July 10, 2024 • 53 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 210: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's over.
If President Biden and his campaign team and his party discipline team can handle Trump and the electorate and the news conferences and the debates as efficiently as they have turned around the effort to push him off the ticket, they are going to win the election in a landslide.
You never say it’s over, especially not with Biden headed for a news conference tomorrow as the NATO summit in Washington concludes in which literally two bad answers or one REALLY bad answer could end his candidacy before noon on Friday. But for now, and skipping for a moment the obviously larger question over whether this signals the start of democracy’s going out of business sale… it… is… over.
Final score: Number of Democrats in the House who called for him to step down, on the record… SEVEN.
Number of Democrats in the Senate who called for him to step down, on the record… NONE.
Number of ex-presidents who called for him to step down… NONE.
Number of historians he loves who called for him to step down…NONE.
Number of former Speakers of the House who reportedly told friends in private she’s deeply uneasy with his continued candidacy and of whom a Biden confidante said "He would listen reluctantly, but he'd listen to her”who called for him to step down… NONE.
Semafor News asked an attendee, off the record, if the mood was comparable to that at a funeral. The answer? “That is an insult to funerals.”
Now there’s just one problem in all this and I think you already know what it is. The only problem it solves is the one Joe Biden had, or has. Out here on the going-out-of-business sale floor, the President is suddenly losing Wisconsin by five, and the Cook Political report just moved Arizona and Georgia and Nevada from Toss-Up to Lean Trump; and just moved Minnesota, Nebraska-Second, and New Hampshire from Likely Biden to Lean Biden.
And the Biden Campaign seems to think this is over, rather than permanent. They will find out otherwise tomorrow night when he gets parsed at that press conference like he was a newly-found Dead Sea Scroll.
ALSO: Two Senators actually call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Clarence Thomas! Project 2025 is trending. And we'll play another edition of "What Crime Did Trump Commit TODAY?"
B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There are people preparing to be cryogenically frozen at the facility where they still keep Ted Williams in a jar who are setting up thousand-year investment funds for when they get thawed. Brian Stelter is so desperate to be rehired by The New York Times he's pretending his old paper also wrote an editorial calling for Trump to bow out. And Dana Bash? Jake Tapper? Trump praised your work on the debate. Your careers are thus over.
C-Block (38:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I watched an Atlanta Braves game the other night and was thus flashed back to the World Series I covered there where the hotel put me in a room next to all-night choir practice.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
President Biden and his campaign team and his party disciplined
(00:25):
team can handle Trump and the electorate and the news
conferences and the debates as efficiently as they have turned
around the effort to push him off the tickets, they
are going to win the election in a landslide. It's over.
You never say it's over, especially not with Biden headed
for a news conference tomorrow as the NATO summit in
(00:46):
Washington concludes, in which literally two bad answers are one
really bad answer could end his candidacy on the spot,
or at worst before noon on Friday. But for now,
and skipping for a moment, the obviously larger question over
whether this signals the start of demock receives going out
of business sale, it is over. Final score. Number of
(01:10):
Democrats in the House who called for him to step
down on the record seven, including long after it was
over yesterday afternoon Mikey Sheryl of New Jersey. Number of
Democrats in the Senate who called for him to step
down on the record none. Number of ex presidents who
called for him to step down none. Number of historians
(01:31):
he loves who called for him to step down. None
number of former Speakers of the House who reportedly told
friends in private, she's deeply uneasy with his continued candidacy,
and of whom a Biden confidante said he would listen reluctantly,
but he'd listened to her who called for him to
step down. None House Democrats met yesterday, and it was
(01:54):
over when the current Speaker, mister Jeffries, talked about unity
at the beginning and staying together and listening to each other,
and by then it was over. Before again, the step
down caucus members said they were preempted by Biden's letter
to House members on Monday, which is nonsense and which
shows you just how untough the Democrats on Capitol Hill
(02:16):
really are. The debate was two weeks ago tomorrow, and
the first thing Biden did nothing to fix it for
a week, and then almost no House Democrats said anything
for the next week. And they think somehow they got
out flanked. If they got outflanked, they got outflanked by
(02:36):
an army of slow moving ants. Juan Vargas of California
a stick with Joe Stalwart, quoted by Politico, it's the
stupidest thing I've ever seen a circular firing squad. Semaphore
News asked an attendee to the congressional meeting off the
record if the mood was comparable to that of a funeral.
(02:58):
The answer that is an insult to funerals. Now, there's
just one problem and all this success from Team Biden,
and I think you may already know what that one
problem is. The one problem that remains is the only
problem that's been solved, is the one Joe Biden had
or has out here on the going out of business
(03:23):
sale floor. The Cook Political Report just moved Arizona and
Georgia and Nevada from toss up to lean Republican, and
just moved Minnesota, Nebraska second, and New Hampshire from likely
Democrat to lean Democrat. And if you want some disastrous metaphors,
(03:46):
there is new polling from Wisconsin. And while the incumbent
Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin leads her Republican challenger, who is
the guy who is on the old brawny paper tow
package rappers, While she leads him by five points, Biden
is six behind Trump. And the disastrous of that metaphor,
besides the number six, the polling was sponsored by AAARP,
(04:12):
and even the unanimity of the on the record support
for keeping the president on the ticket is really just
paved over discontent. Jerry Nadler went on the House conference
call and was quoted as saying Biden should drop out.
Now he says, whether or not I have concerns is
besides the point. He is going to be our nominee
(04:33):
and we all have to support him. And as to
the Senate, even as John Fetterman suggested that to hypo
his polling quote, maybe we can convince President Biden to
bang a porn star unquote, it is now widely reported
that at least three Democratic senators told their conclave that
Biden is in big trouble and unlikely to win. Senator
(04:54):
Brown of Ohio, Senator Tester whose races are so tight
that they could use somebody else's top the ticket anyway,
and then their Senator Bennett of Colorado, who said Joe
Biden is in big trouble, not be because of his stumbles,
but because he has gotten no traction whatsoever in the
messaging war over the economy. And you know what, he hasn't.
(05:14):
So let's just say all of this stuff about his
mental health and his acuity vanished tomorrow and nobody ever
remembered it. Oh yeah, that's right, didn't get anywhere in
the messaging war on the economy. In short, we have
and again this could one eighty again as soon as
tomorrow at that news conference. And by the way, that
(05:36):
is its own problem, which I've addressed here previously. At
exactly what point do we stop thinking that at any
time the president appears in front of a camera, something
terrible might happen. This nightmarish situation in which there has
been public handwringing over the president's reelection one hundred and
twenty days before that election from his own side, from
(06:00):
some of his party leaders, and it has been paved over,
and there is not one indication that the campaign or
the White House has accurately assessed this as a problem
that deals with winning the election. They see this problem
as an insurrection within the party to stamp out that
(06:23):
entire question seems to be looked at as well. The
voters will figure it out. They'll realize, oh PS Project
twenty twenty five. And the fact is, just in this century,
the voters, they expect, will realize and figure it out.
Put George W. Bush in the White House. Returned George W.
(06:43):
Bush into the White House on an anti terrorism campaign
after the worst terrorism disaster in American history occurred on
his watch. Elected Trump and a third to half of
them think Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart were not drug
addled psychotics bent on avenging themselves against a world that
didn't let them be what they really wanted to be.
(07:05):
And yes, only occasionally do I stop and think that
what Rush Limbaugh really wanted to be was the anchor
of SportsCenter. Those are the people the Biden campaign thinks
will be an easier sell than the uncertain Democrats that
they may have silenced for good or what is relatively
for good in this environment through at least Thursday afternoon.
(07:29):
I mean, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg comparison must have already
sprung into your mind. She's the greatest. You don't think
she should retire. Damn you for saying that. But I'm
thinking instead of a Charles Adams cartoon I saw when
I was a kid, and it's never left me. It's
(07:50):
in between rounds of a boxing match, and the guy
in the far corner has barely broken a sweat and
has a big smirk on his face. And in the
front of the drawing, on your side of the drawing
is the other boxer, and he is bloodied and blank eyed,
and his trainer is standing in front of him, spraying
him with an aerosol can, and the can is labeled courage.
(08:16):
When I was a kid, it made me laugh in
the way that the perfection of the imaginary world that
only Adams saw always made me laugh. And then it
made me laugh again because the trainer is not spraying
his losing fighter with strength, just courage. I think that
(08:36):
analogy is app too. I'm glad Joe Biden can keep
the Democratic Party in line. And the line I see
is potentially a line of lemmings. And I know lemmings
don't really do that, but that's the imagery. And also,
(08:57):
besides lemmings, Icebergs. I keep thinking Icebergs. Damn, the Iceberg's
full speed ahead. Now. I don't know if you hear
it in my voice, but I'm sick at least my
throat is. It could be a bug. I don't know.
It's probably the fact that the real field temperatures here
(09:17):
in New York have been near triple digits for two weeks,
and sure the election will be the last chance to
put somebody in the White House who is not insane
while we enter that five year window that is our
last chance just to mitigate the coming climate disaster. So
it's only a few million climate refugees at our door
and only a few more million dead around the world,
(09:40):
rather than you know, varying degrees of everybody dead. Yeah,
one hundred and nineteen days. I'm that happy. Note. Let
me review some other headlines and forgive me if the
rest of this is kind of ragged, as I am
ad libbing to save energy and to some degree, to
save voice some good news Project twenty twenty five, and
(10:02):
I know it's like everything else in the Democratic campaign,
this will solve it. We can go home now, like
Thomas Dewey in nineteen forty eight against Truman, there's no
more need to do any polling. It's September. We're so
far ahead they couldn't possibly catch up. And I know
it was the roper Pole that gave up, not the
(10:23):
Dewey campaign, but the Dewey campaign gave up to in
any event, Back to Project twenty twenty five. I told
you this would be a little ragged, the Bidens social
media team says on the Google Search Term Index, which
gives a value of one to one hundred for search terms.
Current scores include National Football League at about forty five
on the scale of one to one hundred, Taylor Swift
(10:45):
at around fifty two, and Project twenty twenty five is
above ninety. All right, so we got that going for us.
That'll take care of it. Just don't have the president
speak at all. Just have them hold up signs like
in the Bob Dylan video. This from The Guardian Kevin Roberts,
(11:06):
who said in an interview with Steve Bannon's War Room
podcast last week that conservative driven second American Revolution will
be bloodless quote if the left allows it to be,
which was viewed by many Democrats as an implied threat
of political violence. Well also, anybody with an IQ of
above fourteen viewed that as a implied threat of political violence.
(11:26):
He used the term bloodless, which implies the likelihood was bloody.
He's not running for president, Marco Rubio said, our candidate's
Donald Trump. I didn't see Donald Trump say that. Marco
Rubio has for you. Star Trek fans been fully assimilated
into the borg what a weasel. I mean, even for
(11:47):
the Department of Weasels in the Party of Weasels, He's
a weasel. The denials, to go back to the Guardian story,
appear to be undermined by close studies of the personnel
involved in the formulation of Project twenty twenty five. The
point of this is Kevin Roberts, president of the Federalist Society,
was one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five,
(12:09):
and Trumps now stated he knows nothing about it disagrees
completely with it. Which is an interesting contrast there, since
if he knows nothing about it, how could he disagree
with it? And he has nothing to do with it
except that it has been mapped out specifically for him
to implement when he gets into office, And as the
Guardian notes from its research, the denials appear to be
(12:29):
undermined by close studies of the personnel involved in the
document's formulation. Any last guesses, of the thirty eight people
involved in the writing and editing of Project twenty twenty five,
how many of them were nominated to positions in Trump's
administration or his transition team back in twenty sixteen. How
many out of thirty eight editors and writers of Project
(12:51):
twenty twenty five. The correct answer is thirty one out
of thirty eight eighty one percent. As the Guardian writes,
of the document's creators held formal roles in Trump's presidency,
he knows nothing about it. The terrifying fact about the
true relative mental capacities of Trump and Biden are that
Trump may still not really know anything about it because
(13:12):
it doesn't say Trump twenty twenty five. It says Project
twenty twenty five. So why would be it be of
any interest to him? As a fatal narcissist. This is
good news and really surprising. Somewhere, Dick Durbin is rolling
over in his grave even though he's not dead. Two
(13:33):
Democratic US senators now say they are seeking a criminal
investigation of Clarence Thomas over the gifts of travel, the
loan for his RV, other benefits he received from wealthy benefactors.
Washington Post making sure it doesn't get sued by saying bribes.
(13:54):
The senators are Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, always been
two of my favorite senators. They have written, however, to
Attorney General Merrick Garland, trying to get a special council
appointed to investigate Justice Thomas to violate ethics, false statement,
and tax laws, and possibly prosecute him on all of
(14:14):
the above. Notice again, Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, I'm sure disapproves of this and is simply
going to stare daggers at a picture of Clarence Thomas
and send John Roberts another hallmark greeting card saying here
in ethics Land, wish you were here. Please adopt a
(14:35):
voluntary code of ethics, moron. But again to my point
yesterday about to Joe Biden, if you in fact are
going to beat back those who want you off the ticket,
and you are assuring us that you can beat Trump
and that you are well enough to do this, and
all of our concerns are inappropriate and unfair to you,
(14:57):
and you are the man who beat Trump before, and
you're going to have to escalate your campaign even if
you had not had a bad day the debate. The
point of the debate was this was the time to
stick him with the stilettos. Metaphorically speaking, I guess it
wasn't that, Oh, Biden just has to get through this debate.
(15:19):
It was here's where Biden can show to a large
audience tuning into the election for the first time in
late June, what a disaster and what a psychotic and
what a danger to them at home Donald Trump is.
And of course he failed to do that because nobody
could understand almost anything that he said. But now to
my point, if there is one justification for keeping Biden
(15:41):
on the ticket right now, it is that when angry,
he will do outrageous things. It's time for that. Here
it is set up for him like a hockey goal.
Senators White House and Ron Wyden asked Merrick Garland for
a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas. If Garland won't
(16:03):
do it, fire Garland, you fire Merrick Garland. You're going
to get additional You'll get a point in the national
polls from the Democrats and appoint somebody who then immediately
appoints a special prosecutor, a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas.
And while you're at at Alito and his flags, the
(16:24):
Supreme Court is at record low levels of popularity. Something
like two thirds of America thinks it has been corrupted
politically and decides only political issues, not legal ones anymore.
Run against the Supreme Court. Call them Trump's Supreme Court.
Run against them, drive them into the ground. This is Armageddon.
(16:44):
Battle for the Lord. As Teddy Roosevelt said, you can't
be milk toast here and here it is set up
for you. Gol Biden assists Widen and white House. Get
a special prosecutor in on the bastard. God knows there's
enough there to sort through. All you have to do
(17:04):
is get the article from Pro Publica. No warrants are necessary.
A new feature on the Countdown podcast, What crime did
Donald Trump commit today? Republicans must pass the save actor.
Go home and cry yourself to sleep. Non citizen illegal
migrants are getting the right to vote. Bullshit being pushed
(17:27):
by crooked Democrat politicians who are not being stopped. Bullshit
by an equally dishonest Justice Department. Bullshit. Our whole voting
system is under siege. Bullshit. Harm Meat and David, go
to court and get this stopped. Now. If you're relying
on harm meat, Dylan, you've already lost the election. By
the way, there is still our hope that I will
always turn to. That democracy is preserved less by our
(17:48):
efforts to preserve it than it is by the stupidity
of those who had destroyed it. But at the end,
the Justice Department is corrupt, Trump writes, and won't do
a thing to help. They have no shame. All I
can say is, if I'm elected by blah blah election
frauds series, we already know who you are. Don't do it.
(18:08):
They will be sent to prison for long periods of time.
We already know who you are. Don't do it. Zuckerbucks,
be careful. The last sentence is a direct threat against
a man who is trying to register your voters. That
is a federal crime. People have been sent to prison
for years, particularly in the South in the sixties and seventies,
(18:29):
for doing exactly that. And to add to it, the
weight of threatening prosecution by the government of the United States.
Indict him right now. Where's Jack Smith on this? Nothing
in the Supreme Court ruling says Jack Smith can't indict
him again. We know that the whole process of dragging
Trump through the courts is not something that has boosted him.
(18:51):
It has enabled him to raise more money. Everything today
enables you to raise more money. Since Joe Biden had
a terrible debate, he raised more money. It doesn't matter.
It's just a good excuse to goose the crowd that
was already gonna give you the money. But here we
know from polling that even though nothing has happened in
the federal cases, and Trump's owned judge in Florida managed
(19:12):
to stall that and his own judges on the Supreme
Court managed to stall that prosecution, that the damage done
by the indictments is it's not ten points, it's not
decisive for the election, but it is part of the
cumulative announce tomorrow that Jack Smith is indicting Trump for
(19:33):
violating federal law that makes it illegal to threaten those
trying to register voters voting rights acts. Let's talk weasels.
Nicki Haley freed her delegates yesterday and encouraged them to
vote for Trump. This nation teeters on the brink of
(19:56):
disaster because Republicans have no morals. But because they have
no morals, Nicky Haley can say what she said about
Trump and then in the same lifetime free her delegates
to go vote for him. Meanwhile, the Democrats can't get
(20:17):
more than seven Capitol Hill Democrats to look at Joe
Biden and say I love him, dump him on the
other hand, once again, second time, I fall back to it.
Democracy survives less by our efforts to preserve it than
it does through the stupidity of those who would destroy it.
Please listen now to the Republican Congressman Jeff Duncan of
(20:37):
South Carolina, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate and
Grid Security. And Jeff has a creed core. He is
he is in pain. Listen to this and visualize a
man tilting his head to the side and looking like
(20:58):
he's about to cry as he says much of this.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I do load and unload the dishwasher. And I can
tell you, speaker, that many times I have opened the dishwasher,
loaded properly with the right amount of dishwashing liquid or
pod put in that all the dishes aren't clean, the
rits off before they were put in to the general lady, and.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Had to run it again. And Americans know this, Congressman
Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, who has dirty dishes. Congressman,
I think the explanation is clear. God hates you also
(21:48):
of interest here. You know, the fascinating thing about the
entirety of the Biden nomination issue is that there's so
much to hate on both sides. No, of course The
New York Times didn't try to get Joe Biden off
the ticket just because he wouldn't give their reporters all
one on one interview. And if he goes now because
(22:10):
he had some sort of episode during the debate, that
will prove their reporting was right. They wouldn't be that
petty or small. Wait do you hear the X timesman
Brian Stelter insists that his old employer, and you can
tell he wants it to be his next employer again.
Did an editorial calling for Trump to drop out too?
(22:31):
Oh no, they're not biased against Biden. No, no, no,
of course they did, Brian. It started in paragraph nine ten,
in the paragraph twenty of their other editorial calling for
Biden to drop out. Worse persons guess who won? That's next.
(22:53):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman, my
crazy friend. Oh yeah, like Cornheiser should talk. I have
(23:24):
like six days worth of Cornheizer crazy stories and I
only worked with him for like six days. He's just lucky.
My throat hurts coming up the worst hotel in the World,
fittingly because next is the worst Persons in the World,
Where it was the worst hotel stay in the world,
and I'm really not sure what brought it to mind.
(23:45):
I think I watched a game involving the Atlanta Braves
and that flashed me back to the nineteen ninety nine
World Series, and that automatically flashed me back to staying
at this hotel next to all night choir practice. I
still can't believe it, coming up on a quarter of
a century ahead on countdown. But first, there are still
(24:07):
more new idiots to talk about, the all night choirs
of a new century. The daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
worse persons in the world. That's me with a bad
voice to inquire for some reason. The bronze worse a
(24:28):
man named Mark House. Mark House is an estate lawyer,
and I don't suppose, by any stretch of the imagination
that this is entirely his fault, but his is the
name in the story that I read about this, so
he gets the blame even if he doesn't deserve it.
That's the way worse persons has always worked. Mark House
is one of many estate lawyers trying to unfreeze the
(24:48):
assets of the frozen, Bloomberg News reports, and remember, seven
eighths of Bloomberg is still for people who think every
moment of the day about dollars and coins. I'll just
read you some of the It's easier that way. Nobody
wants to come back from the dead poor. I'll say
(25:10):
that again. Quote nobody wants to come back from the dead, poor,
reports Bloomberg News. It's a hell of a lead. Luckily
for the rich, making wealth immortal is more solvable than
reversing death, no kidding. The state attorneys are creating trusts
aimed at extending wealth until people who get cryonically preserved
(25:32):
can be revived, even if it's hundreds of years later.
These revival trusts are an emerging area of law, taken
seriously enough to attract true believers and merit discussion at
industry conferences. The idea of cryo preservation has gone from
crackpot to merely eccentric, said Mark house And, a state
(25:55):
lawyer who works with the Scottsdale, Arizona based al Core
Life Extension Foundation. Does that name ring a bell to you?
Al Corps in Scottsdale in Arizona as the Bloomberg story
notes it's the world's largest cryonics facility, with fourteen hundred members,
about two hundred and thirty of them not appearing in
(26:18):
your picture because they're over there in the tank. Where's
mister Marshall. Oh, he's over there in the tank. Is
he near you know who? Because I know about Alcore
from that guy? Oh? Is his name again, Ted Williams?
Remember Alcore is where they stored Ted Williams. Have you
seen the condition of his head? No? No, I haven't. Well,
(26:40):
look around the room. It's got to be here somewhere.
Two hundred and thirty people already frozen there and by
one estimate, according to Bloomberg, fifty five hundred people are
planning for cryogenic preservation, and this guy House says he's
worked with about one hundred of them for Steve LaBelle.
The story continues a retired hospital executive in Michigan. The
chance to join the approximately five hundred people already frozen
(27:03):
sounds like a dream come true. He's always finding new
ways to spend his time, most recently as a writer
of young adult fantasy novels. He loves living and doesn't
want money to stand in the way of a second chance.
He searched for a year, according to Bloomberg, for a
trust model most likely to hold up through centuries, and
he plans to put one hundred thousand dollars in his
(27:25):
revival trust. Here's the quote from mister Lebel. I really
want to figure out a solution, otherwise I'll be in
there with my fingers crossed, hoping there's money left over
two hundred years from now to pay for the resurrection process.
Mister LaBelle is seventy six, and though Bloomberg does not
know this or note this, he is mad as a hatter.
(27:48):
There is one interesting aspect to this, the idea that
when you go into the tub and get frozen, that
there's some real estate guy or financial planner out there
trying to make sure you can reclaim your cash in
the year twenty five twenty five, if that man is
still alive. Here's the fact that I found the most
(28:10):
fascinating of all. In many states, your living trust or
your will expires after ninety nine years. In Florida, your
estate can exist for a thousand years, presumably because some
of the people there can exist for a thousand years.
But my favorite part of this remains I'll be in
(28:31):
there with my fingers crossed. Honest to goodness, based on
Alcore's experience with Ted Williams, I don't want you to
suggest to them that they should cross your fingers or
do anything else unusual with your body. A runner up
worser speaking of frozen heads. Brian Stelter, formerly of The
(28:54):
New York Times, formerly of CNN, Brian Stelter was one
of the best TV writing bloggers of all time. With
The Times, he was also an excellent blogger, and with
CNN he was an even better blogger. He has written
on threads in what is a continuing and desperate attempt
to get The Times to rehire him. Quote for everyone
(29:14):
who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board
called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in
Tonight's editorial. This is from Monday Night Trump. Of course,
he quotes it, should also withdraw from this race, not
least because of his own cognitive deficiencies and incessant line
on threads. Stelter put together a thread of various quotes
(29:36):
from this article, this opinion piece in The New York
Times that seemed to support the thesis that oh sure,
they're not just calling up for Biden to withdraw. They've
also called for Trump to withdraw. Look, it's in the editorial,
and Brian was the good guy who pointed it out.
We should rehire him. Wasn't he a lot of fun
around here? He broke a lot of stories that were
fed to him by Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC,
(29:57):
who played him like a two dollars banjo. Oh, I
said the quiet part out loud again. I'm so sorry, Brian.
Here's the thing. I'll read you again what he wrote,
just not the quote, but what he said for everyone
who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board
called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in
tonight's editorial. Trump of course, also with Trump and blah
blah blah. That was in the twentieth paragraph of the piece.
(30:21):
Twenty paragraphs in they say, Oh, by the way, Trump
is also crazy and has cognitive deficiencies and lies incessantly.
Paragraph twenty. The first nineteen paragraphs are just about Joe Biden.
Twenty four references to Joe Biden by name and a
photo of him at the top that has been distorted
so that it looks like he's what's the guy Russell
(30:44):
Crowe in a beautiful mind with all the numbers and
letters swirling around his head. That's what they made the
president look like. But this is also about Trump. Down there,
down there in paragraph twenty. Down there, if you're still
reading it, paragraph twenty, The Times is completely fair. Oh no, no,
they're not. They haven't decided this is their Watergate. They're
still trying to make up for the fact that they
(31:05):
finished second in Watergate in nineteen seventy three and seventy four.
And by the way, the title of the article, the
opinion piece, the op ed. The editorial from The New
York Times that Stelter cites here is proving that they
asked Trump to step aside. The Democratic Party must speak
the plain truth to the president. Brian miss New York
(31:27):
Times is not going to date you, but our winner
and speaking of people who will someday be formerly of CNN,
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash or as Trump called them
on Sean Hannity's show, Jake and Dana. Jake and Dana
were pretty good. I thought they were fair. You know,
(31:50):
if you do anything involving Donald j pedophilia, what pedophilia Trump.
If you do anything involving Donald King Kong Trump, Donald
convicted fellon Trump. If you do any anything with him
in a media setting and he comes back and says
you were fair, that means he perceived you had your
(32:11):
thumbs and your hands and arms and your ass on
the scales in his benefit, because nothing else is fair.
The world exists to make Donald Trump feel like he's
in charge of it. And if he says Jake and
Dana were pretty good, I thought they were fair, that
means you suck. That means you failed. That means I
(32:32):
will continue to assert what I said live immediately after
the debate. There were three stories in the debate. The
number three story was Joe Biden's cognitive performance, which was
not good and no one will defend it. Number two,
the second most important story was Trump lied every thirty
(32:52):
five seconds. And number one was that CNN, led by
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, never fact checked him once,
never pushed back one on any of his lies, never
corrected him in the least. Still, the big story, Jake
(33:13):
and Dana, well, they were pretty good according to Trump.
Proves my point. Jake Tapper and Dana and or Dana
Bash praised by Trump. Good evening and welcome to the
end of your careers. Two days worst persons in the
(33:33):
world that kind of hurt to the number one story
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And I do not exactly
remember what caused me to think of this story, except
for the fact that it has lurked always just beneath
(33:58):
the front of my mind since it first happened. In
October nineteen ninety nine, I was finishing my first year
as the principal anchor and senior correspondent for Fox Sports News,
Fox's first attempt to challenge ESPN. I was the host
of the Game of the Week on the Fox broadcast network, Baseball,
and things had gone pretty well. The guy who hired
(34:20):
me recognized it would be five years before we had
enough credibility to maybe say we were getting forty percent
of ESPN's audience. He had quit and moved back to England,
and he had been replaced by another guy who said
he would raise the ratings in five weeks or everybody
would get fired. My direct boss had hired a clown
(34:42):
named Chris Myers to be the top anchor for Fox
Sports News and spent something like two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to lure him away from ESPN, not knowing
that ESPN was actually trying to get Myers to leave
without having to fire him. None of my direct boss's
bosses had told my direct boss that they were hiring
me for three million dollars to be the top anchor
(35:05):
for Fox Sports News. Myers was bitterly resentful about this,
I mean more so than usual, and his boss, who
had chained himself to Myers, was even more bitterly resentful.
Myers began to demand anything they gave me. They built
me a small wardrobe cabinet so when I moved to
LA I could keep some clothes and some valuables in
(35:27):
my office until I got my own home. Well, the
next thing I knew they had built one for Myers,
I poked my head in his office one day when
he was not there. It was an exact duplicate of mine.
The only thing he had in his wardrobe cabinet was
one lone bent hangar. Myers co anchored with Steve Lyons,
(35:48):
who was proudly doing homophobic jokes on our air. Lions
worked the Baseball Show with me every Saturday on Big Fox,
and I always thought I was the biggest complainer in
the world until I met Lyons and like the second
morning he left the makeup room and the hairstylist said
she was preparing to kill him, but before she did
and the police came, she wanted to thank me for
(36:08):
never complaining. Despite all this, we were somehow getting enormous
amounts of publicity. Every time anybody wrote an article about
ESPN or Sports Center or Dan Patrick, they devoted at
least a third, sometimes a half of the article to
me and Fox Sports News and my former partnership with
(36:30):
Dan and our publicity department did nothing with any of
this free publicity. Millions of dollars worth of free publicity,
No commercials boasting about all the good press, no advertising
about all the good press. Nothing. Plus, just to round
it out, I had a stalker who advised me that
she was not surprised I had not responded to her
(36:50):
in her five years of phone calls and letters. I
just needed time and anyway. She knew I was talking
to her during the show in Code and she would
be coming out to La to marry me or kill me.
She had decided which and all I could think was,
she's going to kill me, and the makeup artist is
(37:11):
going to kill Lions, and you know what that means.
That means Myers will wind up getting to do the
Baseball Show by himself. So things are going great. Nineteen
ninety nine was the last World Series that Fox did
not televise, but we sent a full crew anyway to
cover it wall to wall for our fledgling cable network
(37:33):
and Fox Sports News, and I was the anchor. I
don't think they sent Lions or Myers. And with me
there were two of our cable only analysts, the former
Red Sox and Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy and the former
Dodgers second baseman Steve Sachs. I liked them both. We
worked well together. They had utterly different styles. After our
(37:53):
live shots from the field at Turner Field in Atlanta,
following Game one of that World Series, our producer Eric
Weinberger gathered us in the Fox luxury suite down the
first base line and he asked us what our news
were to improve what had been kind of a sloppy
Game one effort. And I said, well, the monitor off
which I have to narrate the highlights that needs to
(38:14):
be adjusted. And mind you, we're going on there two
minutes after the game. I have not seen the highlights,
nor could I, nor do I know which highlights have
been chosen. I am ad libbing on top of ad libbing,
and the only monitor, which is black and white and
about four inches in diameter, this had been placed on
the dirt next to the braves Dugout. I had literally
(38:36):
had to drop to my hands and knees the second
the highlights started to play. To have any chance at all,
I said, just put the monitor on a stool or
a chair, or the wall, or have somebody hold it
up near my face. Weinberger said, okay. Kevin Kennedy said
that the Fox scopes the pre produced in depth analyzes
(39:00):
of pitch sequences or defensive positionings the inside base inside baseball,
he kind of needed to see at least some of
them before going on the air with them, maybe during
the commercial breaks, or he would have no idea what
to tell the audience, as was evidenced after game one.
Weinberger said, okay, absolutely, and then he said to Sax
(39:21):
and what do you need Steve, and Sax said utterly,
sincerely and with as much concern as I had had
for the Monitor and Kennedy had had for the Fox scopes.
Sax said, you got any more of these cookies? These
are great. What I had not told Weinberger was something
he already knew. I had to get more sleep. Fox
(39:46):
had put us in a hotel in suburban Buckhead, Georgia,
the Swiss Hotel, which I guess has been a Weston
for twenty years. Nice enough place, big rooms, and the
one they put me in the first night was next
to a party or a meeting of some kind. I
mean there were it sounded like like twenty or thirty
people in there, ordinary sized room, same as mine. I
(40:10):
called the desk, Sorry, no other rooms available. They would
call my neighbors and make sure they would quiet down
before bedtime, and they did. And then at two am
I discovered what kind of party or meeting it was
and why twenty people were in the room in an
ordinary size room. In what started it as a dream
and then turned into literally unbelievable reality, I heard a
(40:34):
loud Southern voice say, if we are going to win
this competition, we're gonna have to be the best chorus
that ever left North Carolina. And they began to sing
gospel mostly, which is fine, except not at two am.
Make that now three am, the night before Game one
(40:54):
of the World Series, which I have to cover on
live TV. Oh, and they'd get thirty or forty seconds
into one of the hymns, and the director, who had
a voice like the PA system at Turner Field, only
way clearer, would stop them and yell at them and
make them start from the beginning. They were competing in
(41:15):
the morning, and he had decided they were going to
spend the night, the whole night that night practicing. I
called the desk and I made a few sharp edged
remarks about being on national television and how many opportunities
I would have to bankrupt the Buckhead Swiss Hotel and
(41:36):
the Swiss Hotel chain generally. And suddenly they found me
another room to move to, and I gathered my stuff
and trudged a few floors and scattered my stuff in
the new room, and I fell onto the bed and
I went right to sleep, and I got a solid
two or three minutes. And that's when the bathroom phone
(41:57):
began to ring, not the main phone in the room,
just the one in the bathroom. Picked it up and
there was a dial tone, and it kept ringing, one
hundred rings, two hundred rings. I disconnected the phone line
from the wall. It kept ringing. I thought, I have
(42:19):
to be on one of two TV shows. Either I'm
on Candid Camera or The Twilight Zone. The phone is alive.
I've disconnected it from the wall and it's still ringing.
It is now five am. I still have a chance
to get a full night's sleep, in full day's sleep
before the game, but the rest of the day will
(42:39):
be erased. I called the desk. My god, we still
have one of those phones in one of the rooms.
I thought we'd removed all of them. I'll send the electrician.
He got there surprisingly fast. He did not bother with
any niceties, and he simply did what I would have done.
He yanked the whole thing out of the wall and
took it with him. I closed the door behind him,
(43:02):
and I could hear it as he moved back down
the hall towards the elevator. The phone was still ringing.
It was a possessed phone. As the sun began to
rise and I crawled back into bed, I remembered something.
Vital I called my new friend at the front desk
again and I pleaded with him. Upon my arrival. The
night before, which seemed like three or four decades earlier,
(43:25):
I had sent over a suit to be pressed. Please,
could you make sure they do not deliver it until
I call? I have to sleep, guaranteed, sir, you get
some sleep now. The knock came at eight thirty am,
Ballet Service. I shout, go away. A moment later the
(43:47):
phone rings Ballet Service. Minutes after that the phone rings again. Hi,
this is the Ballet manager. We want to make sure
did you get your suit? I emitted a string of
popular Anglo saxon expletives. I had now been violently awakened
so many times by so many different means that my
vision had blurred. I called the desk. I asked for
(44:11):
the fat number of the general manager's office, and, in
those days before the universality of email, I wrote the
general manager a crisp and enraged letter, summarizing to her
my night in her hell with elevators, and explaining I
would be checking out and going anywhere a cab could
take me, a Motel six, a YMCA, a safe looking
(44:33):
bus stop. When I finally woke to my own alarm
around two in the afternoon, I found a note slipped
under my door. It was as apologetic as anything I
have ever read, and it had this sentence in it.
I know we cannot undo the harm we have done
to you, but I would offer you this by way
(44:53):
of apology. At eight pm this evening, the presidential suite
will become available. Please try it just tonight with our compliments.
We will pack and move your belongings in your absence,
and my assistant will stay tonight until you return from
the game and will personally escort you to the suite. Okay, well,
(45:17):
I had to give that a shot, didn't I. The
Presidential suite at the Swiss Hotel and Buckhead, Georgia was
not what I expected. The front doors, there were two
of them, opened onto a dining table which seated twenty eight.
A few feet away from this twenty eight seater, well
(45:40):
twenty or thirty or forty feet was the baby grand
piano in the next room. To the left, just a
few minutes walk away was the kitchen and the conference room,
which had the big table. Each of the bedrooms had
a fireplace, so did the living room. There were four bedrooms.
(46:03):
There was a sauna, There was a hot tub. There
was a second hot tub out on the balcony. There
was a walk in closet larger than the first room
they had given me. There was a door in the
back of the walk in closet that led to a
second walk in closet. I thought immediately of two things.
(46:27):
I called all the women I had dated in the
preceding year to see if any of them wanted to
fly to Atlanta at my expense, even if it was
just to see the presidential suite. I called women I
had known from when I occasionally worked in Atlanta sixteen
years earlier. I then thought, we all right, practically here,
(46:48):
we can hold the pre production meeting for Game two
of the World Series in well, either in the living
room with the twenty eight seat dining table or in
the conference room with the thirty six seat table. Hell,
the whole Game two of the World Series in this suite.
My only concern with that, in a suite so big
(47:11):
it should have had its own ZIP code, was that
there was an excellent chance Steve Sachs would get lost
in it and we would never find him. And then
I thought, no, they'll probably charge me extra for such
a wonderful bonus the Buckhead, Georgia, Swiss Hotel and its
general manager, whose name is lost in the folds of history,
(47:31):
had cemented a place in my travel hall of fame,
and we were discussing that during the pre production with
our Fox Sports news crew at noon on Sunday before
Game two, munching on the six plates of free food
they had sent up, when the doorbell rang, I say, doorbell.
It sounded like the bells at Notre Dame in Paris. There,
(47:55):
to my surprise, outside the double doors were three hotel
staffers with luggage carts. For a moment, I thought they
had come to give us free rides to the lobby.
I expressed my surprise at their presence. Well, said the staffer,
who turned out to be the other assistant to the
hotels general manager. You're checking out today, I smiled, No, no, no, Tomorrow.
(48:20):
Game two is tonight. We're checking out tomorrow, tomorrow morning.
Suddenly the bell station manager looked sad, even remorseful. Oh,
for God's sakes, we got that wrong too. I'm afraid
we need the presidential suite for an actual president tonight.
I can move you to the governor's suite, he said. Hopefully,
(48:44):
they packed my stuff as I instructed the Fox staff
to eat all of the food on the platters and
to stuff anything they could not eat into their pockets.
I tried to sneak in a quick sauna, but the
staff said there was a certain element of hurry up involved. Finally,
we all paraded down the hall to the Governor's suite.
And why Burger and I were speculating that this would
(49:06):
only have one conference table and only one hot tub,
and it would all be indoors, and there would be
no balcony, and we'd all be like Cinderella when the
clock struck midnight, and we get there and the assistant
to the General Manager opens the door to the Governor's
suite with great ceremony, and they're five feet in from
the vestibule. Perfectly placed on the ratty and bright blue
(49:28):
nineteen eighty one nylon rug that might once have been
the artificial turf at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, was the
biggest carpet stain I have ever seen in my life,
easily ten feet in diameter, causable only by the spilling
of nuclear waste or by a murder. So I said
(49:54):
to the chagrined assistant to the general manager who was
putting down a fresh towel to cover the stain, and
to whom it was apparently news that his Governor's suite
feature to stain the size of the chalk outline of
where the body had fallen. So I asked him, when
(50:19):
does the chorus arrive for practice? I swear to goodness
there are pictures of me at the Baby Grand piano
(50:39):
pretending to play. I've done all the damage I can
do here, mostly to my own respiratory system. Thanks for
listening and bearing with me. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray
and John Phillip Schanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was
produced by Tko Brothers. And I have to have a
(51:02):
conversation with the producers of this show because I have
never recorded a generic last segment that I can just
plug in when I'm not feeling well, So I have
to do a new one for every show because I
put all these dates and times in it, because I'm
a genius. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written
(51:25):
by Mitch Warren Davis, appearing courtesy of ESPN inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my
friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was pretty much my fault
except the rest. I'd like to blame on society. That's
countdown for this, the one hundred and nineteenth day until
(51:45):
the twenty twenty four presidential election, the two hundred and
eightieth day since convicted felon Donald J. Insanity, Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
And that's right. I couldn't even get through the entire
closing segment in one take. Use the September eighteen sentencing hearing.
Use the mental health system. You've got it, mister president.
(52:08):
Use presidential immunity. You don't just give up. You don't say, well,
Hitler won the election, So here are the keys. If
you don't do it, he will use presidential immunity to
stop Trump from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins as the news warrants,
(52:30):
although as mentioned earlier, maybe not. I'll check in with
my respiratory system in the afternoon. I suspect it's in
one other room in the house somewhere. Until then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good
luck to me. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(53:04):
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. If
President Biden and his campaign team and his party disciplined
(00:25):
team can handle Trump and the electorate and the news
conferences and the debates as efficiently as they have turned
around the effort to push him off the tickets, they
are going to win the election in a landslide. It's over.
You never say it's over, especially not with Biden headed
for a news conference tomorrow as the NATO summit in
(00:46):
Washington concludes, in which literally two bad answers are one
really bad answer could end his candidacy on the spot,
or at worst before noon on Friday. But for now,
and skipping for a moment, the obviously larger question over
whether this signals the start of demock receives going out
of business sale, it is over. Final score. Number of
(01:10):
Democrats in the House who called for him to step
down on the record seven, including long after it was
over yesterday afternoon Mikey Sheryl of New Jersey. Number of
Democrats in the Senate who called for him to step
down on the record none. Number of ex presidents who
called for him to step down none. Number of historians
(01:31):
he loves who called for him to step down. None
number of former Speakers of the House who reportedly told
friends in private, she's deeply uneasy with his continued candidacy,
and of whom a Biden confidante said he would listen reluctantly,
but he'd listened to her who called for him to
step down. None House Democrats met yesterday, and it was
(01:54):
over when the current Speaker, mister Jeffries, talked about unity
at the beginning and staying together and listening to each other,
and by then it was over. Before again, the step
down caucus members said they were preempted by Biden's letter
to House members on Monday, which is nonsense and which
shows you just how untough the Democrats on Capitol Hill
(02:16):
really are. The debate was two weeks ago tomorrow, and
the first thing Biden did nothing to fix it for
a week, and then almost no House Democrats said anything
for the next week. And they think somehow they got
out flanked. If they got outflanked, they got outflanked by
(02:36):
an army of slow moving ants. Juan Vargas of California
a stick with Joe Stalwart, quoted by Politico, it's the
stupidest thing I've ever seen a circular firing squad. Semaphore
News asked an attendee to the congressional meeting off the
record if the mood was comparable to that of a funeral.
(02:58):
The answer that is an insult to funerals. Now, there's
just one problem and all this success from Team Biden,
and I think you may already know what that one
problem is. The one problem that remains is the only
problem that's been solved, is the one Joe Biden had
or has out here on the going out of business
(03:23):
sale floor. The Cook Political Report just moved Arizona and
Georgia and Nevada from toss up to lean Republican, and
just moved Minnesota, Nebraska second, and New Hampshire from likely
Democrat to lean Democrat. And if you want some disastrous metaphors,
(03:46):
there is new polling from Wisconsin. And while the incumbent
Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin leads her Republican challenger, who is
the guy who is on the old brawny paper tow
package rappers, While she leads him by five points, Biden
is six behind Trump. And the disastrous of that metaphor,
besides the number six, the polling was sponsored by AAARP,
(04:12):
and even the unanimity of the on the record support
for keeping the president on the ticket is really just
paved over discontent. Jerry Nadler went on the House conference
call and was quoted as saying Biden should drop out.
Now he says, whether or not I have concerns is
besides the point. He is going to be our nominee
(04:33):
and we all have to support him. And as to
the Senate, even as John Fetterman suggested that to hypo
his polling quote, maybe we can convince President Biden to
bang a porn star unquote, it is now widely reported
that at least three Democratic senators told their conclave that
Biden is in big trouble and unlikely to win. Senator
(04:54):
Brown of Ohio, Senator Tester whose races are so tight
that they could use somebody else's top the ticket anyway,
and then their Senator Bennett of Colorado, who said Joe
Biden is in big trouble, not be because of his stumbles,
but because he has gotten no traction whatsoever in the
messaging war over the economy. And you know what, he hasn't.
(05:14):
So let's just say all of this stuff about his
mental health and his acuity vanished tomorrow and nobody ever
remembered it. Oh yeah, that's right, didn't get anywhere in
the messaging war on the economy. In short, we have
and again this could one eighty again as soon as
tomorrow at that news conference. And by the way, that
(05:36):
is its own problem, which I've addressed here previously. At
exactly what point do we stop thinking that at any
time the president appears in front of a camera, something
terrible might happen. This nightmarish situation in which there has
been public handwringing over the president's reelection one hundred and
twenty days before that election from his own side, from
(06:00):
some of his party leaders, and it has been paved over,
and there is not one indication that the campaign or
the White House has accurately assessed this as a problem
that deals with winning the election. They see this problem
as an insurrection within the party to stamp out that
(06:23):
entire question seems to be looked at as well. The
voters will figure it out. They'll realize, oh PS Project
twenty twenty five. And the fact is, just in this century,
the voters, they expect, will realize and figure it out.
Put George W. Bush in the White House. Returned George W.
(06:43):
Bush into the White House on an anti terrorism campaign
after the worst terrorism disaster in American history occurred on
his watch. Elected Trump and a third to half of
them think Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart were not drug
addled psychotics bent on avenging themselves against a world that
didn't let them be what they really wanted to be.
(07:05):
And yes, only occasionally do I stop and think that
what Rush Limbaugh really wanted to be was the anchor
of SportsCenter. Those are the people the Biden campaign thinks
will be an easier sell than the uncertain Democrats that
they may have silenced for good or what is relatively
for good in this environment through at least Thursday afternoon.
(07:29):
I mean, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg comparison must have already
sprung into your mind. She's the greatest. You don't think
she should retire. Damn you for saying that. But I'm
thinking instead of a Charles Adams cartoon I saw when
I was a kid, and it's never left me. It's
(07:50):
in between rounds of a boxing match, and the guy
in the far corner has barely broken a sweat and
has a big smirk on his face. And in the
front of the drawing, on your side of the drawing
is the other boxer, and he is bloodied and blank eyed,
and his trainer is standing in front of him, spraying
him with an aerosol can, and the can is labeled courage.
(08:16):
When I was a kid, it made me laugh in
the way that the perfection of the imaginary world that
only Adams saw always made me laugh. And then it
made me laugh again because the trainer is not spraying
his losing fighter with strength, just courage. I think that
(08:36):
analogy is app too. I'm glad Joe Biden can keep
the Democratic Party in line. And the line I see
is potentially a line of lemmings. And I know lemmings
don't really do that, but that's the imagery. And also,
(08:57):
besides lemmings, Icebergs. I keep thinking Icebergs. Damn, the Iceberg's
full speed ahead. Now. I don't know if you hear
it in my voice, but I'm sick at least my
throat is. It could be a bug. I don't know.
It's probably the fact that the real field temperatures here
(09:17):
in New York have been near triple digits for two weeks,
and sure the election will be the last chance to
put somebody in the White House who is not insane
while we enter that five year window that is our
last chance just to mitigate the coming climate disaster. So
it's only a few million climate refugees at our door
and only a few more million dead around the world,
(09:40):
rather than you know, varying degrees of everybody dead. Yeah,
one hundred and nineteen days. I'm that happy. Note. Let
me review some other headlines and forgive me if the
rest of this is kind of ragged, as I am
ad libbing to save energy and to some degree, to
save voice some good news Project twenty twenty five, and
(10:02):
I know it's like everything else in the Democratic campaign,
this will solve it. We can go home now, like
Thomas Dewey in nineteen forty eight against Truman, there's no
more need to do any polling. It's September. We're so
far ahead they couldn't possibly catch up. And I know
it was the roper Pole that gave up, not the
(10:23):
Dewey campaign, but the Dewey campaign gave up to in
any event, Back to Project twenty twenty five. I told
you this would be a little ragged, the Bidens social
media team says on the Google Search Term Index, which
gives a value of one to one hundred for search terms.
Current scores include National Football League at about forty five
on the scale of one to one hundred, Taylor Swift
(10:45):
at around fifty two, and Project twenty twenty five is
above ninety. All right, so we got that going for us.
That'll take care of it. Just don't have the president
speak at all. Just have them hold up signs like
in the Bob Dylan video. This from The Guardian Kevin Roberts,
(11:06):
who said in an interview with Steve Bannon's War Room
podcast last week that conservative driven second American Revolution will
be bloodless quote if the left allows it to be,
which was viewed by many Democrats as an implied threat
of political violence. Well also, anybody with an IQ of
above fourteen viewed that as a implied threat of political violence.
(11:26):
He used the term bloodless, which implies the likelihood was bloody.
He's not running for president, Marco Rubio said, our candidate's
Donald Trump. I didn't see Donald Trump say that. Marco
Rubio has for you. Star Trek fans been fully assimilated
into the borg what a weasel. I mean, even for
(11:47):
the Department of Weasels in the Party of Weasels, He's
a weasel. The denials, to go back to the Guardian story,
appear to be undermined by close studies of the personnel
involved in the formulation of Project twenty twenty five. The
point of this is Kevin Roberts, president of the Federalist Society,
was one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five,
(12:09):
and Trumps now stated he knows nothing about it disagrees
completely with it. Which is an interesting contrast there, since
if he knows nothing about it, how could he disagree
with it? And he has nothing to do with it
except that it has been mapped out specifically for him
to implement when he gets into office, And as the
Guardian notes from its research, the denials appear to be
(12:29):
undermined by close studies of the personnel involved in the
document's formulation. Any last guesses, of the thirty eight people
involved in the writing and editing of Project twenty twenty five,
how many of them were nominated to positions in Trump's
administration or his transition team back in twenty sixteen. How
many out of thirty eight editors and writers of Project
(12:51):
twenty twenty five. The correct answer is thirty one out
of thirty eight eighty one percent. As the Guardian writes,
of the document's creators held formal roles in Trump's presidency,
he knows nothing about it. The terrifying fact about the
true relative mental capacities of Trump and Biden are that
Trump may still not really know anything about it because
(13:12):
it doesn't say Trump twenty twenty five. It says Project
twenty twenty five. So why would be it be of
any interest to him? As a fatal narcissist. This is
good news and really surprising. Somewhere, Dick Durbin is rolling
over in his grave even though he's not dead. Two
(13:33):
Democratic US senators now say they are seeking a criminal
investigation of Clarence Thomas over the gifts of travel, the
loan for his RV, other benefits he received from wealthy benefactors.
Washington Post making sure it doesn't get sued by saying bribes.
(13:54):
The senators are Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, always been
two of my favorite senators. They have written, however, to
Attorney General Merrick Garland, trying to get a special council
appointed to investigate Justice Thomas to violate ethics, false statement,
and tax laws, and possibly prosecute him on all of
(14:14):
the above. Notice again, Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, I'm sure disapproves of this and is simply
going to stare daggers at a picture of Clarence Thomas
and send John Roberts another hallmark greeting card saying here
in ethics Land, wish you were here. Please adopt a
(14:35):
voluntary code of ethics, moron. But again to my point
yesterday about to Joe Biden, if you in fact are
going to beat back those who want you off the ticket,
and you are assuring us that you can beat Trump
and that you are well enough to do this, and
all of our concerns are inappropriate and unfair to you,
(14:57):
and you are the man who beat Trump before, and
you're going to have to escalate your campaign even if
you had not had a bad day the debate. The
point of the debate was this was the time to
stick him with the stilettos. Metaphorically speaking, I guess it
wasn't that, Oh, Biden just has to get through this debate.
(15:19):
It was here's where Biden can show to a large
audience tuning into the election for the first time in
late June, what a disaster and what a psychotic and
what a danger to them at home Donald Trump is.
And of course he failed to do that because nobody
could understand almost anything that he said. But now to
my point, if there is one justification for keeping Biden
(15:41):
on the ticket right now, it is that when angry,
he will do outrageous things. It's time for that. Here
it is set up for him like a hockey goal.
Senators White House and Ron Wyden asked Merrick Garland for
a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas. If Garland won't
(16:03):
do it, fire Garland, you fire Merrick Garland. You're going
to get additional You'll get a point in the national
polls from the Democrats and appoint somebody who then immediately
appoints a special prosecutor, a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas.
And while you're at at Alito and his flags, the
(16:24):
Supreme Court is at record low levels of popularity. Something
like two thirds of America thinks it has been corrupted
politically and decides only political issues, not legal ones anymore.
Run against the Supreme Court. Call them Trump's Supreme Court.
Run against them, drive them into the ground. This is Armageddon.
(16:44):
Battle for the Lord. As Teddy Roosevelt said, you can't
be milk toast here and here it is set up
for you. Gol Biden assists Widen and white House. Get
a special prosecutor in on the bastard. God knows there's
enough there to sort through. All you have to do
(17:04):
is get the article from Pro Publica. No warrants are necessary.
A new feature on the Countdown podcast, What crime did
Donald Trump commit today? Republicans must pass the save actor.
Go home and cry yourself to sleep. Non citizen illegal
migrants are getting the right to vote. Bullshit being pushed
(17:27):
by crooked Democrat politicians who are not being stopped. Bullshit
by an equally dishonest Justice Department. Bullshit. Our whole voting
system is under siege. Bullshit. Harm Meat and David, go
to court and get this stopped. Now. If you're relying
on harm meat, Dylan, you've already lost the election. By
the way, there is still our hope that I will
always turn to. That democracy is preserved less by our
(17:48):
efforts to preserve it than it is by the stupidity
of those who had destroyed it. But at the end,
the Justice Department is corrupt, Trump writes, and won't do
a thing to help. They have no shame. All I
can say is, if I'm elected by blah blah election
frauds series, we already know who you are. Don't do it.
(18:08):
They will be sent to prison for long periods of time.
We already know who you are. Don't do it. Zuckerbucks,
be careful. The last sentence is a direct threat against
a man who is trying to register your voters. That
is a federal crime. People have been sent to prison
for years, particularly in the South in the sixties and seventies,
(18:29):
for doing exactly that. And to add to it, the
weight of threatening prosecution by the government of the United States.
Indict him right now. Where's Jack Smith on this? Nothing
in the Supreme Court ruling says Jack Smith can't indict
him again. We know that the whole process of dragging
Trump through the courts is not something that has boosted him.
(18:51):
It has enabled him to raise more money. Everything today
enables you to raise more money. Since Joe Biden had
a terrible debate, he raised more money. It doesn't matter.
It's just a good excuse to goose the crowd that
was already gonna give you the money. But here we
know from polling that even though nothing has happened in
the federal cases, and Trump's owned judge in Florida managed
(19:12):
to stall that and his own judges on the Supreme
Court managed to stall that prosecution, that the damage done
by the indictments is it's not ten points, it's not
decisive for the election, but it is part of the
cumulative announce tomorrow that Jack Smith is indicting Trump for
(19:33):
violating federal law that makes it illegal to threaten those
trying to register voters voting rights acts. Let's talk weasels.
Nicki Haley freed her delegates yesterday and encouraged them to
vote for Trump. This nation teeters on the brink of
(19:56):
disaster because Republicans have no morals. But because they have
no morals, Nicky Haley can say what she said about
Trump and then in the same lifetime free her delegates
to go vote for him. Meanwhile, the Democrats can't get
(20:17):
more than seven Capitol Hill Democrats to look at Joe
Biden and say I love him, dump him on the
other hand, once again, second time, I fall back to it.
Democracy survives less by our efforts to preserve it than
it does through the stupidity of those who would destroy it.
Please listen now to the Republican Congressman Jeff Duncan of
(20:37):
South Carolina, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate and
Grid Security. And Jeff has a creed core. He is
he is in pain. Listen to this and visualize a
man tilting his head to the side and looking like
(20:58):
he's about to cry as he says much of this.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I do load and unload the dishwasher. And I can
tell you, speaker, that many times I have opened the dishwasher,
loaded properly with the right amount of dishwashing liquid or
pod put in that all the dishes aren't clean, the
rits off before they were put in to the general lady, and.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Had to run it again. And Americans know this, Congressman
Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, who has dirty dishes. Congressman,
I think the explanation is clear. God hates you also
(21:48):
of interest here. You know, the fascinating thing about the
entirety of the Biden nomination issue is that there's so
much to hate on both sides. No, of course The
New York Times didn't try to get Joe Biden off
the ticket just because he wouldn't give their reporters all
one on one interview. And if he goes now because
(22:10):
he had some sort of episode during the debate, that
will prove their reporting was right. They wouldn't be that
petty or small. Wait do you hear the X timesman
Brian Stelter insists that his old employer, and you can
tell he wants it to be his next employer again.
Did an editorial calling for Trump to drop out too?
(22:31):
Oh no, they're not biased against Biden. No, no, no,
of course they did, Brian. It started in paragraph nine ten,
in the paragraph twenty of their other editorial calling for
Biden to drop out. Worse persons guess who won? That's next.
(22:53):
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman, my
crazy friend. Oh yeah, like Cornheiser should talk. I have
(23:24):
like six days worth of Cornheizer crazy stories and I
only worked with him for like six days. He's just lucky.
My throat hurts coming up the worst hotel in the World,
fittingly because next is the worst Persons in the World,
Where it was the worst hotel stay in the world,
and I'm really not sure what brought it to mind.
(23:45):
I think I watched a game involving the Atlanta Braves
and that flashed me back to the nineteen ninety nine
World Series, and that automatically flashed me back to staying
at this hotel next to all night choir practice. I
still can't believe it, coming up on a quarter of
a century ahead on countdown. But first, there are still
(24:07):
more new idiots to talk about, the all night choirs
of a new century. The daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
worse persons in the world. That's me with a bad
voice to inquire for some reason. The bronze worse a
(24:28):
man named Mark House. Mark House is an estate lawyer,
and I don't suppose, by any stretch of the imagination
that this is entirely his fault, but his is the
name in the story that I read about this, so
he gets the blame even if he doesn't deserve it.
That's the way worse persons has always worked. Mark House
is one of many estate lawyers trying to unfreeze the
(24:48):
assets of the frozen, Bloomberg News reports, and remember, seven
eighths of Bloomberg is still for people who think every
moment of the day about dollars and coins. I'll just
read you some of the It's easier that way. Nobody
wants to come back from the dead poor. I'll say
(25:10):
that again. Quote nobody wants to come back from the dead, poor,
reports Bloomberg News. It's a hell of a lead. Luckily
for the rich, making wealth immortal is more solvable than
reversing death, no kidding. The state attorneys are creating trusts
aimed at extending wealth until people who get cryonically preserved
(25:32):
can be revived, even if it's hundreds of years later.
These revival trusts are an emerging area of law, taken
seriously enough to attract true believers and merit discussion at
industry conferences. The idea of cryo preservation has gone from
crackpot to merely eccentric, said Mark house And, a state
(25:55):
lawyer who works with the Scottsdale, Arizona based al Core
Life Extension Foundation. Does that name ring a bell to you?
Al Corps in Scottsdale in Arizona as the Bloomberg story
notes it's the world's largest cryonics facility, with fourteen hundred members,
about two hundred and thirty of them not appearing in
(26:18):
your picture because they're over there in the tank. Where's
mister Marshall. Oh, he's over there in the tank. Is
he near you know who? Because I know about Alcore
from that guy? Oh? Is his name again, Ted Williams?
Remember Alcore is where they stored Ted Williams. Have you
seen the condition of his head? No? No, I haven't. Well,
(26:40):
look around the room. It's got to be here somewhere.
Two hundred and thirty people already frozen there and by
one estimate, according to Bloomberg, fifty five hundred people are
planning for cryogenic preservation, and this guy House says he's
worked with about one hundred of them for Steve LaBelle.
The story continues a retired hospital executive in Michigan. The
chance to join the approximately five hundred people already frozen
(27:03):
sounds like a dream come true. He's always finding new
ways to spend his time, most recently as a writer
of young adult fantasy novels. He loves living and doesn't
want money to stand in the way of a second chance.
He searched for a year, according to Bloomberg, for a
trust model most likely to hold up through centuries, and
he plans to put one hundred thousand dollars in his
(27:25):
revival trust. Here's the quote from mister Lebel. I really
want to figure out a solution, otherwise I'll be in
there with my fingers crossed, hoping there's money left over
two hundred years from now to pay for the resurrection process.
Mister LaBelle is seventy six, and though Bloomberg does not
know this or note this, he is mad as a hatter.
(27:48):
There is one interesting aspect to this, the idea that
when you go into the tub and get frozen, that
there's some real estate guy or financial planner out there
trying to make sure you can reclaim your cash in
the year twenty five twenty five, if that man is
still alive. Here's the fact that I found the most
(28:10):
fascinating of all. In many states, your living trust or
your will expires after ninety nine years. In Florida, your
estate can exist for a thousand years, presumably because some
of the people there can exist for a thousand years.
But my favorite part of this remains I'll be in
(28:31):
there with my fingers crossed. Honest to goodness, based on
Alcore's experience with Ted Williams, I don't want you to
suggest to them that they should cross your fingers or
do anything else unusual with your body. A runner up
worser speaking of frozen heads. Brian Stelter, formerly of The
(28:54):
New York Times, formerly of CNN, Brian Stelter was one
of the best TV writing bloggers of all time. With
The Times, he was also an excellent blogger, and with
CNN he was an even better blogger. He has written
on threads in what is a continuing and desperate attempt
to get The Times to rehire him. Quote for everyone
(29:14):
who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board
called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in
Tonight's editorial. This is from Monday Night Trump. Of course,
he quotes it, should also withdraw from this race, not
least because of his own cognitive deficiencies and incessant line
on threads. Stelter put together a thread of various quotes
(29:36):
from this article, this opinion piece in The New York
Times that seemed to support the thesis that oh sure,
they're not just calling up for Biden to withdraw. They've
also called for Trump to withdraw. Look, it's in the editorial,
and Brian was the good guy who pointed it out.
We should rehire him. Wasn't he a lot of fun
around here? He broke a lot of stories that were
fed to him by Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC,
(29:57):
who played him like a two dollars banjo. Oh, I
said the quiet part out loud again. I'm so sorry, Brian.
Here's the thing. I'll read you again what he wrote,
just not the quote, but what he said for everyone
who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board
called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in
tonight's editorial. Trump of course, also with Trump and blah
blah blah. That was in the twentieth paragraph of the piece.
(30:21):
Twenty paragraphs in they say, Oh, by the way, Trump
is also crazy and has cognitive deficiencies and lies incessantly.
Paragraph twenty. The first nineteen paragraphs are just about Joe Biden.
Twenty four references to Joe Biden by name and a
photo of him at the top that has been distorted
so that it looks like he's what's the guy Russell
(30:44):
Crowe in a beautiful mind with all the numbers and
letters swirling around his head. That's what they made the
president look like. But this is also about Trump. Down there,
down there in paragraph twenty. Down there, if you're still
reading it, paragraph twenty, The Times is completely fair. Oh no, no,
they're not. They haven't decided this is their Watergate. They're
still trying to make up for the fact that they
(31:05):
finished second in Watergate in nineteen seventy three and seventy four.
And by the way, the title of the article, the
opinion piece, the op ed. The editorial from The New
York Times that Stelter cites here is proving that they
asked Trump to step aside. The Democratic Party must speak
the plain truth to the president. Brian miss New York
(31:27):
Times is not going to date you, but our winner
and speaking of people who will someday be formerly of CNN,
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash or as Trump called them
on Sean Hannity's show, Jake and Dana. Jake and Dana
were pretty good. I thought they were fair. You know,
(31:50):
if you do anything involving Donald j pedophilia, what pedophilia Trump.
If you do anything involving Donald King Kong Trump, Donald
convicted fellon Trump. If you do any anything with him
in a media setting and he comes back and says
you were fair, that means he perceived you had your
(32:11):
thumbs and your hands and arms and your ass on
the scales in his benefit, because nothing else is fair.
The world exists to make Donald Trump feel like he's
in charge of it. And if he says Jake and
Dana were pretty good, I thought they were fair, that
means you suck. That means you failed. That means I
(32:32):
will continue to assert what I said live immediately after
the debate. There were three stories in the debate. The
number three story was Joe Biden's cognitive performance, which was
not good and no one will defend it. Number two,
the second most important story was Trump lied every thirty
(32:52):
five seconds. And number one was that CNN, led by
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, never fact checked him once,
never pushed back one on any of his lies, never
corrected him in the least. Still, the big story, Jake
(33:13):
and Dana, well, they were pretty good according to Trump.
Proves my point. Jake Tapper and Dana and or Dana
Bash praised by Trump. Good evening and welcome to the
end of your careers. Two days worst persons in the
(33:33):
world that kind of hurt to the number one story
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And I do not exactly
remember what caused me to think of this story, except
for the fact that it has lurked always just beneath
(33:58):
the front of my mind since it first happened. In
October nineteen ninety nine, I was finishing my first year
as the principal anchor and senior correspondent for Fox Sports News,
Fox's first attempt to challenge ESPN. I was the host
of the Game of the Week on the Fox broadcast network, Baseball,
and things had gone pretty well. The guy who hired
(34:20):
me recognized it would be five years before we had
enough credibility to maybe say we were getting forty percent
of ESPN's audience. He had quit and moved back to England,
and he had been replaced by another guy who said
he would raise the ratings in five weeks or everybody
would get fired. My direct boss had hired a clown
(34:42):
named Chris Myers to be the top anchor for Fox
Sports News and spent something like two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to lure him away from ESPN, not knowing
that ESPN was actually trying to get Myers to leave
without having to fire him. None of my direct boss's
bosses had told my direct boss that they were hiring
me for three million dollars to be the top anchor
(35:05):
for Fox Sports News. Myers was bitterly resentful about this,
I mean more so than usual, and his boss, who
had chained himself to Myers, was even more bitterly resentful.
Myers began to demand anything they gave me. They built
me a small wardrobe cabinet so when I moved to
LA I could keep some clothes and some valuables in
(35:27):
my office until I got my own home. Well, the
next thing I knew they had built one for Myers,
I poked my head in his office one day when
he was not there. It was an exact duplicate of mine.
The only thing he had in his wardrobe cabinet was
one lone bent hangar. Myers co anchored with Steve Lyons,
(35:48):
who was proudly doing homophobic jokes on our air. Lions
worked the Baseball Show with me every Saturday on Big Fox,
and I always thought I was the biggest complainer in
the world until I met Lyons and like the second
morning he left the makeup room and the hairstylist said
she was preparing to kill him, but before she did
and the police came, she wanted to thank me for
(36:08):
never complaining. Despite all this, we were somehow getting enormous
amounts of publicity. Every time anybody wrote an article about
ESPN or Sports Center or Dan Patrick, they devoted at
least a third, sometimes a half of the article to
me and Fox Sports News and my former partnership with
(36:30):
Dan and our publicity department did nothing with any of
this free publicity. Millions of dollars worth of free publicity,
No commercials boasting about all the good press, no advertising
about all the good press. Nothing. Plus, just to round
it out, I had a stalker who advised me that
she was not surprised I had not responded to her
(36:50):
in her five years of phone calls and letters. I
just needed time and anyway. She knew I was talking
to her during the show in Code and she would
be coming out to La to marry me or kill me.
She had decided which and all I could think was,
she's going to kill me, and the makeup artist is
(37:11):
going to kill Lions, and you know what that means.
That means Myers will wind up getting to do the
Baseball Show by himself. So things are going great. Nineteen
ninety nine was the last World Series that Fox did
not televise, but we sent a full crew anyway to
cover it wall to wall for our fledgling cable network
(37:33):
and Fox Sports News, and I was the anchor. I
don't think they sent Lions or Myers. And with me
there were two of our cable only analysts, the former
Red Sox and Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy and the former
Dodgers second baseman Steve Sachs. I liked them both. We
worked well together. They had utterly different styles. After our
(37:53):
live shots from the field at Turner Field in Atlanta,
following Game one of that World Series, our producer Eric
Weinberger gathered us in the Fox luxury suite down the
first base line and he asked us what our news
were to improve what had been kind of a sloppy
Game one effort. And I said, well, the monitor off
which I have to narrate the highlights that needs to
(38:14):
be adjusted. And mind you, we're going on there two
minutes after the game. I have not seen the highlights,
nor could I, nor do I know which highlights have
been chosen. I am ad libbing on top of ad libbing,
and the only monitor, which is black and white and
about four inches in diameter, this had been placed on
the dirt next to the braves Dugout. I had literally
(38:36):
had to drop to my hands and knees the second
the highlights started to play. To have any chance at all,
I said, just put the monitor on a stool or
a chair, or the wall, or have somebody hold it
up near my face. Weinberger said, okay. Kevin Kennedy said
that the Fox scopes the pre produced in depth analyzes
(39:00):
of pitch sequences or defensive positionings the inside base inside baseball,
he kind of needed to see at least some of
them before going on the air with them, maybe during
the commercial breaks, or he would have no idea what
to tell the audience, as was evidenced after game one.
Weinberger said, okay, absolutely, and then he said to Sax
(39:21):
and what do you need Steve, and Sax said utterly,
sincerely and with as much concern as I had had
for the Monitor and Kennedy had had for the Fox scopes.
Sax said, you got any more of these cookies? These
are great. What I had not told Weinberger was something
he already knew. I had to get more sleep. Fox
(39:46):
had put us in a hotel in suburban Buckhead, Georgia,
the Swiss Hotel, which I guess has been a Weston
for twenty years. Nice enough place, big rooms, and the
one they put me in the first night was next
to a party or a meeting of some kind. I
mean there were it sounded like like twenty or thirty
people in there, ordinary sized room, same as mine. I
(40:10):
called the desk, Sorry, no other rooms available. They would
call my neighbors and make sure they would quiet down
before bedtime, and they did. And then at two am
I discovered what kind of party or meeting it was
and why twenty people were in the room in an
ordinary size room. In what started it as a dream
and then turned into literally unbelievable reality, I heard a
(40:34):
loud Southern voice say, if we are going to win
this competition, we're gonna have to be the best chorus
that ever left North Carolina. And they began to sing
gospel mostly, which is fine, except not at two am.
Make that now three am, the night before Game one
(40:54):
of the World Series, which I have to cover on
live TV. Oh, and they'd get thirty or forty seconds
into one of the hymns, and the director, who had
a voice like the PA system at Turner Field, only
way clearer, would stop them and yell at them and
make them start from the beginning. They were competing in
(41:15):
the morning, and he had decided they were going to
spend the night, the whole night that night practicing. I
called the desk and I made a few sharp edged
remarks about being on national television and how many opportunities
I would have to bankrupt the Buckhead Swiss Hotel and
(41:36):
the Swiss Hotel chain generally. And suddenly they found me
another room to move to, and I gathered my stuff
and trudged a few floors and scattered my stuff in
the new room, and I fell onto the bed and
I went right to sleep, and I got a solid
two or three minutes. And that's when the bathroom phone
(41:57):
began to ring, not the main phone in the room,
just the one in the bathroom. Picked it up and
there was a dial tone, and it kept ringing, one
hundred rings, two hundred rings. I disconnected the phone line
from the wall. It kept ringing. I thought, I have
(42:19):
to be on one of two TV shows. Either I'm
on Candid Camera or The Twilight Zone. The phone is alive.
I've disconnected it from the wall and it's still ringing.
It is now five am. I still have a chance
to get a full night's sleep, in full day's sleep
before the game, but the rest of the day will
(42:39):
be erased. I called the desk. My god, we still
have one of those phones in one of the rooms.
I thought we'd removed all of them. I'll send the electrician.
He got there surprisingly fast. He did not bother with
any niceties, and he simply did what I would have done.
He yanked the whole thing out of the wall and
took it with him. I closed the door behind him,
(43:02):
and I could hear it as he moved back down
the hall towards the elevator. The phone was still ringing.
It was a possessed phone. As the sun began to
rise and I crawled back into bed, I remembered something.
Vital I called my new friend at the front desk
again and I pleaded with him. Upon my arrival. The
night before, which seemed like three or four decades earlier,
(43:25):
I had sent over a suit to be pressed. Please,
could you make sure they do not deliver it until
I call? I have to sleep, guaranteed, sir, you get
some sleep now. The knock came at eight thirty am,
Ballet Service. I shout, go away. A moment later the
(43:47):
phone rings Ballet Service. Minutes after that the phone rings again. Hi,
this is the Ballet manager. We want to make sure
did you get your suit? I emitted a string of
popular Anglo saxon expletives. I had now been violently awakened
so many times by so many different means that my
vision had blurred. I called the desk. I asked for
(44:11):
the fat number of the general manager's office, and, in
those days before the universality of email, I wrote the
general manager a crisp and enraged letter, summarizing to her
my night in her hell with elevators, and explaining I
would be checking out and going anywhere a cab could
take me, a Motel six, a YMCA, a safe looking
(44:33):
bus stop. When I finally woke to my own alarm
around two in the afternoon, I found a note slipped
under my door. It was as apologetic as anything I
have ever read, and it had this sentence in it.
I know we cannot undo the harm we have done
to you, but I would offer you this by way
(44:53):
of apology. At eight pm this evening, the presidential suite
will become available. Please try it just tonight with our compliments.
We will pack and move your belongings in your absence,
and my assistant will stay tonight until you return from
the game and will personally escort you to the suite. Okay, well,
(45:17):
I had to give that a shot, didn't I. The
Presidential suite at the Swiss Hotel and Buckhead, Georgia was
not what I expected. The front doors, there were two
of them, opened onto a dining table which seated twenty eight.
A few feet away from this twenty eight seater, well
(45:40):
twenty or thirty or forty feet was the baby grand
piano in the next room. To the left, just a
few minutes walk away was the kitchen and the conference room,
which had the big table. Each of the bedrooms had
a fireplace, so did the living room. There were four bedrooms.
(46:03):
There was a sauna, There was a hot tub. There
was a second hot tub out on the balcony. There
was a walk in closet larger than the first room
they had given me. There was a door in the
back of the walk in closet that led to a
second walk in closet. I thought immediately of two things.
(46:27):
I called all the women I had dated in the
preceding year to see if any of them wanted to
fly to Atlanta at my expense, even if it was
just to see the presidential suite. I called women I
had known from when I occasionally worked in Atlanta sixteen
years earlier. I then thought, we all right, practically here,
(46:48):
we can hold the pre production meeting for Game two
of the World Series in well, either in the living
room with the twenty eight seat dining table or in
the conference room with the thirty six seat table. Hell,
the whole Game two of the World Series in this suite.
My only concern with that, in a suite so big
(47:11):
it should have had its own ZIP code, was that
there was an excellent chance Steve Sachs would get lost
in it and we would never find him. And then
I thought, no, they'll probably charge me extra for such
a wonderful bonus the Buckhead, Georgia, Swiss Hotel and its
general manager, whose name is lost in the folds of history,
(47:31):
had cemented a place in my travel hall of fame,
and we were discussing that during the pre production with
our Fox Sports news crew at noon on Sunday before
Game two, munching on the six plates of free food
they had sent up, when the doorbell rang, I say, doorbell.
It sounded like the bells at Notre Dame in Paris. There,
(47:55):
to my surprise, outside the double doors were three hotel
staffers with luggage carts. For a moment, I thought they
had come to give us free rides to the lobby.
I expressed my surprise at their presence. Well, said the staffer,
who turned out to be the other assistant to the
hotels general manager. You're checking out today, I smiled, No, no, no, Tomorrow.
(48:20):
Game two is tonight. We're checking out tomorrow, tomorrow morning.
Suddenly the bell station manager looked sad, even remorseful. Oh,
for God's sakes, we got that wrong too. I'm afraid
we need the presidential suite for an actual president tonight.
I can move you to the governor's suite, he said. Hopefully,
(48:44):
they packed my stuff as I instructed the Fox staff
to eat all of the food on the platters and
to stuff anything they could not eat into their pockets.
I tried to sneak in a quick sauna, but the
staff said there was a certain element of hurry up involved. Finally,
we all paraded down the hall to the Governor's suite.
And why Burger and I were speculating that this would
(49:06):
only have one conference table and only one hot tub,
and it would all be indoors, and there would be
no balcony, and we'd all be like Cinderella when the
clock struck midnight, and we get there and the assistant
to the General Manager opens the door to the Governor's
suite with great ceremony, and they're five feet in from
the vestibule. Perfectly placed on the ratty and bright blue
(49:28):
nineteen eighty one nylon rug that might once have been
the artificial turf at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, was the
biggest carpet stain I have ever seen in my life,
easily ten feet in diameter, causable only by the spilling
of nuclear waste or by a murder. So I said
(49:54):
to the chagrined assistant to the general manager who was
putting down a fresh towel to cover the stain, and
to whom it was apparently news that his Governor's suite
feature to stain the size of the chalk outline of
where the body had fallen. So I asked him, when
(50:19):
does the chorus arrive for practice? I swear to goodness
there are pictures of me at the Baby Grand piano
(50:39):
pretending to play. I've done all the damage I can
do here, mostly to my own respiratory system. Thanks for
listening and bearing with me. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray
and John Phillip Schanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was
produced by Tko Brothers. And I have to have a
(51:02):
conversation with the producers of this show because I have
never recorded a generic last segment that I can just
plug in when I'm not feeling well, So I have
to do a new one for every show because I
put all these dates and times in it, because I'm
a genius. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written
(51:25):
by Mitch Warren Davis, appearing courtesy of ESPN inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my
friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was pretty much my fault
except the rest. I'd like to blame on society. That's
countdown for this, the one hundred and nineteenth day until
(51:45):
the twenty twenty four presidential election, the two hundred and
eightieth day since convicted felon Donald J. Insanity, Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
And that's right. I couldn't even get through the entire
closing segment in one take. Use the September eighteen sentencing hearing.
Use the mental health system. You've got it, mister president.
(52:08):
Use presidential immunity. You don't just give up. You don't say, well,
Hitler won the election, So here are the keys. If
you don't do it, he will use presidential immunity to
stop Trump from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins as the news warrants,
(52:30):
although as mentioned earlier, maybe not. I'll check in with
my respiratory system in the afternoon. I suspect it's in
one other room in the house somewhere. Until then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good
luck to me. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(53:04):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com