August 9, 2023 • 45 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 9 COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Is Jack Smith preparing a THIRD set of indictments against Trump? Maybe a FOURTH? The Grand Jury which indicted Trump LAST week is still meeting this week; they were in there yesterday. And Smith is deep in the weeds on Trump de-frauding his cultists and getting them to give him money to fix a “stolen election” he knew damn well WASN’T stolen. But the Special Counsel is also clearly still looking at how Trump tried to stop the transfer of presidential power. And Fani Willis will reportedly go to HER Atlanta Grand Jury as early as Tuesday. While they’re already blocking roads around the courthouse, Trump is already pre-smearing her, and he's already forgotten that he demanded the indictment of Joe Biden in October 2020.
Plus: Trump has already pre-contempted a court order that hasn’t been issued yet. He says even if Judge Chutkan restricts what he can and can’t talk about, he’ll talk about it. The hearing is Friday.
Re-indicted cause it feels so good. And yes, I’m singing that.
B-Block (20:00) IN SPORTS: A chant of "Free Kevin Brown" broke out at the Baltimore Orioles' game last night. Their suspended play-by-play man will be back Friday, but that was the plan all along. And his suspension points to the plan in far too many baseball, basketball, and hockey TV booths: All reporting, all criticism, in fact anything not gushingly glowing about the home team will result in suspension. It's been coming for a century and it's here: the sports play-by-play broadcast is there only to brainwash you that your team is perfect, always has been, and you need to give it more money. (32:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The words you never want to hear from Matt Schlapp: I'm hanging out. Mike Pence makes a funny about January 6; too bad he didn't DO something about it. And mega-fraud God-salesman Franklin Graham attacks the U.S. Women's Soccer Team. Jesus would punch him in the face.
C-Block (37:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Milo in Tennessee (38:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It is now 35 years since I got the greatest scoop of my career, using the least amount of effort. The Wayne Gretzky Trade!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. Trump
may be facing another round of federal indictments, maybe two
(00:27):
of them, maybe imminently reindicted, re reindicted. The grand jury
that indicted Donald Trump last Thursday for his attempts to
stop the transfer of presidential power was seen at the
Preddyman Courthouse yesterday, and not for picture day or an
alumni reunion. They were there, according to a report by Politico,
(00:49):
convened again meeting, hearing evidence of some kind about something
we do not know about. What if you can keep
all of them straight? You may remember that after Trump
was ind in the stolen classified documents case, a superseding
indictment on the documents was issued, and not only was
(01:12):
Trump reindicted, but a third defendant, Carlos de Olivia, the
Boss wants the server deleted guy. He was added to
the Jack Smith Rogues gallery. Frankly, there have been so
many Trump indictments, and so many Trump indictment stories, and
so much Trump indictment news that if I did not
(01:33):
keep a spiral notebook about all of it, I don't
think I would be able to keep it all straight.
First documents, Second documents, coo, Lord, It's like I'm rattling
off the titles of the books of the Bible. It
can cloud the sense that Jack Smith had clearly established
three overlapping but separate types of investigations documents, coup and
(01:57):
financial fraud involving Trump's various packs and his fundraising pitches
to the suckers and cult out there to send him
money to help fix the stolen election that he knew,
damn well was not stolen. Jack Smith's grand jury has
not handed up any indictments on any of that latter
money stuff yet, and it might be the easiest to prove.
(02:22):
Politico Now quotes the lawyer for the ex con ex
New York City Police Chief Bernie Carrick, as saying his
interview with the Smith team on Monday was filled with
questions about quoting the reporters save America Pack's enormous fundraising
hall in the weeks between election day and the January sixth,
twenty twenty one attack on the Capitol en quote the
(02:44):
reporters quote the attorney Tim PARLATORI as saying, it's a
laser focus from election day to January sixth, But then
and I don't want to insult Kyle Cheney or Betsy
Woodroff of Politico. I mean they have stuff that the
New York Times report last night on the Carrick interview
does not even mention. But I think the significance of
the rest of what the attorney Tim PARLATORI said may
(03:07):
not have fully hit them. Parlatory went on to describe
the rest of his client, Carrick's chat with the Smiths,
and it isn't about fundraising and scamming. It's about stopping
the peaceful transfer of power. Jack Smith is still investigating
stopping the peaceful transfer of power. He's going to indict
him again. Quote. Parlatory said. Smith's team didn't ask any
(03:31):
questions about Jenna Ellis or about Mark Meadows. The team
did ask a few questions about Boris Epstein, and the
investigators asked multiple questions about Justin Clark, who was deputy
campaign manager of Trump's reelection bid. Unquote Wait, Justin Clark,
(03:53):
new shooter. Justin Clark, the lawyer at the Fringes who
was working the room pushing the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, the
one with no visible neck. That Justin Clark, I mean
Jenna Ellis. We know Mark Meadows flipped the Boris Epshtein
(04:14):
is Maggie Haberman's pick for unindicted co conspirators six, as
Bernie Carrick is my pick for six. But Justin Clark
after mentioning that towards the middle of twenty twenty one,
Giuliani and his crew tried to convince Trump to use
Save America pack funds to pay Rudy Politico ads quote.
There was significant tension between Justin Clark and Rudy Giuliani
(04:38):
over Trump's strategy of contesting the results in Georgia. Carrick
described to the Special Council's team a contentious phone call
where Giuliani yelled at Clark and called him a liar.
Parlatory said, so what is that about money? The attempt
to coerce the Georgia Secretary of State to fraudulently create
(05:01):
fake votes for Trump on the phone the recorded phone call,
both did Rudy say anything about owning those breasts? More
indictments cometh and that right soon reindicted, prepare for it. Meanwhile,
(05:25):
in the indictments we already have, Trump has pre contempted
a court order that hasn't been issued yet. And Judge
Tanya Chutkin was nice enough to slap his attorney's sideways.
On another matter, Trump First Wyndham, Hampshire in one of
those anybody ever tell them that anything you say can
(05:45):
and will be used against you moments. There's no gag order,
there's not even a protective order on sensitive evidence yet,
and Trump has already convicted himself of contempt of court.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They take away you write our trest amendment? Now they soone,
because so now I have one of these lunatic reporters
back there saying, sir, would like to talk to you
about your case. I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Talk about it. Somehow that's that good for votes?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Do you agree when we say I can't talk, i'd
I will talk about it.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I will.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
They're not taking away my first send them the earth. Well, sure,
talk about it, talk about it, and then you are
in contempt of court, and the judge will just expand
the restrictions, and sooner or later she'll expand them so
much that she will have no other choice but to
put your ass in jail. It's now inevitable. I would
(06:36):
wonder why his lawyers are not warning him about this
like that would work but it turns out these new
lawyers are bigger idiots than the last new lawyers. Easy
timeline here over the last weekend, in a couple of
days on social media, Trump threatened everybody. On Friday, special
counsel asks judge for a protective order to keep Trump
(06:58):
from you know, using the evidence to docs witnesses. Judge
asks Trump's lawyers for a response to that. Trump's lawyers
ask for a delay. Judge refuses, Trump's lawyers give the response.
Smith responds. Judge then gives Trump's lawyers the hearing they wanted.
Judge tells them and Smith to agree on two dates
for the hearing Friday or earlier. Submit them to her
(07:22):
by yesterday afternoon. So it's yesterday afternoon, and Smith says
anytime Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. John Lorow and Todd Blanche
the Trump lawyers say next Monday or Tuesday, neither of
which is before Friday. So Trump's lawyers ignore what the
judge asks for and sends her something else. So she
(07:44):
steam rolls them and schedules the hearing anyway on Friday.
Be there Aloha, by the way, dollars to donuts. One
or both of Trump's lawyers don't show Friday, and then
Trump can claim the judge has gagged him without his
attorney's being present, the old kill your parents and cry
(08:05):
that you're an orphan ploy, which Trump had already done
yesterday in New Hampshire. I'm sorry to play you two
clips of dementia Jay that you have to hear this
to set up the punchline.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Is this going to be the future of elections in
America where a sitting president tells his tells his attorney
general to indict the opponent to try and knock the
opponent down.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yes, we wouldn't want a new tradition of the Attorney
General of the United States indicting the president's likely election opponent.
Oh wait, who was it again who went on Fox
in October twenty twenty and demanded that his attorney general
indict Joe Biden and Obama? All right, this Trump is
(08:51):
so eft up he doesn't even remember all his past threats. Okay,
back to reindictment. Mentioned yesterday that the logistical Tea Leaves
confirmed Fawnie Willis is going to the Fulton County Grand
Jury for the Georgia indictments presently, but no earlier than tomorrow. Now, ABC,
(09:15):
the New York Times, and The Guardian probably others are
all reporting it'll probably be next week. The Times uses
the same divining rod that the Atlanta Journal Constitution used Yesterday,
two subpoenad witnesses confirmed they had not gotten the follow
up noticed that they need to show up the one
that arrives forty eight hours before you have to show up,
(09:36):
So that means they could not get them now until
today Wednesday, which would mean a grand jury hearing Friday.
But they're not starting this on Friday, so next week.
Guardian says as early as Tuesday. The Atlanta Paper may
have the best tidbit about this. Roads are already closed
around the courthouse. And by the way, as I recall
(09:59):
the details of the new Fawnie Willis grand jury, it
was one of two grand jury and the meeting days
were not the Tuesday Thursday schedule of the Federal Court
in DC, but a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday Friday schedule or
whatever that is worth. And of course, besides getting reindicted,
Trump has already set himself up for a gag order
(10:20):
in Georgia or maybe a defamation suit. Four years ago,
Fannie Willis was a defense attorney, and briefly she was
a defense attorney for a rapper calling himself YSL Mondo.
The Trump campaign uncovered this and unused the same magic
wand with which Trump has skated through life. Oh you know,
(10:41):
two and three are practically the same number. So let's
just say two and three are the same number. And
if two and three are the same number, well, then
two and three placed next to each other, well, that's
the same as two or three. Therefore, the number two
is exactly the same as the number twenty three. Thus
(11:02):
Fannie willis used to be YSL Monday attorney. She does
not announce this to the entire world first thing every morning.
Therefore she's hiding it. Therefore, she was hiding a relationship
with a rapper, and therefore all rappers are gang members.
Therefore she's a DA She prosecutes gang members. Therefore, she
(11:24):
was quote caught hiding a relationship with a gang member.
She was prosecuting. But wait, there's more. Now Trump sees
this and sees one word and one word alone, relationship,
and that means only one thing to him. Waka waka waka,
(11:45):
they say, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
They say that she was after a certain gang, and
she ended up having an affair with the head of
the gang or a gang member. And this is a
person that wants to indict me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Donald Trump is trash, pure human garbage, reindict. Of course,
this whole seventy eight counts and counting thing against Trump
is just going to go away because Matt Gates has
just figured out how to get him out of all
this quote. You can actually bring Trump in to give
(12:18):
testimony before Congress and in doing so immunize him. Gates
told this to one of the right wings streaming propagandists,
the one with the Charlie Brown balloon head, I think,
and even he was not buying this. When has this
been done before, he asked. Gates answered cheerfully, it hasn't,
and it hasn't because a grant of immunity by Congress
(12:40):
means they can't use what you say at your congressional
hearing in any prosecution of you. It doesn't mean they
can't prosecute you. It's not a pardon. Besides, even if
they did do something that kakamamy, what is Trump going
to reveal? What is he going to testify to that
he could then wipe off the prosecutorial blackboard. Is he
(13:03):
going to tell the truth? He didn't even remember he
demanded that Bill Barr indict Joe Biden late in the
twenty twenty campaign. And there's one more thing about Trump.
Indicted and re indicted and re reindicted. We appear to
be seeing the law of diminishing returns finally kicking in.
Thank god. I've already mentioned here that the Trump fundraising
(13:25):
windfall after the first Jacksmith indictment was only about half
of the wind fall after the Alvin Bragg indictment. Now
Axios has analyzed Google trends for the various Trump indictments.
The scale on Google trends is from a minimum of
one to a maximum of one hundred. The Mary Lago
search was a sixty five out of one hundred, the
(13:47):
Stormy Daniel's indictment announcement that banged the gong one hundred,
the Classified Documents indictment was a fifty two, and the
early data on the Coup indictments the Google trend number
of forty two. So let him be reindicted. The financial
benefit is waiting And wait, have I said reindicted like
(14:12):
like eight times already?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
What is this?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Why? Is this word praying on my brain? Reindicted, reindicted. Oh,
I feel a song coming on, Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Nancy reindicted, And it feels a good reindicted, Like it's
filing wood and there's one perfect fit and sugar prison
is it? The country is so excited cause he's predited.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Hey, thank you, Nancy Faust. I don't know how I
get away with it every day. I really don't. Also
of interest here, obviously, Issue one fails. In Ohio, the
Republican push were correctly the Republican push to make it
(15:15):
tougher to amend the state constitution designed specifically to make
it more difficult to protect abortion in Ohio rejected. Issue
one fails. Why look, I just poked it with a stick.
Democracy is still breathing. And listen. Listen to this from
the home park of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and
(15:38):
their suspended announcer Kevin Brown. And they are freeing Kevin Brown.
He is coming back to the Orioles booth. About a
(16:00):
dozen baseball broadcasters went on the air and pancaked the
ball more Orioles for this madness. But the bad news
is a lot of other broadcasters wanted to do so,
but we're afraid to because this premise that the job
of a TV sports play by play man is to
say only positive things about his team or he will
(16:22):
be beaten severely. This is rapidly taking hold in baseball
and basketball and hockey. And that's why you heard all
the announcers say what they did in defensive Kevin Brown,
because ask not for whom the bell tolls. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that, not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
In Sports Baltimore, Orioles play by play announcer Kevin Brown
will come off the secret suspension list and rejoin his
broadcast Friday. And if you think this indicates that the
tsunami of banned publicity and genuine indignation over the team's
punishment somehow affected authoritarian CEO John Angelos of the Orioles, Nope,
(17:31):
nothing gets through to him. Brown's non suspension suspension, which
was clearly supposed to be two weeks, was supposed to
end Friday anyway, two weeks. If you somehow miss this story,
mister Brown, read the statistics on a full screen graphic
showing how much better the Baltimore Orioles have been I'll
repeat that word better this year against Tampa Bay than
(17:55):
in years past. The graphic was produced by the team's
broadcast crew, the statistics were produced by the team's media
relations department, and Brown was suspended for mentioning what it's
said on the graphic that the Orioles used to lose
more than they do now to Tampa Bay. It's madness,
and it's not just important because it reflects what happens
(18:18):
when rich, vulgar, unintelligent, messianic people who have enough money
to threaten the jobs of anybody who works for them
do that. It's also not just important because the Orioles
and CEO Angelos were called out on the air by
my friend Gary Cohene of the New York Mets telecasts,
and my friend Howie Rose of the New York Mets
radio broadcasts, and my friends Jason Bennetti who does the
(18:41):
White Sox games, and Michael Kay and John Sterling and
Susan Waldman who do the Yankees games, and Kevin Eucles
and Dave O'Brien who do the Red Sox games, and
Tom McCarthy of the Phillies and Kevin Connors and Kevin
mcganbie of ESPN. And there's something else here that actually
pertains to a see change in what the broadcasts of
sports events are now becoming and are now expected to be.
(19:05):
This has been happening behind the scenes, sodo vocha, off
the record for the last several years, not everywhere, obviously,
not with those teams which did not blink as their
own announcers savaged, the Orioles, nor the teams that recognize
that if their teams stink and their announcers pretend they
don't stink, nobody will believe those announcers anymore, nor watch
(19:29):
the broadcasts, nor buy the products the announcers are trying
to sell. But since last year at least, I have
been hearing more and more from announcer friends in other sports,
some of them genuinely terrified for their own jobs or
jobs of their colleagues, from baseball, from basketball, from hockey,
(19:51):
not so much football because those are almost all network
TV broadcasts. It's all off the record, it's all friend
to friend, and they have been telling me that they
or their friends have been called in and warned, warned, warned,
warned by their teams, often warned by their teams general
managers or vice presidents of broadcasting or presidents or owners
(20:15):
that not only are they the announcers expected to put
as positive as spin as possible on what they say
about the team, which has largely always been true, but
that they now literally cannot acknowledge any problems past, present,
or future with their teams. In hockey, no penalty against
(20:37):
their team is legitimate. In basketball, all the referees are
biased against their players. In baseball, no the replay is wrong,
and that pitch was outside and that next pitch was
to a strike. In all sports, every player who was
traded away was no good, and every free agent who
left the team was disloyal. In sports game broadcasting, there
(21:01):
has always been, since the first of them in nineteen
twenty XI one, a delicate balance between actual reporting and
actual salesmanship. My dear late friend Bob Wolf, who announced
his first Major League baseball game in nineteen forty seven
and who announced his last Major League Baseball Old Timers
game in twenty seventeen, titled his book about Baseball broadcasting
(21:24):
and the tensions between teams and sponsors and the Truth
It's not who won or lost the game. It's how
you sold the beer. Well, now it's how you sell
the team. The Orioles suspension of Kevin Brown revealed some
other things about what the O's have been doing to
their announcers. They have been punishing various unnamed announcers, per
(21:48):
widespread reports, all year, for things that reek of madness.
One Orioles announcer was supposedly reprimanded, may be even suspended
for saying nice things about a player who used to
play for the Baltimore Orioles but doesn't anymore. Brown's suspension
for this Orwellian crime of admitting that the O's have
(22:09):
not always been at war with East Asia, or at
least that they have not always been winning the war
with East Asia. That suspension was reportedly delayed for several
days because the Orioles needed Brown to fill in on
radio for yet another announcer who had committed the thought
crime of not wearing a shirt with an Oriole's logo
(22:30):
on it, and he had been suspended. It is fitting
that this slow but unstoppable conversion of the sports broadcast
in many different sports from mix of truth and promotion
into pure propaganda and indeed something close to brainwashing bubbled
to the surface, at least in terms of general knowledge,
(22:52):
because a baseball team, one with the second best record
in the game, enjoying a glorious renaissance season, decided to
punish its announcers anyway even though everything is going great.
That is fitting because the new ultimate goal eliminate anything
that doesn't get people watching to buy more Orioles stuff
(23:15):
or tickets or more MLB merchandise or whatever. This started
in baseball twenty even fifteen years ago. Every one of
the news stories on Baseball's owned website carried a note
at its end this story was not subject to the
approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. There were
(23:38):
a lot of things to complain about during the commissionership
of Bud Ceiling, and god knows I complained about all
of them several times, but that wasn't one of them.
In two thousand and eight, Bud Ceiling asked me to
come work for the MLB website and the new MLB
TV network it would launch the next year. Say whatever
(23:59):
you want, you know, that's my rule, he told me.
All I ask is if it's about me, or if
it's really harsh about the game. Call me, give me
a chance to talk you out of it, or at
least give me a chance to get you to give
my side of it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Two.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
We couldn't make the MLB TV network thing workout because
I already had three TV jobs, But I worked for
MLB dot com for four years. I wrote columns for
MLB dot com because Bud Sealing personally hired me. And
then as his time as commissioner was beginning to wind down,
(24:36):
he seeded control of the website and the network to others,
and soon that little note about the stories not being
subject to the approval of the clubs disappeared, And soon
I wrote something about the owners of the Yankees that
the Yankees didn't like, and my column disappeared, And soon
after when MLB Network offered me my own daily show,
(24:57):
the offer disappeared within days after the Yankees found out
and warned the network president that they would not allow
Wow It to happen and would kick all the MLB
network cameras out of Yankee Stadium if it did. And
even if you didn't know those inside, really they only
apply to me things. If you last watched the MLB
(25:19):
Network in two thousand and nine or twenty ten, and
then you skipped ahead and turned it on today. You
would recognize the deterioration in the editorial content within minutes,
maybe seconds. There are some pros like Brian Kenny and
ad Nan Verk who do not carry the new water
and sneak in facts, but the rest of them, every
(25:41):
team is undefeated. Every baseball player is a superstar. Every
player error is just symbolic of their extraordinary effort. Every
team punting on its season and trading away at star
players to other teams. Why why? What an opportunity they're
providing for the next stars of the game to emerge.
(26:05):
A team starving its franchise and its fans and then
abanding its home city of fifty five years to go
move somewhere else. Well, that's the dawn of a new era.
And who knows it might also be an opportunity for
an expansion team in the abandoned city. MLB network, which
you used to be able to watch for more than
(26:25):
an hour at a time, is ninety percent of the
time now useless. It is uninsightful propaganda because you can
never say anything negative. Everybody is perfect. It does not
seek to inform, it barely seeks to entertain. It is
there to get you to buy stuff. Winter before last,
(26:47):
Bud Selig's successor as baseball Commissioner, Rob Manfred, fired MLB
network's top reporter, probably baseball's top reporter, Ken Rosenthal, even
though Ken Rosenthal is the best part of the Fox
Network baseball game broadcasts, including the World Series. MLB Network
fired a guy who was on the World Series broadcasts
(27:08):
every year, and there was no great mystery as to
why they would do something that petty and stupid. Rosenthal
had been critical of Commissioner Rob Manfred in columns for
the website The Athletic, And not only can't you be
critical of baseball or Rob Manfred on MLB network and
(27:30):
by the way, Manfred thinks he and baseball are one
and the same, but you can't have been critical of
Rob Manfred and then be on MLB Network ever. And
now this attitude, the correct word for it is editorial dictatorship.
This attitude is overtaking the local broadcasts of baseball games
(27:53):
and hockey games and basketball games. And I assume football
games on the radio. The last one I heard of
those was about nineteen seventy. There actually are non sports
implications as well. It's just that much more stuff on
television or online or in a streaming service in which
the question of whether or not you have just seen
(28:13):
something approaching impartial truth is completely out of date and irrelevant.
That question has been replaced by another question, whether or
not what you have just seen has been enough of
an infomercial, or if somebody like Kevin Brown has just
been screamed at or humiliated or suspended for not selling
(28:35):
you hard enough on something. And then there is the
more immediate question all those team broadcasts and broadcasters which
correctly vivisected the Orioles on Monday night after Kevin Brown
was suspended or the news got out anyway, how many
of those teams and the channels they largely own will
(28:58):
be sold to new owners in the years to come,
new owners who will think the Orioles were right. And
how soon will this happen, And what happens to the
honest sportscasters after the sales happen? Still ahead on countdown
(29:31):
greatest scoop of my career and the amount of hard
work I put into it approximately yeah, virtually nothing, which
is I guess the karma behind the fact that when
they handed out the awards for the stories that year.
I lost to a story about morgana The Kissing Bandit
(29:52):
ahead first time for the Daily round Up of the Miscreants,
Moron's undone in Kruger Effects Specimens, who constitute Today's worst
persons in the World Bronze Matt, how are things feeling
on the herschel Walker campaign slap? He tweeted a photo
of himself on a pretend news studio set with the
(30:13):
caption quote Newsmax where we hang out, Watch out, gentlemen,
Matt Schlapp is hanging out again. Runner up Mike Pence
qualified for the Republican debate. Yeah, could they fight? By
the way, is that possible anyway? Pence's spokesman immediately put
(30:35):
out a statement taking a shot at Pence's old boss quote,
hopefully former President Trump has the courage to show up,
which of course is more or less what Trump said
about Pence on January sixth, and which would be a
sicker burn if you know Pence had at any point
in the preceding two and a half years actually done
anything about bringing Trump to justice for January sixth. But
(30:58):
our winner, Franklin Graham, son of the original religious con
man Billy Graham. Franklin Graham has now joined the attacks
on the US women's national soccer team after its loss
in the World Cup. Graham writes, I used to pull
for our women's soccer team, liar, but recently they have
(31:18):
shown disrespect for the US. Liar. When did they do that?
When half of them sang the national anthem and the
others stood respectfully silent, You know the way our military
is instructed to do. And they've used their platform to
promote the LGBTQ agenda. You mean offering hope to the
people repressed and bullied by your church. Are the ones
(31:40):
who are closeted in your church who convince themselves they
can't be gay because they are helping you bully gays.
When players think it is more about them than the
nation they represent, you mean like when phony millionaire preachers
think it is more about them and their profits than
their supposed deity, and especially his message of love and
(32:02):
tolerance and sport. Con man utter naked fraud Franklin Graham.
If there really was a Jesus and he comes back, now,
he's gonna punch you in the face. Franklin Graham two days.
(32:23):
Worst parson in the world, Amen just ahead. It was
the story I broke that garnered the greatest amount of
publicity I ever got for one of these. It was
(32:45):
also the story I broke that I worked the least
to break. All I did was answer the freaking phone
a couple of times. Gretzky Day next, first time to
feature another dog in need. You can help. Every dog
has its day to Milo in spring Hill, Tennessee. The
pictures are difficult to look at. Milo was found on
(33:07):
the streets by house of strays, an otherwise ordinary brown
and white mutt with a bleeding tumor. They took him in,
They got him started on chemo. The first results a
couple of weeks later, are now in from the first treatments.
The mass is smaller, He could survive this, and he
has that most obvious signal of the dog who may
(33:30):
make it a prodigious appetite. Milo's best bet is our donations.
You can do so and find him at cuddly dot
com or check my Twitter feeds for Milo. Milo thanks you,
and I thank you. Finally our number one story on
(34:00):
the countdown Things I promised not to tell, And back
to my favorite topic, me, this is thirty four years ago.
So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty eight on the
West coast. But by the time I got the story
on the air at ten PMPDT and it made all
the wires that made it August ninth, nineteen eighty eight.
So happy double Day anniversary, Wayne Gretzky. Just after dinner,
(34:24):
the phone rang in my office at Channel five in
La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took a deep breath.
You never knew where a call that started like that
was going to end up. I just wanted you to know.
I was out golfing at Riviera at the Riviera Club
this afternoon, and Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, well,
he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys,
(34:45):
if you want to buy your seasoned Kings tickets, do
it now. It just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price
is going to go up next week. To be polite
to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly,
the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week
of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot
of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, we're going to trade
(35:05):
Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there
was nearly as much talk that that trade would send
him to USC in LA. But the owner of the
Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf
clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was
suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my
(35:30):
phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours
and I watch every night. Here we go again. I
was just having lunch with a friend of mine out
here at the golf course in bel Air, and like
an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in the
dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he says
he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And now
(35:50):
I was beginning to get actually worried. I was a
lame duck as the sports director of Channel five in
Los Angeles, and for months there had been rumors that
I was moving down the street to Channel two in
Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly because I
was moving down the street to Channel two. The deal
had been done months earlier. We were going to announce
it that week. In fact, as these two guys called in.
(36:13):
I had actually been busily packing up my Channel five office.
My thought now was that the sportscaster at the local
NBC station, who had a bit of a substance problem
and a nasty temper and a real dislike for the
fact that I was nearly as popular as he was,
was setting me up. I had once managed to mislead
(36:34):
him into thinking we were about to break a story
about a big LA football trade. There was no breaking
story because there was no trade, and he had actually
mentioned it on the air, having clearly stolen it from
me because I was the one who had made it up.
And oh was he furious at me? For all I
knew he wanted to embarrass me three weeks before I
(36:54):
moved into direct competition with him at five, six and eleven.
This August eighth, nineteen eighty eight was in fact my
first day back after I had burned all my Channel
five bacation time. And for all I knew, this guy
at NBC had been having his staffers call me for
a week with made up sightings of McNall confirming a
Gretzky trade that frankly I never believed was going to happen.
(37:16):
I mean not to get two sidetracked here. But one
day my phone rang and it was a kid who said, Hi,
mister Oberman, I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be
an intern here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and
mister Rogan says I can have the spot, but only
if I call you up right now and say I'm sorry.
If I call you up and I tell you to
go f yourself, the kid did not say f To
(37:40):
his credit, he used his real name, Bill Weir. He
later became a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA,
then a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I
have not let a year go by since without reminding
him of his f yourself internship phone call. He said
(38:00):
life paid him back by making him work with the
guy for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two
supposed listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the
owner of the La Kings, is apparently trapesing through golf
locker rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell
them he has completed a trade for the babe ruth
of hockey, Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they
(38:22):
like me I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again.
This guy was playing golf at the La Country Club.
Same story. McNall, buy your Kams tickets. No, I just
got Gretzky. The next caller had been it yet a
fourth club, I think Wilshire or something. If this was
a pranket was a big one, and bluntly I had
(38:43):
begun to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You
don't know me, but I watch you every night. I
stumbled onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight.
I said, which golf course were you at? And he said,
excuse me? I was in my office all day and
so was my uh my missus. She's on the phone
with me. She works for Bruce in all the Kings.
(39:06):
This time I grabbed a pencil, Honey, why don't you
take it from here? And she did. She worked in
the finance office and she had, literally, she said, just
made out a check for fifteen million dollars to the
owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington. She said, and
the note memo where you wite write what it's for?
I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky. She also
(39:28):
had seen the trade contract identified the players the Kings
were going to give up with the fifteen million to
get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martine Zelenagh. There
were also draft choices, but she didn't know or didn't
remember the specifics of which ones. Now breathless, I asked
her if I could call her back through the switchboard
of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's offices were,
(39:51):
just to confirm she was who she said she was.
She said I could, I did, she was. I believe.
In fact, she turned out to be the only person
on the McNall financial team that did not get charged
with something. I went in to talk to my news
director and to the producer of our newscast. We were
not on until ten PM. It was now about seven.
(40:11):
They were very excited, and they said that given that
I had exact details from a King's source, plus the
four witnesses to the owner of the team shooting off
his big bazoo at every golf course he could reach,
that we should run it, and that we should run
it as the lead news story right at the start
of the newscast that night, which we did. The Kings
(40:33):
would not confirm it obviously, but as soon as I
got off the air with my sports cast the second
time I reported this story, a reporter from the Associated
Press was on the phone asking me to read him
my script, which he then quoted word for word and
put out on their sports wire. It was on the
back page of the New York Post. The next day,
(40:54):
my friends called me from New York to say, Hey,
your sportscast is on the back page of the New
York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky.
The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement
of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday
the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A
King's vice president told me at the press conference that
(41:15):
the Oilers were enraged because they had wanted to hold
off until the eleventh because the deadline for their season
ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday the tenth.
The Kings were nice enough to let me of all
the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and I congratulated
Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated me on
the scoop, and I said, I didn't do anything but
(41:36):
answer the phone, and he thought about it for a
second and said pretty much the same for me, and
we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop of
all time did eventually come back with a sting for
me and some payback. A year later, we all submitted
our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy for
Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen eighty eight.
(42:00):
I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The Emmys were
always judged by a committee of television types from a
different city, so he didn't have that home La Bias
and the guy from NBC, who I had first thought
was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had somehow found
out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight would be
(42:20):
judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio,
I think, so he managed to get an interview with
MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad, buxome
woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence,
used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields
and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and
(42:41):
she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan
Ryan during games Morgana. MORGANA Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio,
so sure enough, at the Emmys the next year, my
exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne
Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles
Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in ceremony and it
(43:05):
was at some old Landmark hotel in Pasadena, they showed
clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then
announced that the winner was Fred Rogan KNBC. For being
chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood up
and bowed my girlfriend, punched me in the arm and said,
(43:27):
let's get out of here and go drinking. We left.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
(43:49):
music arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Shanell. Guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged, done performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
You heard them for Every dog has its Day. The
(44:10):
sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis at appears courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this, the nine hundred and forty fifth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(44:33):
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck reindted and it
(45:03):
feels a good reindided luck a spy and woof, it's
one profic fit and joke a present is it? The
country is so excited causes Thank you, Nancy Faust. Countdown
(45:26):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
may be facing another round of federal indictments, maybe two
(00:27):
of them, maybe imminently reindicted, re reindicted. The grand jury
that indicted Donald Trump last Thursday for his attempts to
stop the transfer of presidential power was seen at the
Preddyman Courthouse yesterday, and not for picture day or an
alumni reunion. They were there, according to a report by Politico,
(00:49):
convened again meeting, hearing evidence of some kind about something
we do not know about. What if you can keep
all of them straight? You may remember that after Trump
was ind in the stolen classified documents case, a superseding
indictment on the documents was issued, and not only was
(01:12):
Trump reindicted, but a third defendant, Carlos de Olivia, the
Boss wants the server deleted guy. He was added to
the Jack Smith Rogues gallery. Frankly, there have been so
many Trump indictments, and so many Trump indictment stories, and
so much Trump indictment news that if I did not
(01:33):
keep a spiral notebook about all of it, I don't
think I would be able to keep it all straight.
First documents, Second documents, coo, Lord, It's like I'm rattling
off the titles of the books of the Bible. It
can cloud the sense that Jack Smith had clearly established
three overlapping but separate types of investigations documents, coup and
(01:57):
financial fraud involving Trump's various packs and his fundraising pitches
to the suckers and cult out there to send him
money to help fix the stolen election that he knew,
damn well was not stolen. Jack Smith's grand jury has
not handed up any indictments on any of that latter
money stuff yet, and it might be the easiest to prove.
(02:22):
Politico Now quotes the lawyer for the ex con ex
New York City Police Chief Bernie Carrick, as saying his
interview with the Smith team on Monday was filled with
questions about quoting the reporters save America Pack's enormous fundraising
hall in the weeks between election day and the January sixth,
twenty twenty one attack on the Capitol en quote the
(02:44):
reporters quote the attorney Tim PARLATORI as saying, it's a
laser focus from election day to January sixth, But then
and I don't want to insult Kyle Cheney or Betsy
Woodroff of Politico. I mean they have stuff that the
New York Times report last night on the Carrick interview
does not even mention. But I think the significance of
the rest of what the attorney Tim PARLATORI said may
(03:07):
not have fully hit them. Parlatory went on to describe
the rest of his client, Carrick's chat with the Smiths,
and it isn't about fundraising and scamming. It's about stopping
the peaceful transfer of power. Jack Smith is still investigating
stopping the peaceful transfer of power. He's going to indict
him again. Quote. Parlatory said. Smith's team didn't ask any
(03:31):
questions about Jenna Ellis or about Mark Meadows. The team
did ask a few questions about Boris Epstein, and the
investigators asked multiple questions about Justin Clark, who was deputy
campaign manager of Trump's reelection bid. Unquote Wait, Justin Clark,
(03:53):
new shooter. Justin Clark, the lawyer at the Fringes who
was working the room pushing the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, the
one with no visible neck. That Justin Clark, I mean
Jenna Ellis. We know Mark Meadows flipped the Boris Epshtein
(04:14):
is Maggie Haberman's pick for unindicted co conspirators six, as
Bernie Carrick is my pick for six. But Justin Clark
after mentioning that towards the middle of twenty twenty one,
Giuliani and his crew tried to convince Trump to use
Save America pack funds to pay Rudy Politico ads quote.
There was significant tension between Justin Clark and Rudy Giuliani
(04:38):
over Trump's strategy of contesting the results in Georgia. Carrick
described to the Special Council's team a contentious phone call
where Giuliani yelled at Clark and called him a liar.
Parlatory said, so what is that about money? The attempt
to coerce the Georgia Secretary of State to fraudulently create
(05:01):
fake votes for Trump on the phone the recorded phone call,
both did Rudy say anything about owning those breasts? More
indictments cometh and that right soon reindicted, prepare for it. Meanwhile,
(05:25):
in the indictments we already have, Trump has pre contempted
a court order that hasn't been issued yet. And Judge
Tanya Chutkin was nice enough to slap his attorney's sideways.
On another matter, Trump First Wyndham, Hampshire in one of
those anybody ever tell them that anything you say can
(05:45):
and will be used against you moments. There's no gag order,
there's not even a protective order on sensitive evidence yet,
and Trump has already convicted himself of contempt of court.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They take away you write our trest amendment? Now they soone,
because so now I have one of these lunatic reporters
back there saying, sir, would like to talk to you
about your case. I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Talk about it. Somehow that's that good for votes?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Do you agree when we say I can't talk, i'd
I will talk about it.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I will.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
They're not taking away my first send them the earth. Well, sure,
talk about it, talk about it, and then you are
in contempt of court, and the judge will just expand
the restrictions, and sooner or later she'll expand them so
much that she will have no other choice but to
put your ass in jail. It's now inevitable. I would
(06:36):
wonder why his lawyers are not warning him about this
like that would work but it turns out these new
lawyers are bigger idiots than the last new lawyers. Easy
timeline here over the last weekend, in a couple of
days on social media, Trump threatened everybody. On Friday, special
counsel asks judge for a protective order to keep Trump
(06:58):
from you know, using the evidence to docs witnesses. Judge
asks Trump's lawyers for a response to that. Trump's lawyers
ask for a delay. Judge refuses, Trump's lawyers give the response.
Smith responds. Judge then gives Trump's lawyers the hearing they wanted.
Judge tells them and Smith to agree on two dates
for the hearing Friday or earlier. Submit them to her
(07:22):
by yesterday afternoon. So it's yesterday afternoon, and Smith says
anytime Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. John Lorow and Todd Blanche
the Trump lawyers say next Monday or Tuesday, neither of
which is before Friday. So Trump's lawyers ignore what the
judge asks for and sends her something else. So she
(07:44):
steam rolls them and schedules the hearing anyway on Friday.
Be there Aloha, by the way, dollars to donuts. One
or both of Trump's lawyers don't show Friday, and then
Trump can claim the judge has gagged him without his
attorney's being present, the old kill your parents and cry
(08:05):
that you're an orphan ploy, which Trump had already done
yesterday in New Hampshire. I'm sorry to play you two
clips of dementia Jay that you have to hear this
to set up the punchline.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Is this going to be the future of elections in
America where a sitting president tells his tells his attorney
general to indict the opponent to try and knock the
opponent down.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yes, we wouldn't want a new tradition of the Attorney
General of the United States indicting the president's likely election opponent.
Oh wait, who was it again who went on Fox
in October twenty twenty and demanded that his attorney general
indict Joe Biden and Obama? All right, this Trump is
(08:51):
so eft up he doesn't even remember all his past threats. Okay,
back to reindictment. Mentioned yesterday that the logistical Tea Leaves
confirmed Fawnie Willis is going to the Fulton County Grand
Jury for the Georgia indictments presently, but no earlier than tomorrow. Now, ABC,
(09:15):
the New York Times, and The Guardian probably others are
all reporting it'll probably be next week. The Times uses
the same divining rod that the Atlanta Journal Constitution used Yesterday,
two subpoenad witnesses confirmed they had not gotten the follow
up noticed that they need to show up the one
that arrives forty eight hours before you have to show up,
(09:36):
So that means they could not get them now until
today Wednesday, which would mean a grand jury hearing Friday.
But they're not starting this on Friday, so next week.
Guardian says as early as Tuesday. The Atlanta Paper may
have the best tidbit about this. Roads are already closed
around the courthouse. And by the way, as I recall
(09:59):
the details of the new Fawnie Willis grand jury, it
was one of two grand jury and the meeting days
were not the Tuesday Thursday schedule of the Federal Court
in DC, but a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday Friday schedule or
whatever that is worth. And of course, besides getting reindicted,
Trump has already set himself up for a gag order
(10:20):
in Georgia or maybe a defamation suit. Four years ago,
Fannie Willis was a defense attorney, and briefly she was
a defense attorney for a rapper calling himself YSL Mondo.
The Trump campaign uncovered this and unused the same magic
wand with which Trump has skated through life. Oh you know,
(10:41):
two and three are practically the same number. So let's
just say two and three are the same number. And
if two and three are the same number, well, then
two and three placed next to each other, well, that's
the same as two or three. Therefore, the number two
is exactly the same as the number twenty three. Thus
(11:02):
Fannie willis used to be YSL Monday attorney. She does
not announce this to the entire world first thing every morning.
Therefore she's hiding it. Therefore, she was hiding a relationship
with a rapper, and therefore all rappers are gang members.
Therefore she's a DA She prosecutes gang members. Therefore, she
(11:24):
was quote caught hiding a relationship with a gang member.
She was prosecuting. But wait, there's more. Now Trump sees
this and sees one word and one word alone, relationship,
and that means only one thing to him. Waka waka waka,
(11:45):
they say, I guess.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
They say that she was after a certain gang, and
she ended up having an affair with the head of
the gang or a gang member. And this is a
person that wants to indict me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Donald Trump is trash, pure human garbage, reindict. Of course,
this whole seventy eight counts and counting thing against Trump
is just going to go away because Matt Gates has
just figured out how to get him out of all
this quote. You can actually bring Trump in to give
(12:18):
testimony before Congress and in doing so immunize him. Gates
told this to one of the right wings streaming propagandists,
the one with the Charlie Brown balloon head, I think,
and even he was not buying this. When has this
been done before, he asked. Gates answered cheerfully, it hasn't,
and it hasn't because a grant of immunity by Congress
(12:40):
means they can't use what you say at your congressional
hearing in any prosecution of you. It doesn't mean they
can't prosecute you. It's not a pardon. Besides, even if
they did do something that kakamamy, what is Trump going
to reveal? What is he going to testify to that
he could then wipe off the prosecutorial blackboard. Is he
(13:03):
going to tell the truth? He didn't even remember he
demanded that Bill Barr indict Joe Biden late in the
twenty twenty campaign. And there's one more thing about Trump.
Indicted and re indicted and re reindicted. We appear to
be seeing the law of diminishing returns finally kicking in.
Thank god. I've already mentioned here that the Trump fundraising
(13:25):
windfall after the first Jacksmith indictment was only about half
of the wind fall after the Alvin Bragg indictment. Now
Axios has analyzed Google trends for the various Trump indictments.
The scale on Google trends is from a minimum of
one to a maximum of one hundred. The Mary Lago
search was a sixty five out of one hundred, the
(13:47):
Stormy Daniel's indictment announcement that banged the gong one hundred,
the Classified Documents indictment was a fifty two, and the
early data on the Coup indictments the Google trend number
of forty two. So let him be reindicted. The financial
benefit is waiting And wait, have I said reindicted like
(14:12):
like eight times already?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
What is this?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Why? Is this word praying on my brain? Reindicted, reindicted. Oh,
I feel a song coming on, Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Nancy reindicted, And it feels a good reindicted, Like it's
filing wood and there's one perfect fit and sugar prison
is it? The country is so excited cause he's predited.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Hey, thank you, Nancy Faust. I don't know how I
get away with it every day. I really don't. Also
of interest here, obviously, Issue one fails. In Ohio, the
Republican push were correctly the Republican push to make it
(15:15):
tougher to amend the state constitution designed specifically to make
it more difficult to protect abortion in Ohio rejected. Issue
one fails. Why look, I just poked it with a stick.
Democracy is still breathing. And listen. Listen to this from
the home park of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and
(15:38):
their suspended announcer Kevin Brown. And they are freeing Kevin Brown.
He is coming back to the Orioles booth. About a
(16:00):
dozen baseball broadcasters went on the air and pancaked the
ball more Orioles for this madness. But the bad news
is a lot of other broadcasters wanted to do so,
but we're afraid to because this premise that the job
of a TV sports play by play man is to
say only positive things about his team or he will
(16:22):
be beaten severely. This is rapidly taking hold in baseball
and basketball and hockey. And that's why you heard all
the announcers say what they did in defensive Kevin Brown,
because ask not for whom the bell tolls. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that, not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
In Sports Baltimore, Orioles play by play announcer Kevin Brown
will come off the secret suspension list and rejoin his
broadcast Friday. And if you think this indicates that the
tsunami of banned publicity and genuine indignation over the team's
punishment somehow affected authoritarian CEO John Angelos of the Orioles, Nope,
(17:31):
nothing gets through to him. Brown's non suspension suspension, which
was clearly supposed to be two weeks, was supposed to
end Friday anyway, two weeks. If you somehow miss this story,
mister Brown, read the statistics on a full screen graphic
showing how much better the Baltimore Orioles have been I'll
repeat that word better this year against Tampa Bay than
(17:55):
in years past. The graphic was produced by the team's
broadcast crew, the statistics were produced by the team's media
relations department, and Brown was suspended for mentioning what it's
said on the graphic that the Orioles used to lose
more than they do now to Tampa Bay. It's madness,
and it's not just important because it reflects what happens
(18:18):
when rich, vulgar, unintelligent, messianic people who have enough money
to threaten the jobs of anybody who works for them
do that. It's also not just important because the Orioles
and CEO Angelos were called out on the air by
my friend Gary Cohene of the New York Mets telecasts,
and my friend Howie Rose of the New York Mets
radio broadcasts, and my friends Jason Bennetti who does the
(18:41):
White Sox games, and Michael Kay and John Sterling and
Susan Waldman who do the Yankees games, and Kevin Eucles
and Dave O'Brien who do the Red Sox games, and
Tom McCarthy of the Phillies and Kevin Connors and Kevin
mcganbie of ESPN. And there's something else here that actually
pertains to a see change in what the broadcasts of
sports events are now becoming and are now expected to be.
(19:05):
This has been happening behind the scenes, sodo vocha, off
the record for the last several years, not everywhere, obviously,
not with those teams which did not blink as their
own announcers savaged, the Orioles, nor the teams that recognize
that if their teams stink and their announcers pretend they
don't stink, nobody will believe those announcers anymore, nor watch
(19:29):
the broadcasts, nor buy the products the announcers are trying
to sell. But since last year at least, I have
been hearing more and more from announcer friends in other sports,
some of them genuinely terrified for their own jobs or
jobs of their colleagues, from baseball, from basketball, from hockey,
(19:51):
not so much football because those are almost all network
TV broadcasts. It's all off the record, it's all friend
to friend, and they have been telling me that they
or their friends have been called in and warned, warned, warned,
warned by their teams, often warned by their teams general
managers or vice presidents of broadcasting or presidents or owners
(20:15):
that not only are they the announcers expected to put
as positive as spin as possible on what they say
about the team, which has largely always been true, but
that they now literally cannot acknowledge any problems past, present,
or future with their teams. In hockey, no penalty against
(20:37):
their team is legitimate. In basketball, all the referees are
biased against their players. In baseball, no the replay is wrong,
and that pitch was outside and that next pitch was
to a strike. In all sports, every player who was
traded away was no good, and every free agent who
left the team was disloyal. In sports game broadcasting, there
(21:01):
has always been, since the first of them in nineteen
twenty XI one, a delicate balance between actual reporting and
actual salesmanship. My dear late friend Bob Wolf, who announced
his first Major League baseball game in nineteen forty seven
and who announced his last Major League Baseball Old Timers
game in twenty seventeen, titled his book about Baseball broadcasting
(21:24):
and the tensions between teams and sponsors and the Truth
It's not who won or lost the game. It's how
you sold the beer. Well, now it's how you sell
the team. The Orioles suspension of Kevin Brown revealed some
other things about what the O's have been doing to
their announcers. They have been punishing various unnamed announcers, per
(21:48):
widespread reports, all year, for things that reek of madness.
One Orioles announcer was supposedly reprimanded, may be even suspended
for saying nice things about a player who used to
play for the Baltimore Orioles but doesn't anymore. Brown's suspension
for this Orwellian crime of admitting that the O's have
(22:09):
not always been at war with East Asia, or at
least that they have not always been winning the war
with East Asia. That suspension was reportedly delayed for several
days because the Orioles needed Brown to fill in on
radio for yet another announcer who had committed the thought
crime of not wearing a shirt with an Oriole's logo
(22:30):
on it, and he had been suspended. It is fitting
that this slow but unstoppable conversion of the sports broadcast
in many different sports from mix of truth and promotion
into pure propaganda and indeed something close to brainwashing bubbled
to the surface, at least in terms of general knowledge,
(22:52):
because a baseball team, one with the second best record
in the game, enjoying a glorious renaissance season, decided to
punish its announcers anyway even though everything is going great.
That is fitting because the new ultimate goal eliminate anything
that doesn't get people watching to buy more Orioles stuff
(23:15):
or tickets or more MLB merchandise or whatever. This started
in baseball twenty even fifteen years ago. Every one of
the news stories on Baseball's owned website carried a note
at its end this story was not subject to the
approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. There were
(23:38):
a lot of things to complain about during the commissionership
of Bud Ceiling, and god knows I complained about all
of them several times, but that wasn't one of them.
In two thousand and eight, Bud Ceiling asked me to
come work for the MLB website and the new MLB
TV network it would launch the next year. Say whatever
(23:59):
you want, you know, that's my rule, he told me.
All I ask is if it's about me, or if
it's really harsh about the game. Call me, give me
a chance to talk you out of it, or at
least give me a chance to get you to give
my side of it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Two.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
We couldn't make the MLB TV network thing workout because
I already had three TV jobs, But I worked for
MLB dot com for four years. I wrote columns for
MLB dot com because Bud Sealing personally hired me. And
then as his time as commissioner was beginning to wind down,
(24:36):
he seeded control of the website and the network to others,
and soon that little note about the stories not being
subject to the approval of the clubs disappeared, And soon
I wrote something about the owners of the Yankees that
the Yankees didn't like, and my column disappeared, And soon
after when MLB Network offered me my own daily show,
(24:57):
the offer disappeared within days after the Yankees found out
and warned the network president that they would not allow
Wow It to happen and would kick all the MLB
network cameras out of Yankee Stadium if it did. And
even if you didn't know those inside, really they only
apply to me things. If you last watched the MLB
(25:19):
Network in two thousand and nine or twenty ten, and
then you skipped ahead and turned it on today. You
would recognize the deterioration in the editorial content within minutes,
maybe seconds. There are some pros like Brian Kenny and
ad Nan Verk who do not carry the new water
and sneak in facts, but the rest of them, every
(25:41):
team is undefeated. Every baseball player is a superstar. Every
player error is just symbolic of their extraordinary effort. Every
team punting on its season and trading away at star
players to other teams. Why why? What an opportunity they're
providing for the next stars of the game to emerge.
(26:05):
A team starving its franchise and its fans and then
abanding its home city of fifty five years to go
move somewhere else. Well, that's the dawn of a new era.
And who knows it might also be an opportunity for
an expansion team in the abandoned city. MLB network, which
you used to be able to watch for more than
(26:25):
an hour at a time, is ninety percent of the
time now useless. It is uninsightful propaganda because you can
never say anything negative. Everybody is perfect. It does not
seek to inform, it barely seeks to entertain. It is
there to get you to buy stuff. Winter before last,
(26:47):
Bud Selig's successor as baseball Commissioner, Rob Manfred, fired MLB
network's top reporter, probably baseball's top reporter, Ken Rosenthal, even
though Ken Rosenthal is the best part of the Fox
Network baseball game broadcasts, including the World Series. MLB Network
fired a guy who was on the World Series broadcasts
(27:08):
every year, and there was no great mystery as to
why they would do something that petty and stupid. Rosenthal
had been critical of Commissioner Rob Manfred in columns for
the website The Athletic, And not only can't you be
critical of baseball or Rob Manfred on MLB network and
(27:30):
by the way, Manfred thinks he and baseball are one
and the same, but you can't have been critical of
Rob Manfred and then be on MLB Network ever. And
now this attitude, the correct word for it is editorial dictatorship.
This attitude is overtaking the local broadcasts of baseball games
(27:53):
and hockey games and basketball games. And I assume football
games on the radio. The last one I heard of
those was about nineteen seventy. There actually are non sports
implications as well. It's just that much more stuff on
television or online or in a streaming service in which
the question of whether or not you have just seen
(28:13):
something approaching impartial truth is completely out of date and irrelevant.
That question has been replaced by another question, whether or
not what you have just seen has been enough of
an infomercial, or if somebody like Kevin Brown has just
been screamed at or humiliated or suspended for not selling
(28:35):
you hard enough on something. And then there is the
more immediate question all those team broadcasts and broadcasters which
correctly vivisected the Orioles on Monday night after Kevin Brown
was suspended or the news got out anyway, how many
of those teams and the channels they largely own will
(28:58):
be sold to new owners in the years to come,
new owners who will think the Orioles were right. And
how soon will this happen, And what happens to the
honest sportscasters after the sales happen? Still ahead on countdown
(29:31):
greatest scoop of my career and the amount of hard
work I put into it approximately yeah, virtually nothing, which
is I guess the karma behind the fact that when
they handed out the awards for the stories that year.
I lost to a story about morgana The Kissing Bandit
(29:52):
ahead first time for the Daily round Up of the Miscreants,
Moron's undone in Kruger Effects Specimens, who constitute Today's worst
persons in the World Bronze Matt, how are things feeling
on the herschel Walker campaign slap? He tweeted a photo
of himself on a pretend news studio set with the
(30:13):
caption quote Newsmax where we hang out, Watch out, gentlemen,
Matt Schlapp is hanging out again. Runner up Mike Pence
qualified for the Republican debate. Yeah, could they fight? By
the way, is that possible anyway? Pence's spokesman immediately put
(30:35):
out a statement taking a shot at Pence's old boss quote,
hopefully former President Trump has the courage to show up,
which of course is more or less what Trump said
about Pence on January sixth, and which would be a
sicker burn if you know Pence had at any point
in the preceding two and a half years actually done
anything about bringing Trump to justice for January sixth. But
(30:58):
our winner, Franklin Graham, son of the original religious con
man Billy Graham. Franklin Graham has now joined the attacks
on the US women's national soccer team after its loss
in the World Cup. Graham writes, I used to pull
for our women's soccer team, liar, but recently they have
(31:18):
shown disrespect for the US. Liar. When did they do that?
When half of them sang the national anthem and the
others stood respectfully silent, You know the way our military
is instructed to do. And they've used their platform to
promote the LGBTQ agenda. You mean offering hope to the
people repressed and bullied by your church. Are the ones
(31:40):
who are closeted in your church who convince themselves they
can't be gay because they are helping you bully gays.
When players think it is more about them than the
nation they represent, you mean like when phony millionaire preachers
think it is more about them and their profits than
their supposed deity, and especially his message of love and
(32:02):
tolerance and sport. Con man utter naked fraud Franklin Graham.
If there really was a Jesus and he comes back, now,
he's gonna punch you in the face. Franklin Graham two days.
(32:23):
Worst parson in the world, Amen just ahead. It was
the story I broke that garnered the greatest amount of
publicity I ever got for one of these. It was
(32:45):
also the story I broke that I worked the least
to break. All I did was answer the freaking phone
a couple of times. Gretzky Day next, first time to
feature another dog in need. You can help. Every dog
has its day to Milo in spring Hill, Tennessee. The
pictures are difficult to look at. Milo was found on
(33:07):
the streets by house of strays, an otherwise ordinary brown
and white mutt with a bleeding tumor. They took him in,
They got him started on chemo. The first results a
couple of weeks later, are now in from the first treatments.
The mass is smaller, He could survive this, and he
has that most obvious signal of the dog who may
(33:30):
make it a prodigious appetite. Milo's best bet is our donations.
You can do so and find him at cuddly dot
com or check my Twitter feeds for Milo. Milo thanks you,
and I thank you. Finally our number one story on
(34:00):
the countdown Things I promised not to tell, And back
to my favorite topic, me, this is thirty four years ago.
So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty eight on the
West coast. But by the time I got the story
on the air at ten PMPDT and it made all
the wires that made it August ninth, nineteen eighty eight.
So happy double Day anniversary, Wayne Gretzky. Just after dinner,
(34:24):
the phone rang in my office at Channel five in
La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took a deep breath.
You never knew where a call that started like that
was going to end up. I just wanted you to know.
I was out golfing at Riviera at the Riviera Club
this afternoon, and Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, well,
he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys,
(34:45):
if you want to buy your seasoned Kings tickets, do
it now. It just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price
is going to go up next week. To be polite
to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly,
the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week
of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot
of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, we're going to trade
(35:05):
Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there
was nearly as much talk that that trade would send
him to USC in LA. But the owner of the
Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf
clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was
suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my
(35:30):
phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours
and I watch every night. Here we go again. I
was just having lunch with a friend of mine out
here at the golf course in bel Air, and like
an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in the
dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he says
he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And now
(35:50):
I was beginning to get actually worried. I was a
lame duck as the sports director of Channel five in
Los Angeles, and for months there had been rumors that
I was moving down the street to Channel two in
Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly because I
was moving down the street to Channel two. The deal
had been done months earlier. We were going to announce
it that week. In fact, as these two guys called in.
(36:13):
I had actually been busily packing up my Channel five office.
My thought now was that the sportscaster at the local
NBC station, who had a bit of a substance problem
and a nasty temper and a real dislike for the
fact that I was nearly as popular as he was,
was setting me up. I had once managed to mislead
(36:34):
him into thinking we were about to break a story
about a big LA football trade. There was no breaking
story because there was no trade, and he had actually
mentioned it on the air, having clearly stolen it from
me because I was the one who had made it up.
And oh was he furious at me? For all I
knew he wanted to embarrass me three weeks before I
(36:54):
moved into direct competition with him at five, six and eleven.
This August eighth, nineteen eighty eight was in fact my
first day back after I had burned all my Channel
five bacation time. And for all I knew, this guy
at NBC had been having his staffers call me for
a week with made up sightings of McNall confirming a
Gretzky trade that frankly I never believed was going to happen.
(37:16):
I mean not to get two sidetracked here. But one
day my phone rang and it was a kid who said, Hi,
mister Oberman, I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be
an intern here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and
mister Rogan says I can have the spot, but only
if I call you up right now and say I'm sorry.
If I call you up and I tell you to
go f yourself, the kid did not say f To
(37:40):
his credit, he used his real name, Bill Weir. He
later became a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA,
then a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I
have not let a year go by since without reminding
him of his f yourself internship phone call. He said
(38:00):
life paid him back by making him work with the
guy for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two
supposed listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the
owner of the La Kings, is apparently trapesing through golf
locker rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell
them he has completed a trade for the babe ruth
of hockey, Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they
(38:22):
like me I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again.
This guy was playing golf at the La Country Club.
Same story. McNall, buy your Kams tickets. No, I just
got Gretzky. The next caller had been it yet a
fourth club, I think Wilshire or something. If this was
a pranket was a big one, and bluntly I had
(38:43):
begun to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You
don't know me, but I watch you every night. I
stumbled onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight.
I said, which golf course were you at? And he said,
excuse me? I was in my office all day and
so was my uh my missus. She's on the phone
with me. She works for Bruce in all the Kings.
(39:06):
This time I grabbed a pencil, Honey, why don't you
take it from here? And she did. She worked in
the finance office and she had, literally, she said, just
made out a check for fifteen million dollars to the
owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington. She said, and
the note memo where you wite write what it's for?
I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky. She also
(39:28):
had seen the trade contract identified the players the Kings
were going to give up with the fifteen million to
get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martine Zelenagh. There
were also draft choices, but she didn't know or didn't
remember the specifics of which ones. Now breathless, I asked
her if I could call her back through the switchboard
of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's offices were,
(39:51):
just to confirm she was who she said she was.
She said I could, I did, she was. I believe.
In fact, she turned out to be the only person
on the McNall financial team that did not get charged
with something. I went in to talk to my news
director and to the producer of our newscast. We were
not on until ten PM. It was now about seven.
(40:11):
They were very excited, and they said that given that
I had exact details from a King's source, plus the
four witnesses to the owner of the team shooting off
his big bazoo at every golf course he could reach,
that we should run it, and that we should run
it as the lead news story right at the start
of the newscast that night, which we did. The Kings
(40:33):
would not confirm it obviously, but as soon as I
got off the air with my sports cast the second
time I reported this story, a reporter from the Associated
Press was on the phone asking me to read him
my script, which he then quoted word for word and
put out on their sports wire. It was on the
back page of the New York Post. The next day,
(40:54):
my friends called me from New York to say, Hey,
your sportscast is on the back page of the New
York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky.
The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement
of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday
the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A
King's vice president told me at the press conference that
(41:15):
the Oilers were enraged because they had wanted to hold
off until the eleventh because the deadline for their season
ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday the tenth.
The Kings were nice enough to let me of all
the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and I congratulated
Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated me on
the scoop, and I said, I didn't do anything but
(41:36):
answer the phone, and he thought about it for a
second and said pretty much the same for me, and
we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop of
all time did eventually come back with a sting for
me and some payback. A year later, we all submitted
our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy for
Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen eighty eight.
(42:00):
I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The Emmys were
always judged by a committee of television types from a
different city, so he didn't have that home La Bias
and the guy from NBC, who I had first thought
was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had somehow found
out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight would be
(42:20):
judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio,
I think, so he managed to get an interview with
MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad, buxome
woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence,
used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields
and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and
(42:41):
she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan
Ryan during games Morgana. MORGANA Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio,
so sure enough, at the Emmys the next year, my
exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne
Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles
Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in ceremony and it
(43:05):
was at some old Landmark hotel in Pasadena, they showed
clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then
announced that the winner was Fred Rogan KNBC. For being
chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood up
and bowed my girlfriend, punched me in the arm and said,
(43:27):
let's get out of here and go drinking. We left.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
(43:49):
music arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Shanell. Guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged, done performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
You heard them for Every dog has its Day. The
(44:10):
sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis at appears courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this, the nine hundred and forty fifth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(44:33):
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck reindted and it
(45:03):
feels a good reindided luck a spy and woof, it's
one profic fit and joke a present is it? The
country is so excited causes Thank you, Nancy Faust. Countdown
(45:26):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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