THE ULTIMATE DESANTIS GOAL: GET US TO BETRAY UKRAINE AND NATO - 3.16.23 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. A
Democratic president, writes Will Salatan, whose brother and I co

(00:24):
wrote a book of poems when we were in the
fourth grade together, is standing up to Putin, and he's
facing a Republican who would rather attack Mickey Mouse. Brilliant,
Will Salatan, but unnecessarily narrow. The Republican, of course, is
Ran DeSantis, mister woke Finoki swamp, who was for Ukraine
before he was against it. And more importantly, DeSantis's naive, isolationist,

(00:49):
stupid claim that Ukraine is not among this country's vital
national interests. Who dismissed Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a
territorial dispute opened the door for even lesser men to
charge through. And what is clearly the next big fascist
push in this country, the attempt to get America to
betray Ukraine and serve Putin. Quote. The Ukrainians are being crushed,

(01:15):
the retired Army Colonel Douglas McGregor said on Fox last night.
Quote their casualties are horrific. We have effectively seen the
Russians destroy three separate armies built by the Ukrainians, and
everybody is beginning to wonder what's really happening, none of
which is true, but all of which lines up perfectly
with what is being broadcast in Russia on Vladimir Putin's

(01:36):
propaganda channel, and for which Colonel McGregor should be recalled
from retirement and court martialed as an unregistered foreign agent.
And it gets worse again, quoting this scum McGregor, the
truth is coming out that this war was not started
by Russia. What was it, Sir Lightning that Russia begged
us not to try and drag Ukraine into NATO? We

(02:01):
ignored Russia, and Russia made it very clear that they
were going to defend their national interest. All they wanted
was neutrality for Ukraine. I hope McGregor was paid for this.
I hope McGregor was paid for this by Putin. I
hope he was paid a lot. I hope he can
find somewhere to spend it all in hell. All of

(02:22):
this was said, of course too Tucker Carlson, who gave
it his perfected, perplexed look of the dog being shown
the card trick, and who, as I have noted previously here,
would probably be described as a Russian asset, except who
could ever think he's an asset to anybody. Carlson is
almost certainly not being paid to say these things. His
hatred of America as it is currently constituted, especially as

(02:45):
it is currently governed, is his only genuine emotion. He
harbors grudges untold against so many minority groups and so
many individual people that the only way he could fulfill
vengeance for them is if he were running this country
as dictator. And don't think he has not wondered about
how he might make that happen. And now we have

(03:07):
to ask ourselves about a future less than two years.
Hence not just Ukraine's part in that American future, but
the rest of Eastern Europe and thus the rest of
Western Europe and thus the rest of the West like us.
It is noon on January twenty, twenty twenty five. Trump
has been inaugurated by Hooker, by Krook or he hasn't,

(03:31):
and DeSantis has. Zelenski's resistance against the Russians is in
year three, and putin the Weekend continues to commit extraordinary
resources to his quote special military action. Several million Russian
servicemen are dead, but they control much of Ukraine and
as Trump or DeSantis or somebody else takes the presidential

(03:52):
oath of office. Here Putin now simultaneously bombs Poland, and
the new Republican president sends US military resources to Poland Putin.
This is not a randomly chosen nightmare scenario, the end

(04:13):
of a timeline that began with the form that mister
DeSantis filled out for Carlson the other day. Poland's internal
security agency has this week uncovered a network of Russian
agents inside its country. It says, who were installing hidden
cameras on those sections of Polish railway tracks that have
become the main transit point for the delivery of weapons

(04:35):
and ammunition bound for Kiev from its western allies. If
this report is correct, and the Russians are already even
game planning sabotage or a less subtle attack on Polish territory,
and Putin can only retain power by trying to rebuild
the Soviet Union. That theoretical about what we would do
should he actually attack a NATO country stopped being an

(04:57):
if and has started being a when, And suddenly it
doesn't matter that much whether Donald Trump is paying the
Russi back for the twenty sixteen election, or if they
did nothing about the twenty sixteen election, or if he
owes them billions, or if he's just doing it because
he admires murderous dictators like Putin and would like to
be one his own self. This country could wind up

(05:19):
allied with Russia in a war against Europe if the
Republicans ever regain power. Of course, the likelihood that money
is at the heart of this remains the likeliest bet.
Federal prosecutors have been investigating Trump's ironically named Truth Social Company.
Sure enough, what have they found? Two loans made to

(05:42):
the company, Trump Media wired through the Caribbean from two companies,
and to quote England's The Guardian, that both appeared to
be controlled in part by the relation of an ally
of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is daunting to realize
that Trump's malign, disloyal, treacherous, treasonous, anti American influence will

(06:04):
not end with an indictment or a conviction or an imprisonment,
but only with a physical incompacitation or the fulfillment of
that wish that ex Republican Congressman Peter Meyer told The
Atlantic He's heard from countless nominal Trump's supporters, quoting Meyer,
I can't wait until this guy dies unquote. Even then,
of course, Trump will merely become the martyr of his

(06:27):
cult or knowing them, they will believe he's actually still
alive somewhere, and he's just a way for the moment
planning strategy with JFK Jr. And JFK and Jesus and
Princess Diana and Rush Limbaugh, it is almost impossible to
believe that at this late date there could still be
a new development in Trump's multi pronged plot to overturn

(06:49):
the twenty twenty election and overthrow democracy. Yet here it is,
and it's in Georgia too, where we have all heard
the tape of the phone call begging Brad Raffensburger quote
to find eleven thousand, seven hundred and eighty votes, as
if they were so many bottle of gold spray paint.
You may have heard about a second Georgia phone call

(07:10):
by Trump to the Speaker of the Georgia House, David Ralston,
to convene a special session in December twenty twenty, at
which Trump wanted Ralston to throw out George's election and
thus its electors, and thus steal them from Biden and
give them to Trump. It turns out that phone call
was recorded as well. Five of the members of the

(07:31):
extremely chatty special grand jury in Atlanta examining Trump's crimes
there have confirmed they heard it. We don't know what's
on it, but we do know the late speaker, Rawlston said.
The day after that, Trump demanded the special session, and
Rawlston said it would be very much an uphill battle
under Georgia law. And the question now is why have

(07:52):
we not heard this tape yet? And of course, if
we are back in Georgia, following my thread, we are
now back in the native territory of the first member
of the United States House of A Representatives, whom some
grand jury somewhere I'd actually be willing to indict purely
on the basis of incalculable stupidity. Yes, it is Marjorie
Trader Green again. And she went to the border for

(08:15):
a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, and then she leaked
classified material and when even it disagreed with her paranoid fantasies,
she decided the witness and her committee was lying about it.
In short, US Border Patrol Chief Raoul Ortiz said it
was alleged that his agents had found an explosive device

(08:37):
near the border with Mexico. He told the committee that
agents had in fact found a duct tape ball filled
with sand that was no threat to anybody unless you
were to sit on it while you were wearing a
bathing suit. A Fox quote news unquote contributor then explained
that on January eighteenth, it was believed that a quote

(08:58):
Mexican firecracker had been planted near the US border, presumably
by drug cartels. It turned out to be a duct
tape ball filled with sand that was not good enough
for Special Agent Marjorie Trader Green. If the devising question
was death filled with sand, then why would Chief Ortiz

(09:19):
tell me during his testimony that he was briefed about
it in a secure location and couldn't comment on classified information.
They don't brief the chief of Border Patrol in an
scif about a ball of sand that only brief us
about danger stayings in classifad briefings. It would be obvious

(09:39):
to anybody except Barney Rubble's body double that the briefing
and its classified nature was not to cover up the
sand bomb, but to protect border patrols detection abilities. And
its techniques, and see if this sounds familiar to protect
where our cameras are located. It is nice, however, to

(10:01):
note that, in her usual imbecilic, boastful way, she said
ed Ortiz couldn't comment on classified information, that Marjorie Taylor
Green just confessed to divulging classified information and she should
be arrested for that and have her security clearance permanently stripped. Today.
Of course, you're not going to hear any of this

(10:22):
on Fox quote news unquote, nor for that matter, on CNN,
And this is fascinating. Quinnipiac published a poll yesterday indicating
that the nation has very strong opinions on the Dominion
defamation case against Murdoch propagandists, and it's almost entirely in
one direction. Sixty five percent of everybody thinks Fox should

(10:44):
lose that suit and be punished for defaming Dominion. Ninety
three percent of Democrats feel so, seventy six percent of
people aged eighteen to thirty four, of all parties, sixty
seven percent of independence. Only one group disagrees, and you
knew which group that was about thirty forty seconds ago. Yes,

(11:05):
it's the Republicans. And he had forty one percent of
Republicans think Fox should lose the dominion case. Yet Fox
still is not the cable news outfit in the most trouble.
The New York Post gossip page put out what was
even for them a really squishy story that the new chairman,
Chris Licht, whom when we were at MSNBC together we
all thought eight paced might be fired by labor day.

(11:29):
Both the Post and the website puck now a report
that Licht had an unexpected guest and a meeting of
six hundred CNN managers the other morning, And by the way,
CNN six hundred managers, there's your problem right there. The
extra man at the meeting was David zaslov licks boss,
who reaffirmed his commitment to lickt. The Post's headline on

(11:52):
this story was originally quote boss of CNN parents says
execs are all effing behind network CEO Chris Licht, but
that headline was soon changed by the Post to quote
boss of CNN parent defends networks CEO Chris Licht, but
admits he's gotten a lot wrong. And for the Post
to back down on something like that, there was some

(12:14):
Grade four arm twisting somewhere late yesterday afternoon. Anyway, The
Puck Report quoted Lickt as asking these six hundred managers,
there's your problem right there, CNN asking the six hundred
managers to snitch on any employees who didn't like the
new CNN writer Dylan Buyer's quoting Lickt, it's incumbent on

(12:36):
us to unlock that potential, to give people a sense
of purpose, and if they don't take that, help them
find something else here or outside the company. Well that's
the Chris Lickt we all used to know. Hatchetman. Buyers
also reports the latest on CNN's new morning show, which

(12:57):
I believe is titled tire Fire with Don Lemon and
the reporter who used to be from The Daily Caller
who can't anchor, and the utility in fielder Hoppy Pardlow
or whatever her name is. This was what Licked broke
up one of his only two successful primetime shows. Four
It is failing miserably. Don Lemon is very unhappy and

(13:17):
making stupid mistakes on the air. The Daily Caller person
Caitlin Collins is dreaming of moving back from New York
to Washington and has fired her agent because she apparently
just realized he's also Don Lemon's agent, and yeah, I
fired him eighteen months ago too. Anyway, at a moment
where everything I've been talking about here cries out for fearless, interpretive,

(13:39):
analytical news, this Zaslov and Licked and CNN continue to
be hell bent on returning CNN to a kind of
video stenographer's role which it never had, but which they
have convinced themselves was its true time of greatness. Zaslov
says this is Licked's destiny and his moment or something,

(14:03):
and Puck quotes him as He's gotten a lot wrong.
We've gotten a lot wrong. We're all flawed. You bet
your ass, Sonny. How flawed is summed up by particular imagery, which,
after I questioned it last night, buyers insisted was chosen very,
very deliberately. Quote. Nearly one year in, it's clear that

(14:27):
zas Laugh still believes in his vision for CNN as
a non partisan broadcast style news digest, and still believes
that Licht is are you ready for the imagery and
still believes that Lickt is his captain. Ahab Now, I'll

(14:47):
confess that I have not read Moby Dick all the
way through since nineteen seventy five, I haven't even watched
the Gregory Peck movie where he's Captain Ahab in a
year or two. But if my memory serves me, Captain
Ahab finally finds moby Dick and harpoon him, but he
gets his foot caught in the harpoon rope, and before
you know it, he's pinned up against moby Dick's side,

(15:10):
and the whale goes underwater and drowns him, and then
turns around and accelerates straight towards the pea quad and
rams it and cuts it in half and sinks it.
And if this Zaslov is really out there with his captain,
and this version of the story is really called moby Licked,
then soon or late the great White whale will be
literally deep platforming Zaslov. And then when he and all

(15:33):
the other sailors fall into the sea, moby Dick will
come back and eat all of them. Or moby lickt
call me Ishmael, my boat sank. The end still ahead

(16:00):
on countdown slight format change for this edition, which I'll
explained press. But let me tell you something I promised
not to tell. First. One of the great scoops of
my sports career. One that my boss had insisted I
go get for him happened when I had given up
on the story, went to go get some pizza, and
on the way home, I literally saw the guys at

(16:21):
the center of the story yelling at each other about
the story on the street. First, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day to DeVore, California, and this is
just terrible the high kill shelter there as a pair
of fourteen week old puppies, sisters gorgeous shepherd husky mixes

(16:41):
with haunting eyes, Banshee and Shenanigan. They have been there
nine days, but they're already on the kill list because
the shelter is full three month old puppies. They need
our pledges to help a rescue save them where they
need a foster or an adopter near DeVore. You'll see
them on my Twitter feeds, and your retweets alone could

(17:02):
save their lives. I thank you, and Banshee and Shenanigan,
thank you. Now from the files of things I promised

(17:23):
not to tell, and I recently went past the building
my second professional home, and I was flooded with my
memories of a place called the RKO Radio Network. This
is nineteen eighty and I'm nearing my twenty second birthday,
and I'm working real hard at one radio network run
by the United pres International Wire Service in my second

(17:44):
year and making around more nearly twenty thousand dollars a year.
And in September, a drunken manager had tried to get
me fired, tried to fire me himself for being young.
And I'll be damned if I can remember getting consecutive
days off there. This was UPI in a nutshell for
my first few weeks there. I thought whoever had decorated

(18:05):
the newsroom had found the floor tiles with the ugliest
design pattern in history, and they finally I saw a
colleague grind his lit cigarette into that floor, and only
then did I realize that was what the ugly design
pattern was. Hundreds of ground out cigarettes, years and years

(18:26):
of ground out cigarettes in the tiles. Anyway, the main
advantage to working at UPI was that everybody in what
was then a flourishing radio business knew UPI, and thus
they knew you, and they knew you were underpaid. The
top all news radio station in the country. WCBS in
New York had already asked if I might be a

(18:48):
candidate for a coming opening in their sports department. The
previous spring. I'd actually interviewed with two vice presidents at
this thing. The yachtsman Ted Turner, who owned the Atlanta Braves,
was going to try to start something he called cable
News Network, but they were not initially interested in me,
and after meeting with them, I was certain they would
never get it launched, let alone get an audience for it.

(19:12):
I was working there literally fourteen months later. I'd also
been flown to Boston, like they spent fifty five dollars
on me by a radio station that really wanted me
to do a morning sports shift for them, and they
were offering forty thousand dollars a year, twice my salary,
and I was ready to do it. And I was
sitting in the office in Boston trying to figure out

(19:33):
where I could live and how late I could sleep
and still get there in the morning. And then the
news director said, now, except if there's a big story,
you can do the afternoon sportscast from home over the phone,
which is when I realized I was supposed to do
the morning and the afternoon. I was essentially on the
clock from five am to six pm, and the forty

(19:53):
thousand dollars would have had to go to my sister
because the schedule would have killed me within three months.
And then there was this RKO radio network. Up I
was in the unique position of having RKO as a client,
so RKO heard and used ours stuff all the time.
And also they had from their beginning used our UPI

(20:17):
feed as a kind of twenty four seven constantly flowing
turned on spigot audition service. From the time I got
to UPI in July nineteen seventy nine, it seemed like
one radio person from UPI per month was hired away
by RKO. Sometime in the early autumn of nineteen eighty,
I was covering a New York Rangers game at Madison

(20:39):
Square Garden, and the guy next to me, smoking a
cigar inside the garden, right in front of all the fans,
turned out to be the sports director of this RKO network.
In fact, he was the entirety of the RKO sports department.
But we're doubling in size. I'm going to start doing
weekend sports cast, and I get to hire a new
person to do the weekends. It's a union shop, so

(21:00):
it's fifty one dollars a sports cast. After there's ten
a weekends, twenty two for any dollars to reports for
reports from the field, and you'd be my backup. Twenty
two bucks from the field and a guarantee of five
ten and a weekend, and you got to come in
one day a week to book the stringers for the
weekend games. That would be free, but the guarantee is

(21:21):
twenty six thousand dollars plus those twenty two dollars every
time you have file a report from the field. You're interested. Well,
I did some quick math. This was about forty percent
more money for about forty percent less work. And there
were no five am to six pm schedules. When the
sports director called me back a few weeks later to

(21:42):
offer me the gig, I did not hesitate. His name,
by the way, was Charlie Steiner. Charlie would later be
a colleague of mine at Sports Center, and then he
did the Yankees games, and now he does the Dodgers games,
and he's been a friend for forty two years. The
network itself was also space age, shiny and new and
it had carpets where up I had the stubbed out

(22:06):
cigarettes decorps. RKO was literally the first radio network in
this country to deliver all of its programs to its
stations via satellite. No more scratchy, hyper expensive phone lines.
RKO came through crystal clear, and that was our pitch
to the stations. All the newscasts, all the sportscasts, all
the features ended with the same tagline, BIA satellite, This

(22:29):
is the RKO Radio Network, And then a spot for
Hubba Bubba Gum for my first few weeks there. Part
of the job also included doing two sportscasts today for
r ko's local station, Wo R. The first time I
went up in the elevator to their studio, it dawned
on me that it was the exact same studio where

(22:50):
seven years before I had been invited by the great
comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding along with my dad
to sit and watch in amazed preciation as Bob and
Ray did their show on Wo R. So basically, as
of December nineteen eighty I had accomplished all of my
childhood goals. The only problem with the place was the location.

(23:16):
R KO was on the southeast corner of Times Square,
probably the low watermark in the history of Times Square.
It was in fourteen forty Broadway, at the corner of
fortieth Street. There was a backdoor at forty first Street
and sixth Avenue, right across from Bryant Park. On those
occasions when I filled in for Charlie Steiner on the

(23:36):
weekdays for his morning show, which they would tape overnight,
I would often be at the studios until two or
three am, and my walk home was a little sketchy.
In point, in fact, I would not walk home. I
would run, I mean run, run from that backdoor at
forty first and sixth. I'd pass Bryant Park on my
right as fast as I could, past all the drug

(23:58):
dealers and other folks, then dart on the north side
of forty second between sixth and fifth, and once you
got to that corner a fifth and forty second, you
were back in civilization, with good street lights and other
people on the streets, no matter how late the hour,
or as we called them in New York then witnesses.
Occasionally I might have to walk in Times Square itself,

(24:22):
usually when it was daylight. What surrounded me there was
about as far from today's Disneyland East Times Square as
you could imagine. In fact, you could not imagine. There
were porn theaters everywhere, and it wasn't just porn theaters.
They were spaced apart and in between them. Other businesses existed,

(24:44):
porn peep shows, porn sex shops, and porn video rental stores.
I remember always making sure I was walking on the
outside edge of the street, nearest the gutter, on the
premise that in the event somebody tried to mug me,
I stood a much better chance by running right out
into automobile traffic. Besides which, I used to worry that
if I walked to close to the porn theaters and

(25:06):
the shows and the shops and the video stores one day,
I might just get stuck to the sidewalk. Times Square
was so different in nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one
that I really can't imagine that the annual income made
there from anything but porn and the Arco Radio network

(25:27):
was more than twenty dollars a year. In total. There
was nothing else, I mean nothing. On weekends, walking over
from my home on the East Side, I would decide
which fast food place i'd be getting lunch from somewhere
on Fifth Avenue or Lex. I go to the nearest
pay phone. I'd call the RCAO newsroom desk, and I
would offer to bring in food for everybody, for the
simple reason that in Times Square forty years ago, there

(25:53):
were no restaurants open on weekends. I'll say that again,
in Times Square forty years ago, on the weekends, all
the restaurants that resisted there were closed during the day.
And forget public transportation to Times Square. I would finish

(26:13):
my brisk, twenty five minute walk to work one night
in that frigid winter of nineteen eighty eighty one and
see my colleagues looking unusually pasty and drawn. You didn't
take the subway in, did you, asked one of the editors,
Tom Ryan. I looked at him like it was crazy.
Well good, some guy got stabbed by the stairs closest
to our building. I asked if he was okay. No,

(26:35):
he's not okay, he's dead. But they got the guys
who did it. They arrested fifty one people. One guy
got stabbed to death, fifty one people were arrested. I
asked if they had been restaging a reenactment of the
assassination of Julius Caesar. Still, the equipment was brand new
and easy to use, and the staff was all young.

(26:57):
We all had fun, and we had parties, and everybody
lived in the city, and for the most part, it
was a pleasure to work there, and it was way
more creative even than Charlie Steiner had suggested. Those twenty
two dollars voice reports from the field, they piled up fast.
The baseball players went on strike that June nineteen eighty one,
and every time I covered a bargaining session I could

(27:18):
be certain of at least another forty four dollars. And
if that doesn't sound like much, the rent on my
very nice studio apartment never got higher than four hundred
and ninety eight dollars a month. R ko's location also
provided me with some wacky logistical problems. I filled in
for Charlie on most holidays, plus I did the same
thing at a local radio station WNW. This made the

(27:42):
actual Christmas into my metaphorical Christmas. If I had to
fill in for both of these operations on the same day,
my schedule went like this, get into RKO in Times Square.
It maybe two am. Tape Charlie's Morning Show by four am,
then walk Crosstown very quickly to wnw Over on Third

(28:04):
Avenue and do those sportscasts live between five thirty and nine,
and then go home and maybe take a nap, but
not a long one because I would have to be
back at RKO by one pm, tod Charlie's Afternoon Show,
rinse repeat a lot of work. On the other hand,
just one week of those days paid the rent for
two months. On a wet New Year's Eve nineteen eighty one,

(28:26):
I treated myself to a cab to go to RKO,
which put me in the bizarre position of getting into
a cab on the East Side at one thirty am
New Year's Morning and saying take me to Times Square
and the drivers saying you missed it, buddy, it's been
nineteen eighty two for an hour and a half. Nothing
like being the only person going into Times Square while

(28:48):
one million people are leaving it drunk. Most of the
sportscasts I did at r KO or pretty textbook, but
there did come the day that I walked in to
fill in for Charlie who was at Wimbledon. So this
is the summer of nineteen eighty one, and the wires
were full of this story of some unnamed American radio

(29:08):
reporter getting into a brawl with a London tabloid writer
at a Wimbledon press conference, and it slowly evolved that
the reporter was Charlie, my boss, and we were going
to have to figure out a way to cover this.
At first, Charlie wanted to do it in the third
person and say the reporter did this, and the reporter

(29:30):
said that, And I said, you know, I really don't
think we're going to get away with that. Given how
much wire copy I'm seeing here, Charlie, this is probably
gonna be on the front page in the New York
Times in the morning. Sure enough, it was above the fold.
We're still unbeknownst to Charlie, his fight took place in
a corner of the Wimbledon press room, right under the
camera that fed out a shot of that room twenty

(29:51):
four to seven to every television network in the world.
Sure enough, the last item on ABC's six thirty newscast
that night with Peter Jennings was a feature on Charlie
Steiner fighting with the British over how they broke up
the John McEnroe postmatch press conference, and he was pissed
off because that many wouldn't get any soundbites from McEnroe.

(30:15):
I managed to run home from RKO and record the
report by Dick chap and when Charlie got back from London,
I loaned it to him. This was in July nineteen
eighty one. Charlie still hasn't given me the tape back.
Every time I see him, he swears he's still looking
for it. It's in a box somewhere. But I'm beginning
to think he may not be telling me the whole

(30:37):
truth about what happened to my video cassette. But my
favorite RKO story is about Charlie's sudden and inexplicable obsession
with the story. During that nineteen eighty one baseball strike
I mentioned in the middle of this thing which stopped
the season for fifty days and was really the beginning
of the end of that time when baseball truly mattered

(30:59):
in this country. When every day in that strike, somebody
on all the team newscast set and the baseball strike
is in its twenty third day, a story broke that
George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, was going to
meet with Baseball Commissioner Boy Qune and a couple of
other owners who realized that the work stoppage was financial madness.
As George told me years later, he was losing about

(31:23):
a million dollars in revenue every day so that the
Milwaukee Brewers could save five thousand dollars in salaries every year. Well,
my boss, Charlie Steiner decided he was going to scoop
the world about this secret Steinbrenner Qune meeting. So he
told me to come into the office on one of
my off days and worked the phones. Work the phone son.

(31:46):
Two of us, me and the newly hired producer, my
friend John Martin, were supposed to call everybody we knew
and find out for Charlie when these guys were meeting
and where and who would be there, and to not
go home until we had nailed it down. Well, it
was madness. I didn't know anybody in baseball, let alone

(32:07):
anybody who knew where the owner of the Yankees it
was going to meet in secret with the Commissioner of baseball,
let alone, who knew all that and would tell me.
But I tried everybody I could think of, and had
already suggested to John Martin that I was just going
to start dialing ten digits at random and asking whoever
answered if they knew. When after about eight hours of

(32:28):
this well passed my dinner time, I was on the
phone with some executive of some West Coast team when
he said hold on a minute. I got another call,
and a moment later from the adjoining room in my office,
I heard John Martin say, at mister Smith, high, this
is John Martin from the RKO Radio network, and yes,
RKO Radio Network, Yes, I'll hold sir. Mister Smith picked

(32:51):
up my call again and said is this really two
of you calling me about this crap at the same
time from the same network, And I said yes, and
I apologized, and I told him I was going home.
If Charlie doesn't like it, I told John he can
fire me, so follow me on this because I had
missed dinner. When I got back to my street on

(33:13):
the East Side, I was famished. I don't know nine o'clock,
ten o'clock. The last two blocks of my walk home
was always identical. I'd come up Third Avenue and then
hang a right at the southeast corner of Third Avenue
and fifty fifth Street. I lived at the other end
of fifty fifth Street, in your second avenue. But now
I was going to go pick up some pizza in
a very nice place on the northwest corner of this

(33:35):
same lock. I got the slices, the lights changed. Now
I was crossing towards the northeast corner of fifty fifth
and Third, which itself was the home of a famous
New York bar, P J. Clarks. Ordinarily I would never
have been on that side of the street at that hour,
but there I was. And as I slipped past the
ancient front door, I saw the side exit open and

(33:57):
a burst of bright yellow light, like in an Edward
Hopper painting shoot out onto a waiting on fifty fifth Street. Then,
as I walked, carrying my box of pizza and wearing
my RKO Radio Network black jacket, who emerges from that
light of that side door at PJ. Clark's but George

(34:19):
Steinbrenner in a tux I gasped. I tried to summon
the courage to approach Steinbrenner as he walked towards his
limo and ask him about his planned meeting with Commissioner Kuhne.
And just before I admitted to myself that no, at
the age of twenty two, I did not have such courage.
I saw Steinbrenner stop at the limo, and I heard

(34:41):
him yell back towards the light shining through the still
open side door to Clark's Eddie, Eddie, And with that
Edward Bennett Williams, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, leaned out,
also in a tucks and said, with evident exasperation, what now?
George Steinbrenner shouted, what time are you and I and
Child's meeting with Bowie tomorrow. I couldn't believe it. I

(35:07):
couldn't believe my luck. Williams had not seen me. Steinbrenner
had not seen me. Williams sighed again for the tenth time.
Charge nine thirty, nine thirty in the morning, George, nine
thirty Booie's condo. I now plastered myself against the wall
of Clarks. I hope they had not seen me at all.

(35:27):
Without so much as asking the question, I had learned
that the Orioles owner and Childs Eddie Childs, the owner
of the Texas Rangers. They would be accompanying Steinbrenner to
the meeting and it would begin at nine thirty at
the condominium of Commissioner Bowie Kune And I was wondering
if I could try to fake Steinbrenner's voice and shout, Eddie,
where's Booe's condo again? When suddenly I heard Steinbrenner say, Eddie,

(35:49):
where is Booie's condo again? By now, Edward Bennett Williams
had re lit a cigar he was holding. George write
it down this time five seventy five, Park five seven five.
I could barely breathe. Good God. They had handed me

(36:12):
everything but the cross street. Eddie, Eddie, what's the cross street?
Williams now swore, Oh, for f's sake, George sixty third,
sixty third in Park five seventy five Park at nine
thirty in the morning. Okay, Steinbrenner got into the limo.
It's squealed off. The door closed. I wrote what I
had heard on the top of the pizza box and

(36:33):
took off at a dead run to my apartment at
the corner of fifty fifth and Second, pausing only to
take a quick bite of pizza. I called John Martin
back at the RKO Radio network. I got it, John, said,
you got what I got. Everything about the meeting, John said,
I'll get the Boss soon. All three of us were
on the phone. Charlie did not believe I had gotten
him any information, so I laid it on Thick. You're

(36:58):
right in this down Boss, nine thirty tomorrow morning. It's
at Bowie Kune's condo at five seven five Park that's
the corner of sixty third, of course. Then there was
silence at Charlie's end of the phone. Oh and h
Edward Bennett, Williams of the Orioles, and any childs of
the Rangers. They'll be there too. I don't know, Charlie,

(37:19):
if it's just them or there are others, but but
those four will certainly be there. Booi's condo five seventy
five Cross Street is sixty third. Charlie started to make
a kind of but but noise, But but but how
did you find out? Howlen? And hell did you actually
find out? Why do you think it's true? I had

(37:43):
been waiting for this for several moments, and my answer
had been rehearsed in my mind at least as far
back as my elevator ride up to my apartment with
the most nonchalance I had ever mustered in my life,
I answered Charlie Steiner. Well, Charlie, I am ran into

(38:05):
Steinbrenner at Clark's. As I mentioned earlier, slight change in formats. Today,
I'm a little under the weather. So the rest of
the show is reruns. If you want to bail out now,

(38:27):
I will not hold it against you. I think I'll
be fine tomorrow. It's just a nasal thing. But since
we're on this topic of career highlights from the nineteen eighties,
the reason I am not now retiring after like forty
years as the top sportscaster in Boston television is contained
in another saga, fulfilling that old saw about the anticipation
being greater than the event, much much greater. That's next.

(38:52):
This is countdown to the number one story on the
count done in my favorite topic, Me and Things I
promised not to tell. Thirty eight years ago this week
I turned in my resignation at Channel five in Boston.

(39:14):
I stayed there almost two months more at their request,
but it still meant I had tried to get a
job the one there for twice as long as I
actually worked there. At Boston Red Sox spring training in
nineteen eighty three, a fellow named Bob Clark introduced himself
as the sports producer at this Boston station and said
they were all fans of my CNN work and that

(39:36):
there would be a job opening that summer as sports anchor,
and could he go to his bosses and say I
was interested? And I said sure, And in fact, if
he wanted me to go with him to tell his
bosses that, or if he needed me to carry him
to go tell his bosses that, I was ready. Things
advanced so quickly that by Monday, July eighteenth, nineteen eighty three,
I found myself flying up from New York with my agent,

(39:57):
and as Boston appeared out the window of the plane,
she said, you will own this town. Not so much
maybe Later. I went out to the station's headquarters in
a barren suburb called Needham, and interviewed with everybody, sports producers,
the news director, finally the general manager. Everybody beamed at
me and all was going great, having laughed at several

(40:20):
of my jokes and told me he loved my tape.
The general manager, a man named Copper Smith, who was
about to usher me out of his office with a
big hand on my shoulder, when I made a terrible,
terrible mistake. I told him we had met before when
I was a TV intern and he was the general
manager of his parent company's station in New York. I

(40:42):
remember him looking at me quizzically, and only later did
I find out that all of his people had lied
to him without telling me, and they had told him
I was twenty eight years old. They did not tell
me that since I was twenty four years old. Coppersmith's
last year at Channel five in New York had been
nineteen seventy eight, and even giving me the fit of

(41:05):
the aged out, he decided I was no longer anything
older than twenty six, and ultimately he thought that was
too young to be a sports anchor in a major
television market, back when those used to be important jobs
that paid important money. They're sportscasters. Since the station had
gone on the air in the nineteen fifties, had been
an avuncular, pleasant, gifted man named Don Gillis, but he

(41:26):
was cutting back where they had decided to cut him
back two special feature duty. The next day, back in
New York City, I went out to find out if
the Boston newspapers had found anything out about my surreptitious
trip there I went to a place so wonderful and
now so impossible to explain to anybody, the out of
town newspaper and magazine shop in the lobby of the

(41:49):
pan Am building, adjacent to the Grand Central train station.
This was one of the smaller of the out of
town news stands in New York. It carried about two
hundred different American newspapers, dozens more from around the world,
and every imaginable international magazine. It was always packed. Its
entire glory has been wiped out by the Internet. Anyway.

(42:13):
I bought the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald from
the same day, and there it was on page thirty
two of the Globe, a headline over a feature by
the TV sports columnist Jack Craig. Gillis departing soon on Horizon.
Olberman's credentials good young. Keith Olberman of Cable News Network
CNN reported he was very favorably interviewed at Channel five yesterday,

(42:36):
possibly signaling the end of the Don Gillis era more
quickly than anticipated. I was young then, but look credentials good,
it said in the headline. This was it the start
of my TV career for real, no more having to
explain to doubting athletes, doubting colleagues, doubting relatives, doubting team

(42:57):
executives that there really was a TV place called Cable
News Network parenthesis CNN, money in, big fame and one
of the best sports cities in the nation. As even
the Globes article noted, there is a hitch. Alberman's contract
with CNN does not expire until next May, and whether
he would be let out for Channel five is uncertain. Well,
sure it was, but CNN would be nice guys about it, right.

(43:20):
This was real TV, not some perpetual verge of bankruptcy
cable thing. It was really just a big delusion by
Ted Turner. And they needed eight cameras in New York,
but they could only afford seven, So after being used
in the field for ten hours, one cameraman would have
to lash his camera to a tripod for the wide
shot shot for the nightly Sandy Freeman audio talk show.

(43:44):
Even after the inevitable occurred one night and the overworked
camera burst into flames on live TV, CNN would understand
by the way, Sandy Freeman was replaced about a year
later by Larry King. That's how long ago this actually
was anyway. CNN's less and happy reaction to this was academic.

(44:07):
I had unwittingly blown it when I revealed to that
guy Coppersmith that I was not twenty eight years old.
Sure enough, on August fifteenth, WCBB Channel five Boston announced
the hiring of a Miami sportscaster named Lee Webb to
succeed Don Gillis. Webb was a lot of things, and
he wasn't a lot of other things, but hot damn.
He was thirty years old, and that made him the

(44:29):
man in the eyes of the general manager, mister Coppersmith.
On the other hand, Coppersmith thought his station should still
hire me as a reporter. The news director, a man
who went by the imposing name of Philip Scribner Balboni,
offered me a spot as a feature news reporter a producer,
and I would look for offbeat, on usual, unique stories
and go cover them. It was not the sports anchor's job,

(44:52):
but it wasn't CNN either. WCBB would also wait until
CNN finally accepted that it was over between the two
of us. Whenever that was then, three more things happened
in quick succession. Channel five hired a new sports director,
a producer who would run the department and set its
editorial tone. His name was Mike Fernandes, and even after

(45:13):
working with him for six months, the only thing I
knew about him was that he had no sense of humor.
He understood that I was making jokes, but he never
got one of them. And his principal interest in sports
was apparently determining which players were don juans, so he
could refer to them endlessly in the office as quote swordsman.
The second thing that happened was that the sports reporter

(45:35):
at Channel five, Bob Ryan, already very famous at the
Boston Globe later even more so nationally at ESPN, told
management he just could not do both the TV and
newspaper jobs anymore and he needed to quit. Mind you,
this was how important sports was on local TV in
Boston in nineteen eighty three. They had an on air sportscast,
You're a weekend sportscast, You're a sportscast, You're emeritus, and

(45:57):
an on air sports reporter, plus all the producers and
the off air sports director. Often the sports cast in
the hour long six o'clock news, and there was only
the one hour of news the sportscast lasted ten minutes.
So now having already offered me the feature news reporting job,
news director Philip Scribner Belboni offered me my choice of

(46:18):
that job or Bob Ryan's sports reporting job. And while
I was debating that, I managed to resist all efforts
to turn me into a newsman for fifteen years. While
I was debating that, another Boston station suddenly jumped into
the fray. Channel seven was a perennial also ran compared
to Channel five, whose newscasts were among the best, if

(46:39):
not the best, in the country. Without as much as
asking me to even come visit, Channel seven offered me
the job as its sports director, anchored the sports at
six and eleven, run the department, and get much more
money than Channel five. It offered me, and I turned
it down out of loyalty to Channel five because they
asked first. I turned it down moren Channel five was

(47:06):
out in the as I said Barren Suburbs. Channel seven
was in downtown Boston. I would be making like one
hundred thousand a year at age twenty five, with no responsibilities,
living and working in downtown Boston in nineteen eighty four. Moron,
So anyway, I get to Boston at the end of

(47:26):
April nineteen eighty four at Channel five, and on my
first day out in the barren suburbs, I walk up
a circular staircase to the sports department office and I
hit my head on the staircase and bled so much
they all thought I was going to need stitches. And
I went back to the half a house I had
moved to, one of exactly two rental properties in the

(47:46):
entire town of Nida, Massachusetts, and I thought, what in
the hell have I done? No things improved. I was
not just in the field. I did a lot of
substitute anchoring, especially on weekends. And the first time I
did that, Susan Warnick, one of our reporters and the
wife of the big sports aster in town, Bob Lobell
from Channel four. Susan came up to me in the

(48:08):
office on Monday and gave me a big wet kiss
on the lips and said, you were terrific. Lobell is
scared crapless. I love you. The first time I did
a live shot before a Celtics game at Boston Garden,
I wandered around the arena without being recognized. Once two
weeks later, I went back to the garden and I
went to get a hot dog and turned to find

(48:29):
a crowd of several dozen viewers, all shouting at me
in the singular language of the Boston sports fan. On Monday,
June nineteen eighty four, Balboni, the news director, called me
in and said he wanted me to start anchoring every
night on the eleven o'clock news. Lee Webb would continue
on the six but the intimation was if it went
the way he thought it was going to, I would
get that show too. But the problem was, and I

(48:54):
don't know if you've noticed this, but occasionally I like
to make jokes, Okay, I need to make jokes, And
several of the executives at the station were real fans
of the Red Socks and Celtics and Patriots and Bruins,
and they did not like the jokes. And even if
the viewers liked the jokes, they didn't. One day, I

(49:16):
was supposed to go with a cameraman to shoot a
piece in which I pretended to interview the Green Monster,
the famed left field wall at Fenway Park. The punchline
was it would turn out the Green Monster didn't like baseball,
not a bad idea for nineteen eighty four. Just as
we're leaving the station, the sports director Fernandy said, change
of plans, needs you to go to Smithfield. That was

(49:37):
where the football team held its training camp. Patriots just
put their backup middle lineback on waivers, go get some sound.
He didn't need any sound. The executives who didn't like
my jokes had gotten the executive who didn't get my
jokes to stop giving me the chance to do my jokes.
It was an hour and a half to Smithfield. I
was done for the day. I went home for a

(49:59):
little trip to New York in early September, met with
my agent, told her that after all the time and
all the energy we had to get that job, this
was the most impossible to imagine an outcome. But it
was the wrong station, in the wrong suburb, in the
right town, and I didn't know how we could ever
fix it. She agreed. She said I should go in
and tell the news director I wanted to quit, and

(50:19):
then I'd stay as long as he needed me, but
that if they weren't going to let me do the jokes,
what was the point. I was an okay reporter. I
was an okay, sportscaster, but only with the jokes was
I me so September tenth, nineteen eighty four, a Monday,
the news director was not happy. He offered, in fact,
to fire Lee Webb on the spot and give me
the six o'clock show immediately, like that night, like lead

(50:42):
Lee Webb out of the building that minute. But I
told him that would mean he would be keeping somebody
who wanted to leave and firing somebody who wanted to stay.
He angrily agreed, and I became a secret lame duck,
and I stayed on getting fewer and fewer chances to
be me, although they stuck to their end of it.
They sent me to cover the World Series in San
Diego and Detroit, where the guy next to me in

(51:04):
the press by covering it for Channel seven. The place
I should have gone to work was their new sports reporter,
a just retired Red Sox Hall of Fame player named
Carl Yastremsky. I hit a ball over hit, I hit
a ball over there. I hit three balls over that roof.
Then when I got back from the World Series, it
happened on Friday October nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, that TV

(51:26):
Sports columnist from the Boston Globe, Jack Craig called me
up at home and told me Channel five was firing
me because of bad ratings at eleven o'clock. I didn't
have bad ratings at eleven o'clock. In fact, I had
great ratings, and six weeks earlier they'd offered me the
six o'clock show as well. I hung up with Craig
to call my agent, and instead of a dial tone,

(51:46):
I heard the voice of the TV sports columnists from
the Boston Harold Jim Baker. I had answered his call
fort rang. He told me Channel five was firing me
and Lee Webb so it could instead hire Ken the
Hawk Harrelson, the former Red Sox star and TV announcer
who had moved to Chicago. So now I call my agent.

(52:06):
She says, your deal with Channel five is off. They
want to make it look like you stink. They want
to make it look like they just fired you. You
call Jim Baker and Jack Craig right now and tell
them the whole story. Wherever you go next, it has
to be clear that you weren't fired, you quit, and
you stayed on because you're a pro, which you know
was true. So I called. I told both writers everything,

(52:29):
and two minutes after I got off the phone with
Jack Craig from The Globe, the phone rang and it
was Jim Baker from The Harold calling back, and he says,
you'll never believe this. Their negotiations with Hawk Harrelson are dead.
Apparently he wanted four hundred thousand dollars a year and
to guarantee that he only had to come in five
minutes before each show to get makeup and then read

(52:50):
the script that somebody else wrote. So you are now
our lead story, sure enough. Back page of The Boston
Harold Saturday, October twenty, nineteen eighty four. Above the masthead,
Olverman quits Channel five. At the same hour, I was
supposed to go to Morgantown, West Virginia, the place that

(53:11):
was designed simply to make that lovely town of Naham, Massachusetts,
look like I don't know, the riviera. I was supposed
to go to Morgantown to cover Doug Flutie and Boston
College against the University of West Virginia. Since I lived
between the television station and the airport, the cameraman was
going to swing by my house to pick me up.
Do it like seven am. He never showed. By this point,

(53:34):
I'm thinking I just had to call my lying boss's
liars in both Boston newspapers that are on every news
stand in the city and the surrounding area. Why am
I going to race the clock to get to the
airport on my own when this idiot cameraman forgot to
come get me When we had made the arrangements the
day before, the cameraman had gotten my name wrong and

(53:55):
called me Dick. At least that's why I thought he'd
called me Dick. Anyway, I was twenty five. I went
back to bed, and while I was asleep, Channel five
fired me from a job that I had not only quit,
but I had quit twice, including on the front page
of the newspapers that morning. The Channel five people were furious.
I put up a brave front, but beneath the surface,

(54:17):
I was a little scared until two more things happen
before I could move back to New York. The news
director Phil Balboni told Craig of The Globe that it
was all too bad because quote Keith was potentially such
a major talent. Oh and then the general manager, Coppersmith,
was so angry that he told my agent, he will

(54:39):
never again work in this business. I am not a
big believer in motivational quotes, but two those really worked
number one and two on my all time list, and
as always, beyond that, there's a punchline. In two thousand
and seven, an email popped into my inbox at MSNBC.

(55:01):
It was glowing and warm and lovely, and it indicated
the writer was a huge fan. It was signed your
old Channel five news director Phil Balboni. His email did
not mention that I was potentially such a major talent.

(55:27):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Philip Channel. Guitars based on drums
by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections,
such as this one here which You're rarely here, have

(55:49):
been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music when we play it is the Old
Woman theme from ESPN two. It's written by Mitch Warren Davis,
Curtisy VESPN inc musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best
base ofball stadium organist ever, and we didn't have an
announcer today, so I'm not going to credit him. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this,

(56:11):
the eight hundredth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government in the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. The next schedule countdown
is tomorrow, hoping for a full new episode after this
little cold or whatever it is. Wayne's thanks for bearing
with me since I really couldn't read aloud today, which
interferes with stuff till then. I'm Keith Allerman. Good morning,

(56:34):
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Allerman
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}THE ULTIMATE DESANTIS GOAL: GET US TO BETRAY UKRAINE AND NATO - 3.16.23