SO WE'RE GOING TO DO IRAQ AGAIN, ONLY WITH AN "N" - 6.19.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 139: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: So we're going to do that whole Iraq crap again. Only swapping out the last letter. "Iran" instead of "Iraq." Because nobody remembers Bush and people think Trump is somehow anti-war, when he's doing all this because of his desperate FOMO that there is something somewhere on Fox News that he is not being given personal credit for. 

Only he's skipping the whole phony terrorism-9/11-pancake uranium-manufactured evidence dance and just saying "we're doing it to save Israel" even though the evangelicals who WANT to "save" Israel like Mike Huckabee really want just to make sure nobody but them destroys Israel, since the end of their prophecy is that when there are no Jews anywhere but Israel, there'll be a rapture, and all the Jews will convert or, you know, bye-bye.

It's complete delusional snake-handling level religion.

And as for the US military, the purpose of war with Iran would be the same as was the purpose of war with Iraq: to HAVE a war in which you can DESTROY B-2 Stealth Bombers and thus increase the Pentagon budget. As Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok would say: "Blowed 'em up good. Blowed 'em real good!"

PLUS: Governor Hochul of New York uses the mot juste about what appears to have been a set-up of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. ICE swings back towards seizing the people who keep the red states from starving. And those Trump American Phones are made in China.

B-Block (32:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: CNN/MSNBC screw up the ratio of ICE protest coverage to No Kings protest coverage; Stephen Miller runs Trump but Katie Miller runs Stephen Miller; Karoline Leavitt inexplicably posts a photo of Trump wearing a dunce cap. 

C-Block (43:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This week was the 25th anniversary of the day my mother became famous, and loved every moment of it, when she got hit in the face by a baseball thrown by the second baseman of the Yankees - while I was doing the highlights of that game on Fox's national game of the week telecast. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. So

(00:25):
we're going to repeat every mistake from Bush and Iraq,
only this time with Trump and Iran, only this time
starting with blowing up nuclear facilities, only this time starting
with Trump making up stories about the other country wanting
to negotiate, only this time starting while the Senate has

(00:46):
gone home until next week, So no briefings until next week.
We're gonna do this again because Trump got fomo fau
mob actually fear of missing out on bombing. When I
said that in Monday's podcast, I was serious. Fomo fomo

(01:10):
is what animates Trump, the dreadful existential fear he has
that something somewhere in the world is not being credited
to him. But I didn't think it was going to
be decisive. This is where the narrator says it was decisive.
We are gearing up for a strike. I think on
the Fardeaux facility. What I can see is the military

(01:33):
maneuvers are getting in place. That was Bret McGirk yesterday.
Brett McGirk was Obama's point man against ISIS, and then
he was Trump's point man against ISIS. So I don't
think he's grinding an axe here, Owen mix in some
of this phony, Mike Huckabee, religious ecstasy. We have to
save Israel because we have to make sure the Jews
get raptured. Fundamentalist anti Semitic bullshit, and we're here again.

(01:59):
New York Times quote. When he woke on Friday morning,
his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall to
wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel's military genius,
and mister Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself. Fomo.
That's when the I was more involved than I said.

(02:21):
Psychosis from Trump started to seep in to his out
loud voice. By Sunday it was beginning to flower. We'd
never attack Iran, but when we do quote the US
had nothing to do with the attack on Iran tonight.
If we are attacked in any way, shape or formed
by Iran, the full strength and might of the US
armed forces will come down on you at levels never

(02:41):
seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done
between Iran and Israel and end this bloody conflict. That's
all the possibilities In one sentence. We could blow you up,
you could blow us up, all but we could, we
could negotiate our way out of this, and by the
day before yesterday we now have complete and total control
of the skies over Iran. We Iran had good skytrackers

(03:05):
and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it
doesn't compare to American made, conceived and manufactured stuff. Nobody
does it better than the good old USA. We blowed
him up good. We blowed him up real good. This
is big Jim mc Trump and Billy Saal Hirak Hukabe saying,
may the Good Lord take a liking to you and

(03:26):
blow you up real soon. Ah, Billy saw hira Kukabe.
When Bush did this with Iraq, and yeah, this is
where I came in, I seem to recall saying, if
we didn't stop Bush about Iraq, the next Republican president

(03:46):
would do this in Iran. And sure enough, here we are.
When Bush did this with Iraq, he went through this long,
sometimes subtle, intricate, labyrinthine, sometimes deeply sourced series of lies
and manufactured evidence and blackmail and the ex boyation of
nine to eleven and the dragging in of Sadam Hussein.

(04:08):
He went to all that trouble when he could have
just done a Trump and just blowed it up, bloated
up real good. After first publishing the religious delusions of
a fundamentalist confidence trickster and TV pitchman for red Grape
Circulation superfood named Mike Huckabee. Bush could have just said

(04:31):
it was to defend Israel. Who knew, even though the
reason the Huckabees and the others who in previous generations
would have been back home at the Church of God
handling snakes. The technical term for which we students of
religion use is self correcting problem for the handling of snakes.

(04:52):
The entirety of the mainstream defense of Israel is not
predicated on preserving Israel, but about fulfilling this madness that
all the world's Jews will be gathered in Israel and
then con and then we will have the rapture and
all the good souls will go to Heaven, and everybody
else will stay here and enjoy hell on earth, which

(05:12):
is pretty much where we are right now. Anyway. Please
note that if you read all of the fundamentalist stuff
about the conversion of the Jews, if you read it,
it's very carefully written, and all it really says is
that there will only be Jews in Israel, and those

(05:37):
that won't go there and convert will perish or vanish
in the rapture. Well, there's lots of ways you can
achieve that, and most of them involve murder. This means
that my kakabi is involved in a religious movement that
literally wants to save Israel from Iran or anybody else,

(05:58):
because the only people allowed to destroy Israel are American evangelicals.
Trump not only listens to this drivel and thinks, there's
my excuse I can go drop some bombs and get
some credit for something. He then ratchets it up and
publishes it, so he reinforces the idea that this is

(06:22):
something religious. Ambassador Huckabee's text, President Trump, I'd forgotten he
was the ambassador. At least he's out of the country,
mister President. God spared you and Butler pa to be
the most consequential president in a century. Maybe Ever, what
was God thinking about that poor guy got shot in

(06:43):
the head too, was sitting there just listening to this shit?
God said, you are spared that guy over there. I
don't like that guy. Some God, you got here the
decisions on your shoulders. I would not want to be
made by anyone else. You have many voices speaking to you, sir,
oh boy, is that true? Trump has many voices in

(07:06):
his head. You're right about that, Huck, but there is
only one voice that matters his voice. And Trump is
reading this, going, Hannity, I am your appointed servant in
this land and am available for you. But I do
not try to get in your presence office often because

(07:28):
I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has
been a position like yours, not since Truman in nineteen
forty five. I don't reach out to persuade you, only
to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven
and that voice is far more important than mine or
anyone else's. And Trump is thinking, Janine Piro, you sent

(07:50):
me to Israel to be your eyes, ears, and voice
and to make sure our flag flies above our embss.
My job is to be the last one to leave. Yeah, bomb,
stop draw, start dropping. Mike's going to be the last
one to leave. I will not abandon this post. Our
flag will not come down. You did not seek this moment.

(08:12):
This moment sought you. Who in the hell thinks that
the American flag is going to come down in Israel.
It is my honor to serve you. Just remember to
serve man. Mike Huckabee. They printed this out. First, they
printed out the actual text, or what is supposedly the text.
Then they made a pretty looking picture of Huckabee and Trump,

(08:32):
not quite looking at each other, with the words America's
future right over each of their heads. America's future Mike
Huckabee and Donald Trump, or our past. And by the way,
if you read that again and change a couple of
words in this this thing from Huckaby, this text. This

(08:53):
is also the script for Mike Huckaby's TV commercial for
another snake oil called Relaxium. God put relaxium on this
earth to relax you. Two other points about the religious
ecstasy bullshit. The next level delusion after this, and millions
in this country believe this as well, is that if

(09:15):
Israel is at war, this means Jesus will be coming
back like late Sunday, maybe in time for Britain. So
where are your crosses? Because, as the late great comic
genius Bill Hicks noted, sure, that's the first thing Jesus
wants to see when he comes back. You wearing a

(09:36):
cross One thing that is never explained is like of
Israel is at war, that means Jesus is coming back.
What about the last sixteen wars? He didn't come back
for any of those. Does he not get the news?
Does he not get Fox News? Wherever he is? We
know Jesse Waters thinks he speaks with divine influence. Now

(10:00):
back on this earth, there are some practical consequences here.
Politico's Foreign affairs correspondent mentions the one thing that Trump
hasn't counted on the Iranian response quote. A former Western
intelligence official told me the spy community suspects the Islamist
regime in Tehran has sleeper cells in various countries to

(10:21):
carry out attacks if it feels an existential threat. The
regime could also round up Americans in Iran and effectively
hold them hostage, as it is done in the past.
So we're not only going to reenact Iraq and remember
how well and how quickly that went. We go in
and blow it up, and forty two days later, Bush
declares mission accomplished. And I'm co anchoring with Chris Matthews,

(10:45):
and I say to him, wait, if it's mission accomplished,
why is there still fighting there? And why is the
cross eyed president wearing a flight suit if he doesn't
want us to remember the questions about his Air National
Guard service? Shut up. Matthews explained tenderly, We're not only
going to reenact Iraq with a different final letter. We

(11:07):
are going to reenact something like the Iran hostage crisis
of nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty, which was also
exploited by a Republican president. Rule one of war. No
wars are ever quick, and all wars are sold as
being quick. The other consequences will be largely political and domestic.

(11:31):
Tucker Carlson attacked Trump. Ted Cruz attacked Carlson. Steve Bannon
attacked Fox News as not being real. Maga Josh Hawley said,
I don't want us fighting a war. I don't want
another Mid East war. It's so obviously a bad idea
that even Tulsey Gabbard knows it's a bad idea. And
she told Trump this in March and put out that
psycho video last month about nuclear war and leaked that

(11:54):
if Trump gets US involved, she'll have to quit. And
when they asked Trump about her testimony that Iran was
not building a nuclear weapon, he said, I don't care
what she said, and the odds are six to five.
He doesn't really know who she is, or at least
he doesn't really know who she is anymore. So whatever
the end game here is, it will damage Trump and

(12:14):
MAGA and the entire voting block in this country that
believes in brownies and elves and guys who come back
from the dead, but not until you wait twenty twenty
five years for them. And whatever the Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns
are will then alter the entire political landscape a second time.
And oh yes, somebody will eventually notice that this will

(12:36):
be three consecutive Republican presidents who've attacked Iraq or Iran,
and the one before them, Reagan wanted to attack Iran.
The bottom line is, of course, as simple now as
it was in two thousand and two and two thousand
and three. The purpose of war with Iran is the
same as was the purpose of war with Iraq. It's

(12:59):
to have a war, because if you don't have a war,
you can't use all those expensive bombs and tanks and
have to replace them, and especially those bombers. And I mean, honestly,
when was the last time we sent a couple of
two billion dollars be too stealth bombers anywhere and had

(13:20):
one of them shot down or broken or the door
fell off and oops, we have to buy a new one.
So the Department of Defense needs another two billion dollars.
The point of a Republican war, neo cons Maga Bush
trumpet doesn't matter. The point of a Republican war is
to transfer taxpayer money to the military industrial complex. Ike

(13:41):
was right, end of story. The only way Jesus Christ
comes into this is in our reaction to all this.
Jesus Christ again. We blowed them up good. We blowed
them up real good. If you don't know, we blowed

(14:25):
them up real good. By the way. That is from
sc TV, the Late Great John Candy and the late
Great Joe O'Flaherty and the Farm Movie Review, in which
these two guys in overalls talk about tremendous fastbunder fan

(14:46):
films and eventually get around to the fact that the
only films they like are the ones in which people
get blown up. And that's the end. We blow them
up real good. Billy sal Hurrock and Big Jim mcbobb.
It's it's worth looking for it elsewhere Okay, so that's
now for serving elected democratic government officials. Harris Beaten, arrested

(15:09):
and lied about by Christy Nomes Ice Gestapo. She had
to go to the hospital the other day for an
allergic reaction. What an allergic reaction to reality? The latest arrest,
the arrest and then unarrest of the New York City
Comptroller Brad Lander, seems to have been, and you haven't

(15:30):
heard this probably a setup. Firstly, this was not some
sort of stunt for Brad landers campaign from mayor. He
has been going to Immigration court for weeks trying to
literally throw his body between Ice and its cruelest of
its many cruel tortures, getting immigration cases dismissed against defendants,

(15:51):
thus denying them protection against immediate seizure and rendition without trial.
This was the third or fourth time he'd done it.
This is just the first time somebody stopped him. The
best local news here, the City reports the details that
give away the fact that this was a setup. Quote
in the chaotic scene at around noon, Lander asked the

(16:14):
agents repeatedly to show a judicial warrant. You do not
have the authority to arrest US citizens. Lander repeated, as
the officers tightened handcuffs to his wrists. The federal agents
escorted him into an elevator with one member of his
NYPD security detail alongside him. Note in this Ice arrested

(16:36):
a New York City Police officer. A reporter from the
city had overheard one agent say to another minutes before
Lander's arrest, do you want to arrest the comptroller? It
was a setup. They planned this and then they stone
cold lied about Brad Lander, even though there was video.

(17:01):
Homeland Security protecting America, Christy Nomes tweets New York City
Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and
impeding a federal officer. Our heroic ice. Law enforcement officers
face a four hundred and thirteen percent increase in assaults
against them. Four hundred and thirteen percent, that's all we have.

(17:27):
It is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law
enforcement safety to get a viral moment. No one is
above the law except Christy Nome and Ice and Trump,
and we're going to change that. If you lay a
hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.
If we lay a hand on you illegally, we will
not face consequences. I added that last part signed Homeland

(17:51):
Security spokesperson Billy sol Hurok. Cool. Cool. The video shows
the exact opposite of what you wrote here. But your ice,
you're supposed to lie. You're the scum of the earth.
It's the old Monty Python joke come to life. We
charged him with a legal possession of whatever we happen

(18:13):
to have at the police station, which in this case
was a desk. The good news here is that for
the first time I can speak with pride about the
current governor of this state. It appears that the rage
in Gavin Newsom in California and get back in the
rage business, Governor. The glow is beginning to fade a
little bit around the edges, but that glow remains inspirational

(18:36):
to other governors in the normally meh blue states. Speaking
of Blue Governor, Kathy Hokeel goes blue.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Do you want to know what I really think? Please?
It's bullshit? How dare they take an elected official who's
been going down there for weeks to escort people who
are afraid to walk into a courthouse in the United
States of America because despite them having legal status and

(19:08):
following the rules and making their appointments that they don't
know what's going to happen them. So Brad Lander has
stepped up to be a guiding help for them, and
this is what happens to him. What the hell is
happening to this country?

Speaker 1 (19:24):
That's right, Governor exactly, the bon mo, the mos juice.
It's bullshit, and we need not just that sentiment, but
that language from Democrats. Chuck Schumer get up there and
say it's bullshit once again. We are not going to
negotiate our way out of this. Somebody asked me the

(19:44):
other day, when are the Republicans finally going to stop Trump.
They're not. They're in power. They no longer care how
they got there. They're no longer going to give it
up voluntarily. We are not going to have beautifully crafted
Maddow Seniors thesis arguments lead us out of this. We
are going to have to kick them in the balls
our way out of this, because they have also now

(20:06):
reversed course and reprioritized cruelty over food. Trump retacos on deportations.
He's not show moderate anymore. I'll quote the Washington Post,
the Department of Homeland Security told staff that was reversing
guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct

(20:27):
immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants, a decision that
stood at odds with Trump's calls for mass deportations of
anyone without legal status. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
including its Homeland Security Investigations Division just call them the Gestapo,
told agency leaders in a call that agents must continue
conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants, according

(20:50):
to two people familiar with the call, once again a
reminder from Georgia. In twenty eleven, they only had sixty
percent of the farm workers they needed because of a
crackdown on migrant farm workers, and at least seventy five
million dollars worth of food rotted in the fields, just
in Georgia. If they do this well enough, if they

(21:13):
pursue this sufficiently, there will be food shortages. Not oh,
I couldn't get my favorite brand of crup de tay.
Not that. No, just like no food. Also, oops, Ice
is already out of money. Don't worry. We'll just cut

(21:34):
social security or prosecuting criminals, or maybe we'll fire some
more air traffic controllers. This is from Axios Trump's immigration
crackdown is burning through cash so quickly the agency charged
with arresting, detaining, and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out
of money next month. Whoa Immigration and Customs Enforcement parentheses

(21:56):
GESTAPO is already one billion dollars over budget by one estimate,
with more than three months left in the fiscal year.
It's detention facility, about forty one thousand beds, are far
past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space
in the US and abroad. Honest to God, you went
to all this trouble to create this fictional disaster and

(22:18):
invasion bullshit, and you did not build the facilities beforehand
to make your money off of it. What kind of
corrupt businessmen are you? Ice? And the private jail business?
What kind of corrupt idiot are you? No? Oh, I've
had an allergic reaction to the law. I saw the

(22:39):
Constitution and I went late headed save over. I remember
when I was a little girl. That's also worth looking
up if you've never seen it. That's Dan Ackroyd as
the magic chef, cutting her wrists accidentally Julia Child and
beginning to lose consciousness. Find that and Big Jim MCBOB.

(23:03):
If Trump's big bill Axios continued isn't passed soon, he
could use his authority to declare a national emergency. How
many effing national emergencies does this guy have up his
ass to redirect money to ice from elsewhere in the government.
Why don't you take it from the money wasted on
big flag poles and paving over the beautiful lawns of

(23:27):
the White House. Who is the controller? Who is the
handler for Donald Trump? This time it's Steven Miller? A

(23:49):
couple other things. The Senate has to censor Mike Lee.
Mike Lee, who once was an actual kind of nerdy
wonk policy guy, is now just an out of control
Internet addict and showing all of the signs of deep,
deep emotional damage because of it. He has now deleted

(24:09):
his stochastic threat against Governor Walls, misspelling his name Nightmare
on Waltz Street. He put a t in it which
showed the Minnesota Maga murderer next to a picture of
the governor of Minnesota. That's a stochastic terrorist threat. In
a real country, Mike Lee would have been arrested. The
far right has dropped this story like not just a

(24:31):
hot brick, but a ton of hot bricks. Turns out
the guy is indeed ultra maga from NPR. Authorities in
Minnesota say the man arrested in the Saturday attack that
killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded, had a
hit list of forty five elected officials, all Democrats. But
sure he was on an appointee to some nine hundred

(24:53):
and thirty second most important commission in Minnesota by Governor Walls,
who is a bipartisan guy in a bipartisan state, which
means he couldn't possibly be mega because he worked for
root for Walls, just because he wanted to cool Democrats
blowed them up. Real good, Jesus is coming back for brunch.

(25:14):
Here are the problems. Mike Lee deleted these things, won't
acknowledge that he ever sent them, will not apologize. Trump
would not call the governor saying he didn't like the governor.
The jokes that Mike Lee made were more befitting a
mental patient than a senator, even a Republican senator. And
what this underscores here is the fascists have now dropped

(25:35):
even the lame pretense of thoughts and prayers. As always,
the next question becomes is any of this making any
impact or are we stuck permanently between the immovable object
and the irresistible farce? Well, looky here. Strength in numbers
is in. Democrats have an eight point edge for the

(25:57):
generic House ballot for the twenty twenty six midterms. Forty
five percent of adults say they would back the Democratic
candidate in their local congression disc thirty seven percent for
the Republican. Americans also say they are worried about corruption
in the White House. Sixty two percent say Trump's promotion
of his crypto represents a conflict of interest. Twenty nine

(26:18):
percent of adults say it's appropriate for the president to
accept a luxury jet from Katar as a gift. Fifty
four percent say in its inappropriate. So the Trump administration
is not getting away with this. In the zeitgeist, that's
the Trump administration and shopping channel. Because don't forget those

(26:38):
new Trump American smartphones introduced after he hit Apple with
fifty percent tariffs on iPhones, he put out his own iPhone,
Trump Phones, Trump Phones. Hello, can you hear me now? Hello?
There's no speaker? What? It doesn't dial what when? Trump,

(27:02):
by the way, says made in America it turns out
he actually means made in China. Also of interest here,
if an American news organization put out a photo of
what appeared to be Trump wearing a Dunce cap, first off,
it would be the most journalism in American news this year.

(27:24):
But second, Trump and the Maga martyrdom machine would come
down on that news organization so hard that Bob Iiger
would send Trump twenty five million dollars even before Trump
sued him. So why did the government of the United
States put out a photo of what appears to be
Trump wearing a dunce cap? That's next, This is countdown.

(27:50):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this

(28:15):
edition to countdown. Last week would have been my mother's
ninety sixth birthday. She didn't quite make it to her
eightieth birthday. When she was alive, Mom used to lament
that to the degree she was known, she was known
as my dad's wife, or is my mother? Where's my
sister's mother? And then came that day in the year

(28:38):
two thousand when all that changed. We have just passed
the quarter century anniversary of that day, June seventeenth, two thousand.
My mother is in her usual seat in the ninth
row behind the dugout at Yankee Stadium. I am in
my usual seat in the baseball studio at the Fox

(29:00):
Television Network on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, doing the
pregame show for Major League Baseball and all the game
highlights during the broadcasts. It is not an unusual Saturday
for either my mother or myself. And then enter Chuck Knoblock,

(29:21):
second Basement of the New York Yankees, but not for
much longer, and thereupon my mother ascends to baseball immortality.
Next in things I promised not to tell first, believe
it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The roundup of the Miss Green's morons, Undonning Kruger effects

(29:43):
specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the world,
the Bronze Worse CNNMSNBC, Fox, Fox Business, those other useless
places collectively known as cable news. Philip Bump of the
Washington Post the last living cell in a dying body. There,

(30:04):
the great traffics visualizer of the rotting hulk of the
Post put this out in really great color bar graphs.
What happened two saturdays ago? Trump had a pathetic toy
tank parade in which it in retrospect clearly looks like
the soldiers deliberately mailed it in to make him look bad. Meanwhile,
five million or more protesters attended the No Kings marches

(30:26):
and rallies. And what a couple hundred people protested in
Los Angeles? Maybe a thousand. There were anti ice protests
in many cities, maybe a couple thousand alls old. So
what was coverage of all these events like on the
cable networks? Well, sir, it's not just that the cable

(30:47):
network's got the proportions all wrong. It's that the least
well proportioned, the least fair coverage was by CNN and MSNBC.
By contrast, Fox was only terrible the mentions, per the
bump data, CNN mentioned No Kings between June eighth and

(31:08):
June fourteenth seventy three times. That's a seven day span.
Seventy three mentions of the No Kings protests. Other protests
mentioned six hundred and thirty nine times, so like nine
times as many on CNN MSNBC. Oh, they did much better.
Instead of seventy three mentions of No Kings, they mentioned

(31:30):
it seventy seven times, mentions of other protests six hundred
and twenty five times. So the two supposed real news
cable networks did a crap job, and almost identically, they're
now being programmed almost identically in terms of what they mentioned.
In terms of the news, there is a decreasing difference

(31:52):
between the crap that drove away CNN's audience and the
crap that is now driving away MSNBC's audience Fox News.
Fox News mentioned no kings, probably not favorably sixty times times,
and mentioned all the other protests, including the LA protests,
only three hundred and one times. So, in other words,
the coverage of the protests, the anti ice protests and

(32:16):
everything else only got half the bad press on Fox
that it did on CNN or MSNBC. MSNBC and CNN
could not resist the pictures of smoke from LA, even
if it was smoked from a two square block area.
Bumps graphs show in that same span two hundred and
nine mentions of clashes, riots, rioting, vandalism, looting on MSNBC

(32:38):
two hundred and ninety one mentions of clashes, riots, rioting, bandalism,
looting on CNN. This is even though as the Post's
own polling indicated American opinion about the LA protests was
split down the middle. Thirty seven percent said it was
mostly violent, thirty five percent said it was mostly peaceful.
Independence went thirty five thirty three peaceful. So we don't

(33:03):
have any cable news left in this country. Just turn
your sets off there, as a New York sportscaster used
to say, runner up Katie Miller. Ever, wonder what kind
of messed up person would marry Steven Miller. I'll just
read this verbatim from the New York Times backgrounder. Wasn't
there a movie called The Millers where they were actually

(33:24):
giant cockroaches from another planet who just pretended to be humans.
Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a
Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye
popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration.
As an aside, remember Elon Musk, Scammers, he said, were
making forty percent of all calls to the agency's customer

(33:46):
service line. Social Security employees knew the billionaires claim had
no basis. In fact, after journalists followed up, staff members
began drafting a response correcting the record. That's when Leland Dudek,
plucked from a mid level job only six weeks earlier
to run Social Security because of his willingness to co
operate with mister Musk's Department of Government Efficiency or Douche,

(34:09):
got an angry call from the White House. According to
several people familiar with the exchange, the number is forty percent.
Insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aideh was working closely
with mister Musk. According to one of the people familiar
with the April one call, President Trump believed mister Musk.
She said, quote, do not contradict the President. So if

(34:32):
you're wondering why it is that Stephen Miller every day
talks and acts like he didn't sleep at all last
night and instead had spent the evening frog tied in
his own basement while somebody beat him repeatedly with oddly
shaped pieces of rubber. Well, I'm just saying, but the
winner the worst. Fresh Secretary Caroline Levitt l Ie in

(34:54):
her first name, l Ie in her last name, and
Sigmund Freud in her soul. As Trump tried to show
off his trade deal with the British at the g seven,
and he said it was a deal with the EU
because he doesn't know that's not the same thing EU, UK.
I see you, you see me, me talk now, President

(35:16):
sleepy time. Trump opened the folder with the deal with
the British and not the EU, and the loose pages
fell to the ground. Immediately British Prime Minister Keir Starmer
bent down to pick them up. Why did he do that?
Why is the premiere of the UK reduced to picking

(35:37):
up the stuff Trump just dropped you? And I might
assume it's because Starmer realizes that Trump can't bend down,
But no, sir, it was because he was afraid that,
you know, Trump's security FAILANX would then open fire or
start tackling people. The day after this happened, Starmer said, quote,
I mean, look, there weren't many choices with the documents

(35:59):
in picking it up, because, as you probably know, there
were quite strict rules about who can get close to
the president. I mean, seriously, I think if any of you,
meaning the media, had stepped forward other than me, I
was just deeply conscious that in a situation like that,
it would not have been good for anybody else to
have stepped forward. Not that any of you rushed to
There's a very tightly guarded security zone around the president,

(36:23):
as you would expect. So just that's the end of
the quote. Translate what he's saying here. If anybody else
but him had reached down to try to pick the
papers up that Trump dropped and may or may not
have realized he dropped, the entirety of the American security
force would have descended upon them, and knowing the quality

(36:43):
of the people that Trump hires, they probably would have
shot first. So Keir Starmer prevented a massacre in Canada,
you know, like with Huey Long. Look it up, Huey Long.
Now to the Levitt part of this, kind of fittingly,
Caroline Levitt then tweeted out a photo of Trump at

(37:04):
a news conference at the G seven. It was chosen,
presumably because alone, of the dozens of people in the
crowded photograph, Trump is the only one clearly visible. You
can see him from the head to the torso, from
the bottom of his eight foot long tie to the
bottom of his seventy third chin. The problem is in

(37:26):
this photo that Caroline Levitt put out, Trump is perfectly
placed in front of a Canadian flag with only the
left hand red bar of that flag visible, and it's
right above Trump's head. So there's Trump, and right above
him is this furled red thing in a conical shape.

(37:47):
So as you look closer and closer, it is perfectly shaped.
It is perfectly proportioned, it is perfectly positioned, and it
looks exactly like Trump is wearing a red dunce cap. Caroline,
this is a call for help, blinked. Oh no, no, make
it more obvious than that. If this is a call

(38:08):
for help, tell the truth twice Levitt two Day's other
worst twy saidden in the world to the number one

(38:48):
story on the Countdown and a story that begins a
little bit in the past nineteen thirty four. I was
not there for that part of it. But in nineteen
thirty four, my mother, who was five years old, was
sent over to her uncle's house or apartment for the day.
My grandparents needed the day off from her for some reason,

(39:10):
and I'm not sure what it was, but her uncle, Willy,
my great uncle Willy, took her to Yankee Stadium along
with a kid that he knew who he used to
push to Yankee Stadium because the young man was in
a wheelchair. And often before the games. In nineteen thirty four,
the last season that the legendary Babe Ruth played for
the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth would see this kid

(39:32):
in a wheelchair and, consistent with the times, would come
over and rub his back for good luck, which seems
to us to be very crass, and also, if you're
just looking at it from a superstition point of view,
how in the world would that be good luck in
any event. So one day, for the first time, when
she was five years old and just turned five years old,

(39:53):
her birthday was in June, she goes with her uncle
Willy and the boy in the wheelchair to Yankee Stadium.
They don't have the money to go to the games.
It's the middle of the depress, but they live in
the Bronx. They are a few blocks away from the stadium,
and they go to say hi to the players on
the way in, and sure enough, Babe Ruth says hello

(40:14):
to them and asks my mother at the age of five,
what her name is now. Her name was Marie, but
because her mother's name was also Marie, the family often
referred to her as Babe. I heard my grandmother referred
to my mother as Babe when my mother was forty
five years old. It was rather extraordinary in any events.

(40:37):
She says, my name is Babe, and Babe Ruth was
so delighted by this that she went back inside and
got her a brand new baseball, which he gave to
my mother. The first day she went to Yankee Stadium,
she met Babe Ruth, She talked to Babe Ruth, and
Babe Ruth gave her a baseball. Needless to say, in
the ensuing sixty six years that my mother was a

(41:00):
Yankee fan, nothing of interest ever happened to her at
Yankee Stadium. She would eventually see the Yankees win a
couple of World Series, and eventually she saw her own
son reporting from the field after the World Series games
on the World Series broadcast. But nothing like getting a
baseball from Babe Ruth on your first day as a

(41:22):
fan and meeting Babe Ruth occurred to her. There was
a brawl once between Red Sox and Yankees fans. I
recall when I was ten or eleven years old. Beer
was thrown and she may have gotten a few drops
of beer on the shoulder of her dress. I seem
to recall that happening. That was it. Nothing else of interest, Certainly,

(41:43):
nothing difficult or untoward happened to my mother at Yankee
Stadium until the middle of June in the year two thousand.
The Yankees on that Saturday afternoon had a second baseman
named Chuck Knobloch, who had been a great star for
them in an extraordinary addition to their team and set
off the process by which they won preconsecutive World Series

(42:07):
and four in a span of five years, and almost
five in a span of six years. In any event,
Knoblock unfortunately had an issue throwing the ball to first base.
Many second basemen, many baseball players have developed this. It's
somewhat consistent with the idea of the yips in golf,
where you can't sink the putt even though it's two

(42:27):
feet away. Four baseball players, it turns out to generally
be an expression of emotional distress. Your mind is sabotaging
the most fundamental thing in the game. It's stopping you
from throwing the ball. And the easier the play is,
the more familiar you are with it, the more difficult
it suddenly becomes. It happened to Chuck Knoblock. It happened

(42:48):
to another second baseman named Steve Sachs, and they've all
turned out. And it was a pitcher minor league pitcher
who became a writer named Pat Jordan, and they all
turned out. And another one named Rick ang Keel, a
pitcher for the Saint Louis Cardinals, all of whom suddenly
lost the ability to throw the ball in the easiest
way possible, in the way in which they had the
most control, couldn't throw the ball over the baseman's head,

(43:12):
over the catcher's head into the stands. Well, that's where
we joined Chuck naw Block, as it later turned out,
Chuck naw Block's father, who had seen every one of
his games from little league, who had gone to all
his high school games, who had traveled the country when
Chuck naw Block played in the minor leagues, who'd gone
to all the road games of the Minnesota Twins and
the Yankees. Chuck naw Block's father had Alzheimer's disease and

(43:34):
was in the final stages of it, and sometime early
in the two thousand season lost the ability to recognize
the Yankee second basement Chuck naw Block. Well, that accelerated
a problem that would later or shortly thereafter make Chuck
naw Block an x second basement. And on this day,
in June of two thousand, I was completing the second

(43:56):
year of a two year, not particularly happy stint as
the host of Fox Baseball Game of the Week on
the Fox Television network. I was based in Los Angeles,
and every Saturday, I spent the whole day from six
o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night in
a studio in Los Angeles that was kept down about
thirty six degrees. Not my choice. I had to wear

(44:18):
a winter coat. Sometimes, when we weren't on the air,
we would do a pregame show, which, because of the
timing difference, started at ten am, and they liked to
rehearse their pregame shows madness. All the good lions had
been used and made stupid and not funny by the
time we got on the air. They would rehearse this
show two times, three times. An awful experience of my
co host was one of the worst persons in the world,

(44:41):
a man named Steve Lyons, who made me look like
somebody who never complained once in his life. That's the
only good aspect of working with Steve Lyons. He complained
an average of three times a minute. All right, So
Lyons and I are there doing the game of the week,
and that day the broadcast was from Los Angeles, and
it was a four pm Eastern start one pm Pacific time,

(45:01):
So the game and the show started a little bit late,
and we get them started, the Dodgers and whoever. It
was at Dodgers Stadium with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver
as the announcers and me in the studio, and Lions
goes away and he won't be back to the postgame show,
so everybody's happier. Somewhere in the middle of the game,
I'm watching the bank of televisions that's showing all the

(45:24):
other games in progress. And the Chicago White Sox are
playing at Yankee Stadium in New York. This is the
remodeled Yankee Stadium that operated between the years nineteen seventy
six and two thousand and eight. I essentially grew up
in Yankee Stadium, the original original Yankee Stadium and then
this modified, reconstructed one that reopened in nineteen seventy six,
and I knew not only every nook and cranny of

(45:46):
the ballpark, but I knew every camera angle, and we
had had since nineteen seventy two. My family Yankee season tickets,
which I had been paying for since about nineteen ninety two,
even though I did not live in New York. They
were for my mother, who went forty fifty times a year.
So by this point, my mother has been to since
that first game when she was greeted by Babe Ruth

(46:09):
at the front door of Yankee Stadium. Here, welcome to
your future. Here's a baseball for me, Babe Ruth, she
has been to at least a thousand games. She went
to more games in her life than I have, actually
literally true. And she is seated in the seats in
our seats, which have been the same one box forty

(46:29):
seven E since the stadium reopened in nineteen seventy six,
and this is the year two thousand, so she is
in essence celebrating her twenty fifth anniversary in those seats.
The Chicago White Sox are playing the New York Yankees.
They would rout the Yankees that day, and the Yankees
were in the middle of a funk in the middle
of the season. Do not, in small part to Chuck
Knoblock's sudden inability to throw the ball successfully from second

(46:52):
base to first base. He would throw it past the
first basement, over the first basement, he would drop the
ball as he threw it, it would fly out of
his hand. And of course later it proved this was
a psychological protest from deep within in his mind against
playing baseball anymore. It was too painful because his father
was so sick, and his father was so intimately connected
to the game. So now Greg Norton of the Chicago

(47:15):
White Sox hits a fairly tough play towards Chuck Nablock
grounds the ball to the right of the mound. Chuck
naw Block has to charge in, pick the ball up
bare handed, and while slightly off balance, throw it backwards
towards the Yankee first basement, Tino Martinez. Not an impossible play,
and not an impossible play for a good second basement,

(47:36):
as Chuck naw Block had been. But under the circumstances
a disaster in the making which we then saw unfold,
Chuck naw Block throws the ball. It leaves his hand
not straight, but an angle to the right of about
I don't know, fifty sixty degrees the ball shoots out
of his hand and goes nowhere near first base. It

(47:56):
goes into the stands behind first base, and in fact,
it goes to box forty seven E, where my mother
is seated with my high school friend and his two kids.
And my mother is sitting where the incoming throw has
just been launched. I am seeing this unfold on a monitor,
one of like nine with different games going on. But

(48:18):
I know Yankee Stadium, and as I said, the camera
angles intimately, so I know immediately where the ball based
on where it left now Block's hand, where it has
likely gone, and I say that may have hit my mother.
They then cut to a shot of a woman being
attended to and I say that hit my mother, and
everybody in the room laughs because they assume I'm joking,

(48:41):
Because what are the odds that while I am in
the studio hosting the game of the week and doing
the highlights of the games in progress. You know, when
they say now let's go back to the studio for
a Fox game break, I'm the guy doing the game breaks.
That was my job for two years. And sure enough,
I say, that's my mother, and everybody laughs, and then
they cut to a tight shot of a woman holding

(49:02):
her head with a little blood and her glasses have
been broken, and she looks kind of dazed and confused
and they are leading her away, and I went, that's Mom.
And now I call her on my cell phone and
you see her while she is on camera on the
local broadcast of the Yankee White Sox game. You see
her answering the phone. That's when they stopped laughing in
the studio. That's when they realized it was really my mother.

(49:26):
So I talked to her and she said, I'm okay,
it broke my glasses. They think maybe I should go home.
And Georgia and George's kids they want to go home
after that, and I said, did you get the ball
showing where my level of concern was? No, I'm sorry.
I was like, oh, for Christ's sake, Mom, So she's fine,
And otherwise I wouldn't have asked that question. Probably anyway,

(49:47):
now we're predicting this sort of situation. What do we
do with it? And is it going to be a controversy?
And I said, we have to put the highlight on
and I have to mention that it's my mother. It's
not like we're not going to show if it was
some other woman, we'd show it, wouldn't we It would
be the biggest story in baseball today. We have to
do it, and I just happen to know who it is.
So we throw to We are thrown to buy Joe

(50:10):
Buck and Tim McCarver, ti'me for a Fox game break.
Here's Keith Olderman in the studio, White Sox and Yankees.
Joe and Chuck now blocks throwing problem is now getting
personally picks up the Greg Norton bounder from the White
Sox Yankees in the Bronx and throws it into the
stands where right on the edit it hits my mother.

(50:33):
Mom's Okay, I called her. She's a gamer. She'll be
back tomorrow. She just got her lenses broken. Joe, Tim
back to you. Silence from Dodger Stadium. In the broadcast,
you just hear like birds in the background from Dodger Stadium.
For the first time in their lives, Joe Buck and
Tim McCarver have between them, nothing to say. I don't

(50:54):
know what to say, says Joe Buck. Is Keith kidding?
Is that one of Keith jokes? Says Tim, who is
an old friend of mine. Keith, are you still there?
I'm still here, Timmy, Are you kidding? Why would I
kid about something like that? Was that really your mother?
What are the odds against that? And I said, well,
she's been going a game since nineteen thirty four, that
first game she ever went to Babe Ruth gave her

(51:16):
a baseball. Nothing bad has happened in the ensuing years,
So I'd say the odds were probably about six to
five in favor. And he goes, I guess you're right.
I can't believe that was Keith's mother that got hit
by the throw by Chuck no Block. Well, give us
an update later on how she is. We'll do, Tim.
So now the story is out. It's my mother who

(51:36):
got hit by the ball June seventeenth, eighteenth, one of
the two days, the Saturday of that weekend two thousand.
Only the kind of thing that could happen to my mother.
But again, truly, the odds were not that impossible. The
ball's thrown behind first base. Here's a woman who's gone

(51:56):
to an average of forty to fifty games a year
in that stadium for twenty five years. The odds are
pretty good it's going to hit her. And if you're
getting meta and like, what are the union versal odds?
What are the metaphysical odds that she gets hit? As
I said, nothing of interest has happened to her since
nineteen thirty four. She's due in any event. Just to
add to this, two of my best friends in the

(52:18):
world worked for the Yankees. One was the manager, Joe Tory.
The other was the head of publicity, Rick Sarone. Not
the catcher, Rick Serone, but the head of publicity, Rick Serone.
So I call Rick Serone in the office at Yankee
Stadium in the press box, because I figure he's already
figured this out and I want to give him a
heads up that I had no choice but to mention

(52:40):
that it was my mother, since it was my broadcast.
I call him up. I said, did you see the
now block throw? Now? I heard about it. I've been
here in the back. I didn't see who it hit.
I said, do you have any idea who it was?
He said no, Why would I have any idea who
it was? I said, why would I be calling you?
I don't know, Keith. Why would you be calling me?
I said, how many times have you sat behind first

(53:00):
base with me and somebody else, and he goes, wait
a minute, what are you saying? I said, how many
times did you and I go as teenage friends in
the seventies and sat behind first bit And he goes,
oh god no, I said, yep. He said that hit
your mother. I said yep. And he said, first off,
he said, did she get the ball? And I went, no,

(53:21):
she didn't. Oh for crying out loud, Well what you
didn't say anything about it, did you? I went, of course,
I said something they showed her on your broadcast. And
he goes, oh god no. I said, what other choice
did I have? He goes, no, you're right, You're right,
all right. I better get out there. We're going to
start getting phone calls about this, if we haven't already.
Thanks for the heads up. So now. The next day

(53:43):
the newspapers of New York front and back page of
the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and
the Long Island Paper News Day front and back page
some reference to my mother. Photographs in the Daily News
of her being led away. Chuck Nablock hits sportscaster's mother.
And the day after that they're still telling the story,
and there are wire stories, and it is everywhere, and

(54:05):
of course we mentioned it maybe once or twice an
hour on Fox Sports and on cable and on broadcast.
So now Mom is a celebrity, and I must confess
to you. Mom really liked being a celebrity. Mom was
appreciative of my success in my career. But Mom had

(54:26):
wanted to be a ballerina. Apparently. She told me that
I don't really buy it, but that was her story.
And she was a little jealous, resentful, just in a
manageable way most of the time. But I don't want
to bore you with my developmental problems. Emotionally, Mom was
a little jealous of not being in the spotlight, and

(54:47):
she gloried in this, among other things. Mom wound up
being interviewed on the pregame show for the next Saturday's
Game of the Week, and for various reasons, we could
not do a live remote interview with her. So we
sat down and I were courted the questions in Los
Angeles and on the phone asked her the questions while

(55:09):
she was in our ancestral home in the suburbs of
New York City, and Mom didn't really have any good answers,
so I said, why don't you just repeat the answers
that I give you. I'll give you good snarky answers,
real quick ones, and we can do this and you
can make fun of me. Okay. She had a little
trouble delivering the lines, and we actually did several takes.

(55:29):
So if anybody wants to call the FCC and say
that interview was not what it seemed in two thousand,
go right ahead. I don't know what you're going to
do to us about it, but go right ahead. There
were some elements of fakery to this, like I wrote
her answers for her, but there was one answer to
one of my six or seven questions that she gave
completely authentically and we did not need a second take.

(55:51):
And this may tell you the nature of the complicated
relationship between me and my mother and baseball and Chuck Knoblock.
I said, are you surprised that everybody's so interested in this?
And I wrote for her as an answer, No, but
I'm surprised they keep mentioning you. She had no trouble
giving that line whatsoever. She really bought into that answer.

(56:14):
You could see from the tape when I eventually saw
the tape that she was smiling during that one. So
in any event, Mom becomes a celebrity for several months.
This is June of two thousand, come October, when the
Yankees and Mets played in the World Series and she
was in the stands number one. My employers had given
her a Fox Sports cap to wear, and they repeatedly

(56:38):
showed her during the games of the World Series at
Yankee Stadium. So Mom became a celebrity and became very
well known for getting hit in the head with Chuck
Knoblock's throw. Joe Tory, who I mentioned, was an old
friend of mine, the first person I ever interviewed in television,
and a colleague in local sports in television in LA
when I worked there in the eighties and nineties. Joe

(56:58):
Tory called me up right afterwards and asked how she was,
and I said, she's fine. How's your second basement? Hey
acts like he got hit in the head with a
throw too. He's very worried. You think he did it deliberately,
And I said, Joe, you have to tell him that
I'm confident he did not do it deliberately. If he
was aiming at my mother, it would have missed. Joe

(57:20):
Tory laughs and later he tells me he told Noblock
that and was Noblock's first laugh of the year. All right,
So moving ahead on this story, it continued for many years,
for at least ten years, Once or twice a month,
somebody in baseball would say, was it your mother who
got hit by Chuck Knoblock's throw? Memorably, in the year

(57:42):
two thousand and five, the year that the Hall of
Famer Randy Johnson, the big left hander of the mostly
of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Seattle Mariners in the
Montreal Expos, he pitched one season for the Yankees, and
the Yankees got blown out in the playoffs that year.
And before the last game of the season, and this
is one of my favorite moments in the history of baseball.

(58:05):
Before that last game, I walk out into the Yankee
dugout and there is al Lighter, who was a friend
of mine then and now he is telling the story
of my mother and Chuck Knoblock to two other Yankee pitchers,
Scott Proctor and Randy Johnson. And I walk in and
he goes, and then Alderman's mother gets hit in the

(58:25):
head and he says on he's doing the highlights on
TV on the game of the week, and he said,
and I walk out, and he goes, did you hear
that I was telling the story about you? And I said, well,
only the last couple of steps. This is a coincidence.
Finish the story yourself. So now I've got the three
of them, and they're all in hysterics. Yankees lose that
last game of the playoffs. I don't know, it seemed
like it was one hundred and fifty to nothing. And

(58:45):
I go into the clubhouse after the game to say
goodbye for the offseason to the few players that I
knew on the team, including Al Lighter, and to Randy Johnson,
and Randy Johnson in his own deep voiced way, thank
good to see you have a good winter. And he
leaves with his little carrying case with his little wheels
on it and looks like a toy. He's six foot

(59:06):
ten and he has a roller case designed for maybe
his daughter. It looks like a toy. And he leaves,
and about five minutes later, I see the door to
the Yankee clubhouse open up, and in walk Randy Johnson
and he comes over to me and he said, I
forgot to say something. I was already out to my car,
and I thought I better come back in and say

(59:27):
goodbye to Keith and tell him, I mean, this was
a really bad week this last week, as we've been
losing and the season ended, and I just wanted to
say that telling that story about your mother really was
the highlight of the whole thing and made me smile
for the only time this month. So thank you. Have
a great winter. So that's my mother and Randy Johnson,
five years after she got hit in the head with

(59:49):
a throw by Chuck Knoblock the second basement of the Yankees,
one of the more remarkable moments in the history of
Major League Baseball, at least as it pertains to the
Olderman family, and a kind of bookend. Mom stopped going
to the games about two thousand and five, ysaically could
not do it, but she had a good run as
a Yankee fan of about seventy seasons that essentially booke

(01:00:10):
ended by getting hit in the head with a throw
that made her famous within baseball circles and began with
her being handed to baseball at her first game ever
by Babe Ruth, who was charmed by the fact that
my mother's nickname was Babe punchline to this, to me
is one of the most avid collectors of sports memorabilia

(01:00:30):
and particularly game used baseballs. I didn't get either of
those baseballs from my mom, my god, twenty five years ago,

(01:00:55):
and the best part remains Chuck naw Block for years
thought I thought he had done it deliberately, as if
he to hit her. If he had done it deliberately,
I've done all the damage I can do here. And
yes I'm not exaggerating in any of that. Mom loved that.
Mom was disappointed when that faded out. Mom thought there

(01:01:18):
would be a ceremony on the first anniversary. Thanks for listening.
Most of the Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed
by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who are our
musical directors of Countdown, and the music was produced by
Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, Mister
Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical

(01:01:40):
comments here by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Is the sports music
other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today, fittingly with the sports theme, was my
friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as always, my fault.

(01:02:04):
So that's countdown for today, Day one hundred and fifty
one of America held hostage, just one three hundred and
thirteen days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck
lame brained term, unless Putin or Musk remove him sooner,
or he decides to ride the bomb into Iran, or

(01:02:25):
the actuarial tables remove him, or we do. The next
scheduled countdown is Monday. Until that next one, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good afternoon, good morning, good night, and good luck. Countdown

(01:02:58):
with Keith Ouldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.