March 10, 2025 • 66 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 107: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: He has to go. And Minority Whip Katherine Clark. And Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar. And for that matter, Gavin Newsom has to go.
Because after these standard-issue moderate Democrats vanished on election night they have suddenly reappeared 125 days later to address the REAL issue: Democratic House members who actually DID something to protest Trump - even just something symbolic like Al Green did, or those who supported him did.
Jeffries and the others called them to a "come to Jesus" meeting to warn them never to ignore his "Dear Colleague" letter again, that the way to stand up to Trump lighting the county and the world on fire is to hold up mincing little pickle ball paddles with mild words on them and especially to coordinate outfits while not clapping.
Out. Jeffries, Clark, Aguilar. And anybody else who doesn't realize that the last people capable of piercing Trump's bubble are Democrats at his speeches to Congress, and the media which has failed at the task even more than the Dems have.
We need civil disobedience and instead Jeffries is warning Democrats, and 10 Democrats are joining the fascists, in punishing Democrats.
And Newsom? His comments about trans athletes are bad enough. That he did them during a podcast with Charlie Kirk, arranged by Newsom's ex-wife Kim Guilfoyle, is far worse. I mean Newsom's judgment was already in doubt (he married Kim Guilfoyle FFS), but this is insanity.
The nation is ablaze and the Dems are sending strongly worded notes.
The media continues to collapse.It believed Trump's lies about pressuring Russia while he was in fact increasing his demands of Ukraine to include Zelensky resigning. And when Trump told a reporter he couldn't ask a certain question the White House Correspondents Association continued its policy of not commenting. And golly why did Trump think he could publicly threaten Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow?
Well, because of Joe Scarborough, obvs.
B-Block (38:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Stephen A. Smith is not running for president, but keep asking him. Happily he IS showing he doesn't understand the first thing about any of this. His newest political crush? Candace Owens. Meanwhile Musk doesn't understand sports or America. And the Prime Minister of New Zealand fired a diplomat for reminding Britain that Trump is simply doing now what they did to Czechoslovakia in 1938.
C-Block (49:20) THURBER SPECIAL: Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, needs about $200,000 to keep going. The least we can do is raise consciousness. So for the first time since the election here is not just one but two Thurber stories: my favorite ("A Box To Hide In") and my late father's ("I Went To Sullivant."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Democratic
(00:26):
Party leadership in the House and the Senate has to go,
and the leaders in the States have to get active
or they have to go. And the first you can
go is Gavin Newsom. You're out. I'll get to him.
In a moment. During a pit stop at the Indianapolis
five hundred car race in nineteen eighty one, some methanol
was sprayed into and on driver Rick Mears and his crew,
(00:50):
and suddenly there was literally an invisible fire. Methanol flame
does not produce smoke. It is virtually invisible in sunlight.
Rick Mears and his crew were on fire, and nobody
could see it, literally invisible fire. People thought, perhaps they
were kidding. Right now, this nation is on fire, also
(01:12):
an invisible fire, and Democratic leadership is saying, oh no,
it isn't because Akeem Jeffries and Gavin Newsom and the
others can't e fing see it, or because they personally
are not yet on fire yet yet, because Trump hasn't
gotten to them yet to set them on fire. Axio
(01:34):
supports that Jeffries, the Minority Whip Catherine Clark, and Caucus
Chair Pete Aguiar, the top three Democrats in the House
summoned a dozen rank and file members to what was
called a come to Jesus meeting about the disruptions during
Trump's I'm God Right speech last week. You're thinking Jeffries
(01:54):
and Clark and Aguiar should have been awarding the disruptors
medals of some kind, or maybe scolding them for not
disrupting enough. No, sir, leadership is quote unhappy that congressmen
and congresswomen who see the invisible fire consuming our nation
had the audacity to react to it, raps like Jasmine Crockett,
(02:17):
Maxwell Frost, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico.
You had a lot of nerve straying from our plan,
Jeffries told them, and reminded them of his dear colleague
letter he sent them before the speech, insisting on a
quote strong, determined and dignified democratic presence in the chamber,
and how they violated that by making themselves the story. Seriously,
(02:44):
if it came, Jeffries thinks, limiting protests, holding up those
pathetic little signs that they all had, and to what
was called quote outfit coordination and refusal to clap on quote.
If he thinks that was a sign of strength, or
that it was determined, or that it was somehow dignified,
he should be marched out of the House Chamber faster
(03:05):
than al Green was, and in fact, Jeffrey should be
marched out of the House Chamber by Democrats. They're not
being talked to like they are children. One Democrat leaked
to Axios for a story that made the protesters look
like children. We are helping them understand why their strategy
is a bad idea. Ah, I think I've just located
(03:28):
the source of the problem here. Their strategy is not
a bad idea, given that their strategy is, unlike the
one apparently dreamed up by a Keem Jeffreys, an actual strategy,
while the one dreamed up by a Keem Jeffries is
holding up signs the size of ping pong paddles and
not offending the dictator nor angering his Republican slave masters
(03:49):
in the House. It doesn't surprise me. Leadership is very upset.
They gave specific instructions not to do that, one anonymous
Democrats said, showing exactly the lack of courage Trump is
counting on. Trump will count on. Trump has always counted on.
Would they have ever done that to Nancy Pelosi? You
(04:11):
know the answer. Never. So you've got to put the
hammer down. Yes, put the hammer down. Put the hammer
down right on top of that anonymous Democrat's head. F
him or her, f them. The country is on fire
and Trump is doing his best, well, putin's best to
(04:34):
next set the world on fire. And the keen Jeffries
is worried about making sure his Democrats in the House
are absolutely consistent in doing absolutely nothing about it. Invisible
fire everywhere, and he has become a living meme. It's fine,
he says from the table, sipping his coffee. And by
(04:56):
the way, you invoke Nancy Pelosi to encourage this silent appeasement,
this obeying in advance. What did Nancy Pelosi do again?
After Trump's last State of the Union address in twenty twenty,
she tore up her copy of his speech on camera,
slowly and methodically. And do you remember that, or do
(05:20):
you remember the Democratic response speech that followed Trump's State
of the Union in twenty twenty, or who gave that
speech or what that speech was about. I understand that
democratic lawmakers are hamstrung. They don't know what to do
(05:40):
at the moment. Democracy seems to be a bad campaign basis.
They only have a few options at this point. They
could literally act outside of the law, I suppose, since
bribes by foreigners are no longer going to be investigated anywhere,
you could get foreign billionaires to buy Republicans to vote
(06:01):
to impeach Trump. I mean, it's one Republican, Michael, what
could it cost ten million dollars? You could go a
little bit more immediately and more direct. You could interrupt
fascist rallies like Trump's next verbal version of mind komp
with I don't know reasons to evacuate the area in
which the speech is being given. That's probably contraindicated Democratic leadership,
(06:26):
and Democrats could act symbolically and metaphorically and maybe get
themselves punished inside the house or maybe even arrested by
you know, getting up and leaving with Al Green when
he is escorted out, or going along with the progressives
who saying we shall overcome while this latest crazy Republican
speaker Mike Johnson read out Green's censure motion. Or if
(06:52):
they're not willing to do any of that, they can
do whatever the hell teme Jeffries thinks he's doing, and
I'm really not sure what holding up little paddles that
make them all look like wile e Coyote in the
road rudder cartoons with his signs reading help and that's
all folks does. But I believe the technical term for
what he's doing is I think this is the technical
(07:13):
term nothing. While the nation burns invisibly by the way,
Andy Ogles and insane man who represents Insane County is
pushing privileged motions to remove all the protesting Democrats from
their committee assignments. And you know, if the King Jeffries
(07:38):
votes for those resolutions, I would only be mildly surprised, because,
of course, ten Democrats in the House, elected as Democrats
by Democratic voters, they voted with the Republicans to censure
Al Green and they did this because, bluntly, these ten
Democrats are assholes. Amy Barra asshole, Ed Case asshole, Jim asshole,
(08:07):
Laura Gillen asshole, Jim Himes asshole, Chrissy Hulahan asshole, Marcy
Capture asshole, Jared Moskowitz asshole, Marie Glusen camp Perez asshole,
and Tom Swazi asshole. In fact, here's another asshole to
(08:31):
take home with you. Some of those are not actually surprises.
Swazi is nothing more than a weather vane, and a
mediocre one. Marie Perez too. It's a shame about Jared Moskowitz.
He's useful, he was great against Comer, He's funny, and
if he apologizes, I would say he gets a second chance.
It's a shame Marcy Capture wants to end her career
(08:52):
siding with Nazis. But there you go out, all of
them out. And if he doesn't figure out that the
country is on fire, Jeffreys out. Because what Jeffrey should
be doing is threatening to shut the goddamn House of
Representatives down. If any of those measures to throw those
(09:13):
dozen or so Democrats who sang off their committees passes,
walk out before the CR vote, let the Republicans destroy
themselves and Trump and the economy with no Democrats in
the House. Get yourself arrested. If need be a king,
do something. Christ at least hold that weekly news conference
every Sunday morning, just to steal the narrative away from Trump.
(09:36):
It's a meaningless press conference. It's a manipulation of the media.
At least you could do that are you good at
anything risk something risk as much as that old man
from Texas with the Caine risk and the members of
the Black Caucus who sang risked, I mean, goddamn it, Jeffreys.
(09:58):
Last month, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts suggested there was a
constitutional crisis and that the respond should be quote, maybe
a national strike. Saturday he held a town hall in Holliston,
mass and he brought it up again, a national strike.
We can't just sit back and let our democracy just
fall apart, says Congress from McGovern. I can imagine Jeffrey's
(10:21):
response to that. We're not letting it fall apart. We
have outfit coordination. We have our cute little auction house
bitter paddles with strong words written on them, but not
too strong. The inside, off the record response from the Democrats,
(10:42):
from the leadership, from the old wise men and women
of the party is that the Democrats just haven't coordinated
a strategy of response to all this yet still flat
footed after the election. The election was one hundred and
twenty six days ago. In that time, Trump has given
(11:03):
a line a budget veto to a white supremacist, and
he's given your personal info to a stoned narcissist. He's
dangled the prospect of war against Canada, Panama, Mexico and Denmark.
He has imperiled Ukraine and all of Europe. He has
followed Putin's instructions to the letter. He has begun the
(11:24):
process of staying in office past his expiration date. What
he has not yet broken, he has threatened to break.
The King Jeffreys has bought pickleball paddles and coordinated outfits
and yelled at the only Democrats actually merely doing something
(11:46):
symbolic out get him out of here and the others. Ordinarily,
you wait for the Vhy government to take shape after
the Hitler has defeated the France. The King Jeffries has
already surrendered. Al green for Democratic House leader, or or
(12:12):
bring back Nancy and start tearing shit again. By the way,
(12:39):
the answer to the trivia question was that the year
Nancy tore up the copy of Trump's speech was twenty twenty,
and the Democratic response was by Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan,
and it had an audience and I had to go
look it up. When you have nothing but symbolism, do
the symbolism. No to a Keem Jeffries, Yes to Nancy
(13:04):
Pelosi and no, not to Gavin Newsom as the new
face of the Democratic Party. Not at all. I'm not
as shocked as many were that he's suddenly uncertain about
transgendered scholastic athletes. The whole issue, all sides of it,
whereas it has taken on tragic and meaningful proportions, is
(13:30):
not in fact gigantic. There might be in this country
one hundred and fifty students high school college to whom
this applies. If the amount of time spent on this
issue were devoted to the amount of time that would
be required to resolve each of these situations inside the
(13:51):
league or the organization in which they are unfolding, they
could have been solved in about two weeks. Because it's
not about transgendered athletes, Gavin. It's not about whether or
not it's fair to the girls. They don't give a
damn about girls sports. They're going to eliminate them next month.
(14:12):
Gavin Newsom did not surprise me with that. He surprised
me with something else. He really didn't surprise me with anything,
because I met Kimberly Gilfoyle twenty years ago when she
was trying to get a show at MSNBC when Newsom
was still mayor of San Francisco and Kimberly Gilfoyle was
(14:35):
still Gavin Newsom's wife, and my only thoughts were, this
is his wife, that's who he married, this this idiot.
And the other thought was the dialogue from the movie
The Graduate when the old guy mister maguire at the
graduation party has that conversation that career advice with Dustin
(14:58):
Hoffman and he says, I want to say one word
to you, just one word, and Dustin Hoffman is Benjamin
says yes sir, and mister McGuire says, are you listening,
and Benjamin says, yes, yes I am, and mister McGuire
says plastics. Newsom has given me another one of those
(15:23):
first moments, not the Plastics moments, but you know, the
he married this idiot. Newsom did a podcast with Charlie
Kirk that's where the quote about transgendered athletes comes from,
and he agreed with Charlie Kirk that there's an issue
with transgendered athletes. He agreed with Charlie Kirk, racist, sexist, monstrous,
(15:49):
Charlie Kirk to what point to try to get the
vote from that vast middle out there, the middle between
what Gavin Nazis who want to kill all the non
Nazis and Nazis who merely want to imprison all the
nun on Nazis. Is that your wheelhouse for the nomination
in twenty twenty eight? And then it turned out, at
(16:11):
least according to Kirk, that the podcast was arranged by
Kim Gilfoyle. Kirk told the Fox station in La quote,
I got a phone call from Governor Knew some two
weeks ago. We connected through Kimberly Gilfoil. Obviously they have
a shared past. So not only are you still working
(16:32):
with Kirk, but you reached out via Kim Gilfoil because
Lara Trump was unavailable. Alina Hobo wouldn't take your call.
Kirk had another quote, this is another non surprise. This
is a guy who wants to be president more than
(16:53):
any other human being alive. Well that's not true. There's
still Trump. But Gavin, if Kirk's right, by advice to
you is this, get jd Vance to resign, Get Trump
to appoint you vice president. Because even today, even now,
to get the Democratic nomination for president, you have to
have a minimum of one scruple, just one. I mean,
(17:17):
here is where we are in this country. Josh Marshall's
site TPM has gotten an email from management at the
US African Development Foundation to the White House Presidential Personnel
Office about the appointment of the acting chair of the
Foundation's board. Seems like trivia, seems like legales, and it
(17:38):
in fact is the next thing they are going to
do to destroy the country. It gets around the reality
that in this case, Trump's choice could never get confirmed
by the Senate for this acting chair or full time
chair of the foundational board. So the Foundation's solution, memorialized
in an email to the White House Presidential Personnel Office,
(18:00):
is very simple, the Foundation solution and Trump end Senate
confirmation of presidential appointments. This email begins, quote, given the
president's inability to supervise the activities of the board less USADF,
he has inherent authority. Those are the keywords, inherent authority
(18:21):
to designate an acting chairman of the board, and it
ends quote. The President currently has no way of ensuring
the agency is running or complying with his executive order
unless he directs and temporary official using inherent authority under
Article two bingo, you heard me. The next Trump maneuver
(18:43):
will be that Senate approval of his appointments is unconstitutional
according to the inherent authority in Article two, President B
King advise and consent. This eliminate just restraints on Trump,
(19:05):
no also eliminate criticism of him and questions to him.
Eliminate the slightest protest by the outside world, whether it
is Al Green swinging his cane, or a Keem Jeffery
swinging his bat with the paddle ball attached to it
by string, or just some senator asking a question about
(19:26):
who this idiot is he wants to appoint to run
the board of the USADF. And that's another reason why
Al Green's mid speech protest was so essential. Trump long
ago figured out that the easiest way to avoid criticism
was to avoid critics. Keep the critics out out of
your rallies, out of your speeches, out of your cabinet,
(19:47):
out of your party, out of your sight. But there's
one hole in that wall. You can't keep them out
of your speeches. To Congress, Democrats at Trump's speeches, and
the media at Trump events are literally the last people
in this country, the last handful of people who pierce
(20:08):
Trump's bubble. In the slightest al Green voiced opposition and criticism,
and Trump almost imperceptibly has moved from being convinced he
has overwhelming support to convincing himself he has nothing but support,
to convincing himself that he has a complete mandate and
is already king, to never even hearing any more criticism,
(20:30):
to punishing the critics, to making critics and criticism of
him illegal. That is the path. That's why the individual
boycotts of his speech to Congress a week ago were
well intentioned but stupid. That's why even the little ping
pong ball paddles were better. That's why democratic leadership should
(20:55):
have walked out with al Green, not warned others never
to do anything again without written permission of a game Jeffreys.
Most of them are of at best dubious value as
elected congressmen and senators, utterly fungible, several buildings full of
Tom Swazis. But as the last Americans allowed to literally
(21:19):
speak truth to power. Their job is to interrupt Trump.
Their job is to interrupt his feedback loop. Their job
is to shake him and enrage him and provoke him.
Their job is to use their right to shout cat
calls from the Congressional Peanut Gallery until Trump eliminates the
(21:43):
Congressional Peanut Gallery by eliminating Congress. They have to do
this because when he eliminates Congress, all we will have
left is the media. And I know it's a surprise
to you that we still have media. I wouldn't have
noticed either. Funniest dog one thing. Trump announced he was
(22:08):
going to get tough on Russia and there'd be sanctions
on Russia, and he would pressure Russia to settle with Ukraine.
And then he cut off Ukraine's access to US satellite imagery.
And then the Russians doubled the amount of bombs they
were dropping onto Ukraine, and then the accuracy of those
drops suddenly doubled two as if they were getting locations
(22:28):
and other targeting information from American companies. And then NBC
reported yesterday that even if Zelensky signs a rare Earth
deal today, that does not mean Trump will restore American
aid to Ukraine. He wants Zelensky to move towards resigning
and holding elections. And yes, Trump's people have been caught
talking to the opposition parties in Ukraine. You know the
(22:50):
ones favored by Putin. Oh, and yes, he signs the
Rare Earths and Minerals deal and seeds all the territory
Russia wants. And after all that, the media is still
reporting Trump is going to get tough on Russia about Ukraine,
and there'll be sanctions on Russia. And he's pressuring Russia
because the media now sucks. The only people who have
(23:14):
not been muzzled or self muzzled are the ones who
are too stupid to do the job well in the
first place. And just when you are ready to give
up on these idiots, you remember, oh my god, they
are idiots, but they are our idiots, and they are
the only idiots we have left. And you remember that
Trump hates them more than we do, only he is
(23:39):
hunting them now. I got scoffing blowback from last Thursday's podcast,
especially the title Trump's plan to make it illegal to
criticize him and his hunta. And I'd like to apologize
for that title because it wasn't strong enough. The title
should have been Trump's plan to make it illegal to
criticize him and his hunta. And the media is collaborating
(24:01):
so fast it may happen before summer. President, since you must.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Talk about it yesterday, detail about if there happening.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Bob Moskins, cautious secretary of.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Movie, own secretary of no clash.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
You're just a trouble mecare and you're not supposed to
be asking that question because we're talking about the World Cup.
Gets along great with Marco and they both are fantastic.
You have there is no clash Presidents inc. I'm wonder's
NBC any of the questions of.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The World Cup to I can't imagine why Trump got
away with telling a reporter you're not supposed to ask
that question. Maybe it's because when he expelled the Associated
Press from the White House, not one other news organization,
not one did anything about it. Nobody did a thing,
(25:01):
even when simple self defense should have told the White
House car Respondence Association to walk out on Moss that day.
And maybe it's because when the White House Correspondence Association
did not walk out on Moss that day, Trump knew
he could take away its right to select the pool
reporters and they again would not walk out on Moss.
When he did that, he could threaten them with expulsion
(25:23):
from the White House the way you just heard him
do it to the NBC guide just there, without saying it,
just by implying it and knowing the White Correspondence Association
would do nothing. He also knew he could do that
to mister NBC reporter there because v she Joe Scarborough
and missus vsh Joe went to Mari Lago and begged
(25:47):
for what passes for their pathetic professional lives. And he
knew he could do that to NBC going forward, because
NBC immediately spun off MSNBC as fast as they could
file the business paperwork, and MSNBC then fired or demoted
all of its hosts of color, and Trump would never
have to explolicitly threatened NBC ever again. Okay, maybe you'd
(26:10):
have to threaten them again once.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Frankly, what Nicole Wallace said, I've never been a fan
of hers, and she's not very talented, but i'll tell
you what she said the other day about that young
man is disgraceful. She should be forced to resign, and
Rachel Mattow should be forced to resign. Nobody watches her anyway.
I don't know if it's not possible they pay her
(26:34):
as much money as I hear, but certainly she's lost
all credibility, both of them.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But would they said the other day they should be
forced to resign? Thank you again, Joe Scarborough. Joe Scarborough is,
as hl Mankin would have phrased, it not worth the
oil with which to fry him in hell. You know
my criticisms of Rachel Matdow ten million, Joe Scarborough's are
(27:05):
not worth one Rachel Maddow. I'm sure though, when push
comes to shove, NBC will defend her and Wallace and
its White House reporter or that guy who is probably
by now it's ex White House reporter and not the
shady ex congressman who has gone from Trump critic to
(27:26):
Trumps sanitizer, to would be Trump Vice president to never Trumper,
to welcome her of Trump insect overlords, and has done
all this in literally one decade. Laws against deep fakes
that can be converted into laws against anti Trump videos,
laws against campus protests nominally about the Middle East that
(27:48):
can be converted into laws against campus protests about him,
And the saddest part is none of these refined laws
directed at the media directed at protests may be necessary
because the media will have killed itself first. Quote. I
(28:17):
am a member of several Tesla owner forums where widespread
reports of similar attacks are being shared. Begins a post
at a Facebook site user named Mike Miller, who knows
if it's real, copying a letter he claims to have
sent to his California congressman garrim Mendi. Quote. Owners are
facing physical threats, vandalism, and intimidation simply because of their
(28:42):
vehicle choice. Reports in the media highlight incidents of Tesla
charging stations being burned, Tesla service centers being vandalized, and
Tesla vehicles being spray painted or otherwise damaged. Unfortunately, law
enforcement often has limited ability to hold perpetrators accountable. By
the way, certainly that's not because the inpetrators got away
(29:05):
in their Tesla vehicles. This is not just an issue
of property damage. It is an issue of safety and
targeted aggression. I urge you to consider legislative action that
would increase penalties for these acts, potentially classifying them as
hate crimes or enhancing legal consequences for individuals who engage
in such behavior. You heard him, hate crimes he wants
(29:36):
and again it could be a troll. Everybody who responded
to him was in atrol. Everybody who said, yes, let's
make it a hate crime. He wants any damage to
a Tesla vehicle or a facility, or especially Seibetwak prosecuted
as a hate crime. This is how far the madness
(29:58):
of America twenty twenty five has gone. Protections for transgendered
people erased and the debate over it endorsed by the
governor of California who claims to be a Democrat and
is still talking to that crazy woman Guilfoyle. Protections for
transgendered people erased, the history of violence against blacks erased
(30:22):
from government websites, libraries closed, history whitewashed, the interruption of
a presidential speech, which is a Republican invention, incidentally interrupting
a presidential speech bringing censure and possible removal from committees
and ten Democrats supporting it. But if somebody writes, f
(30:43):
you Musk with their finger on the dust on the
back of your cyber truck, that should be a hate crime. Problem,
of course, is what under hate crime statutes could you
charge Musk with when he blows up another one of
his own rockets like last week. Sadly we go from
(31:05):
the ridiculous to the sublime. The New York Times has
published a massive history of Sullivan, the Supreme Court case
with which it was involved that is the protection for
almost all journalistic investigations of and criticisms of elected officials
and prominent public figures. The essence of Sullivan is that
to be guilty of defamation or libel, a news organization
(31:26):
has to be proved to be guilty of actual malice,
knowingly printing falsehoods designed to damage a public or governmental figure.
After laudable but probably way too detailed history of the ruling,
the Times finally gets around the shattering conclusion paragraph nine
thousand or so, that there are already two Supreme Court
(31:48):
justices willing to hear a case that could repeal Sullivan,
Gorstch and Thomas, and all you need is two more
and Sullivan will be re litigated by an utterly compromised court,
a Supreme Court that is itself a constitutional crisis. Worse hill,
The Times peace concludes that the likeliest paintiff in such
(32:08):
a case would be Trump, that his frivolous lawsuits against
CNN and the ABC Stephanopoulos case about his quoting of
the word rape and the stupid CBS lawsuit about the
sixty minutes interview of Kamala Harris. Those are actually attempts
on Trump's behalf, or maybe by him, if he's sane
(32:29):
for an hour, to get one of his lawsuits in
front of his Supreme Court to overturn Sullivan, and again
not exactly being secretive about it. No stealth here. After
he lost his twenty twenty two defamation case against CNN,
Trump appealed last year, and his lawyers wrote, quote, Plaintiff
(32:51):
respectfully requests that the court revisit the actual malice standard
under New York Times v. Sullivan. New York Times v. Sullivan.
Maybe that means they're going to try to repeal New
York Times be Sullivan. No, it's not possible. If Sullivan disappeared,
(33:11):
How much of the already terrified American news media run
by shitthead billionaires would disappear with it? How shaky is
the ground on which Sullivan stands? Well, if you'd really
like to not sleep tonight. The Times notes that thirty
two years ago, an academic paper was written by an
(33:34):
assistant law professor at a Midwestern university which questioned the
broadness of Sullivan, which questioned, especially how much it limited
non governmental public figures from suing news outlets for damage,
how it could someday if left to its own devices,
tabloid eyes mainstream news, even though even thirty two years
(33:57):
ago that had long since happened. The assistant professor with
the nineteen ninety three doubts about Sullivan is still a
prominent legal figure in twenty twenty five. Her name is
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. And unless she's changed her mind,
(34:19):
we're all in a boatload of trouble. Also of interest
here in speaking of which, Gavin Newsom embraces Charlie Kirk
and Stephen A. Smith. Sorry, that's President Stephen A. Smith.
Ask him he's reluctant to run, but ask him if
he's going to run and make the great sacrifice. Gavin
(34:44):
Newsom embraces Charlie Kirk and Stephen A. President Smith embraces
Candae Owens. And that sound you heard is not the
Overton window shifting. It's the Overton window being dropped by
the movers and shattering into a million pieces on the
effing floor. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown,
(35:15):
with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown,
(35:38):
the newspaper The Columbus Dispatch notifies us that Thurber House,
the museum former Thurber family home, the literary nonprofit operation
supporting writers and perpetuating the work of America's most versatile
humorist and satirist, is in financial trouble needs two hundred
thousand to keep going, in large part because fewer and
fewer people know who James Thurber was. I have done
(36:02):
my best to keep him prominent. We had a brief
recive's urgents when I used to read his stories on TV.
But here I have failed him. I haven't done one
Thurber story since we switched to two podcasts a week.
So in hopes that you will help bring him front
of mind again, I will bring you today not just one,
but two Thurbers, and not just two Thurbers, but my
favorite Thurber and my late father's favorite Thurber story. Fitting
(36:26):
since this Thursday, it will have been fifteen years since
my father died, and I was reading it to him
when he died. Now, honestly, it went better than that.
Souths James Thurber forever first, believe it or not, There's
still more new idiots to talk about. The Roundup of
the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
(36:46):
two Day's other worst persons in the world. And this
episode is dedicated to the new rule they are experimenting
with in baseball spring training, the automatic Balls and Strikes system,
in which a batter, catcher, or pitcher can appeal the
umpire's ball or strike call and you get a computerized
(37:06):
review in like fifteen seconds on the scoreboard. I like it.
It's terrific, but I think they may have to change
the name because it's already known by its acronym. It
is the ABS system, which, if you were mean spirited
and I am, you could alter your pronunciation of that
and simply call it a BS system. Fix the acronym anyway.
(37:32):
Here the nominees the Bronze Worse once again, Stephen A. Smith.
I hope he has learned that getting into politics means
more than putting your fingers to your lips pensively and
trying to look serious, but I don't think so. ESPN
is giving him, reportedly a five year, one hundred million
dollar new contract, and cool. I am all for the
talent having the money, and the owners not having the
(37:55):
money should have held out for one hundred and one million,
my friend. But part of this deal will allow Stephen
to talk even more politics in venues other than ESPN.
And I swear to you when I was at ESPN,
I insisted that I would not and should not be
allowed to do it. Nobody else should be allowed to
do politics in other venues while doing sports at ESPN.
(38:17):
Not don't, and I didn't. We did this at MSNBC
and on NBC Football Night in America years ago, ending
in two thousand and nine, twenty ten, And basically that
was the last time it didn't end in utter disaster.
Even before that, Rush Limbaugh tried it and it ended
in utter disaster. And it ended in utter disaster at ESPN.
(38:39):
This with Stephen a will end in tears, especially if
Steven lets himself get played like a two dollars banjo
every time he steps into the arena. This is him
about an interview guest on one of his podcasts quote,
and I'll spare you my impression of him. When that
young lady speaks, don't even think about challenging her intelligence.
(39:01):
Don't even think about challenging her ability to articulate her
point of view. You better know what the hell you're
talking about when you come at her. That's what I
take away just as much as anything else. You get
the idea that Stephen is paid by the word. I
can't wait until she and I sit face to face
one day and bolly back and forth about what we feel,
what we believe, what we stand for, and why. Because
(39:21):
I'm certainly different than her when it comes to some
political position She's taken and beyond, there is no doubt
about that. But I can't deny she's sharp as attack,
and you damn well better be if you're going to
come for her. Because ladies and gentlemen, this went on
for another seventeen days. Who is she is he talking about?
Who is the she in this equation? Candace Owens? Candace
(39:44):
Effing Owens, the woman that the fascist site The Daily
Wire fired because they said she was too anti Semitic
even for them. Candace Effing Owens, who ten years ago
was writing about quote the batshit crazy antics of the
Republican Tea Party, and then she discovered the real money
was being one off of the batshit crazy Republican Tea Party. Stephen,
(40:08):
if you want to cover politics or run for office,
pro tip, take some of that one hundred million dollars
and buy a guide dog the runner up or sir elong,
I'm just going to quote Politico about Musk. Here. Elon
Musk defended himself to a room full of House Republicans
(40:29):
saying that he can't bat a thousand all the time.
According to four people present for his remarks, Okay, I
realize Elon is an immigrant, possibly an immigrant who gained
the system and the laws and has no right to
be here. I don't know, and he probably was impaired
when he said that, so he doesn't exactly get you know,
America or American things like baseball. But let me revisit
(40:53):
that one phrase in there where he said he quote
can't bat a thousand all the time. In point of fact,
to bat a thousand, to have a baseball batting average
of a thousand that is one point zero zero zero.
That means you are batting one thousand all the time.
It means you did not make any outs, no mistakes,
(41:15):
nothing but hits. There are no degrees of batting a thousand.
If you don't bat a thousand all the time, you
are instead batting nine eighty nine or something. Because the
world divides into just two categories e long batting one
thousand and not batting a thousand and guess which category
(41:35):
you fall into, you torp. Also, Elon is not batting
nine eighty nine or something. He's batting about ninety one.
But our winner the worst the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
Christopher Luxon. Now New Zealand used to have a thoughtful, brilliant, brave, humane,
though sometimes unintelligible because of that accent, prime minister named
(41:58):
Jacinda Ardern. Now it has a bald right winger named Luxon.
New z Willand's senior envoy to the United Kingdom, former
head of their Labor Party, Phil Goff, got up an
event in London after Trump started his war crimes against
Zelenski and Ukraine, and mister Goff compared what Trump did
to what the British government and Prime Minister Nevil Chamberlain
(42:20):
and the then outsider Winston Churchill did after Chamberlain sold
out Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in nineteen thirty eight.
Mister Goff said, quote, President Trump has restored the bust
of Churchill to the Oval Office, but do you think
he really understands history Goff then quoted Churchill to Chamberlain
and his government in Parliament after the infamous war starting
(42:44):
betrayal of Czechoslovakia, quote, you had the choice between war
and dishonor you chose dishonor yet you will have war.
New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, who turns eighty next
month and is the head of New Zealand, first immediately
fired mister Goff. His Prime Minister Luxem, who he did
(43:05):
not inform of the firing, backed him up. Why did
they fire Golf because diplomats are supposed to talk diplomatically.
It sounds like mister Luxan could be running the Democratic
Party in this country anyway. Before he became Prime Minister
of New Zealand, Luxon was on the Unilever Company executive ladder,
(43:26):
where he rose to the position of swear. I swear
this is true. He was director of the global deodorance
and grooming category. All right, which part of that sounds
the most embarrassing? And what do you do for the
company here? I'm in charge of grooming. What do you
do for the company here? I'm in charge of global deodorance.
(43:51):
All the deodorans in the world I know that's more
of an Australian accent. I apologize New Zealand. Now this
is bad enough. GoF is quoting Winston Churchill, is pointing
out reality and is doing what real political leaders they
are supposed to do, giving a middle finger to desk
spots like Donald Trump. And they fired him for making
(44:12):
New zealand diplomatic efforts look bad in England. But just
to add to this, he was fired for doing what
I did after the Trump ambush of Zelenski quoting Winston
Churchill and you had the choice between war and dishonor
you chose dishonor yet you will have war. So I'm
taking this personally. Bro New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher, you
(44:32):
need more global deodorance because your spit does two stink
lux on two days. Other worst person and Lord, as
(44:57):
I've mentioned many times, I read this story first aloud
in a class in college in nineteen seventy nine, and
a friend of mine came up to me and said,
you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber
for a living, and I said, yeah, that'll ever happen.
This is, for some reason salvation for me. Catharsis, and
every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been
(45:20):
a long week. A Box to Hide In by James Thurber.
I waited till the large woman with the awful hat
took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering
at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way. The
(45:44):
clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box,
I asked, A large box. I want a box to
hide in. You want a box, he asked, I want
a box to hide in. I said, what do you mean?
He said, you mean a big box. I said, I
(46:04):
meant a big box, big enough to hold me. I
haven't got any boxes, he said, only cottons that cans
come in. I tried several other groceries, and none of
them had a box big enough for me to hide in.
There was nothing for it but to face life out.
I didn't feel strong, and I'd had this overpowering desire
(46:27):
to hide in a box for a long time. Well,
what do you mean you want to hide in this box?
One grocer asked me. It's a form of escape. I
told him, hiding in a box. It circumscribes your worries
in the range of your anguish. You don't see people either.
(46:50):
How the hell do you eat when you're in this box,
asked the grocer. How don't the hell do you get
anything to eat? I said I had never been in
a box and didn't know, but that that would take
care of itself. Well, he said, finally, I haven't got
any boxes, only some pasteboard curtains that cans come in.
It was the same every place. I gave up when
(47:13):
it got dark and the groceries closed, and hid in
my room again. I turned out the light and lay
on the bed. You feel better when it gets dark.
I could have hit in a closet, I suppose, but
people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in
a closet. They would be startled, and you'd have to
(47:35):
tell them why you're in the closet. Nobody pays attention
to a big box lying on the floor. You could
stay in it for days and nobody'd think to look
in it, not even the cleaning woman. My cleaning woman
came the next morning and woke me up, and I
(47:56):
was still feeling bad. I asked her if she knew
where I could get a large box. How big a
box you want? She asked, I want a box big
enough for me to get inside of, I said. She
looked at me with big dim eyes. There's something wrong
with her glands. She's awful, but she has a big heart,
(48:17):
which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick,
and her children are sick, and she is sick too.
I got to thinking how pleasant it would be if
I were in a box now and didn't have to
see her. I'd be in a box right there in
the room, and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if you
had a desire to bark or laugh when someone who
doesn't know walks by the box you were in, maybe
(48:42):
she would have a spell with her heart. If I
did that would die right there. The officers and the
elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny. Dog gone,
thing happened at the building last night. The doorman would
say to his wife, I led in this woman to
clean up ten f and she never come out. See
she's never in there more in an hour, but she
never come out. See when got time for me to
(49:05):
go off duty? Why, I says to Credic, who was
on the elevator, I says, what the hell you suppose
happened to that woman cleans tenf. He says he didn't know.
He says he never seen her after he took her up.
So I spoke to mister Grammage about it. I'm sorry
to bother you, mister Grammage, I says, but there's something
funny about that woman cleans tenf. So I told him
(49:25):
so he said we better have a look, and we
all three goes up and knuts on the door and
rings the bells, seeing nobody answers, so he said we'd
have to walk in. So Crenic opened the door and
we walked in and here was this woman cleans the apartment,
dead as a herring on the floor, and the gentleman
that lives there was in a box. The cleaning woman
(49:50):
kept looking at me. It was hard to realize she
wasn't dead. It's a form of escape, I murmured, wat say.
She asked, Dully, you don't know of any large packing boxes,
do you? I asked, now, I don't. She said, I
(50:13):
haven't found one yet, But I still have this overpowering
urge to hide in a box. Maybe it will go away,
maybe I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse.
It's hard to say. A Box to Hide In by
(50:34):
James Thurber, and I don't know when I went to
Sullivan became my father's favorite Thurber story. I suspect it
was in the hospital when I was reading to him
in the last six months of his life. I know
I read it to him at least half a dozen times,
the first five by his request. The last time he
(50:56):
did not request it, in fact, and this is the
most perverse kind of compliment I think any restriter has
ever received. I read this story to him. It was
the last thing that I read to him. In fact,
it was the last thing he did on earth, was
to listen to this story in a state of semi consciousness.
He waited till the end of it. He took one deep,
(51:18):
satisfied breath, and he died. I don't recommend this, but
I think it does speak to the quality of the writing.
I went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I was reminded
the other morning by what I don't remember, and it
doesn't matter, of a crisp September morning last year when
I went to the Grand Central to see a little
(51:40):
boy of ten get excitedly on a special coach that
was to take him to a boys' school somewhere north
of Boston. He had never been away to school before.
The coach was squirming with youngsters. You could tell after
a while the novitiates shining and tremulous and a little
awed from the more aloof boys who had been away
(52:01):
to school before. But they were very much alike at glance.
There was for me, in case you thought I was
leading up to that, no sharp feeling of old lost
years in the tense atmosphere of that coach. Because I
never went away to a private school when I was
a little boy. I went to Sullivant School in Columbus.
(52:22):
I thought about it as I walked back to my hotel.
Sullivant was an ordinary public school, and yet it was
not like any other I have ever known of. In
seeking an adjective to describe the Sullivant School of my
years nineteen hundred and nineteen hundred and eight, I can
only think of tough. Sullivant School was tough. The boys
(52:45):
of Sullivant came mostly from the region around Central Market,
a poorish district with many families of the laboring class.
The school district also included a number of homes of
the upper classes, because at the turn of the century
one or two old residential streets still lingered near the
shouting and rumbling of the market, reluctant to surrender under
their fine old houses to the encroaching rabble of commerce,
(53:07):
and become as a last. They now have more vulgar
business streets. I remember always first of all, the Celibant
baseball team. Most grammar school baseball teams are made up
of boys in the seventh and eighth grades, or they
were in my day, But with Sulibant it was different.
Several of its best players were in the fourth grade,
(53:30):
known to the teachers of the school as the terrible fourth.
In that grade you first encountered fractions and long division,
and many pupils lodged there for years, like logs in
a brook. Some of the more able baseball players have
(53:53):
been in the fourth grade for seven or eight years. Then, too,
there were a number of boys who had not been
in the class past the normal time, but were nevertheless
deep into their teams. They had avoided starting to school
by eluding the truant officer until they were ready to
go into long pants, but he always got them in
(54:13):
the end. One or two of these fourth graders were
seventeen or eighteen years old, but the dean of the
squad was a tall, husky young man of twenty two
who was in the fifth grade. The teachers of the
third and fourth had got tired of having him around
as the years rolled along and had pushed him on.
His name was Dana Wayeney, and he had a mustache.
(54:38):
Don't ask me why his parents allowed him to stay
in school so long. There were many mysteries at Sullivans
that were never cleared up. All I know is why
he kept on in school and didn't go to work.
He liked playing on the baseball team, and he had
a pretty easy time in class because the teachers had
given up asking him any questions at all years before.
(55:01):
The story was that he had answered but one question
in the seventeen years he had been going to classes
at Sullivant, and that was what is one use of
the comma? The kami, said Dana, embarrassedly, unsnarling his long
legs from beneath a desk much too low for him,
is used to shoot marbles with. Kami's was our word
(55:24):
for those cheap ten percent marbles in case, it wasn't yours.
The Sullivant School baseball team of nineteen hundred and five
defeated several high school teams in the city and claimed
the high school championship of the state, to which title
it had, of course, no technical right. I believe the
boys could have proved their moral right to the championship, however,
(55:45):
if they had been allowed to go out of town
and play all the teams they challenged, such as the
powerful Dayton and Toledo Nines. But their road season was
called off after a terrific fight that occurred during one
game at Mount Stirling or Picquah or Zenia, I can't
remember which. Our first baseman, Dana Whaney, crowned the umpire
(56:09):
with a bat during an altercation overcalled strike and the
fight was on. It took place in the fourth inning,
so of course the game was never finished. The battle
continued on down into the business section of the town
and raged for hours, with much destruction of property. But
since Sullivan was ahead of the time seventeen to nothing,
there could have been no doubt as to the outcome.
(56:32):
Nobody was killed. All of us boys were sure our
team could have beaten Ohio State university that year, but
they wouldn't play us. They were scared. Wayney was by
no means the biggest or toughest guy on the Grammar
School team. He was merely the oldest, being about a
year the senior of Floyd, the center fielder who could
(56:53):
jump five feet straight into the air without taking a
running start. Nobody knew, not even the Board of Education,
which once tried to find out whether Floyd was Floyd's
first name or his last name. He apparently only had one.
He didn't have any parents, and nobody, including himself, seemed
(57:15):
to know where he lived. When teachers insisted that he
must have another name to go with Floyd, he would
grow sullen and ominous, and they would cease questioning him
because he was a dangerous scholar in his schoolroom brawl,
as mister Harrigan, the janitor found out one morning when
he was called in by a screaming teacher. All our
teachers were women to get Floyd under control. After she
(57:39):
had tried to whip him and he had begun to
take the room apart, beginning with the desks. Floyd broke
into small pieces the switch she had used on him.
Some said he also ate it. I don't know, because
I was home sick of the time with mumps or something.
Harrigan was a burly, iron muscle janitor, a man come
(58:02):
from a long line of coal shovelers, but he was
no match for Floyd, who had to be sure the
considerable advantage of being more aroused than mister Harrigan. When
their fight started, Floyd had him down and was sitting
on his chest in no time, and Harrigan had to
promise to be good and to say that's what I
get ten times before Floyd would let him up. I
(58:24):
don't suppose I would ever have got through Sullivant School
alive if it hadn't been for Floyd. For some reason,
he appointed himself my protector, and I needed one. If
Floyd was known to be on your side, nobody in
the school would dare be after you and chase you home.
I was one of the ten or fifteen male pupils
in Sullivant School who always or almost always knew their lessons,
(58:49):
and I believe Floyd admired the mental prowess of a
youngster who knew how many continents there were and whether
or not the sun was inhabited Also, one time, when
it came to be my turn to read to the class.
We used to take turns reading American history aloud. I
came across the word ducane and knew how to pronounce it.
(59:10):
That charmed Floyd, who had been slouched in his seat
idly following the printed page of his worn and penciled textbook.
How you know that was ducane, boy, he asked me
after class. I don't know, I said, I just knew it.
He looked at me with round eyes. Oh that's something
(59:31):
he said. After that word got around that Floyd would
beat the tar out of anybody that messed around with me.
I wore glasses from the time I was eight, and
I knew my lessons, and both of those things were
considered pretty terrible at Sullivan. Floyd had one idiosyncrasy, though.
In the early nineteen hundreds, long, warm, furry gloves that
(59:51):
came almost to your elbows were popular with boys, and
Floyd had one of the biggest pears in school. He
wore them the year round. Dick Peterson was an either
greater figure on the baseball team and in the school
than Floyd was. He had a way in the classroom
of blurting out a long, deep, rolling be for no
(01:00:17):
reason at all. Once he licked three boys his own size,
single handed, really single handed, for he fought with his
right hand and held a mandolin in his left hand
all the time. It came out uninjured. Dick and Floyd
never met in mortal combats, so nobody ever knew which
one could beat, and the scholars were about evenly divided
(01:00:40):
in their opinions. Many a fight started among them after
school when the argument came up. I think school never
let out at Sullivan without at least one fight starting up,
and sometimes there were as many as five or six
raging between the corner of Oak and sixth Streets and
the corner of Rich and Fourth Streets, four blocks away.
Now and again, virtually the whole school turned out to
(01:01:02):
fight the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in
Fifth Street near town for no reason at all, in
winter with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fists,
brick bats, and clubs. Dick Peterson was always in the van, yelling, singing,
being whirling all the way around when he swung with
(01:01:24):
his right or if he hadn't brought his mandle in
his left and missed. He made himself the pitcher on
the baseball team because he was the captain. He was
the captain because everybody else was afraid to challenge his
self election except Floyd. Floyd was too lazy to pitch,
and he didn't care who was captain because he didn't
fully uncomprehend what that meant. On one occasion, when Earl Baddock,
(01:01:48):
a steamfitter's son, had shut out Mound Street School for
six innings without a hit, Dick took him out of
the pitcher's box and went in himself. He was hit hard,
and the other team scored, but it didn't make much
difference because the margin of Sullivan's victory was so great.
The team didn't lose a game for five years to
another grammar school. When Dick Peterson was in the sixth grade,
(01:02:12):
he got into a saloon brawl and was killed. When
I go back to Columbus, I always walked past Sullivant School,
and I have never happened to get there when classes
were letting out, so I don't know what the pupils
are like. Now, I am sure there are no more
Dick Peterson's and no more Floyd's unless Floyd is still
(01:02:34):
going to school there. The playyard is still entirely bare
of grass and covered with gravel, and the sycamore still
line the curve between the schoolhouse fence and the Oak
Street car line. A street car line running past a
schoolhouse is a dangerous thing as a rule, but I
remember no one being injured while I was attending Sullivant.
(01:02:55):
I do remember, however, one person who came very near
being injured. He was a motorman on the Oak Street line,
and once when his car stopped at the owner of
six to let off passengers, he yelled at Cheudy Davidson,
who played third base on the ball team and was
a member of the Terrible Fourth, to get out of
the way. Chudy was fourteen years old, but huge for
(01:03:16):
his age, and he was standing on the tracks taking
a chew of tobacco. Come on down off of that
con I'll not get blocked off, said Shouty, and what
I can only describe as a sullivant tone of voice.
The motorman waited until Shooty moved slowly off the tracks,
then he went on about his business. I think it
(01:03:37):
was lucky for him that he did. There were boys
in those days. I went to Sullivant by James Thurber
(01:04:02):
Thurber House, Columbus, Ohio. I don't know. Maybe we can
put out another book, audio book of Thurber's stories. I
did one. It's available where audio books are available. I
don't think it's on iTunes. It's called the Thurber Audio Collection.
I don't think you can find it using my name,
(01:04:22):
but it's there. They get all the money anyway. I've
done all the damage I can do here more on
Thurber later as I think of it. Thanks for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
(01:04:45):
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else
was as ever my fault. Kenny and I are not
(01:05:07):
running for president. That's countdown for today, Just four hundred
and thirteen days until the scheduled end of his lame duck,
lame brained term, unless Musk replaces him sooner or the
actual aerial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.
As always, bulletins as the news warrants, remember impeach Trump.
(01:05:29):
It won't work now, it will win the Democrats the
midterms if there are midterms, and in the interim, put
your paddles away and get out your canes and keep
protesting until next time. I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(01:06:13):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Democratic
(00:26):
Party leadership in the House and the Senate has to go,
and the leaders in the States have to get active
or they have to go. And the first you can
go is Gavin Newsom. You're out. I'll get to him.
In a moment. During a pit stop at the Indianapolis
five hundred car race in nineteen eighty one, some methanol
was sprayed into and on driver Rick Mears and his crew,
(00:50):
and suddenly there was literally an invisible fire. Methanol flame
does not produce smoke. It is virtually invisible in sunlight.
Rick Mears and his crew were on fire, and nobody
could see it, literally invisible fire. People thought, perhaps they
were kidding. Right now, this nation is on fire, also
(01:12):
an invisible fire, and Democratic leadership is saying, oh no,
it isn't because Akeem Jeffries and Gavin Newsom and the
others can't e fing see it, or because they personally
are not yet on fire yet yet, because Trump hasn't
gotten to them yet to set them on fire. Axio
(01:34):
supports that Jeffries, the Minority Whip Catherine Clark, and Caucus
Chair Pete Aguiar, the top three Democrats in the House
summoned a dozen rank and file members to what was
called a come to Jesus meeting about the disruptions during
Trump's I'm God Right speech last week. You're thinking Jeffries
(01:54):
and Clark and Aguiar should have been awarding the disruptors
medals of some kind, or maybe scolding them for not
disrupting enough. No, sir, leadership is quote unhappy that congressmen
and congresswomen who see the invisible fire consuming our nation
had the audacity to react to it, raps like Jasmine Crockett,
(02:17):
Maxwell Frost, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico.
You had a lot of nerve straying from our plan,
Jeffries told them, and reminded them of his dear colleague
letter he sent them before the speech, insisting on a
quote strong, determined and dignified democratic presence in the chamber,
and how they violated that by making themselves the story. Seriously,
(02:44):
if it came, Jeffries thinks, limiting protests, holding up those
pathetic little signs that they all had, and to what
was called quote outfit coordination and refusal to clap on quote.
If he thinks that was a sign of strength, or
that it was determined, or that it was somehow dignified,
he should be marched out of the House Chamber faster
(03:05):
than al Green was, and in fact, Jeffrey should be
marched out of the House Chamber by Democrats. They're not
being talked to like they are children. One Democrat leaked
to Axios for a story that made the protesters look
like children. We are helping them understand why their strategy
is a bad idea. Ah, I think I've just located
(03:28):
the source of the problem here. Their strategy is not
a bad idea, given that their strategy is, unlike the
one apparently dreamed up by a Keem Jeffreys, an actual strategy,
while the one dreamed up by a Keem Jeffries is
holding up signs the size of ping pong paddles and
not offending the dictator nor angering his Republican slave masters
(03:49):
in the House. It doesn't surprise me. Leadership is very upset.
They gave specific instructions not to do that, one anonymous
Democrats said, showing exactly the lack of courage Trump is
counting on. Trump will count on. Trump has always counted on.
Would they have ever done that to Nancy Pelosi? You
(04:11):
know the answer. Never. So you've got to put the
hammer down. Yes, put the hammer down. Put the hammer
down right on top of that anonymous Democrat's head. F
him or her, f them. The country is on fire
and Trump is doing his best, well, putin's best to
(04:34):
next set the world on fire. And the keen Jeffries
is worried about making sure his Democrats in the House
are absolutely consistent in doing absolutely nothing about it. Invisible
fire everywhere, and he has become a living meme. It's fine,
he says from the table, sipping his coffee. And by
(04:56):
the way, you invoke Nancy Pelosi to encourage this silent appeasement,
this obeying in advance. What did Nancy Pelosi do again?
After Trump's last State of the Union address in twenty twenty,
she tore up her copy of his speech on camera,
slowly and methodically. And do you remember that, or do
(05:20):
you remember the Democratic response speech that followed Trump's State
of the Union in twenty twenty, or who gave that
speech or what that speech was about. I understand that
democratic lawmakers are hamstrung. They don't know what to do
(05:40):
at the moment. Democracy seems to be a bad campaign basis.
They only have a few options at this point. They
could literally act outside of the law, I suppose, since
bribes by foreigners are no longer going to be investigated anywhere,
you could get foreign billionaires to buy Republicans to vote
(06:01):
to impeach Trump. I mean, it's one Republican, Michael, what
could it cost ten million dollars? You could go a
little bit more immediately and more direct. You could interrupt
fascist rallies like Trump's next verbal version of mind komp
with I don't know reasons to evacuate the area in
which the speech is being given. That's probably contraindicated Democratic leadership,
(06:26):
and Democrats could act symbolically and metaphorically and maybe get
themselves punished inside the house or maybe even arrested by
you know, getting up and leaving with Al Green when
he is escorted out, or going along with the progressives
who saying we shall overcome while this latest crazy Republican
speaker Mike Johnson read out Green's censure motion. Or if
(06:52):
they're not willing to do any of that, they can
do whatever the hell teme Jeffries thinks he's doing, and
I'm really not sure what holding up little paddles that
make them all look like wile e Coyote in the
road rudder cartoons with his signs reading help and that's
all folks does. But I believe the technical term for
what he's doing is I think this is the technical
(07:13):
term nothing. While the nation burns invisibly by the way,
Andy Ogles and insane man who represents Insane County is
pushing privileged motions to remove all the protesting Democrats from
their committee assignments. And you know, if the King Jeffries
(07:38):
votes for those resolutions, I would only be mildly surprised, because,
of course, ten Democrats in the House, elected as Democrats
by Democratic voters, they voted with the Republicans to censure
Al Green and they did this because, bluntly, these ten
Democrats are assholes. Amy Barra asshole, Ed Case asshole, Jim asshole,
(08:07):
Laura Gillen asshole, Jim Himes asshole, Chrissy Hulahan asshole, Marcy
Capture asshole, Jared Moskowitz asshole, Marie Glusen camp Perez asshole,
and Tom Swazi asshole. In fact, here's another asshole to
(08:31):
take home with you. Some of those are not actually surprises.
Swazi is nothing more than a weather vane, and a
mediocre one. Marie Perez too. It's a shame about Jared Moskowitz.
He's useful, he was great against Comer, He's funny, and
if he apologizes, I would say he gets a second chance.
It's a shame Marcy Capture wants to end her career
(08:52):
siding with Nazis. But there you go out, all of
them out. And if he doesn't figure out that the
country is on fire, Jeffreys out. Because what Jeffrey should
be doing is threatening to shut the goddamn House of
Representatives down. If any of those measures to throw those
(09:13):
dozen or so Democrats who sang off their committees passes,
walk out before the CR vote, let the Republicans destroy
themselves and Trump and the economy with no Democrats in
the House. Get yourself arrested. If need be a king,
do something. Christ at least hold that weekly news conference
every Sunday morning, just to steal the narrative away from Trump.
(09:36):
It's a meaningless press conference. It's a manipulation of the media.
At least you could do that are you good at
anything risk something risk as much as that old man
from Texas with the Caine risk and the members of
the Black Caucus who sang risked, I mean, goddamn it, Jeffreys.
(09:58):
Last month, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts suggested there was a
constitutional crisis and that the respond should be quote, maybe
a national strike. Saturday he held a town hall in Holliston,
mass and he brought it up again, a national strike.
We can't just sit back and let our democracy just
fall apart, says Congress from McGovern. I can imagine Jeffrey's
(10:21):
response to that. We're not letting it fall apart. We
have outfit coordination. We have our cute little auction house
bitter paddles with strong words written on them, but not
too strong. The inside, off the record response from the Democrats,
(10:42):
from the leadership, from the old wise men and women
of the party is that the Democrats just haven't coordinated
a strategy of response to all this yet still flat
footed after the election. The election was one hundred and
twenty six days ago. In that time, Trump has given
(11:03):
a line a budget veto to a white supremacist, and
he's given your personal info to a stoned narcissist. He's
dangled the prospect of war against Canada, Panama, Mexico and Denmark.
He has imperiled Ukraine and all of Europe. He has
followed Putin's instructions to the letter. He has begun the
(11:24):
process of staying in office past his expiration date. What
he has not yet broken, he has threatened to break.
The King Jeffreys has bought pickleball paddles and coordinated outfits
and yelled at the only Democrats actually merely doing something
(11:46):
symbolic out get him out of here and the others. Ordinarily,
you wait for the Vhy government to take shape after
the Hitler has defeated the France. The King Jeffries has
already surrendered. Al green for Democratic House leader, or or
(12:12):
bring back Nancy and start tearing shit again. By the way,
(12:39):
the answer to the trivia question was that the year
Nancy tore up the copy of Trump's speech was twenty twenty,
and the Democratic response was by Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan,
and it had an audience and I had to go
look it up. When you have nothing but symbolism, do
the symbolism. No to a Keem Jeffries, Yes to Nancy
(13:04):
Pelosi and no, not to Gavin Newsom as the new
face of the Democratic Party. Not at all. I'm not
as shocked as many were that he's suddenly uncertain about
transgendered scholastic athletes. The whole issue, all sides of it,
whereas it has taken on tragic and meaningful proportions, is
(13:30):
not in fact gigantic. There might be in this country
one hundred and fifty students high school college to whom
this applies. If the amount of time spent on this
issue were devoted to the amount of time that would
be required to resolve each of these situations inside the
(13:51):
league or the organization in which they are unfolding, they
could have been solved in about two weeks. Because it's
not about transgendered athletes, Gavin. It's not about whether or
not it's fair to the girls. They don't give a
damn about girls sports. They're going to eliminate them next month.
(14:12):
Gavin Newsom did not surprise me with that. He surprised
me with something else. He really didn't surprise me with anything,
because I met Kimberly Gilfoyle twenty years ago when she
was trying to get a show at MSNBC when Newsom
was still mayor of San Francisco and Kimberly Gilfoyle was
(14:35):
still Gavin Newsom's wife, and my only thoughts were, this
is his wife, that's who he married, this this idiot.
And the other thought was the dialogue from the movie
The Graduate when the old guy mister maguire at the
graduation party has that conversation that career advice with Dustin
(14:58):
Hoffman and he says, I want to say one word
to you, just one word, and Dustin Hoffman is Benjamin
says yes sir, and mister McGuire says, are you listening,
and Benjamin says, yes, yes I am, and mister McGuire
says plastics. Newsom has given me another one of those
(15:23):
first moments, not the Plastics moments, but you know, the
he married this idiot. Newsom did a podcast with Charlie
Kirk that's where the quote about transgendered athletes comes from,
and he agreed with Charlie Kirk that there's an issue
with transgendered athletes. He agreed with Charlie Kirk, racist, sexist, monstrous,
(15:49):
Charlie Kirk to what point to try to get the
vote from that vast middle out there, the middle between
what Gavin Nazis who want to kill all the non
Nazis and Nazis who merely want to imprison all the
nun on Nazis. Is that your wheelhouse for the nomination
in twenty twenty eight? And then it turned out, at
(16:11):
least according to Kirk, that the podcast was arranged by
Kim Gilfoyle. Kirk told the Fox station in La quote,
I got a phone call from Governor Knew some two
weeks ago. We connected through Kimberly Gilfoil. Obviously they have
a shared past. So not only are you still working
(16:32):
with Kirk, but you reached out via Kim Gilfoil because
Lara Trump was unavailable. Alina Hobo wouldn't take your call.
Kirk had another quote, this is another non surprise. This
is a guy who wants to be president more than
(16:53):
any other human being alive. Well that's not true. There's
still Trump. But Gavin, if Kirk's right, by advice to
you is this, get jd Vance to resign, Get Trump
to appoint you vice president. Because even today, even now,
to get the Democratic nomination for president, you have to
have a minimum of one scruple, just one. I mean,
(17:17):
here is where we are in this country. Josh Marshall's
site TPM has gotten an email from management at the
US African Development Foundation to the White House Presidential Personnel
Office about the appointment of the acting chair of the
Foundation's board. Seems like trivia, seems like legales, and it
(17:38):
in fact is the next thing they are going to
do to destroy the country. It gets around the reality
that in this case, Trump's choice could never get confirmed
by the Senate for this acting chair or full time
chair of the foundational board. So the Foundation's solution, memorialized
in an email to the White House Presidential Personnel Office,
(18:00):
is very simple, the Foundation solution and Trump end Senate
confirmation of presidential appointments. This email begins, quote, given the
president's inability to supervise the activities of the board less USADF,
he has inherent authority. Those are the keywords, inherent authority
(18:21):
to designate an acting chairman of the board, and it
ends quote. The President currently has no way of ensuring
the agency is running or complying with his executive order
unless he directs and temporary official using inherent authority under
Article two bingo, you heard me. The next Trump maneuver
(18:43):
will be that Senate approval of his appointments is unconstitutional
according to the inherent authority in Article two, President B
King advise and consent. This eliminate just restraints on Trump,
(19:05):
no also eliminate criticism of him and questions to him.
Eliminate the slightest protest by the outside world, whether it
is Al Green swinging his cane, or a Keem Jeffery
swinging his bat with the paddle ball attached to it
by string, or just some senator asking a question about
(19:26):
who this idiot is he wants to appoint to run
the board of the USADF. And that's another reason why
Al Green's mid speech protest was so essential. Trump long
ago figured out that the easiest way to avoid criticism
was to avoid critics. Keep the critics out out of
your rallies, out of your speeches, out of your cabinet,
(19:47):
out of your party, out of your sight. But there's
one hole in that wall. You can't keep them out
of your speeches. To Congress, Democrats at Trump's speeches, and
the media at Trump events are literally the last people
in this country, the last handful of people who pierce
(20:08):
Trump's bubble. In the slightest al Green voiced opposition and criticism,
and Trump almost imperceptibly has moved from being convinced he
has overwhelming support to convincing himself he has nothing but support,
to convincing himself that he has a complete mandate and
is already king, to never even hearing any more criticism,
(20:30):
to punishing the critics, to making critics and criticism of
him illegal. That is the path. That's why the individual
boycotts of his speech to Congress a week ago were
well intentioned but stupid. That's why even the little ping
pong ball paddles were better. That's why democratic leadership should
(20:55):
have walked out with al Green, not warned others never
to do anything again without written permission of a game Jeffreys.
Most of them are of at best dubious value as
elected congressmen and senators, utterly fungible, several buildings full of
Tom Swazis. But as the last Americans allowed to literally
(21:19):
speak truth to power. Their job is to interrupt Trump.
Their job is to interrupt his feedback loop. Their job
is to shake him and enrage him and provoke him.
Their job is to use their right to shout cat
calls from the Congressional Peanut Gallery until Trump eliminates the
(21:43):
Congressional Peanut Gallery by eliminating Congress. They have to do
this because when he eliminates Congress, all we will have
left is the media. And I know it's a surprise
to you that we still have media. I wouldn't have
noticed either. Funniest dog one thing. Trump announced he was
(22:08):
going to get tough on Russia and there'd be sanctions
on Russia, and he would pressure Russia to settle with Ukraine.
And then he cut off Ukraine's access to US satellite imagery.
And then the Russians doubled the amount of bombs they
were dropping onto Ukraine, and then the accuracy of those
drops suddenly doubled two as if they were getting locations
(22:28):
and other targeting information from American companies. And then NBC
reported yesterday that even if Zelensky signs a rare Earth
deal today, that does not mean Trump will restore American
aid to Ukraine. He wants Zelensky to move towards resigning
and holding elections. And yes, Trump's people have been caught
talking to the opposition parties in Ukraine. You know the
(22:50):
ones favored by Putin. Oh, and yes, he signs the
Rare Earths and Minerals deal and seeds all the territory
Russia wants. And after all that, the media is still
reporting Trump is going to get tough on Russia about Ukraine,
and there'll be sanctions on Russia. And he's pressuring Russia
because the media now sucks. The only people who have
(23:14):
not been muzzled or self muzzled are the ones who
are too stupid to do the job well in the
first place. And just when you are ready to give
up on these idiots, you remember, oh my god, they
are idiots, but they are our idiots, and they are
the only idiots we have left. And you remember that
Trump hates them more than we do, only he is
(23:39):
hunting them now. I got scoffing blowback from last Thursday's podcast,
especially the title Trump's plan to make it illegal to
criticize him and his hunta. And I'd like to apologize
for that title because it wasn't strong enough. The title
should have been Trump's plan to make it illegal to
criticize him and his hunta. And the media is collaborating
(24:01):
so fast it may happen before summer. President, since you must.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Talk about it yesterday, detail about if there happening.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Bob Moskins, cautious secretary of.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Movie, own secretary of no clash.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
You're just a trouble mecare and you're not supposed to
be asking that question because we're talking about the World Cup.
Gets along great with Marco and they both are fantastic.
You have there is no clash Presidents inc. I'm wonder's
NBC any of the questions of.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The World Cup to I can't imagine why Trump got
away with telling a reporter you're not supposed to ask
that question. Maybe it's because when he expelled the Associated
Press from the White House, not one other news organization,
not one did anything about it. Nobody did a thing,
(25:01):
even when simple self defense should have told the White
House car Respondence Association to walk out on Moss that day.
And maybe it's because when the White House Correspondence Association
did not walk out on Moss that day, Trump knew
he could take away its right to select the pool
reporters and they again would not walk out on Moss.
When he did that, he could threaten them with expulsion
(25:23):
from the White House the way you just heard him
do it to the NBC guide just there, without saying it,
just by implying it and knowing the White Correspondence Association
would do nothing. He also knew he could do that
to mister NBC reporter there because v she Joe Scarborough
and missus vsh Joe went to Mari Lago and begged
(25:47):
for what passes for their pathetic professional lives. And he
knew he could do that to NBC going forward, because
NBC immediately spun off MSNBC as fast as they could
file the business paperwork, and MSNBC then fired or demoted
all of its hosts of color, and Trump would never
have to explolicitly threatened NBC ever again. Okay, maybe you'd
(26:10):
have to threaten them again once.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Frankly, what Nicole Wallace said, I've never been a fan
of hers, and she's not very talented, but i'll tell
you what she said the other day about that young
man is disgraceful. She should be forced to resign, and
Rachel Mattow should be forced to resign. Nobody watches her anyway.
I don't know if it's not possible they pay her
(26:34):
as much money as I hear, but certainly she's lost
all credibility, both of them.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
But would they said the other day they should be
forced to resign? Thank you again, Joe Scarborough. Joe Scarborough is,
as hl Mankin would have phrased, it not worth the
oil with which to fry him in hell. You know
my criticisms of Rachel Matdow ten million, Joe Scarborough's are
(27:05):
not worth one Rachel Maddow. I'm sure though, when push
comes to shove, NBC will defend her and Wallace and
its White House reporter or that guy who is probably
by now it's ex White House reporter and not the
shady ex congressman who has gone from Trump critic to
(27:26):
Trumps sanitizer, to would be Trump Vice president to never Trumper,
to welcome her of Trump insect overlords, and has done
all this in literally one decade. Laws against deep fakes
that can be converted into laws against anti Trump videos,
laws against campus protests nominally about the Middle East that
(27:48):
can be converted into laws against campus protests about him,
And the saddest part is none of these refined laws
directed at the media directed at protests may be necessary
because the media will have killed itself first. Quote. I
(28:17):
am a member of several Tesla owner forums where widespread
reports of similar attacks are being shared. Begins a post
at a Facebook site user named Mike Miller, who knows
if it's real, copying a letter he claims to have
sent to his California congressman garrim Mendi. Quote. Owners are
facing physical threats, vandalism, and intimidation simply because of their
(28:42):
vehicle choice. Reports in the media highlight incidents of Tesla
charging stations being burned, Tesla service centers being vandalized, and
Tesla vehicles being spray painted or otherwise damaged. Unfortunately, law
enforcement often has limited ability to hold perpetrators accountable. By
the way, certainly that's not because the inpetrators got away
(29:05):
in their Tesla vehicles. This is not just an issue
of property damage. It is an issue of safety and
targeted aggression. I urge you to consider legislative action that
would increase penalties for these acts, potentially classifying them as
hate crimes or enhancing legal consequences for individuals who engage
in such behavior. You heard him, hate crimes he wants
(29:36):
and again it could be a troll. Everybody who responded
to him was in atrol. Everybody who said, yes, let's
make it a hate crime. He wants any damage to
a Tesla vehicle or a facility, or especially Seibetwak prosecuted
as a hate crime. This is how far the madness
(29:58):
of America twenty twenty five has gone. Protections for transgendered
people erased and the debate over it endorsed by the
governor of California who claims to be a Democrat and
is still talking to that crazy woman Guilfoyle. Protections for
transgendered people erased, the history of violence against blacks erased
(30:22):
from government websites, libraries closed, history whitewashed, the interruption of
a presidential speech, which is a Republican invention, incidentally interrupting
a presidential speech bringing censure and possible removal from committees
and ten Democrats supporting it. But if somebody writes, f
(30:43):
you Musk with their finger on the dust on the
back of your cyber truck, that should be a hate crime. Problem,
of course, is what under hate crime statutes could you
charge Musk with when he blows up another one of
his own rockets like last week. Sadly we go from
(31:05):
the ridiculous to the sublime. The New York Times has
published a massive history of Sullivan, the Supreme Court case
with which it was involved that is the protection for
almost all journalistic investigations of and criticisms of elected officials
and prominent public figures. The essence of Sullivan is that
to be guilty of defamation or libel, a news organization
(31:26):
has to be proved to be guilty of actual malice,
knowingly printing falsehoods designed to damage a public or governmental figure.
After laudable but probably way too detailed history of the ruling,
the Times finally gets around the shattering conclusion paragraph nine
thousand or so, that there are already two Supreme Court
(31:48):
justices willing to hear a case that could repeal Sullivan,
Gorstch and Thomas, and all you need is two more
and Sullivan will be re litigated by an utterly compromised court,
a Supreme Court that is itself a constitutional crisis. Worse hill,
The Times peace concludes that the likeliest paintiff in such
(32:08):
a case would be Trump, that his frivolous lawsuits against
CNN and the ABC Stephanopoulos case about his quoting of
the word rape and the stupid CBS lawsuit about the
sixty minutes interview of Kamala Harris. Those are actually attempts
on Trump's behalf, or maybe by him, if he's sane
(32:29):
for an hour, to get one of his lawsuits in
front of his Supreme Court to overturn Sullivan, and again
not exactly being secretive about it. No stealth here. After
he lost his twenty twenty two defamation case against CNN,
Trump appealed last year, and his lawyers wrote, quote, Plaintiff
(32:51):
respectfully requests that the court revisit the actual malice standard
under New York Times v. Sullivan. New York Times v. Sullivan.
Maybe that means they're going to try to repeal New
York Times be Sullivan. No, it's not possible. If Sullivan disappeared,
(33:11):
How much of the already terrified American news media run
by shitthead billionaires would disappear with it? How shaky is
the ground on which Sullivan stands? Well, if you'd really
like to not sleep tonight. The Times notes that thirty
two years ago, an academic paper was written by an
(33:34):
assistant law professor at a Midwestern university which questioned the
broadness of Sullivan, which questioned, especially how much it limited
non governmental public figures from suing news outlets for damage,
how it could someday if left to its own devices,
tabloid eyes mainstream news, even though even thirty two years
(33:57):
ago that had long since happened. The assistant professor with
the nineteen ninety three doubts about Sullivan is still a
prominent legal figure in twenty twenty five. Her name is
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. And unless she's changed her mind,
(34:19):
we're all in a boatload of trouble. Also of interest
here in speaking of which, Gavin Newsom embraces Charlie Kirk
and Stephen A. Smith. Sorry, that's President Stephen A. Smith.
Ask him he's reluctant to run, but ask him if
he's going to run and make the great sacrifice. Gavin
(34:44):
Newsom embraces Charlie Kirk and Stephen A. President Smith embraces
Candae Owens. And that sound you heard is not the
Overton window shifting. It's the Overton window being dropped by
the movers and shattering into a million pieces on the
effing floor. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown,
(35:15):
with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown,
(35:38):
the newspaper The Columbus Dispatch notifies us that Thurber House,
the museum former Thurber family home, the literary nonprofit operation
supporting writers and perpetuating the work of America's most versatile
humorist and satirist, is in financial trouble needs two hundred
thousand to keep going, in large part because fewer and
fewer people know who James Thurber was. I have done
(36:02):
my best to keep him prominent. We had a brief
recive's urgents when I used to read his stories on TV.
But here I have failed him. I haven't done one
Thurber story since we switched to two podcasts a week.
So in hopes that you will help bring him front
of mind again, I will bring you today not just one,
but two Thurbers, and not just two Thurbers, but my
favorite Thurber and my late father's favorite Thurber story. Fitting
(36:26):
since this Thursday, it will have been fifteen years since
my father died, and I was reading it to him
when he died. Now, honestly, it went better than that.
Souths James Thurber forever first, believe it or not, There's
still more new idiots to talk about. The Roundup of
the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
(36:46):
two Day's other worst persons in the world. And this
episode is dedicated to the new rule they are experimenting
with in baseball spring training, the automatic Balls and Strikes system,
in which a batter, catcher, or pitcher can appeal the
umpire's ball or strike call and you get a computerized
(37:06):
review in like fifteen seconds on the scoreboard. I like it.
It's terrific, but I think they may have to change
the name because it's already known by its acronym. It
is the ABS system, which, if you were mean spirited
and I am, you could alter your pronunciation of that
and simply call it a BS system. Fix the acronym anyway.
(37:32):
Here the nominees the Bronze Worse once again, Stephen A. Smith.
I hope he has learned that getting into politics means
more than putting your fingers to your lips pensively and
trying to look serious, but I don't think so. ESPN
is giving him, reportedly a five year, one hundred million
dollar new contract, and cool. I am all for the
talent having the money, and the owners not having the
(37:55):
money should have held out for one hundred and one million,
my friend. But part of this deal will allow Stephen
to talk even more politics in venues other than ESPN.
And I swear to you when I was at ESPN,
I insisted that I would not and should not be
allowed to do it. Nobody else should be allowed to
do politics in other venues while doing sports at ESPN.
(38:17):
Not don't, and I didn't. We did this at MSNBC
and on NBC Football Night in America years ago, ending
in two thousand and nine, twenty ten, And basically that
was the last time it didn't end in utter disaster.
Even before that, Rush Limbaugh tried it and it ended
in utter disaster. And it ended in utter disaster at ESPN.
(38:39):
This with Stephen a will end in tears, especially if
Steven lets himself get played like a two dollars banjo
every time he steps into the arena. This is him
about an interview guest on one of his podcasts quote,
and I'll spare you my impression of him. When that
young lady speaks, don't even think about challenging her intelligence.
(39:01):
Don't even think about challenging her ability to articulate her
point of view. You better know what the hell you're
talking about when you come at her. That's what I
take away just as much as anything else. You get
the idea that Stephen is paid by the word. I
can't wait until she and I sit face to face
one day and bolly back and forth about what we feel,
what we believe, what we stand for, and why. Because
(39:21):
I'm certainly different than her when it comes to some
political position She's taken and beyond, there is no doubt
about that. But I can't deny she's sharp as attack,
and you damn well better be if you're going to
come for her. Because ladies and gentlemen, this went on
for another seventeen days. Who is she is he talking about?
Who is the she in this equation? Candace Owens? Candace
(39:44):
Effing Owens, the woman that the fascist site The Daily
Wire fired because they said she was too anti Semitic
even for them. Candace Effing Owens, who ten years ago
was writing about quote the batshit crazy antics of the
Republican Tea Party, and then she discovered the real money
was being one off of the batshit crazy Republican Tea Party. Stephen,
(40:08):
if you want to cover politics or run for office,
pro tip, take some of that one hundred million dollars
and buy a guide dog the runner up or sir elong,
I'm just going to quote Politico about Musk. Here. Elon
Musk defended himself to a room full of House Republicans
(40:29):
saying that he can't bat a thousand all the time.
According to four people present for his remarks, Okay, I
realize Elon is an immigrant, possibly an immigrant who gained
the system and the laws and has no right to
be here. I don't know, and he probably was impaired
when he said that, so he doesn't exactly get you know,
America or American things like baseball. But let me revisit
(40:53):
that one phrase in there where he said he quote
can't bat a thousand all the time. In point of fact,
to bat a thousand, to have a baseball batting average
of a thousand that is one point zero zero zero.
That means you are batting one thousand all the time.
It means you did not make any outs, no mistakes,
(41:15):
nothing but hits. There are no degrees of batting a thousand.
If you don't bat a thousand all the time, you
are instead batting nine eighty nine or something. Because the
world divides into just two categories e long batting one
thousand and not batting a thousand and guess which category
(41:35):
you fall into, you torp. Also, Elon is not batting
nine eighty nine or something. He's batting about ninety one.
But our winner the worst the Prime Minister of New Zealand,
Christopher Luxon. Now New Zealand used to have a thoughtful, brilliant, brave, humane,
though sometimes unintelligible because of that accent, prime minister named
(41:58):
Jacinda Ardern. Now it has a bald right winger named Luxon.
New z Willand's senior envoy to the United Kingdom, former
head of their Labor Party, Phil Goff, got up an
event in London after Trump started his war crimes against
Zelenski and Ukraine, and mister Goff compared what Trump did
to what the British government and Prime Minister Nevil Chamberlain
(42:20):
and the then outsider Winston Churchill did after Chamberlain sold
out Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in nineteen thirty eight.
Mister Goff said, quote, President Trump has restored the bust
of Churchill to the Oval Office, but do you think
he really understands history Goff then quoted Churchill to Chamberlain
and his government in Parliament after the infamous war starting
(42:44):
betrayal of Czechoslovakia, quote, you had the choice between war
and dishonor you chose dishonor yet you will have war.
New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, who turns eighty next
month and is the head of New Zealand, first immediately
fired mister Goff. His Prime Minister Luxem, who he did
(43:05):
not inform of the firing, backed him up. Why did
they fire Golf because diplomats are supposed to talk diplomatically.
It sounds like mister Luxan could be running the Democratic
Party in this country anyway. Before he became Prime Minister
of New Zealand, Luxon was on the Unilever Company executive ladder,
(43:26):
where he rose to the position of swear. I swear
this is true. He was director of the global deodorance
and grooming category. All right, which part of that sounds
the most embarrassing? And what do you do for the
company here? I'm in charge of grooming. What do you
do for the company here? I'm in charge of global deodorance.
(43:51):
All the deodorans in the world I know that's more
of an Australian accent. I apologize New Zealand. Now this
is bad enough. GoF is quoting Winston Churchill, is pointing
out reality and is doing what real political leaders they
are supposed to do, giving a middle finger to desk
spots like Donald Trump. And they fired him for making
(44:12):
New zealand diplomatic efforts look bad in England. But just
to add to this, he was fired for doing what
I did after the Trump ambush of Zelenski quoting Winston
Churchill and you had the choice between war and dishonor
you chose dishonor yet you will have war. So I'm
taking this personally. Bro New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher, you
(44:32):
need more global deodorance because your spit does two stink
lux on two days. Other worst person and Lord, as
(44:57):
I've mentioned many times, I read this story first aloud
in a class in college in nineteen seventy nine, and
a friend of mine came up to me and said,
you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber
for a living, and I said, yeah, that'll ever happen.
This is, for some reason salvation for me. Catharsis, and
every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been
(45:20):
a long week. A Box to Hide In by James Thurber.
I waited till the large woman with the awful hat
took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering
at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way. The
(45:44):
clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box,
I asked, A large box. I want a box to
hide in. You want a box, he asked, I want
a box to hide in. I said, what do you mean?
He said, you mean a big box. I said, I
(46:04):
meant a big box, big enough to hold me. I
haven't got any boxes, he said, only cottons that cans
come in. I tried several other groceries, and none of
them had a box big enough for me to hide in.
There was nothing for it but to face life out.
I didn't feel strong, and I'd had this overpowering desire
(46:27):
to hide in a box for a long time. Well,
what do you mean you want to hide in this box?
One grocer asked me. It's a form of escape. I
told him, hiding in a box. It circumscribes your worries
in the range of your anguish. You don't see people either.
(46:50):
How the hell do you eat when you're in this box,
asked the grocer. How don't the hell do you get
anything to eat? I said I had never been in
a box and didn't know, but that that would take
care of itself. Well, he said, finally, I haven't got
any boxes, only some pasteboard curtains that cans come in.
It was the same every place. I gave up when
(47:13):
it got dark and the groceries closed, and hid in
my room again. I turned out the light and lay
on the bed. You feel better when it gets dark.
I could have hit in a closet, I suppose, but
people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in
a closet. They would be startled, and you'd have to
(47:35):
tell them why you're in the closet. Nobody pays attention
to a big box lying on the floor. You could
stay in it for days and nobody'd think to look
in it, not even the cleaning woman. My cleaning woman
came the next morning and woke me up, and I
(47:56):
was still feeling bad. I asked her if she knew
where I could get a large box. How big a
box you want? She asked, I want a box big
enough for me to get inside of, I said. She
looked at me with big dim eyes. There's something wrong
with her glands. She's awful, but she has a big heart,
(48:17):
which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick,
and her children are sick, and she is sick too.
I got to thinking how pleasant it would be if
I were in a box now and didn't have to
see her. I'd be in a box right there in
the room, and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if you
had a desire to bark or laugh when someone who
doesn't know walks by the box you were in, maybe
(48:42):
she would have a spell with her heart. If I
did that would die right there. The officers and the
elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny. Dog gone,
thing happened at the building last night. The doorman would
say to his wife, I led in this woman to
clean up ten f and she never come out. See
she's never in there more in an hour, but she
never come out. See when got time for me to
(49:05):
go off duty? Why, I says to Credic, who was
on the elevator, I says, what the hell you suppose
happened to that woman cleans tenf. He says he didn't know.
He says he never seen her after he took her up.
So I spoke to mister Grammage about it. I'm sorry
to bother you, mister Grammage, I says, but there's something
funny about that woman cleans tenf. So I told him
(49:25):
so he said we better have a look, and we
all three goes up and knuts on the door and
rings the bells, seeing nobody answers, so he said we'd
have to walk in. So Crenic opened the door and
we walked in and here was this woman cleans the apartment,
dead as a herring on the floor, and the gentleman
that lives there was in a box. The cleaning woman
(49:50):
kept looking at me. It was hard to realize she
wasn't dead. It's a form of escape, I murmured, wat say.
She asked, Dully, you don't know of any large packing boxes,
do you? I asked, now, I don't. She said, I
(50:13):
haven't found one yet, But I still have this overpowering
urge to hide in a box. Maybe it will go away,
maybe I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse.
It's hard to say. A Box to Hide In by
(50:34):
James Thurber, and I don't know when I went to
Sullivan became my father's favorite Thurber story. I suspect it
was in the hospital when I was reading to him
in the last six months of his life. I know
I read it to him at least half a dozen times,
the first five by his request. The last time he
(50:56):
did not request it, in fact, and this is the
most perverse kind of compliment I think any restriter has
ever received. I read this story to him. It was
the last thing that I read to him. In fact,
it was the last thing he did on earth, was
to listen to this story in a state of semi consciousness.
He waited till the end of it. He took one deep,
(51:18):
satisfied breath, and he died. I don't recommend this, but
I think it does speak to the quality of the writing.
I went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I was reminded
the other morning by what I don't remember, and it
doesn't matter, of a crisp September morning last year when
I went to the Grand Central to see a little
(51:40):
boy of ten get excitedly on a special coach that
was to take him to a boys' school somewhere north
of Boston. He had never been away to school before.
The coach was squirming with youngsters. You could tell after
a while the novitiates shining and tremulous and a little
awed from the more aloof boys who had been away
(52:01):
to school before. But they were very much alike at glance.
There was for me, in case you thought I was
leading up to that, no sharp feeling of old lost
years in the tense atmosphere of that coach. Because I
never went away to a private school when I was
a little boy. I went to Sullivant School in Columbus.
(52:22):
I thought about it as I walked back to my hotel.
Sullivant was an ordinary public school, and yet it was
not like any other I have ever known of. In
seeking an adjective to describe the Sullivant School of my
years nineteen hundred and nineteen hundred and eight, I can
only think of tough. Sullivant School was tough. The boys
(52:45):
of Sullivant came mostly from the region around Central Market,
a poorish district with many families of the laboring class.
The school district also included a number of homes of
the upper classes, because at the turn of the century
one or two old residential streets still lingered near the
shouting and rumbling of the market, reluctant to surrender under
their fine old houses to the encroaching rabble of commerce,
(53:07):
and become as a last. They now have more vulgar
business streets. I remember always first of all, the Celibant
baseball team. Most grammar school baseball teams are made up
of boys in the seventh and eighth grades, or they
were in my day, But with Sulibant it was different.
Several of its best players were in the fourth grade,
(53:30):
known to the teachers of the school as the terrible fourth.
In that grade you first encountered fractions and long division,
and many pupils lodged there for years, like logs in
a brook. Some of the more able baseball players have
(53:53):
been in the fourth grade for seven or eight years. Then, too,
there were a number of boys who had not been
in the class past the normal time, but were nevertheless
deep into their teams. They had avoided starting to school
by eluding the truant officer until they were ready to
go into long pants, but he always got them in
(54:13):
the end. One or two of these fourth graders were
seventeen or eighteen years old, but the dean of the
squad was a tall, husky young man of twenty two
who was in the fifth grade. The teachers of the
third and fourth had got tired of having him around
as the years rolled along and had pushed him on.
His name was Dana Wayeney, and he had a mustache.
(54:38):
Don't ask me why his parents allowed him to stay
in school so long. There were many mysteries at Sullivans
that were never cleared up. All I know is why
he kept on in school and didn't go to work.
He liked playing on the baseball team, and he had
a pretty easy time in class because the teachers had
given up asking him any questions at all years before.
(55:01):
The story was that he had answered but one question
in the seventeen years he had been going to classes
at Sullivant, and that was what is one use of
the comma? The kami, said Dana, embarrassedly, unsnarling his long
legs from beneath a desk much too low for him,
is used to shoot marbles with. Kami's was our word
(55:24):
for those cheap ten percent marbles in case, it wasn't yours.
The Sullivant School baseball team of nineteen hundred and five
defeated several high school teams in the city and claimed
the high school championship of the state, to which title
it had, of course, no technical right. I believe the
boys could have proved their moral right to the championship, however,
(55:45):
if they had been allowed to go out of town
and play all the teams they challenged, such as the
powerful Dayton and Toledo Nines. But their road season was
called off after a terrific fight that occurred during one
game at Mount Stirling or Picquah or Zenia, I can't
remember which. Our first baseman, Dana Whaney, crowned the umpire
(56:09):
with a bat during an altercation overcalled strike and the
fight was on. It took place in the fourth inning,
so of course the game was never finished. The battle
continued on down into the business section of the town
and raged for hours, with much destruction of property. But
since Sullivan was ahead of the time seventeen to nothing,
there could have been no doubt as to the outcome.
(56:32):
Nobody was killed. All of us boys were sure our
team could have beaten Ohio State university that year, but
they wouldn't play us. They were scared. Wayney was by
no means the biggest or toughest guy on the Grammar
School team. He was merely the oldest, being about a
year the senior of Floyd, the center fielder who could
(56:53):
jump five feet straight into the air without taking a
running start. Nobody knew, not even the Board of Education,
which once tried to find out whether Floyd was Floyd's
first name or his last name. He apparently only had one.
He didn't have any parents, and nobody, including himself, seemed
(57:15):
to know where he lived. When teachers insisted that he
must have another name to go with Floyd, he would
grow sullen and ominous, and they would cease questioning him
because he was a dangerous scholar in his schoolroom brawl,
as mister Harrigan, the janitor found out one morning when
he was called in by a screaming teacher. All our
teachers were women to get Floyd under control. After she
(57:39):
had tried to whip him and he had begun to
take the room apart, beginning with the desks. Floyd broke
into small pieces the switch she had used on him.
Some said he also ate it. I don't know, because
I was home sick of the time with mumps or something.
Harrigan was a burly, iron muscle janitor, a man come
(58:02):
from a long line of coal shovelers, but he was
no match for Floyd, who had to be sure the
considerable advantage of being more aroused than mister Harrigan. When
their fight started, Floyd had him down and was sitting
on his chest in no time, and Harrigan had to
promise to be good and to say that's what I
get ten times before Floyd would let him up. I
(58:24):
don't suppose I would ever have got through Sullivant School
alive if it hadn't been for Floyd. For some reason,
he appointed himself my protector, and I needed one. If
Floyd was known to be on your side, nobody in
the school would dare be after you and chase you home.
I was one of the ten or fifteen male pupils
in Sullivant School who always or almost always knew their lessons,
(58:49):
and I believe Floyd admired the mental prowess of a
youngster who knew how many continents there were and whether
or not the sun was inhabited Also, one time, when
it came to be my turn to read to the class.
We used to take turns reading American history aloud. I
came across the word ducane and knew how to pronounce it.
(59:10):
That charmed Floyd, who had been slouched in his seat
idly following the printed page of his worn and penciled textbook.
How you know that was ducane, boy, he asked me
after class. I don't know, I said, I just knew it.
He looked at me with round eyes. Oh that's something
(59:31):
he said. After that word got around that Floyd would
beat the tar out of anybody that messed around with me.
I wore glasses from the time I was eight, and
I knew my lessons, and both of those things were
considered pretty terrible at Sullivan. Floyd had one idiosyncrasy, though.
In the early nineteen hundreds, long, warm, furry gloves that
(59:51):
came almost to your elbows were popular with boys, and
Floyd had one of the biggest pears in school. He
wore them the year round. Dick Peterson was an either
greater figure on the baseball team and in the school
than Floyd was. He had a way in the classroom
of blurting out a long, deep, rolling be for no
(01:00:17):
reason at all. Once he licked three boys his own size,
single handed, really single handed, for he fought with his
right hand and held a mandolin in his left hand
all the time. It came out uninjured. Dick and Floyd
never met in mortal combats, so nobody ever knew which
one could beat, and the scholars were about evenly divided
(01:00:40):
in their opinions. Many a fight started among them after
school when the argument came up. I think school never
let out at Sullivan without at least one fight starting up,
and sometimes there were as many as five or six
raging between the corner of Oak and sixth Streets and
the corner of Rich and Fourth Streets, four blocks away.
Now and again, virtually the whole school turned out to
(01:01:02):
fight the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in
Fifth Street near town for no reason at all, in
winter with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fists,
brick bats, and clubs. Dick Peterson was always in the van, yelling, singing,
being whirling all the way around when he swung with
(01:01:24):
his right or if he hadn't brought his mandle in
his left and missed. He made himself the pitcher on
the baseball team because he was the captain. He was
the captain because everybody else was afraid to challenge his
self election except Floyd. Floyd was too lazy to pitch,
and he didn't care who was captain because he didn't
fully uncomprehend what that meant. On one occasion, when Earl Baddock,
(01:01:48):
a steamfitter's son, had shut out Mound Street School for
six innings without a hit, Dick took him out of
the pitcher's box and went in himself. He was hit hard,
and the other team scored, but it didn't make much
difference because the margin of Sullivan's victory was so great.
The team didn't lose a game for five years to
another grammar school. When Dick Peterson was in the sixth grade,
(01:02:12):
he got into a saloon brawl and was killed. When
I go back to Columbus, I always walked past Sullivant School,
and I have never happened to get there when classes
were letting out, so I don't know what the pupils
are like. Now, I am sure there are no more
Dick Peterson's and no more Floyd's unless Floyd is still
(01:02:34):
going to school there. The playyard is still entirely bare
of grass and covered with gravel, and the sycamore still
line the curve between the schoolhouse fence and the Oak
Street car line. A street car line running past a
schoolhouse is a dangerous thing as a rule, but I
remember no one being injured while I was attending Sullivant.
(01:02:55):
I do remember, however, one person who came very near
being injured. He was a motorman on the Oak Street line,
and once when his car stopped at the owner of
six to let off passengers, he yelled at Cheudy Davidson,
who played third base on the ball team and was
a member of the Terrible Fourth, to get out of
the way. Chudy was fourteen years old, but huge for
(01:03:16):
his age, and he was standing on the tracks taking
a chew of tobacco. Come on down off of that
con I'll not get blocked off, said Shouty, and what
I can only describe as a sullivant tone of voice.
The motorman waited until Shooty moved slowly off the tracks,
then he went on about his business. I think it
(01:03:37):
was lucky for him that he did. There were boys
in those days. I went to Sullivant by James Thurber
(01:04:02):
Thurber House, Columbus, Ohio. I don't know. Maybe we can
put out another book, audio book of Thurber's stories. I
did one. It's available where audio books are available. I
don't think it's on iTunes. It's called the Thurber Audio Collection.
I don't think you can find it using my name,
(01:04:22):
but it's there. They get all the money anyway. I've
done all the damage I can do here more on
Thurber later as I think of it. Thanks for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
(01:04:45):
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else
was as ever my fault. Kenny and I are not
(01:05:07):
running for president. That's countdown for today, Just four hundred
and thirteen days until the scheduled end of his lame duck,
lame brained term, unless Musk replaces him sooner or the
actual aerial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.
As always, bulletins as the news warrants, remember impeach Trump.
(01:05:29):
It won't work now, it will win the Democrats the
midterms if there are midterms, and in the interim, put
your paddles away and get out your canes and keep
protesting until next time. I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(01:06:13):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com