December 30, 2022 • 51 mins
EPISODE 102: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT No. 1: George Santos is the Brian Williams of politics. I joked last week "If that IS your real name." Now there's question as to whether or not it is. And about where he went to HIGH SCHOOL. And the time he claimed he was black. And about how he could get Kevin McCarthy elected speaker - and get him fired later. As the Feds begin to follow his equally dubious campaign money, I repeat my plea to Democrats: don't try to keep him from being seated by the House of Representatives next Tuesday. After it dawned on me that the comp for Santos is my unfortunate former friend Brian Williams, it also dawned on me that there might still be a way for Santos to worm his way out of it. And that's also reflected in the saga of the George Santos of 1954: Congressman Douglas Stringfellow of Arizona.
B-Block (18:36) SPECIAL COMMENT No. 2: There is method to the January 6th Committee's madness of waiting until the Christmas-New Year's Break to release its final report and these fascinating deposition transcripts. I think they did it to shield the recommendation to invoke the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment. As a bonus yesterday we got testimony that Kim Guilfoyle is an idiot, and that Melania Trump lived in mortal fear of being seen in her robe by Rudy Giuliani.
B-Block (33:51) IN SPORTS: The death of Pele, an analysis of the athletic gifts that made him his game's greatest ever, and his surprising legacy in New York and the United States. (37:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Bad reporting at The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Politico is no match for - as Scottish tweeter Al Kennedy wrote - "I have to hand it to Andrew Tate, this is the first time I've seen someone be so outwitted by a teenager that they end up in jail without it involving a dog that solves fake ghost mysteries."
C-Block (43:21) FRIDAYS WITH JAMES THURBER: His most reprinted story: "The Night The Bed Fell."
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Protect George Santos at all costs. I have a lot
(00:27):
of thoughts about the January six Committee report, and especially
the revelation that Milania Trump was terrified that because of
the coup, Rudy Giuliani was gonna see her walking around
in her robe. But first, I love George Santos with
every fiber of my being. American political history is filled
(00:47):
with other Congressmen, other candidates, other senators, other presidents, other
pundits who have been walking time bombs for their own party.
But George Santos is unique. All previous walking time bombs
have eventually detonated and then dispersed. But George Santos is
(01:08):
the Sisyphus of walking political time bombs. He blows up,
he does his collateral damage to this Republican or that one.
The smoke clears, and then he blows up again. He
is the bomb cyclone of congenital liars. It has now
become evident, as newly as last night, that Santos could
(01:30):
not only become the poster boy for not just Republican dishonesty,
but Republican moronic dishonesty and Republican laugh out loud, stupid dishonesty,
and he could not only cost Kevin McCarthy the House speakership,
but he might be able to first get McCarthy a
hamstrong speakership beholden to lunatics like himself, and he might
(01:53):
then be able to get McCarthy fired later because per Politico,
McCarthy support for the speakership vote will be so razor
thin that he will have to out to the Freedom Caucus.
And if Santos has to quit at some point, that
support will get thinner and thinner, and the Freedom Caucus
(02:13):
will be able to force McCarthy out the first time
he does not do what they want. And remember, the
Freedom Caucus does not exist to legislate nor even to
block democratic policy. It exists only to get its members reelected.
By keeping their supporters in a perpetual state of paranoid
(02:33):
xenophobic agitation between them, George Santos and the Freedom Caucus
can reduce the Republican House majority into purposeless, ineffective arguing chaos.
Thank you, lord, let me repeat my plea Democrats make
all the calls for santos resignation that your conscience or
(02:58):
your constituency demands, but nobody. Nobody is to file emotion
to prevent him from being seated in Congress next week.
Protect George Santos at all costs. I mean, think of
all we know about Santos that we did not know
(03:18):
twenty four hours ago, and think what this list will
look like by next week. Like George Santos claimed to
be black. July, he tweeted, MLK did not die for
us to go back to segregation. As a bi racial person,
I stand tall against segregation of any kind. A respondent asked,
(03:42):
without rancor, how are you by racial? There are three races, Black, Caucasian, Asian,
which two are you? On July six, Santos responded, Caucasian
and black unquote. Like George Santos hates those who are
compelled to dishonesty in public life, August tweeted all caps
(04:05):
Biden is a pathological liar. Like George Santos is opposed
to people posing as Republican candidates just to take and
make money. October nine, he tweeted, I'm tired of grifters
and frauds in politics. We need to get serious if
we are going to win in two like his mother's
(04:30):
family has lived in Brazil since the late eighteen hundreds
and she was also born there. But she was also
also born a white woman from Belgium who immigrated to
the United States. Like last week, I joked George Santos,
if that is your real name. Well, it turned out
(04:52):
he claimed his mother's real name was Zabrovsky, and there
is evidence he used the names Zabrovsky himself and fund
raised it off of it. Total fabrication. Apparently, like George,
George Santos is opposed to corruption. March, he tweeted, content
of character is what is important and what we need
(05:14):
to be teaching our children. Like speaking of teaching, he
didn't just lie about his college education. He lied about
his high school education. His parents quote sent me to
a good prep school, which was horrors Man Prep in
the Bronx, and in my senior year prep school, unfortunately
my parents fell on hard times. The first thing to
(05:35):
go was the prep school horrors Man, a rival school
of my own prep school, obviously not quite as good
as my own prep school, and as meticulous and bluntly,
righteously venomous about anybody who claimed to go there. When
they did not, as all the prep schools are horrors
man says conclusively, George Santos never went to horrors Man like.
(05:58):
While working at Goldman Sacks, he got up on quote
the stage at the largest private equity conference in the world, Salt,
run by Anthony Scaramucci, and he berated his employer, well,
I did that, just two problems there. Scaramucci confirmed Santos
never went to any SALT conference and of course criticizing
(06:20):
his employer, Santos never worked for Goldman Sachs Like. If
you want to attend his quote swearing in celebrations next Tuesday,
for a hundred dollars or five dollars for v I
P S. You get a round trip bus from New
York to Washington, you get a tour of the Capitol
grounds courtesy team Santos, and you get lunch. And the
(06:42):
date of the swearing in on the invitation is January three,
which is three sixty one days ago. And lastly, like
the Republican District Attorney investigating to see what crimes, if any,
Santos is actually committed, has since been joined by the
Queen's District Attorney. The New York State District attorney and
(07:05):
the U S attorney in Brooklyn who is apparently following
the money. I mean, at this rate, by next week
George Santos will be under investigation by the World Court
at the Hague. I cannot say this too many times.
Democrats leave Georgia alone. There is only one caveat to this,
(07:32):
and it is just as serious as I have not
been to this point. It is possible that George santos
drama ends tragically, or much more likely, it ends with
some evidence or at least some claim that George Santos
is not just the lying, manipulative, perfectly untrustworthy Republican, but
(07:53):
there is something literally, psychologically or emotionally wrong with him,
and he will make some statement recognizing that fact or
claiming it. For a week now, George Santos has made
me think of Brian Williams, and I have told you
before that I was actually at the New York Rangers
hockey game in the crowd, the game during which Brian
(08:18):
Williams self destructed the day he publicly took the story
of a scary but not directly life threatening experience during
the invasion of Iraq, where some helicopters that had flown
hours before his had been hit by fire, and over
a decade he had gradually inflated this story a little
bit here, and a little bit more there, and a
(08:38):
little bit even more than until the day finally arrived
at this hockey game in when Brian Williams had the
public address announcer tell of an Army sergeant major who
aided quote Brian Williams and his NBC news team after
their Chinook helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire.
(08:59):
There was no enemy fire, there was no hit. They
were an Iraq back. That was the tipping point at
which Iraq veterans began to complain about the lives of
Brian Williams, many of whom had known many of them
for many years. Williams would eventually be demoted from anchor
of NBC Nightly News to part timer at MSNBC, But
(09:22):
as somebody who had known him eighteen years by that point,
it was clear to me that Brian had something psychologically
wrong with him. I liked Brian. I wanted to help him.
He didn't have a lot of friends at NBC. I
wrote to one NBC executive who was still a friend
of mine, get him drunk, take him into his office,
(09:42):
scatter some empty liquor bottles all around, and then calling
the photographers from the New York Daily News in the
New York Post and explain Brian's gone to rehab. You
don't have to say anything else, because rehab is to
get out of jail free card of the twenty one century.
He comes back in a month and they will throw
a parade for him down Broadway. To a former boss
(10:04):
of mine still at NBC, I sent this email, put
him on tonight and at the start of nightly have
him say this, I'm taking a voluntary leave of absence
for filling the blank days, and during that time, the
entirety of my salary will be donated to any military
charity you can think of. Because while I did not
intend to exaggerate my experience Interack, being hit by small
(10:27):
arms fire is bad enough, being behind the helicopter that
got hit with an RPG is worse. Nevertheless, I did
exaggerate it, and a newsman cannot make a mistake like
that without consequences. Thank you for your forbearance. Now for
the rest of tonight's newscast, here is any other NBC
employees name here I added this PostScript. It was true
(10:49):
in Brian Williams, and it is true today for almost
anybody in this situation do this, and he could still
swerve out of this. It may seem far fetched that
a congressman elect to has lied about everything except for
the fact that his name is George, could also still
(11:10):
swerve out of this. But he could. There is a
faint warning bell in the story of the George Santos off.
He was Republican representative Douglas Stringfellow, of Utah War hero.
As The Washington Post noted, string Fellow rocketed from local
disc jockey to up and coming Republican star by explaining
(11:33):
he had been in the OSS during the war. The
predecessor to the c I a that he had gone
into Nazi Germany on a secret mission. He had captured
the physicist who was leading Hitler's effort to develop the
atomic bomb, which thus stopped the Nazis from getting nukes.
But he and the gang were captured. He was the
sole survivor of his unit. He was sent to a
(11:56):
concentration camp. They made him watch as they tortured his friends.
They shoved bamboo strips under his nails, then let them
on fire. Then they lit a pile of other people
on fire and made him run over the pile of them.
Then he escaped the concentration camp. And then when he
got home, just as the war was ending, he stepped
on a landmine and had to relearn how to walk.
(12:20):
The landmine part was true, the rest not so much.
None of it, and it would has proved that none
of it was true. String Fellow did not resign nor
give back any of the awards he'd been given, as
he told this war story again and again on his
(12:41):
campaign trail, and after he was elected after one term
in the House, the Republicans found somebody else and nominated
him instead. String Fellow fell into obscurity. He died in
nineteen sixty six at the age of just forty four,
and apart from the obvious tragedy of that half a
century later, relatives found the manuscript of an unpublished autobiography
(13:04):
string Fellow had written, in which he said that until
literally months before he was exposed, he truly believed all
of that nightmare had happened to him, right down to
walking over the pile of people being burned alive. String
Fellow wrote that the delusion must have formed in his
(13:25):
mind while he was hospitalized recovering from that serious landmine injury.
If the string Fellow story was happening today, he could
easily have been diagnosed with PTSD or a similar internal conflagration,
or if he didn't have anything really wrong with it,
(13:46):
he could have claimed it. I don't think any one
of us actually wishes George Santos any permanent harm, not
if there is a bona fide medical or physical or
emotional reason. He has been lying so extraordinarily thoroughly provided
he stops lying. But from the practical purposes of the
(14:07):
politics of the new year, of one party is trying
to destroy democracy, one party is trying to preserve it.
Strategy political strategy cannot be ignored here. And while it
would be great to see George Santos redeem himself later,
for now, we need him exactly where he is right now.
(14:29):
We need him to keep talking, We need him to
keep undermining the GOP and Kevin McCarthy, we need him
to keep lying, and we need to protect George Santos
at all costs. Still ahead, another commentary is your Lucky Day.
(15:04):
There is real meaning and a real strategic value in
the late interview transcript dumps from the January six committee,
like the one yesterday, And then there are the fun parts,
like Milania Trump complaining that the coup attempt met too
many meetings in the White House residence and she was
afraid Giuliani was gonna see her walking around in her
rob sports. The Greatest has died, hele in Memoriam Worst
(15:28):
arrested because of a pizza box in a video he
made to try to own credit Tunberg on Twitter at
its Fridays with James thurber All. That is NEXTUS discountdown.
(15:51):
In a world of rational people, the conspiracy theory that
January six was entirely the fault of some guy you've
never heard of named Ray Epps would have been put
to bed permanently with the latest release of under interview
transcrip yesterday by the House Committee. But this is not
a world of rational people. It's America in the waning
days of two and there are still Republicans. Epps was
(16:14):
in the Arizona cell of the oath Keepers, and he
is on video from January five telling Trump supporters to
go to the Capitol. Then when they all got there
the next day, he did not go into the Capitol.
He in fact offered to help police turn back the insurrectionists,
and he is on tape trying to talk people into
leaving the grounds. The January six committee report made no
(16:39):
mention of him for this. The right decided that ray
Epps was an FBI plant or Antifa, or part of
a breach team inciting the insurrection, or he works directly
for Emmanuel Goldstein. Tucker Carlson lunatic, who is incidentally in
one of those streets in which everything he touches dies
(17:00):
stay tuned for worse persons, insisted earlier this week that
the Ry six Committee failed because it did not send
a criminal referral about ray Epps. Congressman Thomas Massey, Lunatic,
accused the committee of failing to release the Epps deposition.
Then yesterday it released the Apps deposition. There is no
(17:21):
there there in the Epps deposition. The acam's Razor explanation
is not just obvious but correct. Apps, like dozens of
those who were charged criminally in the attempted coup, testified
under oath that he thought the capital was going to
be open to the public on January six. Now, this
might have been a dumb conclusion, but dumb conclusions are
(17:44):
not criminal. When it turned out the capital was not open,
he bailed out, quoting his deposition, I saw people crawling
all over the Capitol, climbing the walls. It made me
kind of ill to my stomach. It had gone beyond
to what I wanted it to be. They hijacked this cause.
When they hijacked it and it turned the way, all
(18:05):
credibility was lost. He also testified under oath that the
only time he has ever worked for the government was
when he was in the Marines. Case closed, not that
any of them will believe Case closed. Epps Is testimony
is important. It underscores the madness and the complete hypocrisy
(18:26):
of the January six insurrections, and more importantly, their rationalizations.
They had to do it for America in seventeen seventy six,
and Trump won and stopped the steel and this is
our house and where's Dancy? But it was all false
flag so the government could arrest somebody or something. I'm
(18:46):
still not sure. Ray Epps is my favorite part of
the latest transcript dump. There is Stephanie Grisham insisting Milania
Trump was pissed about the constant coop meetings being held
inside the White House residential areas, because that meant Sidney
Powell or Rudy Giuliani might suddenly appear in her personal space.
Quoting Grisham, she was very upset because nobody would give
(19:07):
her a heads up and was she walking around in
a robe? That kind of thing, speaking of partially undressed,
There was this question, but I do want to ask you,
do you know somebody named Ali Akbar Kimberly Gilfoyle. Answer
is that what terrorists yell Ali Akbar? Now I think
it is am I wrong. I do not know anyone
(19:29):
named Allah Akbar. Question, there's an individual named Ali Akbar
who goes by Ali Alexander. Kimberly Gilfoyle. I've heard of
Ali Alexander. God, what a dope and a voice on
her like the public address system at Yankee Stadium only
louder I met her in two thousand five or so
(19:53):
at MSNBC when Dan Abrams was trying to hire her
to be his guest host. Yeah, that's what he was
trying to do with her. And it was amazing that
she consistently remembers to breathe anyway. On a meta level,
there is one question lurking behind yesterday's transcript, dumped on
all the other releases of the last ten days from
(20:14):
this committee. What kinds of idiots release an investigation into
the worst domestic terrorist attack in our history, the most
heinous attempt to subvert freedom in our history, the most
threatening attack on democracy in our history? What kinds of
idiots do that at ten pm on the Thursday before
Christmas as a nationwide snow calamity looms, And what kinds
(20:36):
of idiots follow that up by releasing the final transcripts
of the interviews for their investigations at five pm on
the Friday before Christmas, and then during the week before
New Year's I have spent a week fuming about this
and raging about this, and wondering how Liz Cheney and
Benny Thompson and Jamie Raskin led us down at the
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final moment, And after long and painful thought, I think
I have the answer. What kinds of idiots do this? Really?
Really smart idiots? Consider the most extraordinary of all the
recommendations by the House Select Committee on January six is
not the set of criminal referrals, not the play by
(21:17):
play of Trump's sedition, not the damning documentation of a
thousand criminals who should spend the lives rotting in prison
for their perfidy and betrayal. Those things are invaluable, but
they are surprising only in some details and some specifics.
The most extraordinary thing this committee did comes on page
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seven sixteen of its final report. Quote. The Committee believes
that those who took an oath to protect and defend
the Constitution and then on January six engaged in insurrection
can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office,
whether federal or state, civilian or military, absent at least
(22:00):
two thirds of Congress acting to remove the disability pursuant
to Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, permanently barred from
getting public office. Of course, that's correct, and the committee
members are hardly the first call to invoke the insurrection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of us called for
(22:20):
it on the night of January. But to see this
in a congressional report is different than in any other
context that could be imagined, except in a criminal indictment.
And yet, at the same time, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment
in a congressional report is like juggling nitro glycerin and
dynamite at the same time. Of course, any report containing
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it had to be released virtually in the middle of
the night, in the middle of the holiday, in the
middle of the transition from a democratic Congress through a
Republican one. To do it earlier would have actually risked
handing the antidemocracy forces of foot in this nation a
legislative victory. It would have been ideal if a wreck
inmendation about the fourteenth Amendment had come at any point, saying,
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but even then the risk would have been tangible. Say
the committee had reported not at Christmas but at Thanksgiving
or Halloween, and the House had acted on a bill,
say the one later introduced by the Rhode Island Congress
and David Cicillini, and actually voted to bar Trump from
seeking further office, or Trump and Meadows or Trump and
(23:31):
Meadows and everybody else. Release that finding in April or
June or September, and the political pressure to pass a bill,
and since the means of enforcing the fourteenth Amendment are unclear,
probably just a symbolic bill, the pressure to do that
would have been unbearable on the Democrats. And what then,
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when the Republicans took control of the House, they are
already bent on perverting the January six committee itself into
some assina smear against Nancy Pelosi or farcical defense of
the trader Trump. What if they had repealed some House
action invoking the fourteenth Amendment. What if they had passed
new legislation superseding the recommendation to go for the fourteenth Amendment.
(24:14):
What if, since the Republican party platform is to see
legitimate grievances and legal actions taken by Democrats and create
false fun house mirror versions of them with which to
attack Democrats, what if Republicans introduced a measure to bar
Nancy Pelosi or anybody else from public service on some
specious claim of violation of the Fourteenth on January six
(24:38):
two one. I have never before accepted the argument that
we should not act because the fascist bullies might then retaliate.
There bullies retaliation is all they know. But in this case,
would it really have been better to have actually passed
an anti Trump fourteenth Amendment piece of legislation only to
(24:59):
see it undone by the Republicans a month or two
months later? Would it really have been better to see
then be able to hold up a past bill and
portray it not as the cynical manipulation it would have been,
but as some kind of triumphant defense of the law
and triumphant defense of Trump. I think the Committee, in
(25:20):
the context of the timeline we and they are actually
stuck in. I think the Committee waited until its recommendation
could not be acted on in the House so that
it could not be reacted against in a coming Republican House,
thus reducing it to a political football and rendering its
meaning shallow, if not entirely empty. As it is, the
(25:43):
recommendation about the fourteenth Amendment and everything else in that
final report goes intact into the political atmosphere, into the
historical record, and into the lapse of the Department of Justice,
which still has at least two years to seek indictments
and convictions that cannot be overturned by Republican sabotage. The
(26:04):
report itself is now fixed in time. The Republicans can
assail it, they can complain about it, they can campaign
on it. But even such transparent con men as Congressman
James Comer of Kentucky have said they have no plans
to investigate the committee or its report, which is a
Republican one eighty from before the elections. That I think
(26:26):
is why the timing was so weird and so initially disturbing.
Sneak the document out intact. Your audience is history and
special counsel Jack Smith. The post report release of the
last depositions, that's a little harder to suss out, But
I suspect there was method to this madness as well.
(26:47):
What Bar and Chow and Ivanka Trump and many others
said in them actually seems almost responsible and patriotic, almost
reflects well on the Party of Insurrection. Pats Zippoloni and
others wrote a note card and over a span of
three hours, repeatedly handed it to Trump, urging him to
(27:07):
say or tweet what was on it, namely, anyone who
entered the Capitol illegally should leave immediately, and he refused.
Bar says Mitch McConnell, called him right after the election
and hopes that he bar would tamp down Trump's rumors
and conspiracy theories. If Anka, says Susan Collins, actually called
her mid insurrection in hopes she could get her father
(27:29):
to stop it. I mean, you read that and you
think January six was actually so serious. Even Susan Collins noticed,
maybe like burying the call to utilize the fourteenth Amendment.
Maybe there is more strategy that pertains to those depositions
that I cannot see. Maybe not, but they did little
damage to those around Trump, And once again it may
(27:51):
just have been a case of slip this stuff out
to the public and the historical record before the Republicans
take over and burn bag all of it. With this
past week to think of about it, beyond suggesting the
wrath of the fourteenth Amendment, I don't see any new
big picture implications for the January six Committee report that
we all had not seen previously. There are the Max
(28:14):
Miller quotes that on January four, Trump did he indeed
suggest bringing in ten thousand National Guardsmen not to protect
the capital from his thugs, but to escort and protect
him and those thugs as they all went to the capital,
and to guard them from left winger counter protesters, you know,
the invisible ones that never appeared. Ryan Goodman from the
(28:37):
website Just Security says he found one smoking gun. It
was known that Trump had called Ronald McDaniel, the RNC chairperson,
and then put John Eastman on the phone with her,
and Eastman told McDaniel, we want you to organize this
fake collector's scheme. Now, Goodman notes there is sworn testimony
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that McDaniel then called Trump back and said, quote, I
accept your request, not Eastman's, but Trump's request. There was
one detail that should be a career ender for a reporter.
It certainly will not be. Cassidy Hutchinson worries to her
first attorney, Stephen Passantino, that Maggie Haberman knows that she
(29:20):
had testified to the committee. Don't worry, says the man
who had been Trump's White House ethics attorney. Maggie's friendly
to us, will be fine. Where I running the New
York Times and read that I would have fired Maggie
Hayberman on the spot, of course, where I running the
New York Times, I would have fired Maggie Hayreman in
two thousand sixteen, different decade, different Judith Miller, same lack
(29:44):
of integrity. So on the meta level, the January six
Committee probably got the most out of its material over
the summer and by the strategy of holding back the
fourteenth Amendment proposal so it could not be turned against democracy.
But unstated and transcending all of this is one truth
about the Committee's report that is so simple that it
(30:04):
can be easily missed. The report's greatest value is this.
It is an endless sequence of dueling gloves to be
taken off and theatrically slapped against the face of Jack Smith,
the face of Merrick Garland, and the face of the
rest of the Department of Justice. And the slap simply
(30:27):
is this, We demand you indict Trump, and do it fast,
and do it hard. This is Sports Center. Wait, check
(30:52):
that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports.
The concern and the sense of crisis during the World
Soccer Cups Adley was warranted. Edson Arantes Dona Cimento died
in Brazil yesterday, age two, complications and advancements of colon cancer.
(31:14):
Pele the greatest player in the history of soccer football worldwide.
You know that, you know the statistic and sixty seven
professional games and eighty three goals, seventy seven goals for
his national team, three World Cups for Brazil. The beautiful smile,
the constant salesmanship of the beautiful game in the multinational grief.
(31:38):
You are not seeing much about what made Palis so great.
I am not an expert on this sport, but I
did play it in school, and I don't think his
brilliance was difficult really to assess. Pele was an acrobat,
the way Michael Jordan could shoot a basketball with perfect
accuracy even if neither of his feet was anywhere near
the floor. Pell was like that, only with every part
(32:01):
of his body airborne horizontal. Well then, just as scissors
kicked back over his own head and the goalie frozen
in horror as it hit the back of the net
behind him on the ground, Pelee had even better body control.
He could start and stop and start again, or fake
left and go right around a defender, at all the
(32:21):
while dribbling the ball with his foot. Some people have
done these things once or twice in a lifetime. He
did them once or twice every game. His time in
this country is not the key part of his story,
but it is important to remember. In the hours here
after his passing, he retired at age thirty four in Brazil,
(32:44):
and was promptly talked into coming out of retirement by,
in no particular order, the Brazilian government. Henry Kissinger and
executives of the New York Cosmos and the North American
Soccer League. Professional soccer had existed in this country for
eight years, and it was notable only for Kird breaking
(33:05):
totals of empty seats. The Cosmos played in Downing Stadium
on Randall's Island, which is about four thirty acres in
the middle of the East River. Only it don't have
water on it. It's most famous feature is support statins
for New York's Triboro Bridge. As of the morning of June,
(33:26):
the Cosmos record in the little stadium there on Randall's Island.
The record crowd was six thousand that day. With pell
added to their roster, they put eighteen thousand in the
stands somehow, and ABC televised the game nationally, and within
a year the Cosmos were playing not in the middle
(33:46):
of East River. They were playing at Giants Stadium, where
a seven playoff game in a thunderstorm with Pela on
the Cosmos through seventy seven thousand fans. Two years earlier,
the record had been six thousand when he retired from
the Cosmos and four good On October one of that year,
he played the first half of a game for his
(34:09):
Brazilian team Santos, and they played the second half of
his American team at Cosmos that game, which mattered nothing
in any standings anywhere. That game drew seventy five thousand.
The enormous crowds did not outlast Peal's time here, but
they showed what soccer could do in America and could
(34:29):
yet do. And if the sport ever gets anywhere near
that big here, somebody better name a stadium after him
or maybe twelve of them. Still ahead Fridays with Thurber
(34:55):
maybe his most famous story, certainly the most reprinted one
in books everywhere. The Night the Bed fell First, the
daily roundup of the misgriants, morons and dunning Kruger effect
specimens who constitute today's worst prisons in the world. The
Bronze to the New York Times once again. The Times
is absolutely intent on turning every mouse into an elephant,
(35:17):
and every elephant into a mouse. As you may know,
nearly a year ago Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now
trying to destroy Ukraine's power infrastructure in hopes of freezing
Ukraine's population to death. The Times headline on this topic
hardline positions by Russia and Ukraine. Dim hope for peace
talks quite intransigent those Ukrainians, that hardline position, demanding Russia
(35:43):
not try to destroy them and kill all their people.
But wait, there's more. Same issue of the newspaper, Times headline,
George Santos is in a class of his own, but
other politicians have embellished their resumes too. Well, if he's
in a class of his own, why are you equating
him to those who are not in a class of
his own? That's what class his own means. It's both sides.
(36:09):
Is hum? What about is um? And the destination point
here is to preserve the Times. Access journalism of the
worst order. Speaking of access journalism, the runners up we
have a team, Ryan Lizza of Politico and Olivia Newsy
of New York Magazine. Anyway, that's how she pronounced it.
When I knew her, it might be NEWTSI or Nuzzy.
(36:31):
One thing I know, she can't make up her mind news.
He was once a promising political writer, but has developed
into an access journalist. She recently published a long, really
long piece on Trump that got absolutely no pick up anywhere,
even after Trump complained about it and attacked News He's looks.
(36:51):
But that was not because Ryan Lizza didn't try. He's
one of the editors of the Daily Political newsletter and
The Day News. He's piece ran Ryan Lizz's newsletter ran
five paragraphs about it and described it as a quote
rolic look under the hood and said news he scored
an incisive interview. And nowhere was it mentioned that Liza
and Newsy are engaged. The free publicity for the fiance's
(37:15):
magazine article is just coincidental, no doubt OI. But the
gold goes to Andrew Tate the other day was a
misogynist online influencer hiding out apparently in Romania. And if
you had ever heard of him, it was probably because
Tucker Carlson interviewed him once and defended him and then said,
(37:35):
they're telling us he's a criminal. Okay, has he been charged?
Four months later, the answer is yeah, apparently thanks to Greta,
Tuneberg and Pizza. Tate tried to troll Greta about the
thirty three cars he claims to own and how he
wanted her to send him her email so he could
write her a lengthy email and detail how many emissions
(37:58):
his cars are spewing into the atmosphere, and she wrote
back and said, sure, here's my email. I'll clean this
up a little. My email is small d energy at
Getta life dot com. Tate was so owned by this
that he put together a two minute video be rating
her and posted it everywhere, and then Romanian authorities came
(38:19):
to his hid out and arrested him because in the
video Tate included a pizza box, which is clearly from
a pizza chain that operates only in Romania. The Romanian
government had apparently been waiting for evidence that he was
actually in Bucharest. Their lawyer now confirms Tate and his
brother have been detained in a human trafficking and rape investigation.
(38:41):
Andrew do not mess with credit. Toneberg plays Tate two
days worse person. And I have argued before that James
(39:07):
Thurber is the greatest American humorist. And it dawns on
me that the argument is not unlike the idea that
show Hey Otani of the Los Angeles Angels is almost
automatically the most valuable player in baseball each year because
he is an All Star hitter and an All Star
pitcher in the same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer,
(39:27):
and in his spare time it was an equally brilliant,
almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple
drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations.
His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
so I'll just read and I will read you now
(39:48):
in this episode what is probably his most famous story
from My life and hard Times, The Night the bed fell.
But James Thurber, I suppose that the high water mark
of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the
bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
(40:12):
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
it five or six times. Then it does a piece
of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and very similitude to what is admittedly a
somewhat incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened
(40:34):
then that my father had decided to sleep in the
attic one night to be away where he could think.
My mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the
old wooden bed up there was unsafe. It was wobbly,
and the heavy headboard would crash down on Father's head
in case the bed fell and kill him. There was
no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten,
(40:57):
he closed the attic door behind him and went up
the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard aminous creakings as
he crawled called into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in
the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared
some days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone
six or eight days, and returned growling and out of
temper with the news that the Federal Union was run
(41:20):
by a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of
the Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch.
We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first
cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he
was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It
was his feeling that if he were not awakened every
hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He
(41:43):
had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring
at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this.
He slept in my room, and I told him that
I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit
breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly.
He tested me the first night, which I had suspected
he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing,
(42:06):
had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however,
and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears
a little, but he took the precaution of putting a
glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at
the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse
him until he was almost gone. He said he would
(42:28):
sniff the camphor. A powerful revivor, Briggs was not the
only member of his family and his crotchets. Old Aunt
Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with two
fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she
was destined to die on South High Street because she
had been born on South High Street and married on
(42:48):
South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Chauffe, who
never went to bed at night without the fear that
a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform
under her door through a tube to avert this calamity,
For she was in greater dread of an aesthetics than
of losing her household goods. She always piled her money, silverware,
(43:09):
and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom,
with a note reading, this is all I have. Please
take it and do not use your chloroform, as this
is all I have. Aunt Gracie Chow also had a
burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She
was confident that burglars had been getting into her house
every night for forty years. The fact that she never
(43:32):
missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary,
she always claimed that she scared them off before they
could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When
she went to bed, she piled where she could get
at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house.
Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she
would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband,
(43:57):
who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long
ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep
or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he
would not respond to her, tugging and pulling, so that
presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly,
and he was shoe down the hall in one direction,
(44:18):
and it's mate down the hall in the other direction.
Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a
couple of pair. But I am straying from the remarkable
incidents that took place during the night that the bed
fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed.
The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their
(44:39):
occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred.
In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom,
where my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang
in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers,
briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one.
(44:59):
My brother Roy was in a room across the hall
from ours. Our bull terrier Wrack, slept in the hall.
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs
which are made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only
by putting up flat with the middle section the two
sides which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a
drop leaf table. When these sides are up. It is
(45:22):
perilous to roll too far toward the edge, for then
the cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the
whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous
banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about
two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who,
in recalling the scene later, first referred to it as
(45:43):
the night the bed fell on your father. Always a
deep sleeper and slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs.
I was at first unconscious of what had happened when
the iron cot rolled me onto the floor and toppled
over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up
and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy.
(46:05):
Hence I did not wake up, only reached the edge
of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened
my mother in the next room, who came to the
immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized the big
wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed,
let's go to your poor father. It was this shout,
(46:27):
rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened
herman in the same room with her. He thought that
mother had become for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, mama,
he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for
shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father,
and you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this
(46:51):
time I was conscious of what was going on in
a vague way, but did not yet realize that I
was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening
in the midst of loud shouts of fear and prehension,
came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating and
that we were all trying to bring him out. With
a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at
(47:15):
the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it,
he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor
ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had
almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of
pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward
the open window, but he came up against one that
(47:37):
was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn, that the whole uproar was being made
(47:57):
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of, in perilous situation. Get me out
of this old, get me out. I think I had
the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine
the global gas Briggs floundering in his camphor. By this time,
my mother, still shouting, pursued by herman, still shouting, was
(48:20):
trying to open the door to the attic in order
to go up and get my father's body out of
the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would not yield.
Her frantic polls on it only added to the general
banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up,
the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father, farthest away
(48:42):
and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been
awakened by the battering on the attic door. He decided
that the house was on fire. O Come, O come,
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
(49:05):
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right.
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
(49:26):
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
(49:49):
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked Father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
(50:10):
no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(50:35):
Thank you for listening. If you're not following or subscribing
to the podcast, please do so. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme, which is from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Guitars Bassed
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers.
(50:58):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the older and theme
from the ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the
seven four day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
(51:21):
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now?
Why only still? Can a new edition Monday? Until then,
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, good luck,
and Happy New Year. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
(51:43):
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Protect George Santos at all costs. I have a lot
(00:27):
of thoughts about the January six Committee report, and especially
the revelation that Milania Trump was terrified that because of
the coup, Rudy Giuliani was gonna see her walking around
in her robe. But first, I love George Santos with
every fiber of my being. American political history is filled
(00:47):
with other Congressmen, other candidates, other senators, other presidents, other
pundits who have been walking time bombs for their own party.
But George Santos is unique. All previous walking time bombs
have eventually detonated and then dispersed. But George Santos is
(01:08):
the Sisyphus of walking political time bombs. He blows up,
he does his collateral damage to this Republican or that one.
The smoke clears, and then he blows up again. He
is the bomb cyclone of congenital liars. It has now
become evident, as newly as last night, that Santos could
(01:30):
not only become the poster boy for not just Republican dishonesty,
but Republican moronic dishonesty and Republican laugh out loud, stupid dishonesty,
and he could not only cost Kevin McCarthy the House speakership,
but he might be able to first get McCarthy a
hamstrong speakership beholden to lunatics like himself, and he might
(01:53):
then be able to get McCarthy fired later because per Politico,
McCarthy support for the speakership vote will be so razor
thin that he will have to out to the Freedom Caucus.
And if Santos has to quit at some point, that
support will get thinner and thinner, and the Freedom Caucus
(02:13):
will be able to force McCarthy out the first time
he does not do what they want. And remember, the
Freedom Caucus does not exist to legislate nor even to
block democratic policy. It exists only to get its members reelected.
By keeping their supporters in a perpetual state of paranoid
(02:33):
xenophobic agitation between them, George Santos and the Freedom Caucus
can reduce the Republican House majority into purposeless, ineffective arguing chaos.
Thank you, lord, let me repeat my plea Democrats make
all the calls for santos resignation that your conscience or
(02:58):
your constituency demands, but nobody. Nobody is to file emotion
to prevent him from being seated in Congress next week.
Protect George Santos at all costs. I mean, think of
all we know about Santos that we did not know
(03:18):
twenty four hours ago, and think what this list will
look like by next week. Like George Santos claimed to
be black. July, he tweeted, MLK did not die for
us to go back to segregation. As a bi racial person,
I stand tall against segregation of any kind. A respondent asked,
(03:42):
without rancor, how are you by racial? There are three races, Black, Caucasian, Asian,
which two are you? On July six, Santos responded, Caucasian
and black unquote. Like George Santos hates those who are
compelled to dishonesty in public life, August tweeted all caps
(04:05):
Biden is a pathological liar. Like George Santos is opposed
to people posing as Republican candidates just to take and
make money. October nine, he tweeted, I'm tired of grifters
and frauds in politics. We need to get serious if
we are going to win in two like his mother's
(04:30):
family has lived in Brazil since the late eighteen hundreds
and she was also born there. But she was also
also born a white woman from Belgium who immigrated to
the United States. Like last week, I joked George Santos,
if that is your real name. Well, it turned out
(04:52):
he claimed his mother's real name was Zabrovsky, and there
is evidence he used the names Zabrovsky himself and fund
raised it off of it. Total fabrication. Apparently, like George,
George Santos is opposed to corruption. March, he tweeted, content
of character is what is important and what we need
(05:14):
to be teaching our children. Like speaking of teaching, he
didn't just lie about his college education. He lied about
his high school education. His parents quote sent me to
a good prep school, which was horrors Man Prep in
the Bronx, and in my senior year prep school, unfortunately
my parents fell on hard times. The first thing to
(05:35):
go was the prep school horrors Man, a rival school
of my own prep school, obviously not quite as good
as my own prep school, and as meticulous and bluntly,
righteously venomous about anybody who claimed to go there. When
they did not, as all the prep schools are horrors
man says conclusively, George Santos never went to horrors Man like.
(05:58):
While working at Goldman Sacks, he got up on quote
the stage at the largest private equity conference in the world, Salt,
run by Anthony Scaramucci, and he berated his employer, well,
I did that, just two problems there. Scaramucci confirmed Santos
never went to any SALT conference and of course criticizing
(06:20):
his employer, Santos never worked for Goldman Sachs Like. If
you want to attend his quote swearing in celebrations next Tuesday,
for a hundred dollars or five dollars for v I
P S. You get a round trip bus from New
York to Washington, you get a tour of the Capitol
grounds courtesy team Santos, and you get lunch. And the
(06:42):
date of the swearing in on the invitation is January three,
which is three sixty one days ago. And lastly, like
the Republican District Attorney investigating to see what crimes, if any,
Santos is actually committed, has since been joined by the
Queen's District Attorney. The New York State District attorney and
(07:05):
the U S attorney in Brooklyn who is apparently following
the money. I mean, at this rate, by next week
George Santos will be under investigation by the World Court
at the Hague. I cannot say this too many times.
Democrats leave Georgia alone. There is only one caveat to this,
(07:32):
and it is just as serious as I have not
been to this point. It is possible that George santos
drama ends tragically, or much more likely, it ends with
some evidence or at least some claim that George Santos
is not just the lying, manipulative, perfectly untrustworthy Republican, but
(07:53):
there is something literally, psychologically or emotionally wrong with him,
and he will make some statement recognizing that fact or
claiming it. For a week now, George Santos has made
me think of Brian Williams, and I have told you
before that I was actually at the New York Rangers
hockey game in the crowd, the game during which Brian
(08:18):
Williams self destructed the day he publicly took the story
of a scary but not directly life threatening experience during
the invasion of Iraq, where some helicopters that had flown
hours before his had been hit by fire, and over
a decade he had gradually inflated this story a little
bit here, and a little bit more there, and a
(08:38):
little bit even more than until the day finally arrived
at this hockey game in when Brian Williams had the
public address announcer tell of an Army sergeant major who
aided quote Brian Williams and his NBC news team after
their Chinook helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire.
(08:59):
There was no enemy fire, there was no hit. They
were an Iraq back. That was the tipping point at
which Iraq veterans began to complain about the lives of
Brian Williams, many of whom had known many of them
for many years. Williams would eventually be demoted from anchor
of NBC Nightly News to part timer at MSNBC, But
(09:22):
as somebody who had known him eighteen years by that point,
it was clear to me that Brian had something psychologically
wrong with him. I liked Brian. I wanted to help him.
He didn't have a lot of friends at NBC. I
wrote to one NBC executive who was still a friend
of mine, get him drunk, take him into his office,
(09:42):
scatter some empty liquor bottles all around, and then calling
the photographers from the New York Daily News in the
New York Post and explain Brian's gone to rehab. You
don't have to say anything else, because rehab is to
get out of jail free card of the twenty one century.
He comes back in a month and they will throw
a parade for him down Broadway. To a former boss
(10:04):
of mine still at NBC, I sent this email, put
him on tonight and at the start of nightly have
him say this, I'm taking a voluntary leave of absence
for filling the blank days, and during that time, the
entirety of my salary will be donated to any military
charity you can think of. Because while I did not
intend to exaggerate my experience Interack, being hit by small
(10:27):
arms fire is bad enough, being behind the helicopter that
got hit with an RPG is worse. Nevertheless, I did
exaggerate it, and a newsman cannot make a mistake like
that without consequences. Thank you for your forbearance. Now for
the rest of tonight's newscast, here is any other NBC
employees name here I added this PostScript. It was true
(10:49):
in Brian Williams, and it is true today for almost
anybody in this situation do this, and he could still
swerve out of this. It may seem far fetched that
a congressman elect to has lied about everything except for
the fact that his name is George, could also still
(11:10):
swerve out of this. But he could. There is a
faint warning bell in the story of the George Santos off.
He was Republican representative Douglas Stringfellow, of Utah War hero.
As The Washington Post noted, string Fellow rocketed from local
disc jockey to up and coming Republican star by explaining
(11:33):
he had been in the OSS during the war. The
predecessor to the c I a that he had gone
into Nazi Germany on a secret mission. He had captured
the physicist who was leading Hitler's effort to develop the
atomic bomb, which thus stopped the Nazis from getting nukes.
But he and the gang were captured. He was the
sole survivor of his unit. He was sent to a
(11:56):
concentration camp. They made him watch as they tortured his friends.
They shoved bamboo strips under his nails, then let them
on fire. Then they lit a pile of other people
on fire and made him run over the pile of them.
Then he escaped the concentration camp. And then when he
got home, just as the war was ending, he stepped
on a landmine and had to relearn how to walk.
(12:20):
The landmine part was true, the rest not so much.
None of it, and it would has proved that none
of it was true. String Fellow did not resign nor
give back any of the awards he'd been given, as
he told this war story again and again on his
(12:41):
campaign trail, and after he was elected after one term
in the House, the Republicans found somebody else and nominated
him instead. String Fellow fell into obscurity. He died in
nineteen sixty six at the age of just forty four,
and apart from the obvious tragedy of that half a
century later, relatives found the manuscript of an unpublished autobiography
(13:04):
string Fellow had written, in which he said that until
literally months before he was exposed, he truly believed all
of that nightmare had happened to him, right down to
walking over the pile of people being burned alive. String
Fellow wrote that the delusion must have formed in his
(13:25):
mind while he was hospitalized recovering from that serious landmine injury.
If the string Fellow story was happening today, he could
easily have been diagnosed with PTSD or a similar internal conflagration,
or if he didn't have anything really wrong with it,
(13:46):
he could have claimed it. I don't think any one
of us actually wishes George Santos any permanent harm, not
if there is a bona fide medical or physical or
emotional reason. He has been lying so extraordinarily thoroughly provided
he stops lying. But from the practical purposes of the
(14:07):
politics of the new year, of one party is trying
to destroy democracy, one party is trying to preserve it.
Strategy political strategy cannot be ignored here. And while it
would be great to see George Santos redeem himself later,
for now, we need him exactly where he is right now.
(14:29):
We need him to keep talking, We need him to
keep undermining the GOP and Kevin McCarthy, we need him
to keep lying, and we need to protect George Santos
at all costs. Still ahead, another commentary is your Lucky Day.
(15:04):
There is real meaning and a real strategic value in
the late interview transcript dumps from the January six committee,
like the one yesterday, And then there are the fun parts,
like Milania Trump complaining that the coup attempt met too
many meetings in the White House residence and she was
afraid Giuliani was gonna see her walking around in her
rob sports. The Greatest has died, hele in Memoriam Worst
(15:28):
arrested because of a pizza box in a video he
made to try to own credit Tunberg on Twitter at
its Fridays with James thurber All. That is NEXTUS discountdown.
(15:51):
In a world of rational people, the conspiracy theory that
January six was entirely the fault of some guy you've
never heard of named Ray Epps would have been put
to bed permanently with the latest release of under interview
transcrip yesterday by the House Committee. But this is not
a world of rational people. It's America in the waning
days of two and there are still Republicans. Epps was
(16:14):
in the Arizona cell of the oath Keepers, and he
is on video from January five telling Trump supporters to
go to the Capitol. Then when they all got there
the next day, he did not go into the Capitol.
He in fact offered to help police turn back the insurrectionists,
and he is on tape trying to talk people into
leaving the grounds. The January six committee report made no
(16:39):
mention of him for this. The right decided that ray
Epps was an FBI plant or Antifa, or part of
a breach team inciting the insurrection, or he works directly
for Emmanuel Goldstein. Tucker Carlson lunatic, who is incidentally in
one of those streets in which everything he touches dies
(17:00):
stay tuned for worse persons, insisted earlier this week that
the Ry six Committee failed because it did not send
a criminal referral about ray Epps. Congressman Thomas Massey, Lunatic,
accused the committee of failing to release the Epps deposition.
Then yesterday it released the Apps deposition. There is no
(17:21):
there there in the Epps deposition. The acam's Razor explanation
is not just obvious but correct. Apps, like dozens of
those who were charged criminally in the attempted coup, testified
under oath that he thought the capital was going to
be open to the public on January six. Now, this
might have been a dumb conclusion, but dumb conclusions are
(17:44):
not criminal. When it turned out the capital was not open,
he bailed out, quoting his deposition, I saw people crawling
all over the Capitol, climbing the walls. It made me
kind of ill to my stomach. It had gone beyond
to what I wanted it to be. They hijacked this cause.
When they hijacked it and it turned the way, all
(18:05):
credibility was lost. He also testified under oath that the
only time he has ever worked for the government was
when he was in the Marines. Case closed, not that
any of them will believe Case closed. Epps Is testimony
is important. It underscores the madness and the complete hypocrisy
(18:26):
of the January six insurrections, and more importantly, their rationalizations.
They had to do it for America in seventeen seventy six,
and Trump won and stopped the steel and this is
our house and where's Dancy? But it was all false
flag so the government could arrest somebody or something. I'm
(18:46):
still not sure. Ray Epps is my favorite part of
the latest transcript dump. There is Stephanie Grisham insisting Milania
Trump was pissed about the constant coop meetings being held
inside the White House residential areas, because that meant Sidney
Powell or Rudy Giuliani might suddenly appear in her personal space.
Quoting Grisham, she was very upset because nobody would give
(19:07):
her a heads up and was she walking around in
a robe? That kind of thing, speaking of partially undressed,
There was this question, but I do want to ask you,
do you know somebody named Ali Akbar Kimberly Gilfoyle. Answer
is that what terrorists yell Ali Akbar? Now I think
it is am I wrong. I do not know anyone
(19:29):
named Allah Akbar. Question, there's an individual named Ali Akbar
who goes by Ali Alexander. Kimberly Gilfoyle. I've heard of
Ali Alexander. God, what a dope and a voice on
her like the public address system at Yankee Stadium only
louder I met her in two thousand five or so
(19:53):
at MSNBC when Dan Abrams was trying to hire her
to be his guest host. Yeah, that's what he was
trying to do with her. And it was amazing that
she consistently remembers to breathe anyway. On a meta level,
there is one question lurking behind yesterday's transcript, dumped on
all the other releases of the last ten days from
(20:14):
this committee. What kinds of idiots release an investigation into
the worst domestic terrorist attack in our history, the most
heinous attempt to subvert freedom in our history, the most
threatening attack on democracy in our history? What kinds of
idiots do that at ten pm on the Thursday before
Christmas as a nationwide snow calamity looms, And what kinds
(20:36):
of idiots follow that up by releasing the final transcripts
of the interviews for their investigations at five pm on
the Friday before Christmas, and then during the week before
New Year's I have spent a week fuming about this
and raging about this, and wondering how Liz Cheney and
Benny Thompson and Jamie Raskin led us down at the
(20:56):
final moment, And after long and painful thought, I think
I have the answer. What kinds of idiots do this? Really?
Really smart idiots? Consider the most extraordinary of all the
recommendations by the House Select Committee on January six is
not the set of criminal referrals, not the play by
(21:17):
play of Trump's sedition, not the damning documentation of a
thousand criminals who should spend the lives rotting in prison
for their perfidy and betrayal. Those things are invaluable, but
they are surprising only in some details and some specifics.
The most extraordinary thing this committee did comes on page
(21:38):
seven sixteen of its final report. Quote. The Committee believes
that those who took an oath to protect and defend
the Constitution and then on January six engaged in insurrection
can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office,
whether federal or state, civilian or military, absent at least
(22:00):
two thirds of Congress acting to remove the disability pursuant
to Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, permanently barred from
getting public office. Of course, that's correct, and the committee
members are hardly the first call to invoke the insurrection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of us called for
(22:20):
it on the night of January. But to see this
in a congressional report is different than in any other
context that could be imagined, except in a criminal indictment.
And yet, at the same time, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment
in a congressional report is like juggling nitro glycerin and
dynamite at the same time. Of course, any report containing
(22:44):
it had to be released virtually in the middle of
the night, in the middle of the holiday, in the
middle of the transition from a democratic Congress through a
Republican one. To do it earlier would have actually risked
handing the antidemocracy forces of foot in this nation a
legislative victory. It would have been ideal if a wreck
inmendation about the fourteenth Amendment had come at any point, saying,
(23:10):
but even then the risk would have been tangible. Say
the committee had reported not at Christmas but at Thanksgiving
or Halloween, and the House had acted on a bill,
say the one later introduced by the Rhode Island Congress
and David Cicillini, and actually voted to bar Trump from
seeking further office, or Trump and Meadows or Trump and
(23:31):
Meadows and everybody else. Release that finding in April or
June or September, and the political pressure to pass a bill,
and since the means of enforcing the fourteenth Amendment are unclear,
probably just a symbolic bill, the pressure to do that
would have been unbearable on the Democrats. And what then,
(23:52):
when the Republicans took control of the House, they are
already bent on perverting the January six committee itself into
some assina smear against Nancy Pelosi or farcical defense of
the trader Trump. What if they had repealed some House
action invoking the fourteenth Amendment. What if they had passed
new legislation superseding the recommendation to go for the fourteenth Amendment.
(24:14):
What if, since the Republican party platform is to see
legitimate grievances and legal actions taken by Democrats and create
false fun house mirror versions of them with which to
attack Democrats, what if Republicans introduced a measure to bar
Nancy Pelosi or anybody else from public service on some
specious claim of violation of the Fourteenth on January six
(24:38):
two one. I have never before accepted the argument that
we should not act because the fascist bullies might then retaliate.
There bullies retaliation is all they know. But in this case,
would it really have been better to have actually passed
an anti Trump fourteenth Amendment piece of legislation only to
(24:59):
see it undone by the Republicans a month or two
months later? Would it really have been better to see
then be able to hold up a past bill and
portray it not as the cynical manipulation it would have been,
but as some kind of triumphant defense of the law
and triumphant defense of Trump. I think the Committee, in
(25:20):
the context of the timeline we and they are actually
stuck in. I think the Committee waited until its recommendation
could not be acted on in the House so that
it could not be reacted against in a coming Republican House,
thus reducing it to a political football and rendering its
meaning shallow, if not entirely empty. As it is, the
(25:43):
recommendation about the fourteenth Amendment and everything else in that
final report goes intact into the political atmosphere, into the
historical record, and into the lapse of the Department of Justice,
which still has at least two years to seek indictments
and convictions that cannot be overturned by Republican sabotage. The
(26:04):
report itself is now fixed in time. The Republicans can
assail it, they can complain about it, they can campaign
on it. But even such transparent con men as Congressman
James Comer of Kentucky have said they have no plans
to investigate the committee or its report, which is a
Republican one eighty from before the elections. That I think
(26:26):
is why the timing was so weird and so initially disturbing.
Sneak the document out intact. Your audience is history and
special counsel Jack Smith. The post report release of the
last depositions, that's a little harder to suss out, But
I suspect there was method to this madness as well.
(26:47):
What Bar and Chow and Ivanka Trump and many others
said in them actually seems almost responsible and patriotic, almost
reflects well on the Party of Insurrection. Pats Zippoloni and
others wrote a note card and over a span of
three hours, repeatedly handed it to Trump, urging him to
(27:07):
say or tweet what was on it, namely, anyone who
entered the Capitol illegally should leave immediately, and he refused.
Bar says Mitch McConnell, called him right after the election
and hopes that he bar would tamp down Trump's rumors
and conspiracy theories. If Anka, says Susan Collins, actually called
her mid insurrection in hopes she could get her father
(27:29):
to stop it. I mean, you read that and you
think January six was actually so serious. Even Susan Collins noticed,
maybe like burying the call to utilize the fourteenth Amendment.
Maybe there is more strategy that pertains to those depositions
that I cannot see. Maybe not, but they did little
damage to those around Trump, And once again it may
(27:51):
just have been a case of slip this stuff out
to the public and the historical record before the Republicans
take over and burn bag all of it. With this
past week to think of about it, beyond suggesting the
wrath of the fourteenth Amendment, I don't see any new
big picture implications for the January six Committee report that
we all had not seen previously. There are the Max
(28:14):
Miller quotes that on January four, Trump did he indeed
suggest bringing in ten thousand National Guardsmen not to protect
the capital from his thugs, but to escort and protect
him and those thugs as they all went to the capital,
and to guard them from left winger counter protesters, you know,
the invisible ones that never appeared. Ryan Goodman from the
(28:37):
website Just Security says he found one smoking gun. It
was known that Trump had called Ronald McDaniel, the RNC chairperson,
and then put John Eastman on the phone with her,
and Eastman told McDaniel, we want you to organize this
fake collector's scheme. Now, Goodman notes there is sworn testimony
(28:57):
that McDaniel then called Trump back and said, quote, I
accept your request, not Eastman's, but Trump's request. There was
one detail that should be a career ender for a reporter.
It certainly will not be. Cassidy Hutchinson worries to her
first attorney, Stephen Passantino, that Maggie Haberman knows that she
(29:20):
had testified to the committee. Don't worry, says the man
who had been Trump's White House ethics attorney. Maggie's friendly
to us, will be fine. Where I running the New
York Times and read that I would have fired Maggie
Hayberman on the spot, of course, where I running the
New York Times, I would have fired Maggie Hayreman in
two thousand sixteen, different decade, different Judith Miller, same lack
(29:44):
of integrity. So on the meta level, the January six
Committee probably got the most out of its material over
the summer and by the strategy of holding back the
fourteenth Amendment proposal so it could not be turned against democracy.
But unstated and transcending all of this is one truth
about the Committee's report that is so simple that it
(30:04):
can be easily missed. The report's greatest value is this.
It is an endless sequence of dueling gloves to be
taken off and theatrically slapped against the face of Jack Smith,
the face of Merrick Garland, and the face of the
rest of the Department of Justice. And the slap simply
(30:27):
is this, We demand you indict Trump, and do it fast,
and do it hard. This is Sports Center. Wait, check
(30:52):
that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports.
The concern and the sense of crisis during the World
Soccer Cups Adley was warranted. Edson Arantes Dona Cimento died
in Brazil yesterday, age two, complications and advancements of colon cancer.
(31:14):
Pele the greatest player in the history of soccer football worldwide.
You know that, you know the statistic and sixty seven
professional games and eighty three goals, seventy seven goals for
his national team, three World Cups for Brazil. The beautiful smile,
the constant salesmanship of the beautiful game in the multinational grief.
(31:38):
You are not seeing much about what made Palis so great.
I am not an expert on this sport, but I
did play it in school, and I don't think his
brilliance was difficult really to assess. Pele was an acrobat,
the way Michael Jordan could shoot a basketball with perfect
accuracy even if neither of his feet was anywhere near
the floor. Pell was like that, only with every part
(32:01):
of his body airborne horizontal. Well then, just as scissors
kicked back over his own head and the goalie frozen
in horror as it hit the back of the net
behind him on the ground, Pelee had even better body control.
He could start and stop and start again, or fake
left and go right around a defender, at all the
(32:21):
while dribbling the ball with his foot. Some people have
done these things once or twice in a lifetime. He
did them once or twice every game. His time in
this country is not the key part of his story,
but it is important to remember. In the hours here
after his passing, he retired at age thirty four in Brazil,
(32:44):
and was promptly talked into coming out of retirement by,
in no particular order, the Brazilian government. Henry Kissinger and
executives of the New York Cosmos and the North American
Soccer League. Professional soccer had existed in this country for
eight years, and it was notable only for Kird breaking
(33:05):
totals of empty seats. The Cosmos played in Downing Stadium
on Randall's Island, which is about four thirty acres in
the middle of the East River. Only it don't have
water on it. It's most famous feature is support statins
for New York's Triboro Bridge. As of the morning of June,
(33:26):
the Cosmos record in the little stadium there on Randall's Island.
The record crowd was six thousand that day. With pell
added to their roster, they put eighteen thousand in the
stands somehow, and ABC televised the game nationally, and within
a year the Cosmos were playing not in the middle
(33:46):
of East River. They were playing at Giants Stadium, where
a seven playoff game in a thunderstorm with Pela on
the Cosmos through seventy seven thousand fans. Two years earlier,
the record had been six thousand when he retired from
the Cosmos and four good On October one of that year,
he played the first half of a game for his
(34:09):
Brazilian team Santos, and they played the second half of
his American team at Cosmos that game, which mattered nothing
in any standings anywhere. That game drew seventy five thousand.
The enormous crowds did not outlast Peal's time here, but
they showed what soccer could do in America and could
(34:29):
yet do. And if the sport ever gets anywhere near
that big here, somebody better name a stadium after him
or maybe twelve of them. Still ahead Fridays with Thurber
(34:55):
maybe his most famous story, certainly the most reprinted one
in books everywhere. The Night the Bed fell First, the
daily roundup of the misgriants, morons and dunning Kruger effect
specimens who constitute today's worst prisons in the world. The
Bronze to the New York Times once again. The Times
is absolutely intent on turning every mouse into an elephant,
(35:17):
and every elephant into a mouse. As you may know,
nearly a year ago Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now
trying to destroy Ukraine's power infrastructure in hopes of freezing
Ukraine's population to death. The Times headline on this topic
hardline positions by Russia and Ukraine. Dim hope for peace
talks quite intransigent those Ukrainians, that hardline position, demanding Russia
(35:43):
not try to destroy them and kill all their people.
But wait, there's more. Same issue of the newspaper, Times headline,
George Santos is in a class of his own, but
other politicians have embellished their resumes too. Well, if he's
in a class of his own, why are you equating
him to those who are not in a class of
his own? That's what class his own means. It's both sides.
(36:09):
Is hum? What about is um? And the destination point
here is to preserve the Times. Access journalism of the
worst order. Speaking of access journalism, the runners up we
have a team, Ryan Lizza of Politico and Olivia Newsy
of New York Magazine. Anyway, that's how she pronounced it.
When I knew her, it might be NEWTSI or Nuzzy.
(36:31):
One thing I know, she can't make up her mind news.
He was once a promising political writer, but has developed
into an access journalist. She recently published a long, really
long piece on Trump that got absolutely no pick up anywhere,
even after Trump complained about it and attacked News He's looks.
(36:51):
But that was not because Ryan Lizza didn't try. He's
one of the editors of the Daily Political newsletter and
The Day News. He's piece ran Ryan Lizz's newsletter ran
five paragraphs about it and described it as a quote
rolic look under the hood and said news he scored
an incisive interview. And nowhere was it mentioned that Liza
and Newsy are engaged. The free publicity for the fiance's
(37:15):
magazine article is just coincidental, no doubt OI. But the
gold goes to Andrew Tate the other day was a
misogynist online influencer hiding out apparently in Romania. And if
you had ever heard of him, it was probably because
Tucker Carlson interviewed him once and defended him and then said,
(37:35):
they're telling us he's a criminal. Okay, has he been charged?
Four months later, the answer is yeah, apparently thanks to Greta,
Tuneberg and Pizza. Tate tried to troll Greta about the
thirty three cars he claims to own and how he
wanted her to send him her email so he could
write her a lengthy email and detail how many emissions
(37:58):
his cars are spewing into the atmosphere, and she wrote
back and said, sure, here's my email. I'll clean this
up a little. My email is small d energy at
Getta life dot com. Tate was so owned by this
that he put together a two minute video be rating
her and posted it everywhere, and then Romanian authorities came
(38:19):
to his hid out and arrested him because in the
video Tate included a pizza box, which is clearly from
a pizza chain that operates only in Romania. The Romanian
government had apparently been waiting for evidence that he was
actually in Bucharest. Their lawyer now confirms Tate and his
brother have been detained in a human trafficking and rape investigation.
(38:41):
Andrew do not mess with credit. Toneberg plays Tate two
days worse person. And I have argued before that James
(39:07):
Thurber is the greatest American humorist. And it dawns on
me that the argument is not unlike the idea that
show Hey Otani of the Los Angeles Angels is almost
automatically the most valuable player in baseball each year because
he is an All Star hitter and an All Star
pitcher in the same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer,
(39:27):
and in his spare time it was an equally brilliant,
almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple
drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations.
His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
so I'll just read and I will read you now
(39:48):
in this episode what is probably his most famous story
from My life and hard Times, The Night the bed fell.
But James Thurber, I suppose that the high water mark
of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the
bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
(40:12):
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
it five or six times. Then it does a piece
of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and very similitude to what is admittedly a
somewhat incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened
(40:34):
then that my father had decided to sleep in the
attic one night to be away where he could think.
My mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the
old wooden bed up there was unsafe. It was wobbly,
and the heavy headboard would crash down on Father's head
in case the bed fell and kill him. There was
no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten,
(40:57):
he closed the attic door behind him and went up
the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard aminous creakings as
he crawled called into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in
the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared
some days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone
six or eight days, and returned growling and out of
temper with the news that the Federal Union was run
(41:20):
by a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of
the Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch.
We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first
cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he
was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It
was his feeling that if he were not awakened every
hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He
(41:43):
had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring
at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this.
He slept in my room, and I told him that
I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit
breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly.
He tested me the first night, which I had suspected
he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing,
(42:06):
had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however,
and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears
a little, but he took the precaution of putting a
glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at
the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse
him until he was almost gone. He said he would
(42:28):
sniff the camphor. A powerful revivor, Briggs was not the
only member of his family and his crotchets. Old Aunt
Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with two
fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she
was destined to die on South High Street because she
had been born on South High Street and married on
(42:48):
South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Chauffe, who
never went to bed at night without the fear that
a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform
under her door through a tube to avert this calamity,
For she was in greater dread of an aesthetics than
of losing her household goods. She always piled her money, silverware,
(43:09):
and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom,
with a note reading, this is all I have. Please
take it and do not use your chloroform, as this
is all I have. Aunt Gracie Chow also had a
burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She
was confident that burglars had been getting into her house
every night for forty years. The fact that she never
(43:32):
missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary,
she always claimed that she scared them off before they
could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When
she went to bed, she piled where she could get
at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house.
Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she
would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband,
(43:57):
who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long
ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep
or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he
would not respond to her, tugging and pulling, so that
presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly,
and he was shoe down the hall in one direction,
(44:18):
and it's mate down the hall in the other direction.
Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a
couple of pair. But I am straying from the remarkable
incidents that took place during the night that the bed
fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed.
The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their
(44:39):
occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred.
In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom,
where my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang
in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers,
briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one.
(44:59):
My brother Roy was in a room across the hall
from ours. Our bull terrier Wrack, slept in the hall.
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs
which are made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only
by putting up flat with the middle section the two
sides which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a
drop leaf table. When these sides are up. It is
(45:22):
perilous to roll too far toward the edge, for then
the cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the
whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous
banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about
two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who,
in recalling the scene later, first referred to it as
(45:43):
the night the bed fell on your father. Always a
deep sleeper and slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs.
I was at first unconscious of what had happened when
the iron cot rolled me onto the floor and toppled
over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up
and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy.
(46:05):
Hence I did not wake up, only reached the edge
of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened
my mother in the next room, who came to the
immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized the big
wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed,
let's go to your poor father. It was this shout,
(46:27):
rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened
herman in the same room with her. He thought that
mother had become for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, mama,
he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for
shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father,
and you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this
(46:51):
time I was conscious of what was going on in
a vague way, but did not yet realize that I
was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening
in the midst of loud shouts of fear and prehension,
came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating and
that we were all trying to bring him out. With
a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at
(47:15):
the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it,
he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor
ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had
almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of
pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward
the open window, but he came up against one that
(47:37):
was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn, that the whole uproar was being made
(47:57):
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of, in perilous situation. Get me out
of this old, get me out. I think I had
the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine
the global gas Briggs floundering in his camphor. By this time,
my mother, still shouting, pursued by herman, still shouting, was
(48:20):
trying to open the door to the attic in order
to go up and get my father's body out of
the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would not yield.
Her frantic polls on it only added to the general
banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up,
the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father, farthest away
(48:42):
and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been
awakened by the battering on the attic door. He decided
that the house was on fire. O Come, O come,
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
(49:05):
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right.
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
(49:26):
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
(49:49):
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked Father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
(50:10):
no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(50:35):
Thank you for listening. If you're not following or subscribing
to the podcast, please do so. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme, which is from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Guitars Bassed
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers.
(50:58):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the older and theme
from the ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the
seven four day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
(51:21):
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now?
Why only still? Can a new edition Monday? Until then,
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, good luck,
and Happy New Year. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
(51:43):
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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