August 18, 2025 • 48 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 5: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: THE DISASTA IN ALASKA
The Disasta in Alaska - starring the cheeseburger-eating surrender monkey.
We have, to quote Churchill, suffered a defeat, without a war. Because we forget we don’t MERELY have an evil, deranged president, we have an evil, deranged president who is also a moron. Now, Trump - Putin’s butt boy, his errand carrier - will deliver Putin’s message to Zelensky in Washington. He will be accompanied by EU President von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Rutte, Presidents Macron of France and Stubb of Finland, Prime Ministers Starmer of the U-K and Meloni of Italy, and Chancellor Merz of Germany. Trump will be accompanied by a large selection of mirrors.
I suspect Trump will parrot what he remembers of Putin's message (whatever Trump's staff didn't leave on the printer of the business center at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage) and tell Zelensky that the way to achieve an end to the war in Ukraine is: to lose. The best thing Zelensky and the Europeans could say in response would be to state that they are withdrawing their recognition of the government of the United States of America because it is just too effing stupid.
From the Disasta in Alaska to the Occupied territory of Washington, D.C. And don’t forget what Trump today DOUBLING the number of National Guard in DC with new recruits from Ohio, West Virginia, and South Carolina (all of them, far more violent than DC) means: It means he’s read his cratering polls number and declared war on the United States of America.
Also: we rejoin the Trumpstein Cover-up Scandal, already in progress.
B-Block (30:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: International Fop Piers Morgan FINALLY does a journalism - posts a meme of Trump on his way to meet Putin and Trump is wearing kneepads - and then DELETES the first journalism of his life? Pam Bondi proudly admits The Deep State has defeated her fascist DOJ with nothing more than a Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sub. And the battle of the most overrated people in their field: neither CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin nor House Democratic mis-Leader Hakeem Jeffries repeat Andrew Cuomo's canard that Democratic NYC mayor nominee Zohran Mamdani lives in a rent-CONTROLLED apartment when he, like HALF of all NYC renters (myself included) lives in a rent-STABILIZED apartment. Sorkin repeats this FOUR times, Jeffries doesn't correct him, and Jeffries who is theoretically a congressman from New York STILL refuses to endorse his own party's nominee, chosen by its MEMBERS, for mayor OF New York. Sorkin should be fired and Jeffries should resign.
C-Block (43:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody wrote last week that Aaron Sorkin's HBO "Newsroom" version of some of what happened to Countdown on MSNBC was the worst fictionalization of journalism in the English language. I think that's an exaggeration. It wasn't nearly that good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio The
Disaster in Alaska, starring the cheese burger eating surrender Monkey.
(00:34):
We have to quote Winston Churchill, suffer to defeat without
a war because we forget. We do not merely have
an evil deranged president. We have an evil deranged president
who is also a moron. And today Trump Putin's butt boy,
Putin's errand carrier will deliver Putin's message to Zelenski in Washington,
(00:59):
and Zelensky will be accompanied by EU President vonder Lane,
Natosectary General Ruta, Presidents Macrone of France and Stuba of Finland,
Prime Minister Starmer of the UK and Maloney of Italy,
Chancellor Meritz of Germany. And Trump will be accompanied by
a large selection of mirrors from the disaster in Alaska
(01:23):
to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C. I
hope they wrote down for Trump the message. Putin expects
him to relay, because otherwise he will think. Putin wanted
him to tell Zelenski that Trump really won the twenty
twenty election and that voting by mail is unreliable, even
(01:44):
though Russia has voting by mail established in twenty twenty
by Putin. But Trump's takeaway from all that was He's right,
and Joe Biden is the devil. Trump is an utter imbecile.
He is like a lazy Susan of incompetence, evil and farting.
You never know which in a given twenty four hour
(02:05):
period he will express the most of seventy two hours
after the Farcent Anchorage, we have some idea of what
Trump's impression of Neville Chamberlain consisted of. Trump's most recent
addition to his clown car dictatorship is named Steve Whitcoff.
And Steve Whitcoff was previously known only in New York
(02:25):
only for tenant complaints in his apartment buildings, and he
once tried to illegally raise the rent on a mere
eighteen thousand residents at a time, and for the website
The Observer quote used to carry a gun while collecting rents.
Despite all that, Whitcoff is still a clown, a twerp,
(02:47):
and most importantly a mark a sucker, a dupe. He
went on CNN yesterday claiming that Putin had agreed to
quote legislative enshrinement within the Russian Federation not to go
after any other territories when the peace deal is caught,
and he added legislative enshrinement in the Russian Federation not
(03:10):
to go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty.
Now that's nebel Chamberlain in nineteen thirty eight, because those
Putin promises are Hitler nineteen thirty eight at Munich about Czechoslovakia,
and they were all lies, as Putin's promises to this
idiot whitcof are all lies. It is bad enough to
(03:34):
platform Putin and debase US soldiers by having them literally
kneel before Putin and roll out a red carpet for Putin,
but it is something else altogether. To believe and propagate
the lies Putin is smearing all over your face. Whitcough,
you mark, you sucker, you dupe. Actually I take back
(04:01):
what I said before. I hope they did not write
Putin's message to Zelensky and Europe down for Trump, because
if they did, one of Trump's delegation of dopes presumably
left what they wrote down along with the eight pages
of confidential phone numbers and pronunciation guides in the printer
in the business center in the Hotel Captain Cook, twenty
(04:24):
minutes from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in beautiful downtown Anchorage, Alaska.
Eight pages of things like how to pronounce the name
putin pbo tihn, just think pooh. Also this listed where
(04:44):
everybody was supposed to sit and what their phone numbers
were at the Hotel Captain Cook, and when Trump was
supposed to give Putin his commemorative gift. And this was
a surprise. The commemorative gift was not the Dunetsk region
of Ukraine. No, it was an American bald eagle desk statue.
(05:05):
American bald eagle, you say, I assume that's Stephen Miller
who left the documents there. I'm betting on the idiot
who thinks that the German bad guy was named Hilter
and that it's with the Nobel Peace Prize, and who
is dumber than a box of two hundred pounds of rocks.
(05:26):
The press secretary, Oh, I left it inside. What's missing
in the absolute and absolutely justifiable disgust that one of
the other occupants of the Trump clown car left the
itinerary in the printer in the business center at the
the place they went to when they couldn't get into
(05:47):
Motel six or wherever is that. The key events at
Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, we know from these documents were
held in the Billy Mitchell room. And if the bitterness
of the irony of the Billy Mitchell room is not
immediately apparent to you, let me plane. Billy Mitchell was
(06:08):
an American hero, the American World War One pilot witnessed
to the Right Brothers in nineteen oh eight, who almost
alone realized then, or a decade after he saw the
Right Brothers that all subsequent war would be decided not
by ships but by planes and other lighter than air craft.
(06:31):
As his bosses branded him a lunatic, in nineteen twenty one,
he got them to let him send some rickety by
planes with two thousand pound bombs to sink the captured
World War One German dreadnought the Austriesland. And they all
laughed as the giant boat took bomb after bomb after
bomb for the turf first two bombing runs and barely moved.
(06:54):
And then on the third run, Mitchell's handful of planes
hit it just right and it spun like a rotisserie
oven roller and sank within second, and Mitchell's bosses ignored
the meaning of what they saw. But the Japanese observers,
who the nineteen twenty one equivalents of Pete Hegseth and
(07:16):
Cash Bettel invited to watch this demonstration live, said it
was an extraordinary event and they had so much to
learn from it. Our government wound up court martialing Billy Mitchell,
but the Japanese went home, and a couple of years
later Mitchell said that one fine Sunday morning, they'd be
back in a squadron to attack some of our Pacific bases,
(07:39):
like he picked one at random, Pearl Harbor in the
Billy Mitchell room. Donald Trump hosted the disaster in Alaska
and now to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington and
the meeting with Zelenski and especially Ruta. Ruta has already
(08:00):
proven he can manipulate Trump's ego at least as well
as Putin can. It is there today that boss Hog
Trump will deliver Putin's message, or Trump's version of it,
whatever Trump can remember through his brain damaged, self obsessed
Hayes or whatever they didn't leave on the printer. I
(08:21):
suspect he will tell Zlensky that the way to achieve
an end to the war in Ukraine is to lose.
It is amazing to think that maybe the big picture
of what happens when we have a psychopathic narcissist running
the country into the ground is not just the death
of Ukraine and the loss of security for Europe. But
(08:42):
maybe that isn't the big picture. What Trump has shown
Putin again and again and again, and as recently as Friday,
is that he has no conception of why countries fight
or what is meant by the word territory. He hears
about land and regions and occupation, and he thinks somebody
(09:04):
wants wants to trade a duplex in Trump Tower for
a four bedroom in Trump World Tower. Nothing else makes
sense to him. This isn't life or death, or freedom
or tyranny. It's like the rest of the world is.
To Trump, it's a real estate deal. And in revealing
(09:29):
this to Putin, he lays out, as the Americans laid
out to the Japanese visitors at Billy Mitchell's Flying Circus,
how to defeat this country in a land war in
the next four years. Simply sees any building that still
has the word Trump on it. And he will hand
you anything if only you'll give it back to him,
especially if you have seized what is now the most
(09:51):
important piece of land in the world to Trump, the
new parking lot he put up when he paved over
the paradise that had been the White House lawn. There
are too many comparisons between Trump and Ukraine and Neville
Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia. The problem with them is Chamberlain was
(10:13):
naive and wrong, but he wasn't Trump. He didn't think
it was a good meeting because Hitler invited him to
go for a beer next time he was in Germany.
Chamberlain screwed up. I mean he screwed up. But Trump
is worse. Trump is screwed up. The message from Putin
Trump thinks was a triumph, by the way, actually boils
(10:36):
down to next time you're in Russia, Donald, try and
find me quote. Let's be clear, said a TV political commentator.
The so called summit with Vladimir Putin did absolutely nothing
to advance any American interests in any way. That's a fact. Instead,
Vladimir received a massive platform in exchange for zero concessions whatsoever,
(11:01):
and then Putin used that platform to take after shot
after shot at our country, the United States of America.
And what do we get in return for this grand
gesture that will enrich Vladimir Putin and Russia. Nothing we
got nothing. Appeasement doesn't work, has never worked, never will work. Unquote.
(11:27):
The TV commentator was Sean Hannity, and the date of
that commentary was June sixteenth, two thousand and twenty one.
And the president meeting with Putin was President Biden. And
it wasn't in the days in at Wasilla, it was
in Geneva. And the quote was unearthed by John Pasentino
at the news site Status And Sean Hannity is a
(11:49):
whore and Donald Trump is an idiot. And what Zelenski
and the European leaders should do today is tell Trump
that Ukraine and the EU and its member nations have
thought real hard about it, and they are now withdrawing
their recognition of the government of the United States of
America because we are just too effing stupid. Oh I
(12:11):
forgot the coup de gras. Milania wrote a letter. Milania
wrote a letter to Putin calling for peace in Ukraine
for the protection of innocent children, if Milania Trump gave
a shit about the protection of innocent children, she'd write
(12:32):
a letter to her goddamned husband, a letter to putin
about protecting people. It's so pathetic and so useless that
Milania Trump has suddenly made herself into a candidate to
join the Democratic leadership in the House. The disaster in Alaska.
(13:22):
Now about the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C.
We need to face the fact that Trump has declared
war against the United States of America. There is no
national emergency in d C or anywhere else. There certainly
is nothing in DC that is as bad as it
is in Ohio, West Virginia, and South Carolina, whose governors
(13:47):
are Trump whares, and who have now decided to seek
to curry favor with the Furer by sending their own
National Guard troops to Washington to now double the number
present there, even though nearly all the troops are being
sent not into the areas of DC that actually have
some islands, but to the areas that have some liberals
(14:10):
to say nothing of the analysis of Philip bump X
of the Washington Post. You remember the Washington Post. It
used to be a newspaper. Quote The FBI reported that
fully forty three cities in those three states, Ohio, West Virginia,
and South Carolina, had higher rates of violent crime in
twenty twenty four than did d C. More than one
(14:33):
point two million people live in those cities, including more
than nine hundred thousand in Ohio alone, Yet that state's
National Guard is being deployed to d C to protect
the capital's seven hundred thousand odd residents. Half a million
Ohioans live in cities with higher homicide rates than DC.
(14:59):
One disaster has been forestalled. District Attorney Bondi rewrote her
order that SU imposed the head of the DEEA over
the mayor and the police chief of the District of Columbia.
That's what they told the court anyway, because Bondi was
about to get her balls handed to her by the
judge in the lawsuit against her. What are they telling
(15:19):
the public? From Politico quote? In a statement, White House
spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration quote is not
backing down, and that the new order requires city officials
quote to comply fully and completely with federal immigration law
and authorities unquote. This leaves in place the possibility of
(15:39):
what might be the best possible outcome here the prospect
of Trump's brown shirts fighting the actual police of District Columbia. Now,
if this sounds crazy to you DC police versus the
National Guard, let me tell you about June sixteenth, eighteen
(16:00):
fifty seven. It is called the New York City Police Rise,
or as they called it then, the great police Riot
in front of City Hall, which looked then pretty much
the way it looks now, with a bunch of steps
near what would become the Brooklyn Bridge. Thirty years later,
(16:24):
they had dissolved the New York Municipal Police because the Mayor,
Fernando Wood had been abused by them and had abused them,
and the city of New York was in turmoil, and
there had been formed a second New York City police
department called the Metropolitan Police. And so on June sixteenth,
(16:44):
eighteen fifty seven, the New York Municipal Police and the
New York Metropolitan Police duked it out on the steps
of City Hall. How could a shoot them out on
the streets of DC be the best possible outcome because
it would be cops shooting now National Guard and not
(17:06):
you know, civilians. We are headed for something like this,
people are going to get shot, probably within months, probably
since this is being staged in Washington. It is being
test run in Washington, probably in Washington, while one person
(17:32):
in DC is going to try to seize control of
the city either before or after the midterms. And you
can guess who that is. So be prepared. And now
(17:54):
we rejoin the Jeffrey Epstein scandal already in progress. There
have been a lot of cease and desist letters flying around.
So let me just quote somebody quoting somebody quoting somebody else.
On the website Blue Sky, I saw Josh Marshall of
TPM posting photos provided by somebody called Quentin Thomas. Photos
(18:20):
posted by Marshall from mister Thomas of a book by
a man named Andrew Lowney about another man called Prince Andrew.
And the book is called entitled, and it was just
published in the United Kingdom in Andrew Lownie's book, as
photographed by mister Quinton Thomas and posted by mister Marshall.
Mister Lowney writes, and I've adjusted this slightly. Quote. In
two thousand and seven, somebody told one author that he
(18:45):
had facilitated the relationship between somebody else and his future
wife another somebody else. It follows that with a quote
passage indented attributed to somebody else else and dated two
(19:10):
thousand and seven quote the first time somebody had sex
with somebody else was on my plane. Little did somebody
else else know. I beat him to the punch by
a year. H Speaking of Epstein polling, g Elliott Morris's
(19:34):
strength in numbers notes a new poll from the Canadian
firm Ledger finds that forty seven percent of Republicans say
they would still vote for Trump even if he were
implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. Two things A this poll
was covered as if that's a shockingly small amount of
GOPED defection. But given we know how loyal partisans are,
(19:54):
I think Morris writes, fifty three percent of a base
saying they'd look elsewhere is notable and high. But be
careful with headline. Like these studies have found people are
very bad at predicting how they behave in the future
given new information, namely in that they overestimate change. I
(20:15):
would point out that if fifty three percent of Trump's
Republican supporters would bail on him in this poll and
that number is double what actually happens. That would mean
that a quarter of Trump's Republican supporters would bail on him.
That would be enough. Meanwhile, in polling from YouGov, a
(20:35):
total of thirty six percent of American adults say that
jobs at inflation are their number one priority. It had
been twenty eight percent during the first month of this
Trump second term, now thirty six percent. It is now
equal to the high point of that number. Jobs and
inflation are their number one priority thirty six percent. That
(20:58):
is the high water mark of the Joe Biden presidency.
The rest of these numbers are from Pew Research, and
this is Trump approval. He's five points underwater among white people,
sixty eight points underwater among Blacks, forty three percent underwater
(21:22):
among Hispanics, thirty five points underwater. Among Asians ages eighteen
to twenty nine, he's thirty three points underwater, thirty to
forty nine thirty one points underwater. But of course, his
base the older folks aged fifty to sixty four nine
(21:42):
points underwater, ages sixty five and up nine points underwater.
So of everybody in the country over the age of fifty,
Donald Trump's disapproval is fifty three or fifty four percent.
He's thirteen points underwater amongst males, women twenty eight percent underwater.
(22:07):
High school degree or less, fifteen points underwater. College graduate
thirty one percent or less, postgraduate thirty three percent or less.
And as an aside, that difference thirty one percent for
college grads thirty three percent for postgraduates underscores the theory
I've had since childhood that you do not need to
(22:29):
go to anything beyond college. Anyway. Back to it, he's
net minus twenty two approval, thirty eight percent, disapproval sixty percent.
Back to the big picture. Morris also notes Pew looks
(22:50):
at the cross tabs of their Trump approval rating data.
It was forty seven percent approval for Trump when the
term started. It is thirty eight percent now, and it
concludes Trump's rating has slipped more on among his younger
voters than among older adults who had voted for him.
(23:10):
A few weeks in, Trump's job approval rating among those
who had voted for him varied little by age. Morris
writes nine to ten or more Trump voters under thirty
five approved of his job performance, same as in the
older age groups. Today, Trump's rating remains overwhelmingly high among
his voters ages fifty and older, but it has slipped
(23:32):
among the younger voters. Sixty nine percent of Trump voters
under thirty five now approve. That's twenty three points less
than at the start of the term, twenty three points
less it was ninety two percent approval among younger voters.
It is now sixty nine. About a third of the
(23:54):
young people who voted for Trump do not approve of
him as president. While this is extraordinarily good news in
terms of elections if we still have them, it is
bad news because, as dumb as he is, Trump read
these two or more likely had somebody read them to him.
(24:14):
The worse he is doing, the more he senses reality
is cornering him, and the more troops he will bring
onto the streets of the blue cities, just waiting for
the chance to shoot you. The over arching lesson this week,
from c to Shining Sea, from the disaster in Alaska
(24:40):
to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C. Is
that Donald Trump has declared war on the United States
of America. Also of interest here, it's happened the monkeys
have written all of Shakespeare. Somebody has won the lottery
(25:03):
and not blown the money on a seven hundred thousand
square foot palace made out of ketchup. And Pierce Morgan
has done something journalistic. Pierce Morgan has posted a meme
of Trump on his way to Alaska to meet Putin,
wherein Trump is shown wearing bright red kneepads. That's next,
(25:28):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old Woman
(25:55):
still add on this editionive Countdown. I had the pleasure
of reading a comment over the weekend in which it
was claimed that the HBO Aaron Sorkin series Newsroom was
the worst episodic or film depiction of journalism, TV or
otherwise in the history of the English language. I'm not alone.
(26:23):
I'm not alone. Somebody else knows, but I must say
worse than the history of the English language. I think
that's exaggerating. It was not nearly that good. But what
made it even worse was the astonishing amount of dialogue
Sorkin allegedly cut and pasted from other people figuratively in
(26:44):
the case of me, literally according to a friend of
mine who was his ex girlfriend and said he cut
and pasted stuff out of her emails to him and
turned them into dialogue. My dad says it there, and
then it comes out of Jeff Daniels's mouth over there next.
(27:08):
In things I promise not to tell first, Believe it
or not, they're still more new idiots talk about the
roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. The
Bron's worst international fop Pierce Morgan, disgraced ex British journalist
(27:31):
and disgraced ex American journalist. It's a hell of a combo, Peers.
Hours before the disaster in Alaska began, he tweeted, as
President Donald Trump lens in Alaska, I wish him the
very best of luck in trying to secure an end
to the horrendous war in Ukraine. It's refreshing to see
a US president who genuinely prefers peace to war. Beneath
(27:55):
that is a picture of Trump at the top of
the stairs Air Force one waving. This is an actual
picture of Trump. He's waving to no crowd. He's just
posing for a photograph. He does this every time he
gets to the top of the stairs. He waves, whether
there's somebody there or not. We think he knows there's
nobody there, but nobody's sure. But the key ingredient here
(28:17):
is he's wearing not just bright red knee pads over
his pants, but they look like they're from roller Derby.
I mean, these knee pads would be way too much
for the National Football League in the nineteen thirties. I
mean they are knee pads the size of his neck,
(28:41):
bright red knee pads with I might add supporting straps
both on top and below what clear to be appear
to be plastic. They look kind of like baseball catchers,
shint guards, and kneepads. Pierce Morgan wishing Trump luck as
(29:01):
he goes to Alaska to meet Putin wearing kneepads. Morgan,
the hacking the voicemail guy deleted this tweet and reposted
it with a different photo without explanation. When other posters
asked wtf bub, he blithely said he hadn't noticed the
kneepads until after he posted it. He just changed photos,
(29:25):
as one does as one hacks. Paul McCartney's voicemail, for instance,
intered national scum. Moreover, that was the first bit of
actual journalism. Pierce Morgan has ever done, and he deleted it.
The first clever thing he's ever done, the first thing
in which he did not make himself look like an
asshole on at least two continents at the same time,
(29:48):
and he deleted it. The runner up worser Attorney General
Pam Blondie, This is an actual post. This is presumably
something that she thought of or somebody he thought of,
and they vetted it, and they thought about it, and
(30:10):
they posted it anyway, much like Pierce Morgan. Maybe Pierce
Morgan posted this for them. If you touch any law
enforcement officer, we will come after you. I just learned
that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice no longer.
Not only has he fired, he has been charged with
a felony. This is an example of the deep state
(30:33):
we have been up against for seven months. As we
work to refocus. Dj Ah, you will not work in
this administration, she said, while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.
What is this somebody shooting a bazooka at the White House?
(30:53):
Some terrorists with nuclear weapons. Pierce Morgan posting a picture
of the President wearing knee pads on his way to
fellate putin, no, sir, it is a repost of a
New York Post article DC man charged with felony assault
after hitting federal agent with subway sandwich. Pam Bondi and
(31:19):
the federal government laid low by a guy throwing a
sub sandwich. A hero a HOGI, the Hogi from Hell,
an example of the deep State. We have been up against.
You touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after
(31:41):
you with or without lettuce a that should have read
if you touch any law enforcement officer except on January sixth,
twenty twenty one, or if you're wearing a Trump hat,
be imagine posting this in fury and her unrighteous indignation,
herself martyring that the deep State endangered the mighty Warriors
(32:05):
from Trump's isis by throwing a sandwich at it. Posting
this and never realizing you have made another fool out
of yourself and Trump isis and Trump and see the
reference to deep State. Pambody's voice, deep State am I right?
(32:30):
But the winners the worst CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin, Oh
It's bad Sorkin day and House Minority Leader Akeem Jeffries.
I don't know in which order they should resign, but
they should both resign. These two men may be the
most overrated figures in their businesses in a generation. Four
(32:51):
times the smooth shallow Sorkin insisted that the Democratic candidate
for Mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, lives in a
quote rent controlled apartment. Mamdani does not live in a
rent controlled apartment. He lives in what is called here
a rent stabilized apartment. There's a big difference between these
(33:12):
two things. In addition to the fact that it's not
the same words, Andrew Ross Sorkin and you fed up
in the simple business of reading words on TV, which
I think is your job, unless you volunteer at CNBC.
Knowing people at CNBC and having worked off and on
with CNBC for twenty seven years, it's possible he doesn't
(33:32):
get paid for that job. Actually, there is a big difference.
Twenty two thousand apartments are rent controlled in this city.
To live in one of them, you have to have
lived in it since at least nineteen seventy one, or
you have to have inherited it from somebody who lived
in it since at least nineteen seventy one. About fifteen
(33:54):
years ago, I lived in a building that had people
who had been living in it since the forties. They
were in rent controlled apartments. You really couldn't raise the
rent on them. But it has to be you have
to have been there since nineteen seventy one or earlier.
Zoraon Mamdani was born in nineteen ninety one. Mamdani lives
(34:16):
in a rent stabilized apartment. Half of all the apartments
in New York City at all price ranges, are rent stabilized.
All rent stabilized means is the landlord can only raise
the rent so much every year. It's two point seventy
five percent from one year to the next on a
one year lease, or five and a quarter percent if
(34:37):
you want a two year lease. Half of all apartments
in this city are rent stabilized. Zoron Mamdani lives in
one of those. I live in one of those. At
least half the people I have known in the entirety
of my lifetime in New York since nineteen fifty nine
have lived in one of those. They're not for what
this buffoon Sorkin said, for poor people. They are merely
(35:01):
for people who are not billionaires. What happened was Andrew Cuomo,
who already lost the Democratic nomination, said this about Mamdani
and said he lived in a rent control department, which
is not true, because Cuomo cannot handle being a loser
and will do anything to defeat Mamdani or anybody else. Now,
(35:22):
mister Sorkin of CNBC repeated Cuomo's made up bullshit story
four times and said this live on the air to
the minority leader, the Democratic leader in the House, one
of the top five Democrats in the country. It came Jeffries,
who still has not endorsed the Democratic nominee for mayor
(35:44):
of the city that Jeffries represents in the House, nominee
chosen by Democrats in the city that chose Jeffries. Zoran Mamdani.
He's the nominee. He's not running for the nomination. He's
not a candidate. He beat the crap out of Andrew
Cuomo and every other Democrat and all the other Democrats
(36:04):
at Cuomo and a Keem Jeffries have endorsed him, but
not a Keem Jeffries, who's playing some other kind of
game there. And by the way, Jeffries did not correct
Andrew Ross Sorkin, as Andrew Ross Sorkin got it wrong
four times. Jeffries, who so far has been nearly a
(36:27):
total disaster as House minority leader, he might as well be.
Chuck Schumer answered, not with an endorsement of Mam Donnie finally,
nor a repudiation of Cuomo's falsehood that this lazy, sloppy,
overrated clown. Sorkin repeated, but he said, quote, it's a
legitimate issue that has been raised, and the Mam Donnie
(36:49):
campaign is going to address it. First off, that's a
stronger phrase than he's used about Trump. Secondly, Congress and Jeffries,
it isn't a legitimate issue. It's a lie, and it's
a lie you didn't curt when afforded that opportunity. It
is a smear against your party's candidate who you have
(37:10):
not endorsed, a candidate who has won something already, unlike
the great job you did in the House elections last year.
And the issue that has to be raised is why
are you still the minority leader, Why are you the
lead Democrat in the House. Why at best, don't you
(37:31):
know the difference between New York City rent control departments
and New York City rent stabilized apartments When you represent
New York effing City in Congress, a Keem, Jeffries and
Andrew Wrong Sorkin torps, resign leave take that lying shit
(37:52):
Cuomo with you Today's other worst persons And finally our
(38:24):
number one story in the Countdown Things I promised not
to tell And back to my favorite topic, me. I
heard Jeff Daniels say the words, and in the next
minute my cell phone rang. It was an ex girlfriend.
While we were talking, an email arrived from another ex girlfriend,
and then in came a text from the current girlfriend
at her folks house, then two more emails, and before
(38:46):
I was off the phone to voicemails, and then regular
friends started to contact me. This is just over ten
years ago now. It was Sunday, August fifth, twenty twelve.
Jeff Daniels was playing the controversial newscaster and commentator on
Aaron Sorkin's HBO series Newsroom, which was based structurally on
(39:06):
Me and Countdown. And I know this because Aaron Sorkin
told me so before he filmed any of it. And
I know this because he asked me if he could
base the pilot episode on what happened to Me at
MSNBC in the spring and summer of twenty ten and
I know this because he came in and shadowed the
staff of Countdown for two days to get the feel
(39:27):
for the place. And I know this because he wound
up basing one character, Maggie Jordan, on my assistant Margaret Judson,
and then hiring Margaret Judson as a consultant, and then
hiring her as an actress to play a part that
wasn't supposed to be her. And I know this because
he was furious when I would not fly to Denver.
(39:47):
I think it was to do a cameo in the pilot.
And I know this because he said he was hiring
me as a consultant. And I know this because I
never saw a dime out of it. This was the
second time Aaron Sorkin had based one of his TV
series on one of my TV series. The other was
called Sports Night, and Esquire magazine once asked me to
(40:08):
interview Sorkin about Sports Night, and I asked him the
real tough question, what was the origin of Sports Night?
And his answer was, quote, you are the origin. So
when The New York Times had called me about Newsroom,
I lightheartedly said it was nice to know in advance
this time that Aaron Sorkin was making a TV series
about me. Sorkin did not like this at all, and
(40:32):
he told all his actors to tell all their interviewers
that this was not true. And I know that because
Jeff Daniels told me that that was what Sorkin had
told him. Sorkin is interesting. I had known him for
about ten or twelve years when he came in to
countdown to see what it looked and felt like, and
he was twenty minutes late. And my assistant Margaret after
(40:53):
whom he named Maggie Jordan, whom he then hired away
from me, and whom he finally hired as an actress
to play Tess Weston, and she was great. By the way.
Margaret brings him in and he apologizes for being late,
and he said he's staying in a hotel two blocks
away and he should have just walked, but instead he
got in a car, and the next thing he knew,
he was six blocks away, caught in traffic caused by
(41:14):
the complete shutdown of one of the crosstown streets for
midday construction. And I laughed and I said, well, like
my late father, the architect used to say, New York,
it'll be a great town whenever they finish it, and
he laughed, and I laughed, And two years later, in
the seventh episode of the HBO Newsroom series, first aired
(41:34):
on August fifth, twenty twelve, and re aired throughout the week,
Jeff Daniels as the anchorman, Will McAvoy, who wasn't me
but actually kind of was me, is late to his
newsroom because he gets caught in Manhattan traffic caused by
Sunday night street construction, and he says to his exasperated producer,
new York, it'll be a great town whenever they finish it.
(41:57):
That's when my phone and email blew up, and the
then girlfriend, and like forty percent of all of my
exes ever all had the same question, New York, it'll
be a great town whenever they finish it. Isn't that
what your dad used to say? Even the ones who
never met my dad knew this because I used to
quote him constantly, Because the real humor in the quote
(42:20):
is the fact that my dad was an architect and
construction was his business. New York, It'll be a great
town whenever they finish it. And then one of the
last of the exes reached out, she waited until the
show was over. Now, I don't think any of us
is proud of this, but she had also dated Sorkin
once or twice, and since she had written celebrity stories
(42:42):
for a New York newspaper, he had later asked her
by email what the world of gossip reporting was like,
and she told him by email. And what she now
told me made Aaron Sorkin's use of my dad's quote
and other parts of my life seem like possible coincidences.
She said she was watching the third, maybe fourth episode
(43:03):
of Newsroom and in wa a new character, a gossip columnist,
a woman, and the first sentence the character said was
my friend. An ex said word for word something she
had sent to Sorkin in one of the emails about
the gossip business. She said, when she heard it, her
face started to get read, and it would keep getting reader.
(43:24):
The gossip columnist character's second line had also been cut
and pasted from my ex's email, then her long speech,
then all of her dialogue. She said in her second scene,
my ex actually managed to record that episode and to
find her own email to Sorkin and to compare them.
And she said, other than changing a couple of tenses
he had used her answers verbatim. I met the actor
(43:47):
Josh Charles during the two thousand World Series. I was
there anchoring it for Fox Sports. Josh was there promoting
his new show on Fox. Josh had played Dan Rydell
on Sorkin's Sports Night series, and even Sorkin and I agree,
dan Rydell is just me with a different haircut. I
was walking up Sixth Avenue one day in October two
(44:08):
thousand and from several blocks away, I saw Josh Charles
walking towards me, so I had several minutes to prepare
what I could say to him. This was not spontaneous, sadly,
but after our eyes met and I smiled and he
gave me that yes, I'm on TV, look that I
recognize and have myself deployed. He switched suddenly to shock
(44:29):
and even a little apprehension, and I said the line
I had been rehearsing in my head for several minutes.
Excuse me. You don't get to say this often in life,
but didn't you used to play me on TV? Right
there on Sixth Avenue, Josh told me about the ordeal
of working with and for Aaron Sorkin, and I thought
he just met for actors, but I later found out
(44:52):
because New York. It'll be a great time whenever they
finish it. Josh and I are still friends. We've gone
to ballgames together. We were in a fantasy baseball league together.
And one night on my ESPN two show, we came
back from commercial, giving the audience no warning or explanation,
and we simply started co anchoring the show and calling
it Sports Night and making references to the program and
(45:14):
to Newsroom. And then he said, why did we keep
reading this? And I said, I don't know. I just
assumed Sorkin had run out of new ideas. The mutual
laughter that followed was sincere, there is one more punchline
to the Newsroom Sorkin story, because I was like his
seventh guest ever. When Stephen Colbert wrapped up the Colbert
(45:35):
Report on Comedy Central, I was invited to be on
the final farewell episode, me and like ninety nine other people.
There were so many of us, ranging from Barry Manilow
to Brian Cranston to Big Bird, that they had like
nine green rooms in the Comedy Central building. And I
get there and they send me to the green room,
(45:56):
I would be sharing with several other people, and I'd
trudge up a bunch of stairs to the top floor.
And in this big room there is only one other
performer there yet it's Jeff Daniels. Without saying hello, he says, now, wait,
let me explain. Sorkin told me, and I explained, and
then he explained, and then I explained some more, and
(46:16):
Jeff said, oh a lot. And once he said oops,
and Sorkin didn't tell me that. And after about three
minutes he said, so I owe you an apology and
I said, no, you don't. It's not your fault. And
he smiled and he said, well great, I'm glad. So
can we take a picture together that I can put
(46:37):
out on Twitter? And I said, yeah, absolutely, but only
if you capture it New York. It'll be a great
town whenever they finish it. I've done all the damage
(46:59):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Schanel, our musical directors of Countdown,
and it was produced by two Ko brothers. Mister Ray
was on guitarist, bass and drums. Mister Chanale. Therefore, by
process of elimination, handled orchestration and keyboards, our satirical and
(47:19):
fifthy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis, appears CURTISYVESPN Inc. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
was my friend from Breaking Bad and Better call Saul
Johnny Banks. Everything else was as always my fault. That's
(47:45):
countdown for today, Day two hundred and eleven of America
held hostage again, just two hundred and fifty two days
until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame
brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein or the actuarial tables where Caroline Levitt leaves
him the business center in the hotel and anchorage until
(48:09):
next time. I'm Keithuldraman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(48:36):
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 The
Disaster in Alaska, starring the cheese burger eating surrender Monkey.
(00:34):
We have to quote Winston Churchill, suffer to defeat without
a war because we forget. We do not merely have
an evil deranged president. We have an evil deranged president
who is also a moron. And today Trump Putin's butt boy,
Putin's errand carrier will deliver Putin's message to Zelenski in Washington,
(00:59):
and Zelensky will be accompanied by EU President vonder Lane,
Natosectary General Ruta, Presidents Macrone of France and Stuba of Finland,
Prime Minister Starmer of the UK and Maloney of Italy,
Chancellor Meritz of Germany. And Trump will be accompanied by
a large selection of mirrors from the disaster in Alaska
(01:23):
to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C. I
hope they wrote down for Trump the message. Putin expects
him to relay, because otherwise he will think. Putin wanted
him to tell Zelenski that Trump really won the twenty
twenty election and that voting by mail is unreliable, even
(01:44):
though Russia has voting by mail established in twenty twenty
by Putin. But Trump's takeaway from all that was He's right,
and Joe Biden is the devil. Trump is an utter imbecile.
He is like a lazy Susan of incompetence, evil and farting.
You never know which in a given twenty four hour
(02:05):
period he will express the most of seventy two hours
after the Farcent Anchorage, we have some idea of what
Trump's impression of Neville Chamberlain consisted of. Trump's most recent
addition to his clown car dictatorship is named Steve Whitcoff.
And Steve Whitcoff was previously known only in New York
(02:25):
only for tenant complaints in his apartment buildings, and he
once tried to illegally raise the rent on a mere
eighteen thousand residents at a time, and for the website
The Observer quote used to carry a gun while collecting rents.
Despite all that, Whitcoff is still a clown, a twerp,
(02:47):
and most importantly a mark a sucker, a dupe. He
went on CNN yesterday claiming that Putin had agreed to
quote legislative enshrinement within the Russian Federation not to go
after any other territories when the peace deal is caught,
and he added legislative enshrinement in the Russian Federation not
(03:10):
to go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty.
Now that's nebel Chamberlain in nineteen thirty eight, because those
Putin promises are Hitler nineteen thirty eight at Munich about Czechoslovakia,
and they were all lies, as Putin's promises to this
idiot whitcof are all lies. It is bad enough to
(03:34):
platform Putin and debase US soldiers by having them literally
kneel before Putin and roll out a red carpet for Putin,
but it is something else altogether. To believe and propagate
the lies Putin is smearing all over your face. Whitcough,
you mark, you sucker, you dupe. Actually I take back
(04:01):
what I said before. I hope they did not write
Putin's message to Zelensky and Europe down for Trump, because
if they did, one of Trump's delegation of dopes presumably
left what they wrote down along with the eight pages
of confidential phone numbers and pronunciation guides in the printer
in the business center in the Hotel Captain Cook, twenty
(04:24):
minutes from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in beautiful downtown Anchorage, Alaska.
Eight pages of things like how to pronounce the name
putin pbo tihn, just think pooh. Also this listed where
(04:44):
everybody was supposed to sit and what their phone numbers
were at the Hotel Captain Cook, and when Trump was
supposed to give Putin his commemorative gift. And this was
a surprise. The commemorative gift was not the Dunetsk region
of Ukraine. No, it was an American bald eagle desk statue.
(05:05):
American bald eagle, you say, I assume that's Stephen Miller
who left the documents there. I'm betting on the idiot
who thinks that the German bad guy was named Hilter
and that it's with the Nobel Peace Prize, and who
is dumber than a box of two hundred pounds of rocks.
(05:26):
The press secretary, Oh, I left it inside. What's missing
in the absolute and absolutely justifiable disgust that one of
the other occupants of the Trump clown car left the
itinerary in the printer in the business center at the
the place they went to when they couldn't get into
(05:47):
Motel six or wherever is that. The key events at
Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, we know from these documents were
held in the Billy Mitchell room. And if the bitterness
of the irony of the Billy Mitchell room is not
immediately apparent to you, let me plane. Billy Mitchell was
(06:08):
an American hero, the American World War One pilot witnessed
to the Right Brothers in nineteen oh eight, who almost
alone realized then, or a decade after he saw the
Right Brothers that all subsequent war would be decided not
by ships but by planes and other lighter than air craft.
(06:31):
As his bosses branded him a lunatic, in nineteen twenty one,
he got them to let him send some rickety by
planes with two thousand pound bombs to sink the captured
World War One German dreadnought the Austriesland. And they all
laughed as the giant boat took bomb after bomb after
bomb for the turf first two bombing runs and barely moved.
(06:54):
And then on the third run, Mitchell's handful of planes
hit it just right and it spun like a rotisserie
oven roller and sank within second, and Mitchell's bosses ignored
the meaning of what they saw. But the Japanese observers,
who the nineteen twenty one equivalents of Pete Hegseth and
(07:16):
Cash Bettel invited to watch this demonstration live, said it
was an extraordinary event and they had so much to
learn from it. Our government wound up court martialing Billy Mitchell,
but the Japanese went home, and a couple of years
later Mitchell said that one fine Sunday morning, they'd be
back in a squadron to attack some of our Pacific bases,
(07:39):
like he picked one at random, Pearl Harbor in the
Billy Mitchell room. Donald Trump hosted the disaster in Alaska
and now to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington and
the meeting with Zelenski and especially Ruta. Ruta has already
(08:00):
proven he can manipulate Trump's ego at least as well
as Putin can. It is there today that boss Hog
Trump will deliver Putin's message, or Trump's version of it,
whatever Trump can remember through his brain damaged, self obsessed
Hayes or whatever they didn't leave on the printer. I
(08:21):
suspect he will tell Zlensky that the way to achieve
an end to the war in Ukraine is to lose.
It is amazing to think that maybe the big picture
of what happens when we have a psychopathic narcissist running
the country into the ground is not just the death
of Ukraine and the loss of security for Europe. But
(08:42):
maybe that isn't the big picture. What Trump has shown
Putin again and again and again, and as recently as Friday,
is that he has no conception of why countries fight
or what is meant by the word territory. He hears
about land and regions and occupation, and he thinks somebody
(09:04):
wants wants to trade a duplex in Trump Tower for
a four bedroom in Trump World Tower. Nothing else makes
sense to him. This isn't life or death, or freedom
or tyranny. It's like the rest of the world is.
To Trump, it's a real estate deal. And in revealing
(09:29):
this to Putin, he lays out, as the Americans laid
out to the Japanese visitors at Billy Mitchell's Flying Circus,
how to defeat this country in a land war in
the next four years. Simply sees any building that still
has the word Trump on it. And he will hand
you anything if only you'll give it back to him,
especially if you have seized what is now the most
(09:51):
important piece of land in the world to Trump, the
new parking lot he put up when he paved over
the paradise that had been the White House lawn. There
are too many comparisons between Trump and Ukraine and Neville
Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia. The problem with them is Chamberlain was
(10:13):
naive and wrong, but he wasn't Trump. He didn't think
it was a good meeting because Hitler invited him to
go for a beer next time he was in Germany.
Chamberlain screwed up. I mean he screwed up. But Trump
is worse. Trump is screwed up. The message from Putin
Trump thinks was a triumph, by the way, actually boils
(10:36):
down to next time you're in Russia, Donald, try and
find me quote. Let's be clear, said a TV political commentator.
The so called summit with Vladimir Putin did absolutely nothing
to advance any American interests in any way. That's a fact. Instead,
Vladimir received a massive platform in exchange for zero concessions whatsoever,
(11:01):
and then Putin used that platform to take after shot
after shot at our country, the United States of America.
And what do we get in return for this grand
gesture that will enrich Vladimir Putin and Russia. Nothing we
got nothing. Appeasement doesn't work, has never worked, never will work. Unquote.
(11:27):
The TV commentator was Sean Hannity, and the date of
that commentary was June sixteenth, two thousand and twenty one.
And the president meeting with Putin was President Biden. And
it wasn't in the days in at Wasilla, it was
in Geneva. And the quote was unearthed by John Pasentino
at the news site Status And Sean Hannity is a
(11:49):
whore and Donald Trump is an idiot. And what Zelenski
and the European leaders should do today is tell Trump
that Ukraine and the EU and its member nations have
thought real hard about it, and they are now withdrawing
their recognition of the government of the United States of
America because we are just too effing stupid. Oh I
(12:11):
forgot the coup de gras. Milania wrote a letter. Milania
wrote a letter to Putin calling for peace in Ukraine
for the protection of innocent children, if Milania Trump gave
a shit about the protection of innocent children, she'd write
(12:32):
a letter to her goddamned husband, a letter to putin
about protecting people. It's so pathetic and so useless that
Milania Trump has suddenly made herself into a candidate to
join the Democratic leadership in the House. The disaster in Alaska.
(13:22):
Now about the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C.
We need to face the fact that Trump has declared
war against the United States of America. There is no
national emergency in d C or anywhere else. There certainly
is nothing in DC that is as bad as it
is in Ohio, West Virginia, and South Carolina, whose governors
(13:47):
are Trump whares, and who have now decided to seek
to curry favor with the Furer by sending their own
National Guard troops to Washington to now double the number
present there, even though nearly all the troops are being
sent not into the areas of DC that actually have
some islands, but to the areas that have some liberals
(14:10):
to say nothing of the analysis of Philip bump X
of the Washington Post. You remember the Washington Post. It
used to be a newspaper. Quote The FBI reported that
fully forty three cities in those three states, Ohio, West Virginia,
and South Carolina, had higher rates of violent crime in
twenty twenty four than did d C. More than one
(14:33):
point two million people live in those cities, including more
than nine hundred thousand in Ohio alone, Yet that state's
National Guard is being deployed to d C to protect
the capital's seven hundred thousand odd residents. Half a million
Ohioans live in cities with higher homicide rates than DC.
(14:59):
One disaster has been forestalled. District Attorney Bondi rewrote her
order that SU imposed the head of the DEEA over
the mayor and the police chief of the District of Columbia.
That's what they told the court anyway, because Bondi was
about to get her balls handed to her by the
judge in the lawsuit against her. What are they telling
(15:19):
the public? From Politico quote? In a statement, White House
spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration quote is not
backing down, and that the new order requires city officials
quote to comply fully and completely with federal immigration law
and authorities unquote. This leaves in place the possibility of
(15:39):
what might be the best possible outcome here the prospect
of Trump's brown shirts fighting the actual police of District Columbia. Now,
if this sounds crazy to you DC police versus the
National Guard, let me tell you about June sixteenth, eighteen
(16:00):
fifty seven. It is called the New York City Police Rise,
or as they called it then, the great police Riot
in front of City Hall, which looked then pretty much
the way it looks now, with a bunch of steps
near what would become the Brooklyn Bridge. Thirty years later,
(16:24):
they had dissolved the New York Municipal Police because the Mayor,
Fernando Wood had been abused by them and had abused them,
and the city of New York was in turmoil, and
there had been formed a second New York City police
department called the Metropolitan Police. And so on June sixteenth,
(16:44):
eighteen fifty seven, the New York Municipal Police and the
New York Metropolitan Police duked it out on the steps
of City Hall. How could a shoot them out on
the streets of DC be the best possible outcome because
it would be cops shooting now National Guard and not
(17:06):
you know, civilians. We are headed for something like this,
people are going to get shot, probably within months, probably
since this is being staged in Washington. It is being
test run in Washington, probably in Washington, while one person
(17:32):
in DC is going to try to seize control of
the city either before or after the midterms. And you
can guess who that is. So be prepared. And now
(17:54):
we rejoin the Jeffrey Epstein scandal already in progress. There
have been a lot of cease and desist letters flying around.
So let me just quote somebody quoting somebody quoting somebody else.
On the website Blue Sky, I saw Josh Marshall of
TPM posting photos provided by somebody called Quentin Thomas. Photos
(18:20):
posted by Marshall from mister Thomas of a book by
a man named Andrew Lowney about another man called Prince Andrew.
And the book is called entitled, and it was just
published in the United Kingdom in Andrew Lownie's book, as
photographed by mister Quinton Thomas and posted by mister Marshall.
Mister Lowney writes, and I've adjusted this slightly. Quote. In
two thousand and seven, somebody told one author that he
(18:45):
had facilitated the relationship between somebody else and his future
wife another somebody else. It follows that with a quote
passage indented attributed to somebody else else and dated two
(19:10):
thousand and seven quote the first time somebody had sex
with somebody else was on my plane. Little did somebody
else else know. I beat him to the punch by
a year. H Speaking of Epstein polling, g Elliott Morris's
(19:34):
strength in numbers notes a new poll from the Canadian
firm Ledger finds that forty seven percent of Republicans say
they would still vote for Trump even if he were
implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. Two things A this poll
was covered as if that's a shockingly small amount of
GOPED defection. But given we know how loyal partisans are,
(19:54):
I think Morris writes, fifty three percent of a base
saying they'd look elsewhere is notable and high. But be
careful with headline. Like these studies have found people are
very bad at predicting how they behave in the future
given new information, namely in that they overestimate change. I
(20:15):
would point out that if fifty three percent of Trump's
Republican supporters would bail on him in this poll and
that number is double what actually happens. That would mean
that a quarter of Trump's Republican supporters would bail on him.
That would be enough. Meanwhile, in polling from YouGov, a
(20:35):
total of thirty six percent of American adults say that
jobs at inflation are their number one priority. It had
been twenty eight percent during the first month of this
Trump second term, now thirty six percent. It is now
equal to the high point of that number. Jobs and
inflation are their number one priority thirty six percent. That
(20:58):
is the high water mark of the Joe Biden presidency.
The rest of these numbers are from Pew Research, and
this is Trump approval. He's five points underwater among white people,
sixty eight points underwater among Blacks, forty three percent underwater
(21:22):
among Hispanics, thirty five points underwater. Among Asians ages eighteen
to twenty nine, he's thirty three points underwater, thirty to
forty nine thirty one points underwater. But of course, his
base the older folks aged fifty to sixty four nine
(21:42):
points underwater, ages sixty five and up nine points underwater.
So of everybody in the country over the age of fifty,
Donald Trump's disapproval is fifty three or fifty four percent.
He's thirteen points underwater amongst males, women twenty eight percent underwater.
(22:07):
High school degree or less, fifteen points underwater. College graduate
thirty one percent or less, postgraduate thirty three percent or less.
And as an aside, that difference thirty one percent for
college grads thirty three percent for postgraduates underscores the theory
I've had since childhood that you do not need to
(22:29):
go to anything beyond college. Anyway. Back to it, he's
net minus twenty two approval, thirty eight percent, disapproval sixty percent.
Back to the big picture. Morris also notes Pew looks
(22:50):
at the cross tabs of their Trump approval rating data.
It was forty seven percent approval for Trump when the
term started. It is thirty eight percent now, and it
concludes Trump's rating has slipped more on among his younger
voters than among older adults who had voted for him.
(23:10):
A few weeks in, Trump's job approval rating among those
who had voted for him varied little by age. Morris
writes nine to ten or more Trump voters under thirty
five approved of his job performance, same as in the
older age groups. Today, Trump's rating remains overwhelmingly high among
his voters ages fifty and older, but it has slipped
(23:32):
among the younger voters. Sixty nine percent of Trump voters
under thirty five now approve. That's twenty three points less
than at the start of the term, twenty three points
less it was ninety two percent approval among younger voters.
It is now sixty nine. About a third of the
(23:54):
young people who voted for Trump do not approve of
him as president. While this is extraordinarily good news in
terms of elections if we still have them, it is
bad news because, as dumb as he is, Trump read
these two or more likely had somebody read them to him.
(24:14):
The worse he is doing, the more he senses reality
is cornering him, and the more troops he will bring
onto the streets of the blue cities, just waiting for
the chance to shoot you. The over arching lesson this week,
from c to Shining Sea, from the disaster in Alaska
(24:40):
to the Nazi occupied territory of Washington, d C. Is
that Donald Trump has declared war on the United States
of America. Also of interest here, it's happened the monkeys
have written all of Shakespeare. Somebody has won the lottery
(25:03):
and not blown the money on a seven hundred thousand
square foot palace made out of ketchup. And Pierce Morgan
has done something journalistic. Pierce Morgan has posted a meme
of Trump on his way to Alaska to meet Putin,
wherein Trump is shown wearing bright red kneepads. That's next,
(25:28):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old Woman
(25:55):
still add on this editionive Countdown. I had the pleasure
of reading a comment over the weekend in which it
was claimed that the HBO Aaron Sorkin series Newsroom was
the worst episodic or film depiction of journalism, TV or
otherwise in the history of the English language. I'm not alone.
(26:23):
I'm not alone. Somebody else knows, but I must say
worse than the history of the English language. I think
that's exaggerating. It was not nearly that good. But what
made it even worse was the astonishing amount of dialogue
Sorkin allegedly cut and pasted from other people figuratively in
(26:44):
the case of me, literally according to a friend of
mine who was his ex girlfriend and said he cut
and pasted stuff out of her emails to him and
turned them into dialogue. My dad says it there, and
then it comes out of Jeff Daniels's mouth over there next.
(27:08):
In things I promise not to tell first, Believe it
or not, they're still more new idiots talk about the
roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. The
Bron's worst international fop Pierce Morgan, disgraced ex British journalist
(27:31):
and disgraced ex American journalist. It's a hell of a combo, Peers.
Hours before the disaster in Alaska began, he tweeted, as
President Donald Trump lens in Alaska, I wish him the
very best of luck in trying to secure an end
to the horrendous war in Ukraine. It's refreshing to see
a US president who genuinely prefers peace to war. Beneath
(27:55):
that is a picture of Trump at the top of
the stairs Air Force one waving. This is an actual
picture of Trump. He's waving to no crowd. He's just
posing for a photograph. He does this every time he
gets to the top of the stairs. He waves, whether
there's somebody there or not. We think he knows there's
nobody there, but nobody's sure. But the key ingredient here
(28:17):
is he's wearing not just bright red knee pads over
his pants, but they look like they're from roller Derby.
I mean, these knee pads would be way too much
for the National Football League in the nineteen thirties. I
mean they are knee pads the size of his neck,
(28:41):
bright red knee pads with I might add supporting straps
both on top and below what clear to be appear
to be plastic. They look kind of like baseball catchers,
shint guards, and kneepads. Pierce Morgan wishing Trump luck as
(29:01):
he goes to Alaska to meet Putin wearing kneepads. Morgan,
the hacking the voicemail guy deleted this tweet and reposted
it with a different photo without explanation. When other posters
asked wtf bub, he blithely said he hadn't noticed the
kneepads until after he posted it. He just changed photos,
(29:25):
as one does as one hacks. Paul McCartney's voicemail, for instance,
intered national scum. Moreover, that was the first bit of
actual journalism. Pierce Morgan has ever done, and he deleted it.
The first clever thing he's ever done, the first thing
in which he did not make himself look like an
asshole on at least two continents at the same time,
(29:48):
and he deleted it. The runner up worser Attorney General
Pam Blondie, This is an actual post. This is presumably
something that she thought of or somebody he thought of,
and they vetted it, and they thought about it, and
(30:10):
they posted it anyway, much like Pierce Morgan. Maybe Pierce
Morgan posted this for them. If you touch any law
enforcement officer, we will come after you. I just learned
that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice no longer.
Not only has he fired, he has been charged with
a felony. This is an example of the deep state
(30:33):
we have been up against for seven months. As we
work to refocus. Dj Ah, you will not work in
this administration, she said, while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.
What is this somebody shooting a bazooka at the White House?
(30:53):
Some terrorists with nuclear weapons. Pierce Morgan posting a picture
of the President wearing knee pads on his way to
fellate putin, no, sir, it is a repost of a
New York Post article DC man charged with felony assault
after hitting federal agent with subway sandwich. Pam Bondi and
(31:19):
the federal government laid low by a guy throwing a
sub sandwich. A hero a HOGI, the Hogi from Hell,
an example of the deep State. We have been up against.
You touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after
(31:41):
you with or without lettuce a that should have read
if you touch any law enforcement officer except on January sixth,
twenty twenty one, or if you're wearing a Trump hat,
be imagine posting this in fury and her unrighteous indignation,
herself martyring that the deep State endangered the mighty Warriors
(32:05):
from Trump's isis by throwing a sandwich at it. Posting
this and never realizing you have made another fool out
of yourself and Trump isis and Trump and see the
reference to deep State. Pambody's voice, deep State am I right?
(32:30):
But the winners the worst CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin, Oh
It's bad Sorkin day and House Minority Leader Akeem Jeffries.
I don't know in which order they should resign, but
they should both resign. These two men may be the
most overrated figures in their businesses in a generation. Four
(32:51):
times the smooth shallow Sorkin insisted that the Democratic candidate
for Mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, lives in a
quote rent controlled apartment. Mamdani does not live in a
rent controlled apartment. He lives in what is called here
a rent stabilized apartment. There's a big difference between these
(33:12):
two things. In addition to the fact that it's not
the same words, Andrew Ross Sorkin and you fed up
in the simple business of reading words on TV, which
I think is your job, unless you volunteer at CNBC.
Knowing people at CNBC and having worked off and on
with CNBC for twenty seven years, it's possible he doesn't
(33:32):
get paid for that job. Actually, there is a big difference.
Twenty two thousand apartments are rent controlled in this city.
To live in one of them, you have to have
lived in it since at least nineteen seventy one, or
you have to have inherited it from somebody who lived
in it since at least nineteen seventy one. About fifteen
(33:54):
years ago, I lived in a building that had people
who had been living in it since the forties. They
were in rent controlled apartments. You really couldn't raise the
rent on them. But it has to be you have
to have been there since nineteen seventy one or earlier.
Zoraon Mamdani was born in nineteen ninety one. Mamdani lives
(34:16):
in a rent stabilized apartment. Half of all the apartments
in New York City at all price ranges, are rent stabilized.
All rent stabilized means is the landlord can only raise
the rent so much every year. It's two point seventy
five percent from one year to the next on a
one year lease, or five and a quarter percent if
(34:37):
you want a two year lease. Half of all apartments
in this city are rent stabilized. Zoron Mamdani lives in
one of those. I live in one of those. At
least half the people I have known in the entirety
of my lifetime in New York since nineteen fifty nine
have lived in one of those. They're not for what
this buffoon Sorkin said, for poor people. They are merely
(35:01):
for people who are not billionaires. What happened was Andrew Cuomo,
who already lost the Democratic nomination, said this about Mamdani
and said he lived in a rent control department, which
is not true, because Cuomo cannot handle being a loser
and will do anything to defeat Mamdani or anybody else. Now,
(35:22):
mister Sorkin of CNBC repeated Cuomo's made up bullshit story
four times and said this live on the air to
the minority leader, the Democratic leader in the House, one
of the top five Democrats in the country. It came Jeffries,
who still has not endorsed the Democratic nominee for mayor
(35:44):
of the city that Jeffries represents in the House, nominee
chosen by Democrats in the city that chose Jeffries. Zoran Mamdani.
He's the nominee. He's not running for the nomination. He's
not a candidate. He beat the crap out of Andrew
Cuomo and every other Democrat and all the other Democrats
(36:04):
at Cuomo and a Keem Jeffries have endorsed him, but
not a Keem Jeffries, who's playing some other kind of
game there. And by the way, Jeffries did not correct
Andrew Ross Sorkin, as Andrew Ross Sorkin got it wrong
four times. Jeffries, who so far has been nearly a
(36:27):
total disaster as House minority leader, he might as well be.
Chuck Schumer answered, not with an endorsement of Mam Donnie finally,
nor a repudiation of Cuomo's falsehood that this lazy, sloppy,
overrated clown. Sorkin repeated, but he said, quote, it's a
legitimate issue that has been raised, and the Mam Donnie
(36:49):
campaign is going to address it. First off, that's a
stronger phrase than he's used about Trump. Secondly, Congress and Jeffries,
it isn't a legitimate issue. It's a lie, and it's
a lie you didn't curt when afforded that opportunity. It
is a smear against your party's candidate who you have
(37:10):
not endorsed, a candidate who has won something already, unlike
the great job you did in the House elections last year.
And the issue that has to be raised is why
are you still the minority leader, Why are you the
lead Democrat in the House. Why at best, don't you
(37:31):
know the difference between New York City rent control departments
and New York City rent stabilized apartments When you represent
New York effing City in Congress, a Keem, Jeffries and
Andrew Wrong Sorkin torps, resign leave take that lying shit
(37:52):
Cuomo with you Today's other worst persons And finally our
(38:24):
number one story in the Countdown Things I promised not
to tell And back to my favorite topic, me. I
heard Jeff Daniels say the words, and in the next
minute my cell phone rang. It was an ex girlfriend.
While we were talking, an email arrived from another ex girlfriend,
and then in came a text from the current girlfriend
at her folks house, then two more emails, and before
(38:46):
I was off the phone to voicemails, and then regular
friends started to contact me. This is just over ten
years ago now. It was Sunday, August fifth, twenty twelve.
Jeff Daniels was playing the controversial newscaster and commentator on
Aaron Sorkin's HBO series Newsroom, which was based structurally on
(39:06):
Me and Countdown. And I know this because Aaron Sorkin
told me so before he filmed any of it. And
I know this because he asked me if he could
base the pilot episode on what happened to Me at
MSNBC in the spring and summer of twenty ten and
I know this because he came in and shadowed the
staff of Countdown for two days to get the feel
(39:27):
for the place. And I know this because he wound
up basing one character, Maggie Jordan, on my assistant Margaret Judson,
and then hiring Margaret Judson as a consultant, and then
hiring her as an actress to play a part that
wasn't supposed to be her. And I know this because
he was furious when I would not fly to Denver.
(39:47):
I think it was to do a cameo in the pilot.
And I know this because he said he was hiring
me as a consultant. And I know this because I
never saw a dime out of it. This was the
second time Aaron Sorkin had based one of his TV
series on one of my TV series. The other was
called Sports Night, and Esquire magazine once asked me to
(40:08):
interview Sorkin about Sports Night, and I asked him the
real tough question, what was the origin of Sports Night?
And his answer was, quote, you are the origin. So
when The New York Times had called me about Newsroom,
I lightheartedly said it was nice to know in advance
this time that Aaron Sorkin was making a TV series
about me. Sorkin did not like this at all, and
(40:32):
he told all his actors to tell all their interviewers
that this was not true. And I know that because
Jeff Daniels told me that that was what Sorkin had
told him. Sorkin is interesting. I had known him for
about ten or twelve years when he came in to
countdown to see what it looked and felt like, and
he was twenty minutes late. And my assistant Margaret after
(40:53):
whom he named Maggie Jordan, whom he then hired away
from me, and whom he finally hired as an actress
to play Tess Weston, and she was great. By the way.
Margaret brings him in and he apologizes for being late,
and he said he's staying in a hotel two blocks
away and he should have just walked, but instead he
got in a car, and the next thing he knew,
he was six blocks away, caught in traffic caused by
(41:14):
the complete shutdown of one of the crosstown streets for
midday construction. And I laughed and I said, well, like
my late father, the architect used to say, New York,
it'll be a great town whenever they finish it, and
he laughed, and I laughed, And two years later, in
the seventh episode of the HBO Newsroom series, first aired
(41:34):
on August fifth, twenty twelve, and re aired throughout the week,
Jeff Daniels as the anchorman, Will McAvoy, who wasn't me
but actually kind of was me, is late to his
newsroom because he gets caught in Manhattan traffic caused by
Sunday night street construction, and he says to his exasperated producer,
new York, it'll be a great town whenever they finish it.
(41:57):
That's when my phone and email blew up, and the
then girlfriend, and like forty percent of all of my
exes ever all had the same question, New York, it'll
be a great town whenever they finish it. Isn't that
what your dad used to say? Even the ones who
never met my dad knew this because I used to
quote him constantly, Because the real humor in the quote
(42:20):
is the fact that my dad was an architect and
construction was his business. New York, It'll be a great
town whenever they finish it. And then one of the
last of the exes reached out, she waited until the
show was over. Now, I don't think any of us
is proud of this, but she had also dated Sorkin
once or twice, and since she had written celebrity stories
(42:42):
for a New York newspaper, he had later asked her
by email what the world of gossip reporting was like,
and she told him by email. And what she now
told me made Aaron Sorkin's use of my dad's quote
and other parts of my life seem like possible coincidences.
She said she was watching the third, maybe fourth episode
(43:03):
of Newsroom and in wa a new character, a gossip columnist,
a woman, and the first sentence the character said was
my friend. An ex said word for word something she
had sent to Sorkin in one of the emails about
the gossip business. She said, when she heard it, her
face started to get read, and it would keep getting reader.
(43:24):
The gossip columnist character's second line had also been cut
and pasted from my ex's email, then her long speech,
then all of her dialogue. She said in her second scene,
my ex actually managed to record that episode and to
find her own email to Sorkin and to compare them.
And she said, other than changing a couple of tenses
he had used her answers verbatim. I met the actor
(43:47):
Josh Charles during the two thousand World Series. I was
there anchoring it for Fox Sports. Josh was there promoting
his new show on Fox. Josh had played Dan Rydell
on Sorkin's Sports Night series, and even Sorkin and I agree,
dan Rydell is just me with a different haircut. I
was walking up Sixth Avenue one day in October two
(44:08):
thousand and from several blocks away, I saw Josh Charles
walking towards me, so I had several minutes to prepare
what I could say to him. This was not spontaneous, sadly,
but after our eyes met and I smiled and he
gave me that yes, I'm on TV, look that I
recognize and have myself deployed. He switched suddenly to shock
(44:29):
and even a little apprehension, and I said the line
I had been rehearsing in my head for several minutes.
Excuse me. You don't get to say this often in life,
but didn't you used to play me on TV? Right
there on Sixth Avenue, Josh told me about the ordeal
of working with and for Aaron Sorkin, and I thought
he just met for actors, but I later found out
(44:52):
because New York. It'll be a great time whenever they
finish it. Josh and I are still friends. We've gone
to ballgames together. We were in a fantasy baseball league together.
And one night on my ESPN two show, we came
back from commercial, giving the audience no warning or explanation,
and we simply started co anchoring the show and calling
it Sports Night and making references to the program and
(45:14):
to Newsroom. And then he said, why did we keep
reading this? And I said, I don't know. I just
assumed Sorkin had run out of new ideas. The mutual
laughter that followed was sincere, there is one more punchline
to the Newsroom Sorkin story, because I was like his
seventh guest ever. When Stephen Colbert wrapped up the Colbert
(45:35):
Report on Comedy Central, I was invited to be on
the final farewell episode, me and like ninety nine other people.
There were so many of us, ranging from Barry Manilow
to Brian Cranston to Big Bird, that they had like
nine green rooms in the Comedy Central building. And I
get there and they send me to the green room,
(45:56):
I would be sharing with several other people, and I'd
trudge up a bunch of stairs to the top floor.
And in this big room there is only one other
performer there yet it's Jeff Daniels. Without saying hello, he says, now, wait,
let me explain. Sorkin told me, and I explained, and
then he explained, and then I explained some more, and
(46:16):
Jeff said, oh a lot. And once he said oops,
and Sorkin didn't tell me that. And after about three
minutes he said, so I owe you an apology and
I said, no, you don't. It's not your fault. And
he smiled and he said, well great, I'm glad. So
can we take a picture together that I can put
(46:37):
out on Twitter? And I said, yeah, absolutely, but only
if you capture it New York. It'll be a great
town whenever they finish it. I've done all the damage
(46:59):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Schanel, our musical directors of Countdown,
and it was produced by two Ko brothers. Mister Ray
was on guitarist, bass and drums. Mister Chanale. Therefore, by
process of elimination, handled orchestration and keyboards, our satirical and
(47:19):
fifthy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis, appears CURTISYVESPN Inc. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
was my friend from Breaking Bad and Better call Saul
Johnny Banks. Everything else was as always my fault. That's
(47:45):
countdown for today, Day two hundred and eleven of America
held hostage again, just two hundred and fifty two days
until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame
brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein or the actuarial tables where Caroline Levitt leaves
him the business center in the hotel and anchorage until
(48:09):
next time. I'm Keithuldraman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(48:36):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
Host
Keith Olbermann
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