August 10, 2023 • 38 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 10: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith didn't want Trump's TWEETS! He wanted Trump's Direct Messages and his unsent drafts! Who needs a court order to GET a copy of all of Trump's tweets and other social media posts? It feels like you need a court order to AVOID Trump's tweets and other social media posts.
He was looking for - and all the statements by the judge unsealed yesterday confirms this - for the DM's Trump sent, and any sent TO him. And anything still in the draft folders because I was reminded yesterday that 20 years ago terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed and The Shoe-Bomber, and ordinary criminals like David Petraeus simply bypassed the risks of texts and apps by leaving messages IN THE DRAFT FOLDER of email accounts their shared with the messages' recipients.
You could do that with Twitter! And we KNOW Trump shared that account with other people - he sometimes wrote his own tweets and sometimes dictated them.
And he could also be able to get stuff Trump deleted. What? You think when you hit the "Delete" button it vanishes from the universe? Even your drafts?
I mean Twitter was willing to turn all this stuff over to the Special Counsel but it wanted to alert Trump first and the judge said no, that'll give him the chance to destroy evidence and ALERT OTHERS and originally she thought it might lead him to "flee prosecution." Hell to the Yeah!
And the headline is: Smith wanted all that stuff. And he got it.
Also: details leaking on The Atlanta prosecutions, Trump wastes a delay move by demanding a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago when no judge can order one to be built, and yes, a fly landed on Trump's face during his interview with NewsMax. A REAL fly - not NewsMax's Eric Bolling.
B-Block (20:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Trump stochastic terrorist who threatened Biden and those prosecuting Trump on Facebook is killed while the FBI serves him a warrant. And the late Robbie Robertson, not only an extraordinary musical figure but also the unchallenged winner of Twitter (23:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Dictator DeSantis usurps yet another elected official, Ken Starr's evil nephew orders lawyers to take religious training, and the Air Force UFO Whistleblower? Institutionalized five years ago after an episode in which it was determined he was a potential danger to himself.
C-Block (29:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's Elvis Week! That means it was this week, 46 years ago, when a commercial I made for an Elvis concert in Syracuse - maybe the last one ANYBODY made - had to be pulled off our air because... well, you know. And I'll play the commercial.
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. Jack
Smith did not want Trump's tweets. Anybody can get Trump's tweets,
(00:27):
my gud, you couldn't avoid Trump's tweets. Jack Smith wanted
Trump's dms, his direct messages, and maybe more importantly, jack
Smith may have also wanted Trump's unsent drafts. Oh, because
(00:50):
it turns out that some people, maybe Trump maybe not
used use their Twitter account. As in spy parlance, an
electronic dead drop. You write something and rather than texting
it to somebody or sending it by a secure messaging
(01:10):
app to somebody, or emailing it to somebody, or saying
it out loud to somebody, you just leave it in
your Twitter drafts, and you give somebody else the password
to your Twitter account, and they go in and they
read it, and then they delete it, unless, of course,
when you hit delete on Twitter or on the Internet,
(01:31):
you know it doesn't actually delete, like on every email
in the world, and even on the encrypted messaging apps
and most of your homeword processing programs and your laptops
and all of your company servers, and there's deleted, and
(01:51):
then there's just deleted from your vision a friend of mine,
A thirty five year friend of mine, God help us,
a veteran of politics and television, reminded me of this. Yesterday.
Terrorists like colleague Sheik Muhammad of al Qaeda and Richard Reid,
the shoe bomber, used the draft folder in email to
(02:14):
communicate with other members of the terrorist gang. General Petraeus
used it. But why couldn't you use drafts in Twitter too?
And I gasped. Trump doesn't text, Trump doesn't WhatsApp, Trump
doesn't email. Trump often dictated tweets, so we know multiple
people had access to that Trump Twitter account. And even
(02:37):
if he didn't use Twitter drafts as a cheap secret
messaging system, there are still all those direct messages and
the ones he or somebody using his account sent, and
all the direct messages he received, and probably the ones
(03:00):
he wrote and then deleted. That's what Jack Smith want.
He didn't want Trump's tweets. He wanted Trump's drafts and dms,
and judging by the legal documents unsealed yesterday and all
the news accounts he got them, there are hints about
the secrecy element all through that news coverage, but they
(03:21):
are buried paragraph eight in the account by The New
York Times. Quote that prosecutors asked for a warrant to
search the account suggests they wanted specific company data or
were interested in some non public aspect of the account,
though it remains unclear precisely what that may have been.
(03:44):
Non public aspect of Twitter. You say, hmm, what could
that be? And then the giveaway came in the Washington
Post again. Paragraph five TLDR ruling against Twitter's bid to
not turn over Trump's account. Ruling against Twitter's demand that
(04:05):
it had to notify Trump first before turning anything over
and then finding musk when he tried to bully her.
Judge Beryl Howell quote upheld the non disclosure order and
imposed a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars contempt sanction
on Twitter. She found that there were reasonable grounds to
believe that disclosing the warrant to Trump quote would seriously
(04:28):
jeopardize the ongoing investigation by giving him quote an opportunity
to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, or notify confederates.
According to the appellate ruling, unquote, why would they think
he would destroy evidence his tweets, His tweets that are
(04:50):
archived by the government that are actually federal records. Because
he was president. The tweets he desperately wanted you to see.
The tweets He's so compulsively created that when he got
banned from Twitter, he created his own social media site
so he could tweet there instead, and may have bankrupted
himself in the process. They weren't afraid he would destroy
(05:14):
his tweets. They were afraid he would try to destroy
direct messages or drafts or quote. Notify confederates, as the
judge warned, notify them, notify them about what. Delete the
DM you sent me, for god sakes, do it now,
delete this one too. And if you want to take
(05:36):
this one step beyond Judge Howell's first finding, which they
took out of the subsequent ones, was that if they
told Trump they were turning over access to his Twitter account,
his entire Twitter account to Jack Smith, the judge thought
Trump might quote flee from prosecution, flee from the what now,
(06:02):
flee from prosecution over his thousands of tweets that some
of his cultists have made into t shirts and posters,
the dms and the drafts, a god, flee from prosecution.
I've been advising Trump to flee from prosecution for eight years.
We want him to goddamn flee from prosecution. Call us
(06:25):
from Bally will work something out anyway. PostScript. The right
wing rage about Trump and monitoring his social media, which
infringed on his rights, began when Jack Smith told the
judge about the I'm coming for you Trump threatening post
last Friday, And of course the right wing backlash is
(06:47):
as usual, utter imbecilic, infantile, balder dash. These are public statements.
Mark Levin somehow thinks you can turn that on and
off like a light switch. Mark Levin, a guy like
this on fire. He's complaining about the government monitoring I
(07:08):
might as well be complaining about it monitoring Trump's speeches.
I mean, holy crap. Trump makes those posts and give
those speeches to get people to monitor them. That is
the point of doing it. And do not come in
here with the But the dms are private communications and
the drafts, the drafts are sacred private presidential thoughts. You
(07:32):
never read any of the terms of service you agree
to just once you're lucky. It doesn't say that you're
donating your organs to them. Twitter is a private company.
Facebook is a private company. You write it, you post it.
They own it. You write it, you don't post it.
They own it. The day we first got a form
(07:58):
of email, it was in the late nineteen eighties and
KCBS in Los Angeles when they installed a computer monitor
at every desk, and I kissed my typewriter goodbye, and
we could send a message to anybody in CBS worldwide
and in several other companies CBS did a lot of
(08:20):
business with. And I said to somebody in the newsroom,
what happens to it after I hit this delete button?
And the guy said, I don't know. It just disappears.
And I said, really, which do you think is more likely?
It disappears like you say, and no computer in the
world can get to it ever again, or or it
(08:41):
gets stored in a computer the size of a small country,
and the computer is under a mountain in Colorado or somewhere.
This guy's eyes got real wide mountain, I guess. And
then he immediately ran back to his computer terminal. Smith
wanted the dms and the drafts, and oh, by the way,
(09:06):
he got them. He has them now. And Elon Musk
got fined, what did Trump get yesterday? Well, he seems
to have wasted another move to delay stuff. The Trump
Legal team. This would be number one, the one that's
on the Southern tour, as opposed to Number two, which
(09:28):
is doing the mid Atlantic tour, and the one the
third group that's going out on the upcoming Georgia tour.
Trump Legal Team Number one has asked Judge Eileen Cannon
to order the reinstallment of a skiff SCIF Sensitive Compartmented
Information Facility at Mary a Lago because that works so
(09:49):
well last time. A skiff at mary Lago so Trump
can personally examine and discuss the classified documents produced to
him and his defense as part of discovery in the
High I'm don Trump and I Stole Classified Document's case.
Trump wants one there because he says it's too much
(10:09):
trouble to haul his sorry ass to the courtroom handling
this case just to look at documents, even though he
flies to two or three different cities each weekend to
hold his Nazi rallies. The problem is, and this is
a rare mistake for people who are actually really good
(10:31):
at stalling and wasting legal time and delaying trial dates.
Skiffs are not under the jurisdiction of the civil courts,
and as much as Eileen Canon might be being pay
might be so inclined to help out the lazy slab
who appointed her, she has no conceivable right to do so.
(10:56):
Skiffs are under the control of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, not Judge Aileen Cannon or the
Supreme Court for that matter. Besides, doesn't Trump still have
that really professional one that he built himself in his bathroom? Next?
(11:22):
Widespread reporting Tuesday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis
will go to her grand jury in Atlanta next week
as early as next Tuesday for indictments in the I
just want to find eleven, seven hundred and eighty votes
case Now. Reporting from CNN yesterday that Willis will be
asking that grand jury for more than one dozen indictments,
(11:45):
there was no rewarding about the breakdown. Theoretically, it could
be more than one dozen indictments just against Trump, or
one each for more than a dozen different defendants, or
any combination. The latter. The combination or the dozen different
defendants obviously much more likely. CNN buried certain both sides
asm flourishes deep in its text. Willis a Democrat, but
(12:07):
also noted she has been eyeing conspiracy and racketeering charges,
and identified three witnesses who have been subpoened to be
there again when she is in front of the regular
grand jury, all of whom testified to the Special grand jury.
Those who'ld be the former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan,
former State Senator Jen Jordan, and an independent journalist named
George Cheaty who has been with the Atlanta Journal Constitution
(12:30):
and several Atlanta TV stations and still produces commentaries for
Fox five in Atlanta. And if you're wondering what the
hell he is doing there, turns out he went to
the Capitol in December twenty twenty during the time the
electors were assembling. He recognized one of the people there
as a Republican operative. He followed him and before anybody
thought to stop George Cheaty, George Cheedty was in the
(12:51):
room with all the fake electors. Then all he got
was a slousy subpoena. This looks like Willis is going
to indict maybe each elector and the organizers as part
of a rico prosecution, presumably with Trump at the head
(13:12):
of this little miniature organized crime family and maybe others.
Lindsay Grime oh, to be a fly on the wall,
and speaking of flies, and is that a segue? Holy
cal Keith, is that a segue? Trump has done his
(13:33):
first joint interview in years. During one of those flatulent
lap sitting conversations with Newsmax Eric Bowling, the guy who
has descended steadily from CNBC through Fox Business, through The Blaze,
through Sinclair and now to Newsmax, Trump was in full
self martyred to mode when a fly landed on his
(13:55):
upper right cheek a few inches to the right of
his right eye. Trump did not seem to notice, of course,
not he was talking. Nobody wanted to go through the
ordeal of trying to stop either one of these schmucks,
to tell them to stop while they tried to get
rid of the fly, and so later in the same interview,
the same fly was seen buzzing around Trump's head, presumably
(14:18):
looking for any sign of life or anything not too
old to eat. By the way, entomologists confirmed that the
fly was almost certainly not the same fly that landed
on Mike Prince's forehead during the twenty twenty vice presidential
debate and briefly achieved viral fame. And if I'm remembering correctly,
(14:39):
you hosted Saturday Night Live. Household flies tend to live
only a month, so that fly would have to be
about three thousand and sixty human years old if it
was the same fly last night with Trump. As a PostScript,
after the usual Bowling metaphorical filating of Trump, the recorded
(15:02):
interview ended and viewers were returned to the Newsmax We're
being sued by Dominion and Smart Mattic Memorial Studio, where
Eric Bowling was seated again and he read this statement quote. Now,
just a note, Newsmax has accepted the election results as
legal and final. Unquote. You know, Bowling is a worm.
(15:26):
He was too greasy in terms of his dealing with
women to have lasted at Fox. That's how much of
a worm he is. But if he had had the
momentary cohones to read that, now, just to note, newsmax
has accepted the election results as legal and final. If
he had the cohones to read that while sitting across
(15:49):
from Trump, I would have personally sent him ten thousand
dollars in cash. I mean, that was what the fly
I was trying to do. There also of interest here,
remember the right wing was and those who have not
figured it out. Still are furious that Jack Smith was
(16:13):
even reading Trump's public Twitter feed. I mean they were
furious they were reading the public social media feed. The
truth social media and what is the point of this
incongruous magic trick on the part of the fascists. It's
public speech. You can't look at it. It's public speech.
(16:36):
As long as you have the ability to read anybody,
you can't look at it. Well, we found out what
this magic trick is about. Yesterday in Utah, a trump
stochastic terrorist threatened to assassinate President Biden. He did so
on Facebook repeatedly, he said roughly when so the FB
andi stopped by and there was shooting, and now the
trump ist is dead. And that's why Trumpists don't want
(17:00):
you looking at their public social media feeds. They only
want each other looking at their public social media feeds.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
(17:24):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline provo. Utah, a trump stochastic terrorist is
dead and President Biden is not because the FBI monitored
the man's social media feeds. Craig Robertson was not all
that subtle about it. Not just Facebook posts since Monday,
(17:46):
but Facebook posts in big block letters over bright color backgrounds.
Perhaps Utah will become famous this week as the place
a sniper took out Biden the Marxist. He wrote, Hey, FBI,
you still monitoring my social media checking so I can
be sure to have a loaded gun hand in case
you drop by again. These psychopaths never stopped to think,
(18:11):
not for a moment, that the FEDS will not show
up having out armed them, or that the FBI will
outstrategize them or outshoot them or whatever. It is remarkable
the Fed showed up in Utah ahead of the President's
trip there. They went to serve a warrant at Craig
Robertson's house based on his credible threats, and he apparently
(18:33):
believed his own memes. Craig is dead now. And by
the way, the Trump stochastic terrorist reference is not gratuitous
and it's not a guess, officials told ABC News. Robertson
had also threatened Vice President Harris, as well as the
Attorney General and Adam Schiff and other officials involved in
prosecuting Trump and dateline Los Angeles, Robbie Robertson is dead.
(18:58):
Guitarist for Dylan, founder of the band, writer of the Weight.
He died yesterday. On top of that remarkable musical performance
legacy which goes on for a lot longer than just
a sentence. Robertson had just completed scoring his fourteenth Martin
Scorsese film, and on December twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, Robbie
Robertson one Twitter, that's when it was decided like a
(19:23):
comedy writer from Seth MacFarland, things like The Cleveland Show
and Family Guy, and Ted Alec Sulkin posted quote, want
to listen to the band? No, I'm just gonna sit
on an accordion while watching the Civil War documentary. About
nine hours later, Robertson himself replied quote, wish I could
have written for the Cleveland Show instead. Robbie Robertson was eighty,
(19:47):
his burn was five and a half years old, still
ahead on countdown. Well, guess what, It's Elvis week, and
(20:11):
that means I get to tell you the story again
about how I may have done the last Elvis Presley commercial.
I won't play it for you coming up and things
I promise not to tell. First time. For the daily
roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's words the persons in word Bron's
(20:33):
Ron DeSantis, the fascist dictator of Florida. DeSantis just wiped
out another elected state official, Monique Warrel, the state attorney
in the Florida Ninth Judicial Circuit, who had been put
thereby you know, voters. Desantas said, she's under prosecuting criminals,
so he's taking her out and putting in a former
(20:55):
University of Miami football player named Andrew Bain in her place.
You want the backstory, here's the backstory. Monty Quarrel is
a black woman. And Ron DeSantis is an oinking racist
runner up federal judge Brantley Star in Texas. He is
appointed by the other oinking racist Trump. A Southwest Airline
(21:17):
flight attendant tried to ruin the life of the local
head of the Transportation Workers union, kept sending them graphic
images of abortions, hundreds of them. After two years of this,
Southwest fired her. She sued, and this guy Star, yes
his court would be a star chamber, not only found
that she had been discriminated against because of her religious beliefs.
(21:40):
Her religion apparently told her to send graphic images of
abortions to people who supported abortion. But when Southwest issued
a statement that it did not discriminate against people's religious beliefs,
Judge Starr ordered that three attorneys who represented the airline
now have to take quote religious liberty training from an
(22:01):
extremist theocratic, anti abortion, anti democracy group, eight hours each
in the classroom, and they have to pay to fly
the group's guide to Dallas, pure totalitarian theocracy. Judge Starr,
by the way, is the nephew of the man who
tried to run the Republican coup against President Clinton and
(22:22):
Vice President Gore in nineteen ninety eight. Ken Starr. Ken
Star died last year, and Ken Starr and Bradley Starr,
if their religion is correct, Kenstar is now in hell.
But the winner retired Air Force intel officer David Grush.
I hope you did not invest too much in the
(22:43):
words of that so called Air Force UFO whistleblower. That's
David Grush. He claimed he had been retaliated against because
even though he had the high level security clearances and
he had seen the unimaginable. He had dared to tell
of the non human biological material reportedly being recovered from
crash sites and the government's reverse and engineering of extraterrestrial craft,
(23:06):
and and the website The Intercept advises that Major Grush
was admitted to a mental health facility as recently as
October twenty eighteen after he asked his wife after she
had told him he was an alcoholic and needed help,
so he told her quote, I've just been waiting for
(23:27):
you to kill me. And there was apparently a similar
suicidal event in twenty fourteen, and the Air Force people
now really can't figure out how his security clearance was
not revoked after that. The UFO crowd thinks this is
all part of a cover up, But this is just
a smear that was handed urgently to this website, the Intercept.
In fact, it was part of a Freedom of Information
(23:49):
Act filing about him that took exactly the average amount
of time it takes to get an FOIA Act returned
to you for stuff like this. And of course, more importantly,
it circles back to that fundamental question of supposed alien
visitation of our planet. Here Earth, no Earth. That's what
it's called Earth. Why is the big point? Why is
(24:13):
the big question? Why would they come here? Would you
come here if you had a choice, if you could
get around the galaxy? Why would you come here for
the parking? Unless the great late comedian Bill Hicks was right.
Hecks noted that the landings and sightings of UFO are
(24:36):
never in Washington, or a world capital, or even a
county seat of government. They're inevitably in places like Fife, Alabama.
Maybe these aren't the super intelligent beings Bill Hicks posited.
Maybe they're hillbilly aliens. We just want to sit back
(24:56):
and whittlesome. Major David and the aliens forced me to
drink the tequila grush today. These worst person in this
or any other world. Finally, our number one story on
(25:22):
the countdown back to my favorite topic, Me and Things
I Promised Not to Tell, And Elvis Week is underway.
Highlights include today's Ultimate Elvis Tribute artist contest, Meet and Greet,
a room full of Elvi and I'll just read this part.
(25:42):
Join Gates of Graceland host Tom Brown and Graceland's VP
of Archives and Exhibits, Angie Marchesy on an exclusive after
hours tour of Graceland Mansion. Have you ever wondered what
might be inside a drawer or around a corner? This
one of a kind experience. We'll give you a glimpse
of items you will not see on tour and will
(26:03):
feature a special photo op inside Graceland Mansion. Frankly, I
don't want to know what's inside the drawer? Is it Graceland?
The week continues through next Wednesday, which is the anniversary
of Elvis Presley's death August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, A
(26:25):
king on his throne August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, not
on tour, but on toilet in Memphis, Tennessee. And leading
to this timeless and immortal question, does this mean you
don't get paid? That pertains to this next point. Amazingly,
Elvis Week does not contain any sort of tribute or
(26:47):
mention or ceremony or candlelit vigil to this giddying fact.
I maybe the youngest person now alive who can say this.
I did a radio commercial for an Elvis Presley concert
(27:08):
oh Nancy in August of nineteen seventy seven. Elvis was
(27:35):
scheduled to do a series of live shows in the Northeast,
and the day he died he was leaving for Portland, Maine,
and two nights at the then brand new Cumberland County
Civic Center there, then Utica, New York on the nineteenth,
Syracuse the next night, the Nassau County Coliseum on Long
Island on the twenty first, then Rupp Arena in Kentucky, Roanoke, Virginia,
two stops in North Carolina, and wrapping up with two
(27:56):
nights at the Memphis Mid South Coylseum. Having lived through
the end, I have to say that by this point
Elvis Presley was something of a self parody. Arriving at
one concert he fell out of the limo. He was enormous,
he could barely sing, and when he sang, he was
now essentially a country Western singer, and not a very
(28:17):
good one. We had an album oriented commercial rock station
run by Cornell students in Ithaca, New York, and I
do not remember ever hearing an Elvis song played during
one of the regular shows, maybe on the Saturday night
Oldie Show, but the thought of playing hound Dog or
Jailhouse Rock, which are genuine rock and roll classics, would
(28:38):
have provoked laughter or maybe a walkout by the disc jockeys.
So when our advertising sales manager walked into my office
in July nineteen seventy seven and said, we have a
one hundred spot by from Elvis Presley's concert promoter, there
was only one possible answer to this. Why. Well, it
turned out we were an hour or so from the
(28:58):
War Memorial Coliseum in Syracuse, where Elvis was to play
on August twentieth, and the promoters had bought time on
every radio station that played music between Syracuse and US.
They got out a map, pulled out a protractor, and
drew a circle representing a sixty mile radius. There we
were WVBRFM, Antha of New York, out at the edge.
(29:21):
That summer, I was the operations director of the station.
I was in charge, filling in for the general manager
who had a summer job in Rochester, New York, Larry Epstein.
Why Larry thought I would be good at this I
will never never know. In any event, the sales manager
next asked me who on earth could do an Elvis
commercial on a rock station that was known for playing
(29:42):
entire Jethro Tull album sides after eleven at night. I said,
I had no idea somebody who would want the five
percent commission for making the ads, And he said, how
about you? The buck does stop here, right, And he
handed me the script they wanted, and I swallowed hard
and read it out loud. And I don't still have
a copy of that original script, but I know this
(30:03):
is a real cur close recreation, because you don't forget
something like imagining the impact of this playing on the
coolest FM rock radio station in four adjoining counties. Here
goes Elvis, Elvis, Elvis Live Live Live, Elvis Presley, though
one and only the immortal Elvis Live at the Onondaga
(30:25):
County War Memortal Auto Tournament, Syracuse ELBS Elvis Elvis one
night only, Saturday Night, August twentieth Elvis ELBS Elvis Live
Live Live. Yeah, turned out, of course it was Elvis, Elvis,
Elvis dead, dead dead anyway. There was something in there
about prices and where he could send a letter in
(30:46):
a self address stamped envelope for tickets, and it was
supposed to be done in full reverb, that old time
am radio echo effect defect effect. I think they wanted
one or two soundful pops from Elvis's greatest hits, and
I wondered if in our library of five thousand or
so records in the back we even had Elvis's greatest hits.
And I'm not exaggerating about that script. There were at
(31:08):
least two dozen exclamation points on that page. We would
not have put on a commercial with that many exclamation
points in it, even if it was for a Beatles
reunion live in our back studio. We can't run this,
I told the sales manager. They want everything in the
A schedule. The sales manager said, meaning they were paying
our top rate. Did you ask korn? I asked, invoking
(31:30):
our program director Glenn Cornelius. He says, we can run it.
No Elvis songs in it. But and I said, not
like this. Did you call them? Well, they let us
tone it down a little, and he said, the account
is yours. Rewrite it. Tone it down if they say, yes,
this is what fifty bucks for you. Now, don't laugh
about the fifty bucks in nineteen seventy seven money in Ethica,
(31:52):
New York. My rent that summer per month was fifty
one bucks. So I toned it down. Turned out the
promoters didn't give a crap if I toned it down.
They just wanted something played about Elvis every hour. I
recorded it, and soon the mystified listeners of the coolest
FM rock station in four adjoining counties, we're hearing my flat,
(32:14):
still slightly nasal, eighteen year old voice saying the same
thing like six seven times a day, and like everything else.
I made a copy of this. Now I swear. I
used to record my broadcast and listen to them later
and say, I've got to get better. Am I getting better?
This doesn't sound better? So I still have this on
a cassette, and I have a cassette player. So here
(32:37):
it is Elvis. Elvis, Elvis Live Live, Live, toned down,
tone down, toned down.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Elvis Presley Live at the War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse, Saturday,
August twentieth, at eight thirty pm. Tickets priced at fifteen dollars,
twelve fifty and ten dollars plus twenty five cents per
ticket service charge. So kits are on sale now at
the auditorium box office and by mail. Send a self
address Stanton Flow to ell this Auditorium MOX Office, five
(33:07):
fifteen Montgomery Street, Syracuse, one three two oh two. That's
Elvis Live at the War Memorial in Syracuse, August twentieth.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Hey, kid, you have a deviated septum. Actually it's not
bad for age eighteen. Anyway, there were people I knew
then at the station and in town that lovely summer
of nineteen seventy seven who just assumed, who just told
me that they assumed that that commercial was some kind
of satire or gag on my part. So at least
(33:37):
we knew they were listening. So this is how this
turns out. We did a nightly half hour newscast called
World Report at five point thirty every day, and it
was a good newscast, and that title was neither ironic
nor undeserved. We were affiliated with ABC Radio. We ran
the Howard Cosell sports commentary every night. We had a
stock report, we had local reporters. I did a sports cast,
(34:00):
and our news director and my friend of forty seven years,
Peter Shaw, who is still on the board of directors
of the radio station and still in the business at CNBC,
he did the news. Pete had just gone into our
main announced booth and I was just polishing my sports
copy when every bell on our United Press International Wire
Service teletype machine went off. And this is where that
(34:21):
timeless question I mentioned several minutes ago comes into play
the UPI bulletin five twenty eight pm. I think datelined Memphis, Tennessee,
urgent music legend Elvis Presley dead, aged forty two. As
the clanging of the bulletin bells faded in the background,
I ripped the death notice off the wire and sprinted.
(34:42):
I could still sprint. Then to Pete's announce booth. The
sweep hand of the giant clock right in front of him,
so giant it was twice the size of my head
was nearing the twelve. I think this is your new lead, Pete.
I'll run in whatever else they send, and I jammed
the door open and closed. He read the copy, looked
up at me, listened as the disc jockey introduced him,
(35:04):
and pausing only to separate the wise crack from his
actual broadcast, he said, does this mean you don't get paid?
Good evening? I'm Peter Shack now, and this is world
report Elvis Presley has died, a bulletin report from United
Press International, et cetera. I then raced into our main
studio to physically remove my commercial from the rack of
(35:26):
cartridges in which the ads all sat because my main
concern now was that it had to be scheduled to
play soon on our air, maybe in the middle of
the newscast. And honestly, the last thing we needed was
me on tape suddenly appearing on the air saying Elvis
Presley Live.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But the War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse Saturday, August twentieth
at eight thirty pm, tickets priced the ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Twelve more like the Elvis Memorial, Am I right? So
that was my concern. It was not Peter shack Now's. Well.
I was frantically looking for my Elvis commercial kart and
we were playing an ABC News report from correspond at
Russell Spur in Hong Kong. Pete spoke over an intercom
from the announcementoth and he asked me again, no, seriously,
does this mean you don't get paid for the commercials?
(36:13):
Guess what it sure as hell did mean I wouldn't
get paid to this day now, forty five freaking years.
Maybe Elvis is dead, maybe he's alive, Maybe he can
be found sitting home all alone, age eighty seven. If
you can't come around, at least please tell the phone.
I don't know. I don't care. All I know is
(36:35):
Elvis Presley. You owe me money. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thank you, thank you very much,
Thank you very much for listening. Here are the credits.
(36:58):
Most of the music arrange produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Chanel who are the countdown musical
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Scheneil guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by TKO Brothers. The
scarves handed to Me about Charla Hodge, Charla Hodge, everybody.
(37:18):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olberman theme
from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything else was pretty much
(37:38):
my fault except the scarves handed to me by Charla Hodge.
Charla Hodge, everybody that's countdown for this the nine hundred
and forty sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States arrest
him again. I always still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrants till then. I'm
(38:00):
Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and goodlie Buck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(38:21):
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. Jack
Smith did not want Trump's tweets. Anybody can get Trump's tweets,
(00:27):
my gud, you couldn't avoid Trump's tweets. Jack Smith wanted
Trump's dms, his direct messages, and maybe more importantly, jack
Smith may have also wanted Trump's unsent drafts. Oh, because
(00:50):
it turns out that some people, maybe Trump maybe not
used use their Twitter account. As in spy parlance, an
electronic dead drop. You write something and rather than texting
it to somebody or sending it by a secure messaging
(01:10):
app to somebody, or emailing it to somebody, or saying
it out loud to somebody, you just leave it in
your Twitter drafts, and you give somebody else the password
to your Twitter account, and they go in and they
read it, and then they delete it, unless, of course,
when you hit delete on Twitter or on the Internet,
(01:31):
you know it doesn't actually delete, like on every email
in the world, and even on the encrypted messaging apps
and most of your homeword processing programs and your laptops
and all of your company servers, and there's deleted, and
(01:51):
then there's just deleted from your vision a friend of mine,
A thirty five year friend of mine, God help us,
a veteran of politics and television, reminded me of this. Yesterday.
Terrorists like colleague Sheik Muhammad of al Qaeda and Richard Reid,
the shoe bomber, used the draft folder in email to
(02:14):
communicate with other members of the terrorist gang. General Petraeus
used it. But why couldn't you use drafts in Twitter too?
And I gasped. Trump doesn't text, Trump doesn't WhatsApp, Trump
doesn't email. Trump often dictated tweets, so we know multiple
people had access to that Trump Twitter account. And even
(02:37):
if he didn't use Twitter drafts as a cheap secret
messaging system, there are still all those direct messages and
the ones he or somebody using his account sent, and
all the direct messages he received, and probably the ones
(03:00):
he wrote and then deleted. That's what Jack Smith want.
He didn't want Trump's tweets. He wanted Trump's drafts and dms,
and judging by the legal documents unsealed yesterday and all
the news accounts he got them, there are hints about
the secrecy element all through that news coverage, but they
(03:21):
are buried paragraph eight in the account by The New
York Times. Quote that prosecutors asked for a warrant to
search the account suggests they wanted specific company data or
were interested in some non public aspect of the account,
though it remains unclear precisely what that may have been.
(03:44):
Non public aspect of Twitter. You say, hmm, what could
that be? And then the giveaway came in the Washington
Post again. Paragraph five TLDR ruling against Twitter's bid to
not turn over Trump's account. Ruling against Twitter's demand that
(04:05):
it had to notify Trump first before turning anything over
and then finding musk when he tried to bully her.
Judge Beryl Howell quote upheld the non disclosure order and
imposed a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars contempt sanction
on Twitter. She found that there were reasonable grounds to
believe that disclosing the warrant to Trump quote would seriously
(04:28):
jeopardize the ongoing investigation by giving him quote an opportunity
to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, or notify confederates.
According to the appellate ruling, unquote, why would they think
he would destroy evidence his tweets, His tweets that are
(04:50):
archived by the government that are actually federal records. Because
he was president. The tweets he desperately wanted you to see.
The tweets He's so compulsively created that when he got
banned from Twitter, he created his own social media site
so he could tweet there instead, and may have bankrupted
himself in the process. They weren't afraid he would destroy
(05:14):
his tweets. They were afraid he would try to destroy
direct messages or drafts or quote. Notify confederates, as the
judge warned, notify them, notify them about what. Delete the
DM you sent me, for god sakes, do it now,
delete this one too. And if you want to take
(05:36):
this one step beyond Judge Howell's first finding, which they
took out of the subsequent ones, was that if they
told Trump they were turning over access to his Twitter account,
his entire Twitter account to Jack Smith, the judge thought
Trump might quote flee from prosecution, flee from the what now,
(06:02):
flee from prosecution over his thousands of tweets that some
of his cultists have made into t shirts and posters,
the dms and the drafts, a god, flee from prosecution.
I've been advising Trump to flee from prosecution for eight years.
We want him to goddamn flee from prosecution. Call us
(06:25):
from Bally will work something out anyway. PostScript. The right
wing rage about Trump and monitoring his social media, which
infringed on his rights, began when Jack Smith told the
judge about the I'm coming for you Trump threatening post
last Friday, And of course the right wing backlash is
(06:47):
as usual, utter imbecilic, infantile, balder dash. These are public statements.
Mark Levin somehow thinks you can turn that on and
off like a light switch. Mark Levin, a guy like
this on fire. He's complaining about the government monitoring I
(07:08):
might as well be complaining about it monitoring Trump's speeches.
I mean, holy crap. Trump makes those posts and give
those speeches to get people to monitor them. That is
the point of doing it. And do not come in
here with the But the dms are private communications and
the drafts, the drafts are sacred private presidential thoughts. You
(07:32):
never read any of the terms of service you agree
to just once you're lucky. It doesn't say that you're
donating your organs to them. Twitter is a private company.
Facebook is a private company. You write it, you post it.
They own it. You write it, you don't post it.
They own it. The day we first got a form
(07:58):
of email, it was in the late nineteen eighties and
KCBS in Los Angeles when they installed a computer monitor
at every desk, and I kissed my typewriter goodbye, and
we could send a message to anybody in CBS worldwide
and in several other companies CBS did a lot of
(08:20):
business with. And I said to somebody in the newsroom,
what happens to it after I hit this delete button?
And the guy said, I don't know. It just disappears.
And I said, really, which do you think is more likely?
It disappears like you say, and no computer in the
world can get to it ever again, or or it
(08:41):
gets stored in a computer the size of a small country,
and the computer is under a mountain in Colorado or somewhere.
This guy's eyes got real wide mountain, I guess. And
then he immediately ran back to his computer terminal. Smith
wanted the dms and the drafts, and oh, by the way,
(09:06):
he got them. He has them now. And Elon Musk
got fined, what did Trump get yesterday? Well, he seems
to have wasted another move to delay stuff. The Trump
Legal team. This would be number one, the one that's
on the Southern tour, as opposed to Number two, which
(09:28):
is doing the mid Atlantic tour, and the one the
third group that's going out on the upcoming Georgia tour.
Trump Legal Team Number one has asked Judge Eileen Cannon
to order the reinstallment of a skiff SCIF Sensitive Compartmented
Information Facility at Mary a Lago because that works so
(09:49):
well last time. A skiff at mary Lago so Trump
can personally examine and discuss the classified documents produced to
him and his defense as part of discovery in the
High I'm don Trump and I Stole Classified Document's case.
Trump wants one there because he says it's too much
(10:09):
trouble to haul his sorry ass to the courtroom handling
this case just to look at documents, even though he
flies to two or three different cities each weekend to
hold his Nazi rallies. The problem is, and this is
a rare mistake for people who are actually really good
(10:31):
at stalling and wasting legal time and delaying trial dates.
Skiffs are not under the jurisdiction of the civil courts,
and as much as Eileen Canon might be being pay
might be so inclined to help out the lazy slab
who appointed her, she has no conceivable right to do so.
(10:56):
Skiffs are under the control of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, not Judge Aileen Cannon or the
Supreme Court for that matter. Besides, doesn't Trump still have
that really professional one that he built himself in his bathroom? Next?
(11:22):
Widespread reporting Tuesday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis
will go to her grand jury in Atlanta next week
as early as next Tuesday for indictments in the I
just want to find eleven, seven hundred and eighty votes
case Now. Reporting from CNN yesterday that Willis will be
asking that grand jury for more than one dozen indictments,
(11:45):
there was no rewarding about the breakdown. Theoretically, it could
be more than one dozen indictments just against Trump, or
one each for more than a dozen different defendants, or
any combination. The latter. The combination or the dozen different
defendants obviously much more likely. CNN buried certain both sides
asm flourishes deep in its text. Willis a Democrat, but
(12:07):
also noted she has been eyeing conspiracy and racketeering charges,
and identified three witnesses who have been subpoened to be
there again when she is in front of the regular
grand jury, all of whom testified to the Special grand jury.
Those who'ld be the former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan,
former State Senator Jen Jordan, and an independent journalist named
George Cheaty who has been with the Atlanta Journal Constitution
(12:30):
and several Atlanta TV stations and still produces commentaries for
Fox five in Atlanta. And if you're wondering what the
hell he is doing there, turns out he went to
the Capitol in December twenty twenty during the time the
electors were assembling. He recognized one of the people there
as a Republican operative. He followed him and before anybody
thought to stop George Cheaty, George Cheedty was in the
(12:51):
room with all the fake electors. Then all he got
was a slousy subpoena. This looks like Willis is going
to indict maybe each elector and the organizers as part
of a rico prosecution, presumably with Trump at the head
(13:12):
of this little miniature organized crime family and maybe others.
Lindsay Grime oh, to be a fly on the wall,
and speaking of flies, and is that a segue? Holy
cal Keith, is that a segue? Trump has done his
(13:33):
first joint interview in years. During one of those flatulent
lap sitting conversations with Newsmax Eric Bowling, the guy who
has descended steadily from CNBC through Fox Business, through The Blaze,
through Sinclair and now to Newsmax, Trump was in full
self martyred to mode when a fly landed on his
(13:55):
upper right cheek a few inches to the right of
his right eye. Trump did not seem to notice, of course,
not he was talking. Nobody wanted to go through the
ordeal of trying to stop either one of these schmucks,
to tell them to stop while they tried to get
rid of the fly, and so later in the same interview,
the same fly was seen buzzing around Trump's head, presumably
(14:18):
looking for any sign of life or anything not too
old to eat. By the way, entomologists confirmed that the
fly was almost certainly not the same fly that landed
on Mike Prince's forehead during the twenty twenty vice presidential
debate and briefly achieved viral fame. And if I'm remembering correctly,
(14:39):
you hosted Saturday Night Live. Household flies tend to live
only a month, so that fly would have to be
about three thousand and sixty human years old if it
was the same fly last night with Trump. As a PostScript,
after the usual Bowling metaphorical filating of Trump, the recorded
(15:02):
interview ended and viewers were returned to the Newsmax We're
being sued by Dominion and Smart Mattic Memorial Studio, where
Eric Bowling was seated again and he read this statement quote. Now,
just a note, Newsmax has accepted the election results as
legal and final. Unquote. You know, Bowling is a worm.
(15:26):
He was too greasy in terms of his dealing with
women to have lasted at Fox. That's how much of
a worm he is. But if he had had the
momentary cohones to read that, now, just to note, newsmax
has accepted the election results as legal and final. If
he had the cohones to read that while sitting across
(15:49):
from Trump, I would have personally sent him ten thousand
dollars in cash. I mean, that was what the fly
I was trying to do. There also of interest here,
remember the right wing was and those who have not
figured it out. Still are furious that Jack Smith was
(16:13):
even reading Trump's public Twitter feed. I mean they were
furious they were reading the public social media feed. The
truth social media and what is the point of this
incongruous magic trick on the part of the fascists. It's
public speech. You can't look at it. It's public speech.
(16:36):
As long as you have the ability to read anybody,
you can't look at it. Well, we found out what
this magic trick is about. Yesterday in Utah, a trump
stochastic terrorist threatened to assassinate President Biden. He did so
on Facebook repeatedly, he said roughly when so the FB
andi stopped by and there was shooting, and now the
trump ist is dead. And that's why Trumpists don't want
(17:00):
you looking at their public social media feeds. They only
want each other looking at their public social media feeds.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
(17:24):
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline provo. Utah, a trump stochastic terrorist is
dead and President Biden is not because the FBI monitored
the man's social media feeds. Craig Robertson was not all
that subtle about it. Not just Facebook posts since Monday,
(17:46):
but Facebook posts in big block letters over bright color backgrounds.
Perhaps Utah will become famous this week as the place
a sniper took out Biden the Marxist. He wrote, Hey, FBI,
you still monitoring my social media checking so I can
be sure to have a loaded gun hand in case
you drop by again. These psychopaths never stopped to think,
(18:11):
not for a moment, that the FEDS will not show
up having out armed them, or that the FBI will
outstrategize them or outshoot them or whatever. It is remarkable
the Fed showed up in Utah ahead of the President's
trip there. They went to serve a warrant at Craig
Robertson's house based on his credible threats, and he apparently
(18:33):
believed his own memes. Craig is dead now. And by
the way, the Trump stochastic terrorist reference is not gratuitous
and it's not a guess, officials told ABC News. Robertson
had also threatened Vice President Harris, as well as the
Attorney General and Adam Schiff and other officials involved in
prosecuting Trump and dateline Los Angeles, Robbie Robertson is dead.
(18:58):
Guitarist for Dylan, founder of the band, writer of the Weight.
He died yesterday. On top of that remarkable musical performance
legacy which goes on for a lot longer than just
a sentence. Robertson had just completed scoring his fourteenth Martin
Scorsese film, and on December twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, Robbie
Robertson one Twitter, that's when it was decided like a
(19:23):
comedy writer from Seth MacFarland, things like The Cleveland Show
and Family Guy, and Ted Alec Sulkin posted quote, want
to listen to the band? No, I'm just gonna sit
on an accordion while watching the Civil War documentary. About
nine hours later, Robertson himself replied quote, wish I could
have written for the Cleveland Show instead. Robbie Robertson was eighty,
(19:47):
his burn was five and a half years old, still
ahead on countdown. Well, guess what, It's Elvis week, and
(20:11):
that means I get to tell you the story again
about how I may have done the last Elvis Presley commercial.
I won't play it for you coming up and things
I promise not to tell. First time. For the daily
roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's words the persons in word Bron's
(20:33):
Ron DeSantis, the fascist dictator of Florida. DeSantis just wiped
out another elected state official, Monique Warrel, the state attorney
in the Florida Ninth Judicial Circuit, who had been put
thereby you know, voters. Desantas said, she's under prosecuting criminals,
so he's taking her out and putting in a former
(20:55):
University of Miami football player named Andrew Bain in her place.
You want the backstory, here's the backstory. Monty Quarrel is
a black woman. And Ron DeSantis is an oinking racist
runner up federal judge Brantley Star in Texas. He is
appointed by the other oinking racist Trump. A Southwest Airline
(21:17):
flight attendant tried to ruin the life of the local
head of the Transportation Workers union, kept sending them graphic
images of abortions, hundreds of them. After two years of this,
Southwest fired her. She sued, and this guy Star, yes
his court would be a star chamber, not only found
that she had been discriminated against because of her religious beliefs.
(21:40):
Her religion apparently told her to send graphic images of
abortions to people who supported abortion. But when Southwest issued
a statement that it did not discriminate against people's religious beliefs,
Judge Starr ordered that three attorneys who represented the airline
now have to take quote religious liberty training from an
(22:01):
extremist theocratic, anti abortion, anti democracy group, eight hours each
in the classroom, and they have to pay to fly
the group's guide to Dallas, pure totalitarian theocracy. Judge Starr,
by the way, is the nephew of the man who
tried to run the Republican coup against President Clinton and
(22:22):
Vice President Gore in nineteen ninety eight. Ken Starr. Ken
Star died last year, and Ken Starr and Bradley Starr,
if their religion is correct, Kenstar is now in hell.
But the winner retired Air Force intel officer David Grush.
I hope you did not invest too much in the
(22:43):
words of that so called Air Force UFO whistleblower. That's
David Grush. He claimed he had been retaliated against because
even though he had the high level security clearances and
he had seen the unimaginable. He had dared to tell
of the non human biological material reportedly being recovered from
crash sites and the government's reverse and engineering of extraterrestrial craft,
(23:06):
and and the website The Intercept advises that Major Grush
was admitted to a mental health facility as recently as
October twenty eighteen after he asked his wife after she
had told him he was an alcoholic and needed help,
so he told her quote, I've just been waiting for
(23:27):
you to kill me. And there was apparently a similar
suicidal event in twenty fourteen, and the Air Force people
now really can't figure out how his security clearance was
not revoked after that. The UFO crowd thinks this is
all part of a cover up, But this is just
a smear that was handed urgently to this website, the Intercept.
In fact, it was part of a Freedom of Information
(23:49):
Act filing about him that took exactly the average amount
of time it takes to get an FOIA Act returned
to you for stuff like this. And of course, more importantly,
it circles back to that fundamental question of supposed alien
visitation of our planet. Here Earth, no Earth. That's what
it's called Earth. Why is the big point? Why is
(24:13):
the big question? Why would they come here? Would you
come here if you had a choice, if you could
get around the galaxy? Why would you come here for
the parking? Unless the great late comedian Bill Hicks was right.
Hecks noted that the landings and sightings of UFO are
(24:36):
never in Washington, or a world capital, or even a
county seat of government. They're inevitably in places like Fife, Alabama.
Maybe these aren't the super intelligent beings Bill Hicks posited.
Maybe they're hillbilly aliens. We just want to sit back
(24:56):
and whittlesome. Major David and the aliens forced me to
drink the tequila grush today. These worst person in this
or any other world. Finally, our number one story on
(25:22):
the countdown back to my favorite topic, Me and Things
I Promised Not to Tell, And Elvis Week is underway.
Highlights include today's Ultimate Elvis Tribute artist contest, Meet and Greet,
a room full of Elvi and I'll just read this part.
(25:42):
Join Gates of Graceland host Tom Brown and Graceland's VP
of Archives and Exhibits, Angie Marchesy on an exclusive after
hours tour of Graceland Mansion. Have you ever wondered what
might be inside a drawer or around a corner? This
one of a kind experience. We'll give you a glimpse
of items you will not see on tour and will
(26:03):
feature a special photo op inside Graceland Mansion. Frankly, I
don't want to know what's inside the drawer? Is it Graceland?
The week continues through next Wednesday, which is the anniversary
of Elvis Presley's death August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, A
(26:25):
king on his throne August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, not
on tour, but on toilet in Memphis, Tennessee. And leading
to this timeless and immortal question, does this mean you
don't get paid? That pertains to this next point. Amazingly,
Elvis Week does not contain any sort of tribute or
(26:47):
mention or ceremony or candlelit vigil to this giddying fact.
I maybe the youngest person now alive who can say this.
I did a radio commercial for an Elvis Presley concert
(27:08):
oh Nancy in August of nineteen seventy seven. Elvis was
(27:35):
scheduled to do a series of live shows in the Northeast,
and the day he died he was leaving for Portland, Maine,
and two nights at the then brand new Cumberland County
Civic Center there, then Utica, New York on the nineteenth,
Syracuse the next night, the Nassau County Coliseum on Long
Island on the twenty first, then Rupp Arena in Kentucky, Roanoke, Virginia,
two stops in North Carolina, and wrapping up with two
(27:56):
nights at the Memphis Mid South Coylseum. Having lived through
the end, I have to say that by this point
Elvis Presley was something of a self parody. Arriving at
one concert he fell out of the limo. He was enormous,
he could barely sing, and when he sang, he was
now essentially a country Western singer, and not a very
(28:17):
good one. We had an album oriented commercial rock station
run by Cornell students in Ithaca, New York, and I
do not remember ever hearing an Elvis song played during
one of the regular shows, maybe on the Saturday night
Oldie Show, but the thought of playing hound Dog or
Jailhouse Rock, which are genuine rock and roll classics, would
(28:38):
have provoked laughter or maybe a walkout by the disc jockeys.
So when our advertising sales manager walked into my office
in July nineteen seventy seven and said, we have a
one hundred spot by from Elvis Presley's concert promoter, there
was only one possible answer to this. Why. Well, it
turned out we were an hour or so from the
(28:58):
War Memorial Coliseum in Syracuse, where Elvis was to play
on August twentieth, and the promoters had bought time on
every radio station that played music between Syracuse and US.
They got out a map, pulled out a protractor, and
drew a circle representing a sixty mile radius. There we
were WVBRFM, Antha of New York, out at the edge.
(29:21):
That summer, I was the operations director of the station.
I was in charge, filling in for the general manager
who had a summer job in Rochester, New York, Larry Epstein.
Why Larry thought I would be good at this I
will never never know. In any event, the sales manager
next asked me who on earth could do an Elvis
commercial on a rock station that was known for playing
(29:42):
entire Jethro Tull album sides after eleven at night. I said,
I had no idea somebody who would want the five
percent commission for making the ads, And he said, how
about you? The buck does stop here, right, And he
handed me the script they wanted, and I swallowed hard
and read it out loud. And I don't still have
a copy of that original script, but I know this
(30:03):
is a real cur close recreation, because you don't forget
something like imagining the impact of this playing on the
coolest FM rock radio station in four adjoining counties. Here
goes Elvis, Elvis, Elvis Live Live Live, Elvis Presley, though
one and only the immortal Elvis Live at the Onondaga
(30:25):
County War Memortal Auto Tournament, Syracuse ELBS Elvis Elvis one
night only, Saturday Night, August twentieth Elvis ELBS Elvis Live
Live Live. Yeah, turned out, of course it was Elvis, Elvis,
Elvis dead, dead dead anyway. There was something in there
about prices and where he could send a letter in
(30:46):
a self address stamped envelope for tickets, and it was
supposed to be done in full reverb, that old time
am radio echo effect defect effect. I think they wanted
one or two soundful pops from Elvis's greatest hits, and
I wondered if in our library of five thousand or
so records in the back we even had Elvis's greatest hits.
And I'm not exaggerating about that script. There were at
(31:08):
least two dozen exclamation points on that page. We would
not have put on a commercial with that many exclamation
points in it, even if it was for a Beatles
reunion live in our back studio. We can't run this,
I told the sales manager. They want everything in the
A schedule. The sales manager said, meaning they were paying
our top rate. Did you ask korn? I asked, invoking
(31:30):
our program director Glenn Cornelius. He says, we can run it.
No Elvis songs in it. But and I said, not
like this. Did you call them? Well, they let us
tone it down a little, and he said, the account
is yours. Rewrite it. Tone it down if they say, yes,
this is what fifty bucks for you. Now, don't laugh
about the fifty bucks in nineteen seventy seven money in Ethica,
(31:52):
New York. My rent that summer per month was fifty
one bucks. So I toned it down. Turned out the
promoters didn't give a crap if I toned it down.
They just wanted something played about Elvis every hour. I
recorded it, and soon the mystified listeners of the coolest
FM rock station in four adjoining counties, we're hearing my flat,
(32:14):
still slightly nasal, eighteen year old voice saying the same
thing like six seven times a day, and like everything else.
I made a copy of this. Now I swear. I
used to record my broadcast and listen to them later
and say, I've got to get better. Am I getting better?
This doesn't sound better? So I still have this on
a cassette, and I have a cassette player. So here
(32:37):
it is Elvis. Elvis, Elvis Live Live, Live, toned down,
tone down, toned down.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Elvis Presley Live at the War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse, Saturday,
August twentieth, at eight thirty pm. Tickets priced at fifteen dollars,
twelve fifty and ten dollars plus twenty five cents per
ticket service charge. So kits are on sale now at
the auditorium box office and by mail. Send a self
address Stanton Flow to ell this Auditorium MOX Office, five
(33:07):
fifteen Montgomery Street, Syracuse, one three two oh two. That's
Elvis Live at the War Memorial in Syracuse, August twentieth.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Hey, kid, you have a deviated septum. Actually it's not
bad for age eighteen. Anyway, there were people I knew
then at the station and in town that lovely summer
of nineteen seventy seven who just assumed, who just told
me that they assumed that that commercial was some kind
of satire or gag on my part. So at least
(33:37):
we knew they were listening. So this is how this
turns out. We did a nightly half hour newscast called
World Report at five point thirty every day, and it
was a good newscast, and that title was neither ironic
nor undeserved. We were affiliated with ABC Radio. We ran
the Howard Cosell sports commentary every night. We had a
stock report, we had local reporters. I did a sports cast,
(34:00):
and our news director and my friend of forty seven years,
Peter Shaw, who is still on the board of directors
of the radio station and still in the business at CNBC,
he did the news. Pete had just gone into our
main announced booth and I was just polishing my sports
copy when every bell on our United Press International Wire
Service teletype machine went off. And this is where that
(34:21):
timeless question I mentioned several minutes ago comes into play
the UPI bulletin five twenty eight pm. I think datelined Memphis, Tennessee,
urgent music legend Elvis Presley dead, aged forty two. As
the clanging of the bulletin bells faded in the background,
I ripped the death notice off the wire and sprinted.
(34:42):
I could still sprint. Then to Pete's announce booth. The
sweep hand of the giant clock right in front of him,
so giant it was twice the size of my head
was nearing the twelve. I think this is your new lead, Pete.
I'll run in whatever else they send, and I jammed
the door open and closed. He read the copy, looked
up at me, listened as the disc jockey introduced him,
(35:04):
and pausing only to separate the wise crack from his
actual broadcast, he said, does this mean you don't get paid?
Good evening? I'm Peter Shack now, and this is world
report Elvis Presley has died, a bulletin report from United
Press International, et cetera. I then raced into our main
studio to physically remove my commercial from the rack of
(35:26):
cartridges in which the ads all sat because my main
concern now was that it had to be scheduled to
play soon on our air, maybe in the middle of
the newscast. And honestly, the last thing we needed was
me on tape suddenly appearing on the air saying Elvis
Presley Live.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But the War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse Saturday, August twentieth
at eight thirty pm, tickets priced the ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Twelve more like the Elvis Memorial, Am I right? So
that was my concern. It was not Peter shack Now's. Well.
I was frantically looking for my Elvis commercial kart and
we were playing an ABC News report from correspond at
Russell Spur in Hong Kong. Pete spoke over an intercom
from the announcementoth and he asked me again, no, seriously,
does this mean you don't get paid for the commercials?
(36:13):
Guess what it sure as hell did mean I wouldn't
get paid to this day now, forty five freaking years.
Maybe Elvis is dead, maybe he's alive, Maybe he can
be found sitting home all alone, age eighty seven. If
you can't come around, at least please tell the phone.
I don't know. I don't care. All I know is
(36:35):
Elvis Presley. You owe me money. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thank you, thank you very much,
Thank you very much for listening. Here are the credits.
(36:58):
Most of the music arrange produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Chanel who are the countdown musical
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Scheneil guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by TKO Brothers. The
scarves handed to Me about Charla Hodge, Charla Hodge, everybody.
(37:18):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olberman theme
from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything else was pretty much
(37:38):
my fault except the scarves handed to me by Charla Hodge.
Charla Hodge, everybody that's countdown for this the nine hundred
and forty sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States arrest
him again. I always still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrants till then. I'm
(38:00):
Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and goodlie Buck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(38:21):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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