boys, say the talking skunks of trump'sburrow, Oklahoma.
He's paying for them big flag polies himself. That must
be billions. Even a one hundred foot flagpole sells for
only twenty nine thousand dollars retail, so President Scrooge McDuck

(34:37):
is shelling out fifty eight grand. Wow, big spender if
he ever pays the bill. Listen, one hundred foot Flagpole
Company of Alexandria, Virginia or wherever get it in cash

(34:59):
up front. I'm just saying, maybe maybe nome and eight
action dress up sets. Maybe she has it in cash
in her wallet, in her bag. The runner up worser
Ed Martin, nominee for Gulag Meister of the Capitol Military

(35:19):
dis No, I'm sorry, nominee for US Attorney in DC
and serving now as Acting US Attorney in d C.
Let me just read this headline about Ed from the
Jewish Forward Quote exclusive. Trump nominee apologizes for praising Nazi
sympathizer while awaiting Senate confirmation hearing. US Attorney pick Ed

(35:41):
Martin said he was unaware of Timothy Hale Qsinelli's views
and white supremacist ties, which he now denounces. That headline,
Trump nominee apologizes for praising Nazi sympathizer while awaiting Senate
confirmation hearing. But did he do it in the hallway?

(36:03):
By the way, I'd like to apologize. I have to
go in here in a minute, but I do apologize.
That's a headline New York Times. One of the keys
to never letting on that you are one of the
batties is to never ask any questions about the other batties.
Nor believe any of the answers that you are avoiding

(36:23):
in the first place. This guy Hale Cusinelli that ed
Martin first praised, then denounced while awaiting confirmation, then said
he knew nothing about him. That's the stupid looking kid
who tried to pose on the internet as Hitler with
the little mustache and the hair combed that way and
the hand at his chest. But instead of looking tough

(36:47):
or like a candidate for the Trump Cabinet, he just
wound up looking like one of the rejected actors in
the Producers and he might sink ed Martin. Good work,
baby Dolf, but our winner, same topic yet again, Bill.
Another way to avoid the consequences for doing something really, really,

(37:10):
really stupid is to change the narrative and pull a
bit of len aboutism against your critic. Mar went back
on the air and dragged Al Gore, for whom I
worked the living definition of the cliche the road to
Hell is paved with good intentions, dragged Gore into defending
Mar's Dinner with Air Trump. Mar also attacked Larry David

(37:33):
for his soon to be Pulitzer Prize winning satire My
Dinner with Adolph by trying to make Larry appear like
he's an anti Semite. No offense, Larry, but Bill would
have more success trying to make you appear like you're
a Boston Red Sox fan. In an interview with Piers Morgan,
which I assume Bill did just in case he had

(37:55):
not destroyed his career by going to have dinner with Trump,
mar said of Larry's epic evisceration of him, quote fans
de Ball, it's kind of insulting to six million dead Jews.
It's an argument you kind of lost just to start it. Look,
maybe it's not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really

(38:16):
kind of got to stay in his own place. He
is the goat of evil. We're just going to have
to leave it like that. I don't want to make
it constantly personal with me and Larry. We might be
friends again. Bill doesn't want to make that constantly personal.
But he just accused Larry David of insulting six million
dead Jews. Because that's not personal. It's comedy quoting again,

(38:41):
I can take a shot, and I can also take
it when people disagree with me. That's not exactly the
way I would have done it. Again. The irony, let's
go back to what my original thing was. There's got
to be a better way than hurling insults and not
talking to people. If I can talk to Trump, I
can talk to Larry David too. Wait so wait wait
wait wait wait wait wait. You don't want to hurl insults.

(39:03):
So you said, Larry insulting six million dead Jews. That's
not an insult. That's not personal. It's not an insult,
it's comedy. Gold another quote, This wasn't my favorite moment
of our friendship. I think the minute you play the
Hitler card, you've lost the argument. Come on, man, Hitler

(39:23):
nazis a hem from the transcript of HBO's Real Time
with Bill Maher the eighteenth of September two thousand and fifteen,
in which Bill Maher says, quote I try to resist
comparisons to Hitler because there's only one Hitler. He broke

(39:44):
them all. But you know what, if you're stirring up
xenophobic hate among an angry, humiliated population and talking about
rounding up minorities, it's a little Hitler adjacent talking about Trump.
And if you say, oh, he didn't compare Trump to

(40:04):
Hitler ten years ago, he just called him Hitler adjacent,
that's not comparing him. And then he responded to Larry
by saying, I think the minute you play the Hitler card,
you've lost the argument if you think those are not
exact matches. From the transcript of HBO's Real Time with
Bill Maher three weeks earlier, August twenty eight, twenty fifteen,

(40:25):
Bill Maher talks about Trump's rhetoric about China. Again, this
is nearly a decade ago. The anniversary party at the
Bill Mahers set will be August twenty eighth of this year.
On the show in August twenty eight, twenty fifteen, Mars says, quote,
that's the way Hitler talked about the Jews. See as
Bill has just demonstrated yet another way to avoid the

(40:47):
consequences for doing something really, really, really stupid is to
have completely forgotten you did the exact same thing yourself
on your own show in twenty fifteen. Bill. I know
you claim to have done a lot of drugs, but
that much drugs you don't remember twenty fifteen. Bill, when

(41:11):
somebody else compares Trump to Hitler, they've immediately lost the
argument and insulted six million dead Jews. But when I
compare Trump to Hitler, it's avant garde, edgy humor. Look
how far ahead of the curve? I was mar two
days other worst person. There's the word to the number

(41:50):
one story on the countdown and a change in mood
and a quick break. And the other day somebody mentioned
the work of doctor Carl Sagan. The name may ring
a bell. At one point, Carl Carl Sagan was easily
the most famous scientist in America, up there with doctor

(42:10):
Salk of the vaccine, up there with Freud. You name
the scientist. Carl Sagan was probably more famous because Carl
Sagan was on TV every couple of weeks. He was
also and that was the joke. He was also a
professor of astronomy and related sciences at Cornell University. When

(42:31):
I was a student there. I did not take his course.
I suppose I could have gotten into it. As it
turned out, he knew who I was. I'll get to
that story in a moment. This is about interviewing Carl Sagan.
I have interviewed a lot of famous people, and I
don't think of myself as a good interviewer. I don't

(42:54):
think of myself as an interviewer. I have to do it,
and I used to do three or four interviews a
night on my television shows, but I've never been comfortable
doing it. I often don't have any questions. I'm often
not interested in what the guest has to say. That's
why there has never been an actual guest here on
this podcast. I will break this President someday. We are

(43:17):
approaching the third anniversary as I record this, but I
haven't done it yet, have I Well, so it's easier
if it's just you, then you can say at the
end of it, all of it was my fault. I've interviewed,
as it turns out, six presidents, none of them while
they were president, either before or after, and for a

(43:39):
long time I used to say that my first president
was Ronald Reagan, who I interviewed in nineteen ninety two
on radio for ESPN about a football player who'd suffered
a damaging injury and a neck conclusion that left him briefly, thankfully,
briefly paralyzed, And the head of ESPN Radio was a
not that sophisticated sports fan who thought that we could

(44:02):
appeal to a non sports audience on sports stations around
the country on the weekends by having Ronald Reagan on
you forget in the context of the time nineteen ninety two,
Ronald Reagan got elected, Yes, because he was a reactionary
governor from California, and he'd been governor two times there.
And yes, he was a famous TV guy who hosted

(44:22):
a rather low grade TV show that appealed to low
grade people. And he was only the first of two
presidents who could be said to have done that. And
he was a sportscaster, and he was an iconic figure
from a couple of sports movies, the one about the Gipper.
The Gipper is from a sports movie. It's complete nonsense,
the story about the dying player George Gip, but it

(44:43):
gave him a sports context. So I interviewed Ronald Reagan,
and I had to tell the story in my questions
so he knew what I was talking about. That's nineteen
ninety two, he'd only been out of office three years,
and he was already insignificant decline that I had to
help him in the interview. Fortunately it was pre recorded.
I interviewed though, as it turned out, and I've told

(45:03):
the story and don't want want to go through it again.
I interviewed Trump in nineteen eighty three, and I will
recall this part of it and tell it to you
again that the cameraman on that shoot. I ran into
him maybe in twenty sixteen or seventeen after not seeing
him for decades, and he said, remember when we interviewed
that guy? And I went sure do. He goes, remember
what you said after we did the interview and I

(45:25):
went no. He said, well, we were walking back to
the truck and you didn't say anything, and we were
really worried because that was you. You always said something
all the time. I went, yeah, that's me. He said,
when we got back to the truck, you finally set
down the sticks the tripod which I was carrying, and
he said, you said, uh, what the f was wrong
with that guy? And that's all you said. Got that

(45:48):
one right. I later interviewed in order Obama when he
declared his candidac here just before he declared his candidacy
in two thousand and six. He was a live guest
on Countdown Obama and Biden at a Democratic semi debate
in two thousand and seven Biden separately during the campaign
in two thousand and eight. I interviewed Bill Clinton several

(46:11):
times in two thousand and six, seven, eight, and I
think ten. And Jimmy Carter I met at the Democratic
National Convention in two thousand and eight and interviewed him
the first of many times. And as I've mentioned with
great pride, the late Jimmy Carter was a Countdown junkie.
He and his family used to watch every night and
would rearrange their schedules and sometimes DVR the show so

(46:33):
they could all watch at the same time, and they
would often pause it during the commercials so they could
have group discussions with people who weren't with them about
what they've just heard. If you ever need reassurance that
you know what you're doing, take it from Jimmy Carter.
I vaguely and viscerally understand why the people at Fox

(46:53):
News line up and Newsmax and the others line up
and so desperately respond to Trump's support and recognition of them.
I under stand it in a visceral sense. There is
a certain element of egotism involved in this. I felt
it myself about one hundred percent or so. I've interviewed

(47:16):
countless actors and actresses and movie stars and comedians, and
George Carlin by personal I don't know that he's the
most famous person I ever interviewed. But I interviewed Robert
Redford once and he was a viewer, and the indescribable happened.
We're having a great conversation about the environment. Robert Redford

(47:36):
is at his home in Colorado, and we're coming towards
the end of the show at nine o'clock and he's answering,
and he goes, excuse me, And I hadn't said anything.
Did somebody say, wrap the producer? Who will? I know
her name, but I'll leave her out of this. The
producer actually got in Robert Redford's ear during his final answer,

(47:57):
and rather than let him go thirty seconds long so
that the show would bleed over into the nine o'clock hour,
she tried to get Robert Redford to shut up. Otherwise,
a great interview, and all the athletes ali three times.
I think Mickey Mantle, I've told that story the interview

(48:18):
that ended with the comment that he made about how
if he'd known he was going to live, he would
have done better and tried harder. And I said, you
did pretty well, and he said, with the most remorse
I ever heard anybody say anything. I could have done more.
Oh my goodness. And I knew when I did that
interview in Christmas Time nineteen eighty five, that that would
be the last SoundBite in the obituary I would do

(48:39):
for him whenever he passed. And it was a decade
later Willie Mays who answered the phone in the voice
of his own housekeeper, straight out of Gone with the Wind,
He did an impression of Hattie McDaniel. I will not
repeat it. And one of the greatest regrets I ever

(49:00):
had was that radio interview. I used to follow the
old rules, which is, don't record till they tell you
it's okay. So I did not record him answering the phone.
Everybody else would hit play and record while the phone
was ringing. I waited until he said it was okay,
and I missed having a copy of Willie Mays as
Hattie McDaniel as his own made and then dropping out

(49:21):
of that voice in mid sentence and going this is
Willie Ted Williams I interviewed in Boston. I mentioned Ali.
I once had to do Ali on the radio and
I had to basically repeat what he was saying, and
Ali nodded along like I got that right, And I
actually saw him several times thereafter, and we had friendly conversations,

(49:41):
one of which he never actually said anything out loud.
I just sort of heard him. I think through esp
and I don't believe in ESPA, but if it happened
in any context, that was the time it happened. So
I've done a lot of interviews, but to this day,
the most famous person I ever interviewed relatives, certainly to myself,
was doctor Carl Sagan. The Cosmo's series in the the

(50:04):
early eighties was one of the first American created in depth,
serious and entertaining scientific series in television history. It was
one of the most popular shows in television, even though
it was not on NBCABC or CBS, it was on PBS.
It made Carl Sagan, who was already a kind of

(50:26):
glib and tvgenic guy, it made him into a superstar
who appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson every
couple of weeks. That was the joke in the late
seventies at Cornell it was yes, doctor Carl Sagan, the
head of the astronomy department at the Tonight Show, who
visits us here in his satellite office in Ithaca, New York.

(50:47):
Well that's what we all thought about. I didn't take
the class. I'd taken an astronomy class in high school,
and I could not shake the reality that, as great
as it was taught by one of my favorite high
school teachers, a man named Randy McNaughton. The class started,
if I remember correctly, at eleven twenty five, and the
first thing he would do would be shut off the lights.

(51:08):
And this is a bunch of kids who probably didn't
need a big breakfast, including me, who were waiting for lunch.
I don't know how many times I fell asleep during
that class, not because it was bad, but because I
was so hungry. I was basically briefly starving. You wouldn't
know it to look at me, but I was, and
I just didn't want to take it. And knowing me
at the time, you know, I wasn't going to take

(51:31):
a tough course. What's the point of that. I'm here
to get the degree. So in any event, I went
and look this up. It was Monday, April seventeenth, nineteen
seventy eight, and I was at WVBR at Cornell in
late afternoon preparing my sports cast in our big time

(51:52):
thirty minute World newscast and that we did every day
and was a pretty good newscast world report, and I
did the sports cast most nights as the sports director
of the station. And I'm just sitting there looking at
the wire copy and looking at the local news that
we might put in the sportscast. And it was an
ordinary day at the beginning of spring, this time of

(52:14):
year in nineteen seventy eight. I was nineteen years old.
Didn't have aspirations to do anything other than sports. I
had done news for the station. I had done live
reporting for the station, in news and in sports, but
I didn't have any aspirations to be an interviewer or
anything else. When the newscaster on duty that day says,
are you up for interviewing Carl Sagan? He just won

(52:36):
the Pulitzer Prize, And I went sure and get President
Carter on the phone, like he'd do an interview with me. No, No,
we're serious, And I said, what do you mean you're serious? Well,
he just won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. I said, well,
good for him. And we just called his office, you know,
just to see if he'd do an interview, and he said,
I'll do an interview, but it must be live, and

(53:01):
is your sportscaster there today? And you know we we
went what our sportscaster? Yes, Keith is? Is he in
the studio? I like him? He seems to get it.
That was what I was told, Carl Sagan said. And
they relate this to me and I went, oh, come on,
because now apparently he listens to the station all the time.
He loves the rock and roll, and he likes you

(53:21):
doing the sports. He says, he's not a big sports fan,
but he enjoys your work. Well again, I can't possibly
describe how much space there was between us in terms
of renown. I was in April nineteen seventy eight, a
year and three months away from getting my first paycheck

(53:44):
for my first full time job in broadcasting, which would
pay me at an annual rate of sixteen five hundred dollars.
I had not made ten thousand dollars in broadcasting in
my entire life. To this point, I was pretty well
known at the radio station. There were occasionally, maybe once
every other month, fan letters, but literally the pile of

(54:08):
them was less than ten high. In my entire career,
I'd been paid to cover Cornell football Games by United
Press International for fifteen dollars a game, and trust me,
I was underpaid, but it was pretty good money. Fifteen
dollars to go watch that. Oh but Carl Sagan, Carl

(54:28):
Sagan knew Johnny Carson was on his show all the time,
had done not just the Cosmos series, but series after
series for PBS. Follow ups they sold in those early days,
they sold bootleg copies of Cosmos, which would appear, I
guess in nineteen eighty. So he was already famous before

(54:50):
Cosmos when this story takes place. And he'd done countless
shows for PBS already, and as I said on the
Tonight Show, all the time joking about the origins of
the universe, and he wanted to do an interview only
with me, and only live, and I said, well, when
are we going to do it? As soon as you

(55:11):
get in the booth, he's on hold. So one of
the things I did discover in that moment of what
should have been panic was a sense of calm, which
was okay. He won the Pulitzer Prize. What's the name
of the book, something about dragons. The book was called
The Dragons of Eden. Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.

(55:38):
This was not his forte. His forte was The Cosmos.
But Carl Sagan had won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction
and his first interview, as it turned out, his first interview.
He hadn't called anybody else back yet, He hadn't called
the Associated Press or CBS News. He wanted to talk
to Keith Alderman, the nineteen year old sportscaster who he'd

(56:02):
never met and in fact would never meet. And I
got in the booth and they dropped a record, and
whoever was the disc jockey said, we have some breaking news.
Doctor Carl Sagan of Cornell has won a Pulitzer prize.
Keith Olderman is here with an interview with him live
on WVVR. And I went, yes, I am doctor Sagan.

(56:24):
Are you there, Yes, I am Keith. It's a pleasure
to talk to you. And he sounded excited by talking
to me, And I then learned the other lesson, which is,
there is a possibility that you are as big a
deal to the interviewee as he is to you, as
unlikely as this fame gradient would have suggested. And it's
still to me, as I said, it's still it's bigger

(56:47):
than me interviewing Muhammad Ali. Because I was a professional
in a field that was much smaller than it is now,
and I was with the worldwide cable news network CNN.
I had some chops. This was basically Carl Sagan being
interviewed by somebody who who could have been a kid
in his class, but wasn't on his favorite radio station.

(57:13):
I would have assumed that would have been I don't know,
km ET in Los Angeles or something, or at least KNX.
So we talked about this, and I said, what do
you think the impact is on our understanding of human
evolution and the intelligence evolution of you winning a book

(57:36):
that now will have a Pulitzer Prize sticker on it
and be sold to people who don't know anything about it,
but just you're buying it because it says Pulitzer Prize.
And he prayed with laughter. He went, yeah, that was
the first thing I thought of. Obviously, it's going to
make me some more money, but my god, how many
people will now read this book just because it won
this stupid prize. And he said he was shocked that

(57:56):
it won this because he thought it was a good
book and he enjoyed talking about the subject, but he'd
never really seriously considered it until he'd been asked to
talk about a few years before, I think at the
University of Toronto, and he went off on a riff
and what you know, I should study this and try
to find out what would this make a good show.
And this was part of the thing that I guess

(58:17):
generated the big picture idea of cosmos and the evolution
of the universe leading to the evolution of man, and
the evolution of man being dependent on the evolution of
his own intelligence. So we must have gone on for
ten minutes, and he was charming and funny and self deprecating,
and I saw immediately that as good an interviewer as

(58:39):
Johnny Carson was the key ingredient in the joyfulness and
the fun of the Johnny Carson interviews with Carl Sagan
was not some sort of great preparation on Johnny Carson's part,
not some sort of great level of experience on Johnny
Carson's part, but the fact that Carl Sagan liked to
talk and was open and funny, and listened to the

(59:00):
questions carefully and said things that were almost designed to
let you come up with a follow up question. That
was when I realized that one of the greatest processes
for doing a good interview is to not have an
awful lot of time to prepare for it, to have
maybe no more than two or three questions in mind
that you can jot down in case you freeze. This
will force you to listen to what the other guy

(59:23):
is saying and then say, tell me more about that.
This fascinates me. Whether or not it fascinates you is irrelevant.
He wants to talk about it. He just told you so.
So at the end of this interview, I said, congratulations
again and on everything, and please give my regards. I
don't know why I said this, Please give my regards
to Johnny Carson the next time you are out there.

(59:44):
This is one of the great ambitions of my life
to be on the Tonight Show. Oh, I'll see if
I can arrange for you to be a guest. Ha
ha ha. I was a guest on The Tonight Show
twenty five years later. Like to the day, it wasn't
Johnny Carson, but it was still The Tonight Show. But
the punchline to this is having discovered and one of

(01:00:05):
the most famous professors at any American University in the
late twentieth century, maybe in the whole of the twentieth century.
Carl Sagan, one of the pioneers of cosmetics, cosmetology, one
of the guys who mainstreamed the whole idea of the
Big Bang, one of the people who brought everything from

(01:00:27):
physics to creationism together in one unified TV shtick, was
a fan of mine, having discovered this, having seen this,
and knowing that his course was majors only except by
professor Professor's permission, Do you think I went to him

(01:00:54):
or called his office as I approached my last two
semesters at Cornell in the fall of nineteen seventy eight
and spring of nineteen seventy nine, and said, Hey, I'd
love to take the course. Can't you have room for
one more? I'll sit in the back. Do you think
I did that, having had, by the way, in case

(01:01:14):
I was worried about whether or not i'd pass. I
know had a personal relationship with the professor. I was
his favorite sportscaster. I was his favorite person at the
Carnell radio station. I was the only person he'd do
the interview with. He didn't want to talk to the newscaster.
He wanted to talk to me, and when, by the way,
I asked him about the other condition that it be live,
I said, can I use parts of this again later

(01:01:35):
in an edited form so we can run the whole
thing again, but I'd like to use Oh, of course
it's you. You did a great job. Oh my goodness,
and of course what would you do? That's four credits
sitting out there, even on the most basic, greedy, selfish
level imaginable four gut credits with doctor Carl Sagan. Do

(01:01:57):
you think I scheduled the course? No? Can you guess
why I did not schedule the course when I needed
byway wherever he fit into this? I had leftover requirements
in the Agriculture College, in physics, in biology, and I
forget in chemistry. Those three areas I needed four more

(01:02:18):
credits in each of them. Do you think I took
the course? No? And the answer to why I did
not take the course and did not ever meet doctor
Carl Sagan, my fan, the course met at nine o'clock
in the morning, and I didn't want to get up
that early. Still true, you make crazy decisions when you're

(01:02:53):
nineteen years old and just trying to get out of
Cornell and seven semesters. What can I tell you? I've
done all the damage I can do here. I am
remorseful than I never met him though. Thanks for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration

(01:03:15):
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever
in the Cosmos, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the
Ouldroin theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by

(01:03:35):
the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was the
Eternal Universal Traveler, my friend Stevie van zandt Wondering why
there's no tape of me interviewing doctor Sagan. I couldn't
find it. It's there somewhere. Everything else was as ever.
My fault, my fault, and Carl Sagan's for encouraging me.

(01:04:01):
That's Countdown for today, Day ninety nine. Of America, held
host just three hundred and sixty four days until the
scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term.
Unless Musk removes him sooner, or the actuarial tables due,
or the Attorney's General due. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.
As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember, impeach Trump.

(01:04:24):
It will not work now. It will, however, win the
Democrats the midterms. If there are midterms and I want
polling on a presidential recall vote, let's put some pressure
on here, even if you can't have a presidential recall
vote until next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is

(01:05:04):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts