August 14, 2024 • 47 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 8: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: ActiVote, completely its survey in Texas yesterday: Trump 53.3% Harris 46.7% In Texas. The lead is Trump +6.6; the margin of error is 5 points. Their last poll was July 19th, it was Trump by NINE points. So she cut the lead by nearly a third in three weeks. She is ostensibly within the margin of error. In Florida, in polling led by USA Today: Trump 47 Harris 42, so Trump is ahead by 5. IMargin of error is 4.5 points so Kamala Harris IS within the margin of error. All previous polls, from the one by the University of North Florida Research Lab to the one by a Trump pollster, McLaughlin, had it Trump by eight. As recently as last Thursday.
Is she going to WIN Florida or Texas or both? I don’t think so. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in Florida by a MILLION. Trump won Texas in 2016 by nine points. Five-and-a-half in 2020. But that the FACT of Kamala Harris, before the convention, before the campaign has really even begun, has cut Trump’s lead by nearly a third in Texas and nearly forty percent in Florida tells you just how bad things were and just how much better they have already gotten in Florida and Texas – and Michigan and Pennsylvania – and America.
I have this urgent request of the Trump campaign: please continue to do EVERYTHING exactly the way you are doing it now. Thank you. You are Kamala Harris’s primary asset. You are her ROCK.
MEANWHILE, THERE'S ELECTION INTERFERENCE by Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The Post is explaining WHY the Post cannot publish nor even IDENTIFY internal documents and computer traffic STOLEN from a presidential campaigns - THIS time.
There's some lofty bull about pausing and considering motives and outside actors and then the Executive Editor of the Post tells the truth."In the end," says Matt Murray, "it didn’t seem fresh or new enough." Of course there is a clip on YouTube from 2016 in which the Post's Wikileaks reporters explain that's why they published then and yeah they were sure it'd happen again.
So they knew this would happen again and they knew they were setting the precedent and they knew they wouldn’t do better next time and now they’re pretending that it HASN’T happened again and they’re pretending NO precedent was set and they’re confirming they AREN’T doing better next time and they haven’t learned a damn thing.
Lastly, Trump's campaign has been slammed by an unlikely source, the man who might be his only friend in the world: Bill O'Reilly. It's hilarious. And the quotes let me do my Bill O'Reilly voice again.
B-Block (26:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: He's back and badder than ever, suggesting Kamala Harris hasn't done enough interviews. It's Chris Cillizza (two Z's and an endless number of L's); Trump War Room goes full racist and shows you the future and in one the houses everything is neat and clean and evidently all the people are dead; and why Elon Musk's Eleventy Billion views for Trump turns out to imply that the average viewer stayed for ONLY FOUR MINUTES.
C-Block (39:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Sam Rosen retired yesterday - effective at the end of the next season - as the Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer of hockey's New York Rangers. Sam just happens to have succeeded so well AFTER he was my boss when I was 20 and 21 years old! The saga of Sam, who I know so long I wrote a paper about him in college.
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. Texas
is in play Activote polling concluding yesterday Trump fifty three
(00:30):
point three, Harris forty six point seven, so Trump is
only had by six and six tenths in Texas and
the margin of error is five points. Their last poll
was on July nineteenth. It was Trump by nine points,
so she cut the lead by nearly one third in
three weeks. She is ostensibly within the margin of error.
(00:54):
Texas is in play. Texas, oh And Florida is in
play even more in play. Polling led by USA Today
Trump for Harris forty two, so Trump is ahead by
five in Florida. Margin of error is four and a
half points, so Kamala Harris is within the margin of
(01:15):
error in Florida. All previous polls, from one by the
University of North Florida Research Lab to one by a
Trump polster McLaughlin, had Trump by eight as recently as
last Thursday. Quote. I was surprised, unquote, said David Paleo Lojos,
director of Suffolk University Research, which did the poll the
(01:39):
five point poll, that Harris is within striking distance, being
only five points down Florida is in play. Florida, Florida,
and Texas are in play. I have an urgent request
of Donald Trump's campaign for president. Please continue to do
(02:02):
everything exactly the way you are doing it now. Thank you.
You are Kamala Harris's primary asset. You are her rock. Now.
Look is she going to win Florida or Texas or both?
(02:24):
I don't think so. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in
Florida by a million. Trump won Texas in twenty sixteen
by nine points, by five and a half in twenty twenty.
But the fact of Kamala Harris before the convention, before
the campaign has really even begun. The fact that she,
by just being there has cut Trump's lead by nearly
(02:46):
a third in Texas and nearly forty percent in Florida,
tells you just how bad things were there and elsewhere,
and just how much better things are now and how
much better they've already gotten in Florida and Texas and
Michigan and Pennsylvania and America. I have previously discussed and
(03:08):
expressed my distrust of Poles, my horror at the ease
of their manipulation of my own experience with people at
MSNBC asking Frank Lunz for a focus group and for
the outcome of that focus group about me before they
did the focus group. I've expressed this occasionally, once or
(03:31):
twice a week, but poles are compass needles. They don't
tell you how far you have to go, and they
don't give you directions on how to get there. But
generally speaking, they do get the big picture right. They
do get north versus south correctly, and right now they
(03:51):
are all saying the same thing. It is Trump who
is going south. We even have the first polling on
Tim Walls. Morning Console pulled on him right after she
chose him August two and three, and again over this
past weekend. So the original poll showed that fifty seven
(04:13):
percent of all voters had never heard of him. Never
heard of him fifty seven percent, It is now fifteen percent.
That would be a good rollout. Walls had a favorable
score of eighteen in the first poll, it is now
thirty eight. His unfavorables went from eleven to thirty three.
Cutting to the chase. He is above water by five
(04:35):
points as of Sunday. As Morning Consult notes, the vice
presidential pick rarely gets any traction is rarely a boon
or a bust. And this guy is in positive territory,
and that's after the Republicans began to try to swift
vote him. They note that Walls is at plus five
and at the same point in his rollout, Vance was
at minus one. And I'm going to go way out
(04:57):
on a limb here and say that JV has not
exactly rebounded from minus one. A couple of other results
Big Village pollsters. This is a national poll, Harris by three.
It's previous poll, Trump by two. Nate Silver's average keeps
growing a couple of parts of a point each day.
(05:21):
Now Harris by three and one tenth nationally. Bullfinch asked
swing state voters which candidate would you feel comfortable babysitting
your kids? Total shock here on the answer Harris forty
five percent, Trump twenty percent, and I'm presuming the remaining percent,
(05:41):
the thirty five percent left over, those are JV Vance's
childless cat ladies. Right now to the election interference by Politico,
(06:17):
by the New York Times, by the Washington Post, in
which we are talked down to by a news organization
of one hundred and forty seven years experience, which has
done us the service of explaining why the Washington Post
cannot publish nor even identify internal documents and computer traffic
stolen from a presidential campaign. I mean, why the Washington
(06:40):
Post cannot publish any of that this time, especially a
lengthy JV vance vetting document prepared by or for the
Trump campaign. Which news organization has explained this to us
about the Washington Post. Why it's the Washington Post quote
this episode probably reflects that news organizations aren't going to
(07:03):
snap at any hack that comes in and is marked
as exclusive or inside dope and publish it for the
sake of publishing, said Matt Murray, Executive editor of the Post. Instead, quote,
all of the news organizations in this case took a
deep breath and paused and thought about who was likely
(07:23):
to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the
hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy
or not. Well, that's the part of the executive editor's
statement intended for the journalism schools as classes begin anew
in the coming weeks. Here's the real part of what
mister Murray had to say. The decision for newsrooms to
(07:44):
not publish the Dvance Materials, a compilation of publicly available
records and statements, including Dvance's past criticisms of Trump, appeared
to be more straightforward because they also didn't reach a
high level of public interest. Quoting this guy Murray, the
one who still uses phrases like inside dope, quoting mister Murray.
(08:07):
In the end, it didn't seem fresh or new enough.
So if it were new jd Vance stuff, then they'd
swallow hard and just push those morals and ethics to
the side a little bit and run it and not
(08:28):
say all that stuff about taking a deep breath and
pausing and thinking about who the leaker might be or
what their motives might be. Gotcha? End number one justifies
the means, and end number two does not justify the means. Frauds.
From the same Washington Post piece, quoting Kelly McBride, NPR's
(08:51):
public editor and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for
Ethics and Leadership at the Pointer Institute, and before twenty sixteen,
the general thinking was that even with hacked materials quote
if there's something interesting in there, and of course you're
going to report it unquote, but with foreign state actors
increasingly getting involved. It just feels diceier for news organizations
(09:14):
to make the decision, because you don't want to be
helping another country undermine our democracy. McBride said. The motivations
don't have to be pure, but it can't be to
undermine the stability of the entire country. She added that
just seems like a bridge too far. Of course, that
(09:35):
wasn't a bridge too far in twenty sixteen, was it?
Ms McBride. While there was no initial clear link between
say Russia and Wiki leaks and Roger Stone and his wig,
it became apparent pretty damned fast that there was a
link between at least two of those folks, especially after
(10:00):
that subtle hint from Trump. Remember when he said, quote, Russia,
if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the
thirty thousand emails that are missing. I think you will
probably be rewarded mightily by our press, which he said, incidentally,
and answer to a question by Katie Turr god and
the same day that he said that Russian intelligence began
(10:21):
to target Hillary Clinton's emails. It's almost as if they
were listening. The Washington Post, of course, is threading not
one but two needles. Here, it is insisting it does
not have to publish the results of the anti Trump hacking,
while insisting it was justified in publishing the results of
(10:43):
the pro Trump hacking, while also insisting it's older and
wiser and more careful now bullshit. Brian Boutler flagged this
clip from the old Showtime political program The Circus, and
since Showtime posted the clip on YouTube, I'm sure it
won't mind the plug. I think the show is an
(11:04):
on ayme, but so what. It's a plug for Showtime
now available on your cable package. It's Mark McKinnon talking
in twenty sixteen with Washington Post reporters Roz Helderman and
Mateia Gold. Matea Gold I dealt with several times when
she was in LA is now one of the posts
managing editors, and it's her voice you will hear first
(11:26):
on this, and you should look for this clip on
YouTube because you should see Matia Gold's face light up
when the other reporter, Roz Helderman, the one with the glasses,
says she's just found something juicy inside the stolen materials
the Post is going to publish as opposed to these
(11:48):
stolen materials, which they're not going to publish.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Obviously, Wikiwiks seems to have some sort of agenda in
putting this material out. But at the same time, I
don't think anything that's been released so far has been
this big October surprise. It's going to change the trajectory
of the race, Hey, Roz about anything?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
A couple little things. Podesta says that they've taken on
a lot of water, and he says most of that
has to do with terrible decisions made pre campaign, but
a lot has to do with her instincts. Who and
then neuro writes back, almost no one knows better than
me that her instincts can be terrible.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Did that create any issues for you guys as reporters
that it seemed strategically leaked?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I think every indication is that both of these hacks
are stolen material. On the other hand, they're undeniably newsworthy.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
This information is now out there and it's getting consumed
by the public, So I actually feel like we have
a responsibility to use it to sort of illuminate the
stories that we're already been working on and pursuing. I
think we have to assume that these kind of hacks
will likely happen again, and that this kind of material.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Will re allergy culture going forward.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
That's sort of the psychological warfare aspect of the campaign, argues,
which is true. I mean, if there's no doubt it
has rattled them, it's everyone going to have to be
on guard for this kind of hack in the future.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So they knew in twenty sixteen this would happen again,
and they knew they were setting the precedent, and they
knew they wouldn't do better next time. And now they're
pretending that it hasn't happened again, and they're pretending no
precedent was set, and they're confirming they aren't doing better
next time, and they haven't learned a damn thing. The
(13:35):
Washington Post Executive editor Matt Murray again in an interview
with his own reporters about why his own newsroom is
failing all its own ethical obligations to its own nation quote.
Murray said, the Post has no blanket, no hacked materials policy.
You have to evaluate the material as it comes in.
I certainly don't want to encourage hacked material, but it's
(13:58):
going to happen in this world that we're in. So
they they've learned something the hell they have. They published
in twenty sixteen because the material was hot. They're not
publishing in twenty twenty four because the material isn't hot.
(14:21):
And when the next hot material comes in, they've made
sure they can all sell out their ethics yet again
in yet a different direction. One thing you may have
noticed in none of mister Murray's remarks, nor any of
the similar ones from similar editors at the Times or
Politico explaining their cowardice. In none of them do any
(14:44):
of them take the weaker but still far more commendable
route of at least admitting they screwed up in twenty
sixteen when they decided to publish. I mean, it would
be nice to see the word wrong come out of
somebody's mouth. But in twenty six years in the news
andical news businesses, I can tell you without fear contradiction,
(15:07):
that the most wide spread skill in the field is
the one that allows someone to make up gallant sounding
rationalizations for doing or not doing anything purely for the
public interest, never for your own interest, and always accepting
the responsibility, but never the blame. Because, as the political
(15:33):
impressionist David Fry once said, those who are to blame
lose their jobs. Those who are responsible do not. You
would think there'd be some pain from twisting their spine
so much so often, but remember this is the Washington Post.
(15:57):
These guys don't have a spine. A couple of other notes.
You heard that Selene Dion is suing over Trump using
her song My Heart Will Go On from Titanic at
his rallies. I mean, come on, it's perfect, all right.
(16:21):
I can understand her not wanting to be associated with it,
but it is the perfect song. Everything but the glob Glob.
As another option, may I suggest the wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald. This is hilarious. This is from Stephen Chung,
a Trump spokesman who, to his credit, usually puts his
name on press statements from the Trump campaign, even though
(16:43):
Trump has been leaking anonymously on and off the record
since at least the nineteen eighties. The Harris campaign referred
to the Trump Musk Twitter whatever that was, and referred
to Trump's extremism and dangerous Project twenty twenty five agenda,
and the Harris campaign insulted Musk by saying Trump is
there in service of people like Keon Musk and himself
(17:06):
self obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class,
and who cannot run a live stream in the year
twenty twenty four. Stephen Chunk's response, all these statements, yet
nobody ever puts their name on them. Effing Coward's Steve bigmad.
Steve's so big mad he didn't notice it. Right under
(17:29):
that statement it reads Harris Walls in capital letters. That
would be two somebodies who put both their names on it.
They were right, of course, though I did think there
was one undersold gem in that thing that Donnie and
(17:51):
Elanie did on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
The next time. What we'll do is if something happens
with his election, which would be a horror show, we'll
meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a
far safer place to meet in our country. Okay, so
we'll go, You and I will go, and we'll have
a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
So they're gonna move to Venezuela. Huh. Don't let the
wall door hit you in the ass on the way out, Donald.
But finally, maybe the fullest measure of how bad it's
gone for Trump and how fast it's gone bad is
criticism from one person, one voter out there, one lone voice.
(18:33):
Trump is getting hurt, says this one loan critic, because quote,
it's all about discipline. He's a very emotional guy, and
if he's having a bad day, that bad day is
gonna come out during a rally or an interview. But
he isn't like a guy who is internalizing what he
should do. He just flies and he doesn't really think
about the repercussions of what he says, and that's hurting him.
(18:57):
The speaker Bill O'Reilly, or what's left of him on Newsmax.
I was shocked. Bill O'Reilly's gaunt now scary looking. Basically,
he's down to just a skull and an ego. But
(19:18):
understand what Bill O'Reilly's criticism of Trump means. More than
a decade ago, when I still paid for front row
seats at Yankee Stadium, mostly so I could give away
two hundred and fifty tickets a year to make a
wish and sit there and get in ESPN's camera shot
when they did the games. Half the games I actually
went to, there would be Trump seated a row or
(19:41):
two behind me with a guest neither of them ever
saying a word. Trump not even talking to this guy
who appeared to have been his only friend in the world,
the only person who ever showed up with him to
these games. You'd see them drinking milkshakes, occasionally chain drinking milkshakes.
(20:01):
Otherwise they just sat there silently staring at the ball game.
The other guy with Trump was Bill O'Reilly. If Bill
O'Reilly is slamming Trump, it's over. Texas is in play,
(20:22):
Florida is in play. Bill O'Reilly is in play.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
By the way, they're tickets. They're Yankee tickets. They were
gratis no charge, provided by the Yankees, because Bill O'Reilly
and Donald Trump were two of the three biggest freeloaders
I have ever seen at any ballpark anywhere. The third
Rudy Giuliani. Those we're all free tickets. Me I paid.
(20:58):
I mean, there was a tax deduction for the tickets
I gave away. I'm not going to deny that. But
I paid because you because you pay for things. Also
of interest here, speaking of New York sports, my past
is slipping away. Yesterday it happened again. The day before
(21:19):
had been New York's top all news radio station, the
great inspiration of my youth going off the air. And
yesterday it was my first boss, the first of a
long suffering parade of my long suffering bosses retiring, retiring
after about half a century of doing play by play
(21:40):
of the New York Rangers hockey team. I have known
my friend Sam Rosen so long that when I first
met him, I wrote about it in a paper for
one of my classes in school. Oh sorry, Sam.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman,
my crazy friend still ahead of us on this edition
(22:30):
of Countdown. Monday, it was the New York all news
radio station WCBS going off the air, the station who's
news director in nineteen seventy nine gave me the self
confidence to actually pursue this as a life's work. Yesterday
it was the retirement, effective after the upcoming season of
(22:52):
Sam Rosen, the Hall of fame play by play man
of the New York Rangers. Sam was my first boss
in radio in nineteen seventy nine. In fact, I met
him sixteen days before I got that letter from the
news director at WCBS Radio. Sam was both my first
true job lead and my first boss. And now he's retiring.
(23:18):
As they say, time is undefeated. But there's more to
this because after I met him, but before he hired me,
And think about having a Hall of Fame career as
a broadcaster after you were responsible for managing this crazy
twenty and twenty one year old kid version of me.
(23:39):
After I met him, but before he hired me, I
had to go back to my senior year at Cornell
and write a creative writing essay about a memorable person
I had met under unusual circumstances. So I wrote it
about Sam Rosen, And of course I still have the
original copy, which I will read to you next in
(24:02):
Things I promised not to tell first, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days
worst persons in the World, Lebron's worse Chris Slizza, two
(24:23):
z's and an endless amount of ls you remember him
from such worst person in the world appearances as it's
Shapiro people, And how dare you claim Trump as dementia?
You're not doctors? Even though I wrote fifty pieces just
in twenty fifteen diagnosing Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and telling
(24:44):
the former history teacher Jim Clyburn that rule one is,
don't compare anything to Nazi Germany. Well, Chris, with a
lot of zas and an endless amount of ls is back.
It's been twenty three days since Joe Biden ended his candidacy.
It's been seven days since Kamala Harris was formerly named
the Democratic presidential nominee. She has yet to sit for
(25:06):
an interview with any media outlet, and she has answered
less than five total questions from the press.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Chris. Those five questions were when she came over to
the traveling pool and said, okay, what you got and
they asked her her policies. No, they asked her about
Trump and what Trump had said, and what did she
think of Trump? And Trump did this, and Trump did that?
Who wasted the opportunity with the Vice president of the
(25:35):
United States to address I don't know the border the
Middle East? Tim Walls, Whether or not she was black
or Indian or Blindian or anything like that. No, No,
they asked her about Trump. Might as well have asked
her about her football picks for the first weekend of
the NFL season. So You're blaming her because our American
(25:59):
news media, particularly the White House and the Vice Presidential
Press Corps, is largely made up of people who only
remember the last three hours of their lives. I mean,
what do you want from her? You want her to
have a news conference like the one Trump had last week,
where it turned out his news conference was about him
(26:21):
pretending to have a news conference instead of just saying,
I'm going to come here and give a series of
small speeches that have nothing to do with the questions
you just asked me. She is, as Solica accurately notes,
I just said it, Solica and accurate. In the same sentence,
Solica notes she was on day twenty three of her
(26:42):
campaign official or unofficial day twenty three of her campaign,
and he's upset that he has not gotten an exclusive
with her. You're going to try to push her off
the ticket too, because she hasn't done enough interviews with
the Washington Post, CNN and anybody else. That fired you,
Jesus never stops. Absolutely no self awareness whatsoever. You would
(27:07):
think getting fired might have been the first clue that, oh, well,
maybe I'm not doing this correctly. I mean, I have
quit jobs and wondered today, let me quit. Maybe I'm
not as good at this as I thought I was.
Never such a doubt has hit. Chris Silizza has it.
The runners up worser speaking of not having a doubt.
The Trump War Room, which is considered an official part
(27:31):
of the social media campaign of what's his name Psycho Trump.
They put out a tweet tweet x a muscow or
whatever you're gonna call them at eleven twenty one am
Eastern daylight time yesterday. There is a picture on the
left of some two story homes. I mean, they look okay.
(27:53):
They have porches that are not sagging, so they don't
look like the more disreputable parts of upstate New York.
They don't look like a place that you would live
your entire life in going where all the people who
live in the United States actually go on a day
like this, I haven't seen anybody new since the year
two thousand and three. They have that, and it's nice
(28:14):
and clean, and the bushes out front or all right,
and there don't seem to be any cracks in the
pavement or in the six steps up to the giant
American flag that's taller than any of the inbred people
inside this house that is clearly in a white neighborhood.
And I might add there are no people shown in
this photograph, and it says your neighborhood under Trump, and
(28:36):
there's a picture of houses and a flag and no people.
Next to it is your neighborhood under Kamala And in
it is a bunch of folks who appear to be
rushing for aid after a crisis of some sort, possibly
a hurricane, in perhaps an inner city setting. Most of them,
(28:58):
if not all of them, appear to be African American,
or are perhaps people of color show in some other nation.
It's hard to tell from the photograph. There's a guy
in front with a very bad haircut who is drinking
very very earnestly from a cup of water. This looks
like a water distribution scene after some sort of crisis,
(29:20):
and it's packed. Everybody is there and they're all in
a small space and people are worried. And in the
back of some guy wearing a mask. It might be
a crisis in Haiti. It's hard to tell, but the
text above this from the Trump War Room is import
the third World, become the third World. Your neighborhood under Trump,
your neighborhood under Kamala. So if you had any questions
(29:42):
where the Trump campaign would be going henceforth, the answer
is it would be going to George Wallace's gravestone to
get his support for their campaign. Full on racism. Haven't
we done enough for these people? And other past Republican
slogans dating to nineteen sixty six and earlier, That is
(30:04):
where they're going to go down the last eighty plus
days of this campaign. If you think the stuff about
Kamala Harris identifying as a being of Indian descent and
now suddenly becoming black, if you think that's racist, you
ain't seen nothing yet. But I would remind you that
in this side by side, these Trump shits don't even
(30:27):
recognize the fact that they've shown your neighborhood under Trump
as being completely devoid of people, because of course they
were some of the one million who died under Trump's
mismanagement of COVID. That's just my interpretation of what that
picture means. It's very clean here, like a graveyard. Nice
flag though, and seems to be at full staff, not
(30:47):
at half staff or the million people Trump killed. But
the worst person our winner e lawn Musk. You heard.
I played a clip of it before that very sibilant
destruction of two hours of world history between must Psycho Trump,
the post afterwards from X and its desperate attempt to
(31:10):
appear relevant in the media space between seven forty seven
pm forty seven minutes late and ten forty seven pm
e g. When Trump finally stopped effing talking already President
Donald Trump's space post, Well, he's not president, he's ex president.
You can call him ex president, former president. That's fine.
(31:32):
I would just call him Psycho Trump, but that's just me.
Trump's space post received seventy three million views. During the
same period, there were four million posts about Elon Musk
and President Trump's conversation on X, generating a total of
nine hundred and ninety eight million views. Somebody else wrote,
(31:54):
CNN gets fifty million views per month, less than two
thirds of what this did on Tuesday Night. I noted
at the time that a Twitter view is a second,
and if you watch something on Twitter for one second,
it counts as a view, and thus the total number
of seconds is the total number of views. It's not
(32:14):
like TV when you hear that two million people watched
a show on Fox News. It means that at a
given moment, two million people were actually watching the show,
or estimated to be based on the way ratings work
in television. It's not accumulative. It doesn't mean there were
(32:35):
two million different people who watched some part of it
over the course of an hour. It's two million per average.
We don't know. In fact, there is some demographic information
about how many different people watch during the course of
an hour. But the point is two million is okay?
Freeze time count the number of people watching Sean Hannity
(32:55):
Rachel Maddow when I did a show me and that
number is two million. That is totally different from the
idea of two million Twitter views, which is two million
people watching for a second each. In other words, if
in fact seventy three million people viewed the Musk Trump conversation,
(33:19):
it's like there's a drunk guy here at the bar.
He won't stop his conversation with me. If seventy three
million people viewed for one second each, that would mean
the total audience was actually twenty one thousand people. I mean,
I don't think it was that bad, But that's just
to give you the relative idea between a Twitter view
(33:39):
and a TV viewer. Now, somebody who knows this far
better than I do is Michael Mulbihill, the ratings and
research and analytics dude at Fox Television and Fox Sports.
And he wrote seventy three million views and a concurrent
viewership that never got above one and a half million
(33:59):
implies that the average viewer of this three hour interview
watched for less than four minutes. We used to do
pretty well on Countdown. We held people they used to
watch for about forty five minutes out of the sixty
minute show. The average length of time watching Musk and
Trump was just four minutes, meaning at four minutes people went,
(34:22):
oh my god, I'm listening to this again. Let's go
see what's on good old fashioned TV. Or I don't know,
I'll just count my fingers. That'll be more interesting. Elon Musk,
still lying, still stoned, Still the cautionary tale about what
happens if you mainline ozempic and two days worst a
(34:46):
person in the world. See the number one story on
(35:07):
the Countdown on my favorite topic, me and Things I
Promised not to tell. It was James Thurber who once
pointed out that the secret to great writing was never
throw away anything you have written. He confessed that I
believe in nineteen fifty eight that he had managed to
rework stuff that he had written in nineteen eighteen. Well,
(35:28):
I can finally top him. I wrote what You're going
to Hear Next on March twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.
It was a creative writing assignment for my last English
class at Cornell, and it was simple, somebody you have
met recently who you found interesting or under interesting circumstances.
Four to five pages, typed double space. I'll spare you
(35:50):
the suspense. It's about Sam Rosen, as you will hear.
I had what seemed to be a courtesy interview with
Sam Rosen in his office at UPI Audio in New
York on Thursday, March twenty second, nineteen seventy nine. I
didn't think anything had come of it, but on July third,
nineteen seventy nine, UPI Audio hired me my first job.
(36:11):
I was replacing their sports director. Thought I named Maury Trumbull,
who was leaving to go be the sports director of
NBC Radio. Yes, they used to have such jobs. Morey
and I overlapped for about ten days, so technically he
was my first boss. But really, Sam was my first boss,
and he not only survived it, he's still working. He's
(36:34):
been the play by play announcer of the New York
Rangers since nineteen eighty four, and he remains a friend.
I guess I'm not that tough on my employers after all.
Just as interesting, though, is a guy you will here
referred to in passing in the second sentence as an
ABC Sports executive. I will explain who that was and
(36:54):
is after I read you the original. From the original copy,
I might add which I will start doing in one
second from now. Keith Olberman English, one thirty five point
one three, March twenty seven, nineteen seventy nine. By the
time I cornered Sam Rosen in the back room of
(37:16):
United Press Internationals offices in New York City, March twenty
second had already qualified as a very bizarre day. In
the preceding twelve hours, I had dragged myself out of
bed despite half a night's sleep, conducted a successful job
interview with an ABC Sports executive who turned out to
be a former WTKO ITHACA disc jockey, gotten drunk before
(37:38):
noon at a bar run by an ex Cornell basketball player,
sobered myself up in the bowels of New York's subway
system and walked at least three miles on the hard
city streets. Sam Rosen is a sportscaster for the United
Press Audio Network, a low grade national organization with which
(37:59):
I had some contact and some small hope of employment.
The Rosen, who introduced himself to a burnt out, tired me,
was a burly, slow moving man, broad in the shoulders,
straightforward and confident, and the owner of distractingly bushy sideburns.
He had consented to spend a few minutes with me
at the request of Roger norm, a UPI newscaster, whom
(38:21):
I had met through a contact just four days earlier.
Norham had thought Rosen might be able to help me
in my efforts to get a job, and at the
very least critique a tape of one of my broadcasts.
Page two. Rosen began slowly and deliberately reviewing his rise
to network radio from humble beginnings as a gopher at
a New York station. It's a hard business, Keith, he
(38:44):
pointed out, you have to be prepared to start at
the bottom, even say as an intern for a radio
or TV station. I noted, rather meekly, that I spent
the summer of nineteen seventy eight in just such a
capacity at Channel five in New York. Rosen seemed surprised
and a little miffed at my sliver of experience, and
seemed to be growth hoping for something else to suggest, Well,
(39:07):
it's good to define just where you want your career
to go and how it will go. Rosen's confidence disappeared
a second later when I recounted my decision at the
age of eight to become the country's top sportscaster by
starting in radio and then moving into television. He looked
at me with mystification and slowly leaned back in his seat,
(39:27):
to the accompaniment of a groan from rusty hinges and
the squeak of the chair's casters against the tile floor.
Maybe you should try stringing, he offered, and began to
explain the radio term for providing reports or newsmaker's comments
to a station or network on a freelance basis. He
stopped explaining when I noted I had done that for
(39:47):
three city stations and two networks, including his own. Page
three Oh. There followed a classic deafening silence. Finally, Rosen
seized on something he presumed I couldn't possibly have done already,
Small mark good radio, He blurted, barking the words out
as if he were desperately answering some oral test question.
(40:10):
At the last possible second, Sam looked hopefully at me,
but I disappointed him by reviewing my four years at WVBR,
the station's ratings and nature, and my thousand or so
broadcasts on it. He was now getting upset. It was evident,
and Sam later embarrassedly admitted that he was approaching our
(40:31):
talk as a major league baseball player might a clinic
with a dozen little leaguers. Well, you just can't expect
a job in New York out of college, he was
nearly pleading, And then, more sternly, you have to be realistic. Well, Sam,
I had decided to take the offensive at this point
and was speaking softly and unpresumptuously. Do you think my
four years in Ithaca will be discounted because I was
(40:53):
a college student. It's small market radio, and I don't
think it can get much better in small market radio.
Can we listen to my tape now? Is that okay?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Pleasure? Sam appeared relieved, by not having to answer my question,
and he quickly threaded the brown tape through one of
the studios many large tape recorders. Page four. He hit
the on button and sat back. My voice was soon
reverberating in the small room. At first, Rosen simply gazed
at the revolving reels and played with his sideburns. At
(41:26):
the moments passed, however, the motion stopped and he sat
up in his chair. Finally, with the tape over, he
moved his lips as if to comment, but couldn't manage
more than a nervous laugh. Then suddenly his tone changed.
You know, Keith, this tape. No, maybe I shouldn't point. Well,
we just hired a guy to do sports starting next month,
(41:47):
and I didn't have anything to do with the hiring
or anything. But here Rosen stopped staring past me and
looked me instead, squarely in the eyes. His tape wasn't
half as good as yours. I'm very again, a brief
silence in a staccato delivery. I'm very impressed. It was
at once one of the most prideful and disheartening moments
(42:10):
of my life. I couldn't help but smile at the
thought that perhaps my basic skills were indeed honed enough
to the point of excellence. But at the same time
I sensed having been purposely placed in the right place
at the wrong time. UPI Audio, as Sam later noted,
hadn't had any changes in sports staff since nineteen seventy four,
(42:30):
and here there had been an opening filled just a
week before, filled by somebody who sounded only half as
good as me, Page five. The rest of my conversation
with Sam Rosen was far more enjoyable and relaxed. It
had been graphically illustrated to me that patronizing condescension could
be turned into genuine respect by my simply flashing a
(42:54):
little talent. Sam spent the rest of my time in
the studios bathing me in compliments, offering me any assistance
he could, and urging me to make a lot of
people listen to the tape. Make them listen to it,
he suggested, drawing on our just concluded experience. Early in
the conversation, the instructor in this class English what was it?
(43:19):
One thirty five point one point five one three gave
me a check mark with a plus on it. Sounds
like a great experience. I can't believe that you'll have
any difficulty in finding a suitable job. This is well written,
it's clear to the point narrative. Some cleverness as usual,
but cuteness firmly under control. Also, perhaps because written fast,
(43:40):
none of those awkward spots caused by your fondness for
being indirect. Some things have not changed at all since
nineteen seventy nine. I wish I could remember the name
of the teaching assistant who wrote that she was very nice,
extremely supportive, and obviously claire voyant. Now a little reminder
that you cannot, always, to paraphrase Shakespeare, look into the
(44:03):
seeds of time and say which great and will grow
in which will not. The ABC Sports executive and former
wtko Ithaca, New York disc jockey I met earlier in
the day, to whom I gave short shrift to say
the least in sentenced to a paragraph one, was a
vice president at a broadcast called Wide World of Sports,
(44:24):
who gave me a brilliant piece of advice that I
will save for a later edition of Things I promised
not to tell. And his name was Robert Bob iger Iger.
By nineteen eighty nine, Iigre was the head of entertainment
at the ABC Television Network. In nineteen ninety four, he
became president of Cap Cities ABC, which owned ESPN, so
(44:48):
he became my ultimate boss in my third year there.
The next year, Disney bought ABC, mostly so it could
get its hands on ESPN. Iiger became president of Disney
in two thousand, chairman in two thousand and five. He
retired in twenty twenty one, but he returned to the
but at Disney last year. And as I have said
(45:08):
to him every time we have talked since March twenty second,
nineteen seventy nine, when we met and here, I thought
you were just some middle manager who still wanted to
be a sportscaster when he grew up. Sammy, I've done
(45:37):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Please share this podcast with somebody who does not listen.
We're up to a total audience of over a million
a week. Let's go. Let's go now. Thank you for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, musical directors of Countdown, arranged,
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle on
(45:57):
the orchestration and the keyboards. Mister Ray in charge of guitars,
bass and drums and playing them. It was produced by
Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by
the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports
music is the Lderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged
(46:21):
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer
today was my friend Tony Kornheiser, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
eighty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election
Florida and Texas are in play, and the three hundred
and fifteenth day since convicted felon dementia j second place
(46:44):
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use
the mental health system. You've got this. President Biden used
presidential immunity to stop him from doing it. Gain while
we still again and anti Semitic, anti immigration, nutjob Republicans,
(47:12):
please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletin says the News requires till then. I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(47:41):
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. Texas
is in play Activote polling concluding yesterday Trump fifty three
(00:30):
point three, Harris forty six point seven, so Trump is
only had by six and six tenths in Texas and
the margin of error is five points. Their last poll
was on July nineteenth. It was Trump by nine points,
so she cut the lead by nearly one third in
three weeks. She is ostensibly within the margin of error.
(00:54):
Texas is in play. Texas, oh And Florida is in
play even more in play. Polling led by USA Today
Trump for Harris forty two, so Trump is ahead by
five in Florida. Margin of error is four and a
half points, so Kamala Harris is within the margin of
(01:15):
error in Florida. All previous polls, from one by the
University of North Florida Research Lab to one by a
Trump polster McLaughlin, had Trump by eight as recently as
last Thursday. Quote. I was surprised, unquote, said David Paleo Lojos,
director of Suffolk University Research, which did the poll the
(01:39):
five point poll, that Harris is within striking distance, being
only five points down Florida is in play. Florida, Florida,
and Texas are in play. I have an urgent request
of Donald Trump's campaign for president. Please continue to do
(02:02):
everything exactly the way you are doing it now. Thank you.
You are Kamala Harris's primary asset. You are her rock. Now.
Look is she going to win Florida or Texas or both?
(02:24):
I don't think so. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in
Florida by a million. Trump won Texas in twenty sixteen
by nine points, by five and a half in twenty twenty.
But the fact of Kamala Harris before the convention, before
the campaign has really even begun. The fact that she,
by just being there has cut Trump's lead by nearly
(02:46):
a third in Texas and nearly forty percent in Florida,
tells you just how bad things were there and elsewhere,
and just how much better things are now and how
much better they've already gotten in Florida and Texas and
Michigan and Pennsylvania and America. I have previously discussed and
(03:08):
expressed my distrust of Poles, my horror at the ease
of their manipulation of my own experience with people at
MSNBC asking Frank Lunz for a focus group and for
the outcome of that focus group about me before they
did the focus group. I've expressed this occasionally, once or
(03:31):
twice a week, but poles are compass needles. They don't
tell you how far you have to go, and they
don't give you directions on how to get there. But
generally speaking, they do get the big picture right. They
do get north versus south correctly, and right now they
(03:51):
are all saying the same thing. It is Trump who
is going south. We even have the first polling on
Tim Walls. Morning Console pulled on him right after she
chose him August two and three, and again over this
past weekend. So the original poll showed that fifty seven
(04:13):
percent of all voters had never heard of him. Never
heard of him fifty seven percent, It is now fifteen percent.
That would be a good rollout. Walls had a favorable
score of eighteen in the first poll, it is now
thirty eight. His unfavorables went from eleven to thirty three.
Cutting to the chase. He is above water by five
(04:35):
points as of Sunday. As Morning Consult notes, the vice
presidential pick rarely gets any traction is rarely a boon
or a bust. And this guy is in positive territory,
and that's after the Republicans began to try to swift
vote him. They note that Walls is at plus five
and at the same point in his rollout, Vance was
at minus one. And I'm going to go way out
(04:57):
on a limb here and say that JV has not
exactly rebounded from minus one. A couple of other results
Big Village pollsters. This is a national poll, Harris by three.
It's previous poll, Trump by two. Nate Silver's average keeps
growing a couple of parts of a point each day.
(05:21):
Now Harris by three and one tenth nationally. Bullfinch asked
swing state voters which candidate would you feel comfortable babysitting
your kids? Total shock here on the answer Harris forty
five percent, Trump twenty percent, and I'm presuming the remaining percent,
(05:41):
the thirty five percent left over, those are JV Vance's
childless cat ladies. Right now to the election interference by Politico,
(06:17):
by the New York Times, by the Washington Post, in
which we are talked down to by a news organization
of one hundred and forty seven years experience, which has
done us the service of explaining why the Washington Post
cannot publish nor even identify internal documents and computer traffic
stolen from a presidential campaign. I mean, why the Washington
(06:40):
Post cannot publish any of that this time, especially a
lengthy JV vance vetting document prepared by or for the
Trump campaign. Which news organization has explained this to us
about the Washington Post. Why it's the Washington Post quote
this episode probably reflects that news organizations aren't going to
(07:03):
snap at any hack that comes in and is marked
as exclusive or inside dope and publish it for the
sake of publishing, said Matt Murray, Executive editor of the Post. Instead, quote,
all of the news organizations in this case took a
deep breath and paused and thought about who was likely
(07:23):
to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the
hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy
or not. Well, that's the part of the executive editor's
statement intended for the journalism schools as classes begin anew
in the coming weeks. Here's the real part of what
mister Murray had to say. The decision for newsrooms to
(07:44):
not publish the Dvance Materials, a compilation of publicly available
records and statements, including Dvance's past criticisms of Trump, appeared
to be more straightforward because they also didn't reach a
high level of public interest. Quoting this guy Murray, the
one who still uses phrases like inside dope, quoting mister Murray.
(08:07):
In the end, it didn't seem fresh or new enough.
So if it were new jd Vance stuff, then they'd
swallow hard and just push those morals and ethics to
the side a little bit and run it and not
(08:28):
say all that stuff about taking a deep breath and
pausing and thinking about who the leaker might be or
what their motives might be. Gotcha? End number one justifies
the means, and end number two does not justify the means. Frauds.
From the same Washington Post piece, quoting Kelly McBride, NPR's
(08:51):
public editor and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for
Ethics and Leadership at the Pointer Institute, and before twenty sixteen,
the general thinking was that even with hacked materials quote
if there's something interesting in there, and of course you're
going to report it unquote, but with foreign state actors
increasingly getting involved. It just feels diceier for news organizations
(09:14):
to make the decision, because you don't want to be
helping another country undermine our democracy. McBride said. The motivations
don't have to be pure, but it can't be to
undermine the stability of the entire country. She added that
just seems like a bridge too far. Of course, that
(09:35):
wasn't a bridge too far in twenty sixteen, was it?
Ms McBride. While there was no initial clear link between
say Russia and Wiki leaks and Roger Stone and his wig,
it became apparent pretty damned fast that there was a
link between at least two of those folks, especially after
(10:00):
that subtle hint from Trump. Remember when he said, quote, Russia,
if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the
thirty thousand emails that are missing. I think you will
probably be rewarded mightily by our press, which he said, incidentally,
and answer to a question by Katie Turr god and
the same day that he said that Russian intelligence began
(10:21):
to target Hillary Clinton's emails. It's almost as if they
were listening. The Washington Post, of course, is threading not
one but two needles. Here, it is insisting it does
not have to publish the results of the anti Trump hacking,
while insisting it was justified in publishing the results of
(10:43):
the pro Trump hacking, while also insisting it's older and
wiser and more careful now bullshit. Brian Boutler flagged this
clip from the old Showtime political program The Circus, and
since Showtime posted the clip on YouTube, I'm sure it
won't mind the plug. I think the show is an
(11:04):
on ayme, but so what. It's a plug for Showtime
now available on your cable package. It's Mark McKinnon talking
in twenty sixteen with Washington Post reporters Roz Helderman and
Mateia Gold. Matea Gold I dealt with several times when
she was in LA is now one of the posts
managing editors, and it's her voice you will hear first
(11:26):
on this, and you should look for this clip on
YouTube because you should see Matia Gold's face light up
when the other reporter, Roz Helderman, the one with the glasses,
says she's just found something juicy inside the stolen materials
the Post is going to publish as opposed to these
(11:48):
stolen materials, which they're not going to publish.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Obviously, Wikiwiks seems to have some sort of agenda in
putting this material out. But at the same time, I
don't think anything that's been released so far has been
this big October surprise. It's going to change the trajectory
of the race, Hey, Roz about anything?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
A couple little things. Podesta says that they've taken on
a lot of water, and he says most of that
has to do with terrible decisions made pre campaign, but
a lot has to do with her instincts. Who and
then neuro writes back, almost no one knows better than
me that her instincts can be terrible.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Did that create any issues for you guys as reporters
that it seemed strategically leaked?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I think every indication is that both of these hacks
are stolen material. On the other hand, they're undeniably newsworthy.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
This information is now out there and it's getting consumed
by the public, So I actually feel like we have
a responsibility to use it to sort of illuminate the
stories that we're already been working on and pursuing. I
think we have to assume that these kind of hacks
will likely happen again, and that this kind of material.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Will re allergy culture going forward.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
That's sort of the psychological warfare aspect of the campaign, argues,
which is true. I mean, if there's no doubt it
has rattled them, it's everyone going to have to be
on guard for this kind of hack in the future.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So they knew in twenty sixteen this would happen again,
and they knew they were setting the precedent, and they
knew they wouldn't do better next time. And now they're
pretending that it hasn't happened again, and they're pretending no
precedent was set, and they're confirming they aren't doing better
next time, and they haven't learned a damn thing. The
(13:35):
Washington Post Executive editor Matt Murray again in an interview
with his own reporters about why his own newsroom is
failing all its own ethical obligations to its own nation quote.
Murray said, the Post has no blanket, no hacked materials policy.
You have to evaluate the material as it comes in.
I certainly don't want to encourage hacked material, but it's
(13:58):
going to happen in this world that we're in. So
they they've learned something the hell they have. They published
in twenty sixteen because the material was hot. They're not
publishing in twenty twenty four because the material isn't hot.
(14:21):
And when the next hot material comes in, they've made
sure they can all sell out their ethics yet again
in yet a different direction. One thing you may have
noticed in none of mister Murray's remarks, nor any of
the similar ones from similar editors at the Times or
Politico explaining their cowardice. In none of them do any
(14:44):
of them take the weaker but still far more commendable
route of at least admitting they screwed up in twenty
sixteen when they decided to publish. I mean, it would
be nice to see the word wrong come out of
somebody's mouth. But in twenty six years in the news
andical news businesses, I can tell you without fear contradiction,
(15:07):
that the most wide spread skill in the field is
the one that allows someone to make up gallant sounding
rationalizations for doing or not doing anything purely for the
public interest, never for your own interest, and always accepting
the responsibility, but never the blame. Because, as the political
(15:33):
impressionist David Fry once said, those who are to blame
lose their jobs. Those who are responsible do not. You
would think there'd be some pain from twisting their spine
so much so often, but remember this is the Washington Post.
(15:57):
These guys don't have a spine. A couple of other notes.
You heard that Selene Dion is suing over Trump using
her song My Heart Will Go On from Titanic at
his rallies. I mean, come on, it's perfect, all right.
(16:21):
I can understand her not wanting to be associated with it,
but it is the perfect song. Everything but the glob Glob.
As another option, may I suggest the wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald. This is hilarious. This is from Stephen Chung,
a Trump spokesman who, to his credit, usually puts his
name on press statements from the Trump campaign, even though
(16:43):
Trump has been leaking anonymously on and off the record
since at least the nineteen eighties. The Harris campaign referred
to the Trump Musk Twitter whatever that was, and referred
to Trump's extremism and dangerous Project twenty twenty five agenda,
and the Harris campaign insulted Musk by saying Trump is
there in service of people like Keon Musk and himself
(17:06):
self obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class,
and who cannot run a live stream in the year
twenty twenty four. Stephen Chunk's response, all these statements, yet
nobody ever puts their name on them. Effing Coward's Steve bigmad.
Steve's so big mad he didn't notice it. Right under
(17:29):
that statement it reads Harris Walls in capital letters. That
would be two somebodies who put both their names on it.
They were right, of course, though I did think there
was one undersold gem in that thing that Donnie and
(17:51):
Elanie did on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
The next time. What we'll do is if something happens
with his election, which would be a horror show, we'll
meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a
far safer place to meet in our country. Okay, so
we'll go, You and I will go, and we'll have
a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
So they're gonna move to Venezuela. Huh. Don't let the
wall door hit you in the ass on the way out, Donald.
But finally, maybe the fullest measure of how bad it's
gone for Trump and how fast it's gone bad is
criticism from one person, one voter out there, one lone voice.
(18:33):
Trump is getting hurt, says this one loan critic, because quote,
it's all about discipline. He's a very emotional guy, and
if he's having a bad day, that bad day is
gonna come out during a rally or an interview. But
he isn't like a guy who is internalizing what he
should do. He just flies and he doesn't really think
about the repercussions of what he says, and that's hurting him.
(18:57):
The speaker Bill O'Reilly, or what's left of him on Newsmax.
I was shocked. Bill O'Reilly's gaunt now scary looking. Basically,
he's down to just a skull and an ego. But
(19:18):
understand what Bill O'Reilly's criticism of Trump means. More than
a decade ago, when I still paid for front row
seats at Yankee Stadium, mostly so I could give away
two hundred and fifty tickets a year to make a
wish and sit there and get in ESPN's camera shot
when they did the games. Half the games I actually
went to, there would be Trump seated a row or
(19:41):
two behind me with a guest neither of them ever
saying a word. Trump not even talking to this guy
who appeared to have been his only friend in the world,
the only person who ever showed up with him to
these games. You'd see them drinking milkshakes, occasionally chain drinking milkshakes.
(20:01):
Otherwise they just sat there silently staring at the ball game.
The other guy with Trump was Bill O'Reilly. If Bill
O'Reilly is slamming Trump, it's over. Texas is in play,
(20:22):
Florida is in play. Bill O'Reilly is in play.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
By the way, they're tickets. They're Yankee tickets. They were
gratis no charge, provided by the Yankees, because Bill O'Reilly
and Donald Trump were two of the three biggest freeloaders
I have ever seen at any ballpark anywhere. The third
Rudy Giuliani. Those we're all free tickets. Me I paid.
(20:58):
I mean, there was a tax deduction for the tickets
I gave away. I'm not going to deny that. But
I paid because you because you pay for things. Also
of interest here, speaking of New York sports, my past
is slipping away. Yesterday it happened again. The day before
(21:19):
had been New York's top all news radio station, the
great inspiration of my youth going off the air. And
yesterday it was my first boss, the first of a
long suffering parade of my long suffering bosses retiring, retiring
after about half a century of doing play by play
(21:40):
of the New York Rangers hockey team. I have known
my friend Sam Rosen so long that when I first
met him, I wrote about it in a paper for
one of my classes in school. Oh sorry, Sam.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman,
my crazy friend still ahead of us on this edition
(22:30):
of Countdown. Monday, it was the New York all news
radio station WCBS going off the air, the station who's
news director in nineteen seventy nine gave me the self
confidence to actually pursue this as a life's work. Yesterday
it was the retirement, effective after the upcoming season of
(22:52):
Sam Rosen, the Hall of fame play by play man
of the New York Rangers. Sam was my first boss
in radio in nineteen seventy nine. In fact, I met
him sixteen days before I got that letter from the
news director at WCBS Radio. Sam was both my first
true job lead and my first boss. And now he's retiring.
(23:18):
As they say, time is undefeated. But there's more to
this because after I met him, but before he hired me,
And think about having a Hall of Fame career as
a broadcaster after you were responsible for managing this crazy
twenty and twenty one year old kid version of me.
(23:39):
After I met him, but before he hired me, I
had to go back to my senior year at Cornell
and write a creative writing essay about a memorable person
I had met under unusual circumstances. So I wrote it
about Sam Rosen, And of course I still have the
original copy, which I will read to you next in
(24:02):
Things I promised not to tell first, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days
worst persons in the World, Lebron's worse Chris Slizza, two
(24:23):
z's and an endless amount of ls you remember him
from such worst person in the world appearances as it's
Shapiro people, And how dare you claim Trump as dementia?
You're not doctors? Even though I wrote fifty pieces just
in twenty fifteen diagnosing Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and telling
(24:44):
the former history teacher Jim Clyburn that rule one is,
don't compare anything to Nazi Germany. Well, Chris, with a
lot of zas and an endless amount of ls is back.
It's been twenty three days since Joe Biden ended his candidacy.
It's been seven days since Kamala Harris was formerly named
the Democratic presidential nominee. She has yet to sit for
(25:06):
an interview with any media outlet, and she has answered
less than five total questions from the press.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Chris. Those five questions were when she came over to
the traveling pool and said, okay, what you got and
they asked her her policies. No, they asked her about
Trump and what Trump had said, and what did she
think of Trump? And Trump did this, and Trump did that?
Who wasted the opportunity with the Vice president of the
(25:35):
United States to address I don't know the border the
Middle East? Tim Walls, Whether or not she was black
or Indian or Blindian or anything like that. No, No,
they asked her about Trump. Might as well have asked
her about her football picks for the first weekend of
the NFL season. So You're blaming her because our American
(25:59):
news media, particularly the White House and the Vice Presidential
Press Corps, is largely made up of people who only
remember the last three hours of their lives. I mean,
what do you want from her? You want her to
have a news conference like the one Trump had last week,
where it turned out his news conference was about him
(26:21):
pretending to have a news conference instead of just saying,
I'm going to come here and give a series of
small speeches that have nothing to do with the questions
you just asked me. She is, as Solica accurately notes,
I just said it, Solica and accurate. In the same sentence,
Solica notes she was on day twenty three of her
(26:42):
campaign official or unofficial day twenty three of her campaign,
and he's upset that he has not gotten an exclusive
with her. You're going to try to push her off
the ticket too, because she hasn't done enough interviews with
the Washington Post, CNN and anybody else. That fired you,
Jesus never stops. Absolutely no self awareness whatsoever. You would
(27:07):
think getting fired might have been the first clue that, oh, well,
maybe I'm not doing this correctly. I mean, I have
quit jobs and wondered today, let me quit. Maybe I'm
not as good at this as I thought I was.
Never such a doubt has hit. Chris Silizza has it.
The runners up worser speaking of not having a doubt.
The Trump War Room, which is considered an official part
(27:31):
of the social media campaign of what's his name Psycho Trump.
They put out a tweet tweet x a muscow or
whatever you're gonna call them at eleven twenty one am
Eastern daylight time yesterday. There is a picture on the
left of some two story homes. I mean, they look okay.
(27:53):
They have porches that are not sagging, so they don't
look like the more disreputable parts of upstate New York.
They don't look like a place that you would live
your entire life in going where all the people who
live in the United States actually go on a day
like this, I haven't seen anybody new since the year
two thousand and three. They have that, and it's nice
(28:14):
and clean, and the bushes out front or all right,
and there don't seem to be any cracks in the
pavement or in the six steps up to the giant
American flag that's taller than any of the inbred people
inside this house that is clearly in a white neighborhood.
And I might add there are no people shown in
this photograph, and it says your neighborhood under Trump, and
(28:36):
there's a picture of houses and a flag and no people.
Next to it is your neighborhood under Kamala And in
it is a bunch of folks who appear to be
rushing for aid after a crisis of some sort, possibly
a hurricane, in perhaps an inner city setting. Most of them,
(28:58):
if not all of them, appear to be African American,
or are perhaps people of color show in some other nation.
It's hard to tell from the photograph. There's a guy
in front with a very bad haircut who is drinking
very very earnestly from a cup of water. This looks
like a water distribution scene after some sort of crisis,
(29:20):
and it's packed. Everybody is there and they're all in
a small space and people are worried. And in the
back of some guy wearing a mask. It might be
a crisis in Haiti. It's hard to tell, but the
text above this from the Trump War Room is import
the third World, become the third World. Your neighborhood under Trump,
your neighborhood under Kamala. So if you had any questions
(29:42):
where the Trump campaign would be going henceforth, the answer
is it would be going to George Wallace's gravestone to
get his support for their campaign. Full on racism. Haven't
we done enough for these people? And other past Republican
slogans dating to nineteen sixty six and earlier, That is
(30:04):
where they're going to go down the last eighty plus
days of this campaign. If you think the stuff about
Kamala Harris identifying as a being of Indian descent and
now suddenly becoming black, if you think that's racist, you
ain't seen nothing yet. But I would remind you that
in this side by side, these Trump shits don't even
(30:27):
recognize the fact that they've shown your neighborhood under Trump
as being completely devoid of people, because of course they
were some of the one million who died under Trump's
mismanagement of COVID. That's just my interpretation of what that
picture means. It's very clean here, like a graveyard. Nice
flag though, and seems to be at full staff, not
(30:47):
at half staff or the million people Trump killed. But
the worst person our winner e lawn Musk. You heard.
I played a clip of it before that very sibilant
destruction of two hours of world history between must Psycho Trump,
the post afterwards from X and its desperate attempt to
(31:10):
appear relevant in the media space between seven forty seven
pm forty seven minutes late and ten forty seven pm
e g. When Trump finally stopped effing talking already President
Donald Trump's space post, Well, he's not president, he's ex president.
You can call him ex president, former president. That's fine.
(31:32):
I would just call him Psycho Trump, but that's just me.
Trump's space post received seventy three million views. During the
same period, there were four million posts about Elon Musk
and President Trump's conversation on X, generating a total of
nine hundred and ninety eight million views. Somebody else wrote,
(31:54):
CNN gets fifty million views per month, less than two
thirds of what this did on Tuesday Night. I noted
at the time that a Twitter view is a second,
and if you watch something on Twitter for one second,
it counts as a view, and thus the total number
of seconds is the total number of views. It's not
(32:14):
like TV when you hear that two million people watched
a show on Fox News. It means that at a
given moment, two million people were actually watching the show,
or estimated to be based on the way ratings work
in television. It's not accumulative. It doesn't mean there were
(32:35):
two million different people who watched some part of it
over the course of an hour. It's two million per average.
We don't know. In fact, there is some demographic information
about how many different people watch during the course of
an hour. But the point is two million is okay?
Freeze time count the number of people watching Sean Hannity
(32:55):
Rachel Maddow when I did a show me and that
number is two million. That is totally different from the
idea of two million Twitter views, which is two million
people watching for a second each. In other words, if
in fact seventy three million people viewed the Musk Trump conversation,
(33:19):
it's like there's a drunk guy here at the bar.
He won't stop his conversation with me. If seventy three
million people viewed for one second each, that would mean
the total audience was actually twenty one thousand people. I mean,
I don't think it was that bad, But that's just
to give you the relative idea between a Twitter view
(33:39):
and a TV viewer. Now, somebody who knows this far
better than I do is Michael Mulbihill, the ratings and
research and analytics dude at Fox Television and Fox Sports.
And he wrote seventy three million views and a concurrent
viewership that never got above one and a half million
(33:59):
implies that the average viewer of this three hour interview
watched for less than four minutes. We used to do
pretty well on Countdown. We held people they used to
watch for about forty five minutes out of the sixty
minute show. The average length of time watching Musk and
Trump was just four minutes, meaning at four minutes people went,
(34:22):
oh my god, I'm listening to this again. Let's go
see what's on good old fashioned TV. Or I don't know,
I'll just count my fingers. That'll be more interesting. Elon Musk,
still lying, still stoned, Still the cautionary tale about what
happens if you mainline ozempic and two days worst a
(34:46):
person in the world. See the number one story on
(35:07):
the Countdown on my favorite topic, me and Things I
Promised not to tell. It was James Thurber who once
pointed out that the secret to great writing was never
throw away anything you have written. He confessed that I
believe in nineteen fifty eight that he had managed to
rework stuff that he had written in nineteen eighteen. Well,
(35:28):
I can finally top him. I wrote what You're going
to Hear Next on March twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.
It was a creative writing assignment for my last English
class at Cornell, and it was simple, somebody you have
met recently who you found interesting or under interesting circumstances.
Four to five pages, typed double space. I'll spare you
(35:50):
the suspense. It's about Sam Rosen, as you will hear.
I had what seemed to be a courtesy interview with
Sam Rosen in his office at UPI Audio in New
York on Thursday, March twenty second, nineteen seventy nine. I
didn't think anything had come of it, but on July third,
nineteen seventy nine, UPI Audio hired me my first job.
(36:11):
I was replacing their sports director. Thought I named Maury Trumbull,
who was leaving to go be the sports director of
NBC Radio. Yes, they used to have such jobs. Morey
and I overlapped for about ten days, so technically he
was my first boss. But really, Sam was my first boss,
and he not only survived it, he's still working. He's
(36:34):
been the play by play announcer of the New York
Rangers since nineteen eighty four, and he remains a friend.
I guess I'm not that tough on my employers after all.
Just as interesting, though, is a guy you will here
referred to in passing in the second sentence as an
ABC Sports executive. I will explain who that was and
(36:54):
is after I read you the original. From the original copy,
I might add which I will start doing in one
second from now. Keith Olberman English, one thirty five point
one three, March twenty seven, nineteen seventy nine. By the
time I cornered Sam Rosen in the back room of
(37:16):
United Press Internationals offices in New York City, March twenty
second had already qualified as a very bizarre day. In
the preceding twelve hours, I had dragged myself out of
bed despite half a night's sleep, conducted a successful job
interview with an ABC Sports executive who turned out to
be a former WTKO ITHACA disc jockey, gotten drunk before
(37:38):
noon at a bar run by an ex Cornell basketball player,
sobered myself up in the bowels of New York's subway
system and walked at least three miles on the hard
city streets. Sam Rosen is a sportscaster for the United
Press Audio Network, a low grade national organization with which
(37:59):
I had some contact and some small hope of employment.
The Rosen, who introduced himself to a burnt out, tired me,
was a burly, slow moving man, broad in the shoulders,
straightforward and confident, and the owner of distractingly bushy sideburns.
He had consented to spend a few minutes with me
at the request of Roger norm, a UPI newscaster, whom
(38:21):
I had met through a contact just four days earlier.
Norham had thought Rosen might be able to help me
in my efforts to get a job, and at the
very least critique a tape of one of my broadcasts.
Page two. Rosen began slowly and deliberately reviewing his rise
to network radio from humble beginnings as a gopher at
a New York station. It's a hard business, Keith, he
(38:44):
pointed out, you have to be prepared to start at
the bottom, even say as an intern for a radio
or TV station. I noted, rather meekly, that I spent
the summer of nineteen seventy eight in just such a
capacity at Channel five in New York. Rosen seemed surprised
and a little miffed at my sliver of experience, and
seemed to be growth hoping for something else to suggest, Well,
(39:07):
it's good to define just where you want your career
to go and how it will go. Rosen's confidence disappeared
a second later when I recounted my decision at the
age of eight to become the country's top sportscaster by
starting in radio and then moving into television. He looked
at me with mystification and slowly leaned back in his seat,
(39:27):
to the accompaniment of a groan from rusty hinges and
the squeak of the chair's casters against the tile floor.
Maybe you should try stringing, he offered, and began to
explain the radio term for providing reports or newsmaker's comments
to a station or network on a freelance basis. He
stopped explaining when I noted I had done that for
(39:47):
three city stations and two networks, including his own. Page
three Oh. There followed a classic deafening silence. Finally, Rosen
seized on something he presumed I couldn't possibly have done already,
Small mark good radio, He blurted, barking the words out
as if he were desperately answering some oral test question.
(40:10):
At the last possible second, Sam looked hopefully at me,
but I disappointed him by reviewing my four years at WVBR,
the station's ratings and nature, and my thousand or so
broadcasts on it. He was now getting upset. It was evident,
and Sam later embarrassedly admitted that he was approaching our
(40:31):
talk as a major league baseball player might a clinic
with a dozen little leaguers. Well, you just can't expect
a job in New York out of college, he was
nearly pleading, And then, more sternly, you have to be realistic. Well, Sam,
I had decided to take the offensive at this point
and was speaking softly and unpresumptuously. Do you think my
four years in Ithaca will be discounted because I was
(40:53):
a college student. It's small market radio, and I don't
think it can get much better in small market radio.
Can we listen to my tape now? Is that okay?
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Pleasure? Sam appeared relieved, by not having to answer my question,
and he quickly threaded the brown tape through one of
the studios many large tape recorders. Page four. He hit
the on button and sat back. My voice was soon
reverberating in the small room. At first, Rosen simply gazed
at the revolving reels and played with his sideburns. At
(41:26):
the moments passed, however, the motion stopped and he sat
up in his chair. Finally, with the tape over, he
moved his lips as if to comment, but couldn't manage
more than a nervous laugh. Then suddenly his tone changed.
You know, Keith, this tape. No, maybe I shouldn't point. Well,
we just hired a guy to do sports starting next month,
(41:47):
and I didn't have anything to do with the hiring
or anything. But here Rosen stopped staring past me and
looked me instead, squarely in the eyes. His tape wasn't
half as good as yours. I'm very again, a brief
silence in a staccato delivery. I'm very impressed. It was
at once one of the most prideful and disheartening moments
(42:10):
of my life. I couldn't help but smile at the
thought that perhaps my basic skills were indeed honed enough
to the point of excellence. But at the same time
I sensed having been purposely placed in the right place
at the wrong time. UPI Audio, as Sam later noted,
hadn't had any changes in sports staff since nineteen seventy four,
(42:30):
and here there had been an opening filled just a
week before, filled by somebody who sounded only half as
good as me, Page five. The rest of my conversation
with Sam Rosen was far more enjoyable and relaxed. It
had been graphically illustrated to me that patronizing condescension could
be turned into genuine respect by my simply flashing a
(42:54):
little talent. Sam spent the rest of my time in
the studios bathing me in compliments, offering me any assistance
he could, and urging me to make a lot of
people listen to the tape. Make them listen to it,
he suggested, drawing on our just concluded experience. Early in
the conversation, the instructor in this class English what was it?
(43:19):
One thirty five point one point five one three gave
me a check mark with a plus on it. Sounds
like a great experience. I can't believe that you'll have
any difficulty in finding a suitable job. This is well written,
it's clear to the point narrative. Some cleverness as usual,
but cuteness firmly under control. Also, perhaps because written fast,
(43:40):
none of those awkward spots caused by your fondness for
being indirect. Some things have not changed at all since
nineteen seventy nine. I wish I could remember the name
of the teaching assistant who wrote that she was very nice,
extremely supportive, and obviously claire voyant. Now a little reminder
that you cannot, always, to paraphrase Shakespeare, look into the
(44:03):
seeds of time and say which great and will grow
in which will not. The ABC Sports executive and former
wtko Ithaca, New York disc jockey I met earlier in
the day, to whom I gave short shrift to say
the least in sentenced to a paragraph one, was a
vice president at a broadcast called Wide World of Sports,
(44:24):
who gave me a brilliant piece of advice that I
will save for a later edition of Things I promised
not to tell. And his name was Robert Bob iger Iger.
By nineteen eighty nine, Iigre was the head of entertainment
at the ABC Television Network. In nineteen ninety four, he
became president of Cap Cities ABC, which owned ESPN, so
(44:48):
he became my ultimate boss in my third year there.
The next year, Disney bought ABC, mostly so it could
get its hands on ESPN. Iiger became president of Disney
in two thousand, chairman in two thousand and five. He
retired in twenty twenty one, but he returned to the
but at Disney last year. And as I have said
(45:08):
to him every time we have talked since March twenty second,
nineteen seventy nine, when we met and here, I thought
you were just some middle manager who still wanted to
be a sportscaster when he grew up. Sammy, I've done
(45:37):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Please share this podcast with somebody who does not listen.
We're up to a total audience of over a million
a week. Let's go. Let's go now. Thank you for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, musical directors of Countdown, arranged,
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle on
(45:57):
the orchestration and the keyboards. Mister Ray in charge of guitars,
bass and drums and playing them. It was produced by
Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by
the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports
music is the Lderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged
(46:21):
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer
today was my friend Tony Kornheiser, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
eighty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election
Florida and Texas are in play, and the three hundred
and fifteenth day since convicted felon dementia j second place
(46:44):
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use
the mental health system. You've got this. President Biden used
presidential immunity to stop him from doing it. Gain while
we still again and anti Semitic, anti immigration, nutjob Republicans,
(47:12):
please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletin says the News requires till then. I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(47:41):
Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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