November 21, 2022 • 44 mins
EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) 1st SPECIAL COMMENT Is America free? Or are we slaves to the mob rule of Republican gun owners? These Americans - just out for a Saturday night in a place in Colorado Springs that they considered their "haven," just like the children were in Uvalde and just like the shoppers in Buffalo, were killed - directly or stochastically - by Republicans.(5:40) We always ignore the darkest, truest part of the equation of gun violence: there are people in this country who WANT this to keep happening. It is why more children die by gunfire every year than do on-duty cops or active military. And the Republican Party has prostituted itself to these people. (9:10) The 2nd Amendment is a lie; there are 103 words related to money or ownership in the Constitution as amended and none of them are in 2A; (13:41) Right now the President could make enormous inroads into the availability of the guns with which Republicans hunt minorities and children, just by Executive Orders. He must make them, and more over he must lead us in the truth: once again, in Colorado Springs, REPUBLICANS MURDERED AMERICANS.
B-Block (18:51) 2nd SPECIAL COMMENT: If you were Attorney General and you were trying to run out the clock on prosecuting an ex-president and make sure it was the clock that got the blame - and not you - you'd do exactly what Merrick Garland did in appointing a Special Counsel nearly two years after the crime (22:08) There are seven major rationalizations for Garland's act. I'll let them by refuted by Neal Katyal, William Barr, Jill Wine-Banks, Bradley Moss, Matthew Miller, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Samuel Alito - and Robert Mueller.
C-Block (30:50) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The extraordinary offer by dog rescue champion/singer/comedian Elayne Booster (31:25) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Nothing new on the James Comer Scandal (32:21) IN SPORTS: Qatar didn't ban beer at the World Cup. It just raised the price to $22,600; the infamous "Mantle Lewd Questionnaire" is up for auction (and I'll tell you about the only baseball document even more profane than Mantle's: the 1898 Special Instructions To Players (38:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Geraldo Rivera and Ronny Jackson are no match for Maggie "Trump's Change of Tone" Haberman (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 40 years ago, the media guy for the NFL Players Union and all but one of the reporters covering the NFL strike talks pranked the one remaining reporter. It. Was. Epic.
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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 I Heart Radio.
At the heart of the United States of America is
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your right to live without one political party advocating that
you should be killed. The central promise of the United
States of America is your right to be free without
one political party advocating that any election it loses has
been fixed, and that it's presumptive presidential nominee has the
right to overthrow the government. And the essence of the
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United States of America is your responsibility to defend it,
which today means your responsibility to recognize that if it
were not so already. Since Friday, it has become clear
we have a choice in this country. We can have
the United States of America with freedom and representative government
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and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or we
can have the Republican Party. It is inescapable. We can
no longer have both the stories of the Republican death
cult of the Gun and the Republican death cult of
Trump crossed late Saturday night in Colorado, the disaster of
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the appointment of a Special Council ahead, but first this
nightmare in Colorado springs five dead, at least twenty five
injured in a mass shooting, the six hundred and first
in this country this year in Colorado this year, the
ninth in this country this week. This one in an
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lgbt Q club which held drag shows and which was
to commemorate Transgender Remembrance Day hours later. This one, after
days and weeks and months of deliberate and publicized home
of phobia and the targeting of the transgendered, and the
demonization of something as unthreatening as men dressed as women
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by dozens of the most prominent Republican candidates from Dessantis
to Lake to Bobert, and by virtually all of the
conservative commentators, this one is stochastic terrorism with a direct
link to the Republican Party dissent into fascism and political violence.
The suspect is the grandson of a Maga California state assemblyman,
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who had compared January six to Lexington and conquered. Neither
of the usual gun nut excuses that those who are
known to the police to be violent are weeded out
from gun ownership, or that the real cause is mental
illness can possibly apply here, as it only does in
five percent of these shootings. Anyway, it can't apply here
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because the suspect was not some stranger to the law.
A year ago there was a standoff and a threat
to kill his mother with a bomb, and yet he
was not prosecuted and not institutionalized, and the sheriff of
his county is allowed denouncer of red flag laws. We
have spent the money to train the cops. We have
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spent the money to give the cops the weapons they
said they need. We have pushed for more good guys
with guns. We have trained in active shooter drills everybody
from kindergarteners to stadium ushers. And it did not stop
Colorado Springs, or the University of Virginia, or Buffalo or Uvaldi.
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In desperately trying to process and understand this spiraling national disaster,
which gets exponentially worse with every passing week, we always
leave out one component without which these things couldnot possibly happen.
We always leave it out because in some ways, it
is more horrible to contemplate than being in the club
or in the bus, or in the supermarket or in
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the school. That component is this. There are people in
this country who want this to keep happening. We live
in a hell where more children die by gunfire in
a year than do on duty police officers and active
military members. The rights cannibalistic obsession is not merely to
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own a gun. It is to own a gun so
that they can shoot someone who is without a gun.
The victims are unarmed. Whether it is a psychopath shooting
you in a classroom, or cops shooting some kid, or
some homophobes shooting up another lgbt Q club, it is
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not the fight they lust after. It is the unfair fight.
They don't want you to have a gun. They don't
want gun fights. They want to hunt people. They want
to kill people they do not like. They want black
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people shot, they want children shot. They want gay people shot,
they want Asian people shot, they want Jewish people shot,
they want liberal people shot. This happens not because this
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country fails to act. It acts. This happens not because
the Congress fails to act. It acts. This happens not
because the president fails to act. He acts. This happens
not because mental health professionals fail to act. They act.
This happens not because the filibuster is in the way.
It is a wall of paper. This happens not because
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the gun lobbies in the way. It is a wall
of paper. This happens not because the Red States are
in the way. They are a wall of paper. This
happens because the Republicans let it happen. Republicans equal gun massacres,
gun massacres equal Republicans. Without one entire political party prostituting itself,
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the gun lobby would lose all of its power. Congress
would be able to route the death cult. The President
would be able to enforce the laws and issue executive orders.
The filibuster would be irrelevant. The Red States would fall
one after the other, and the will of the people,
sixty one percent of whom want an assault weapon ban,
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the will of the American people would prevail in the
United States of America. But there is a political party
prostituting itself, and that party is the Republican Party. And
there may or may not be anything we can do
quickly enough to stop these ritualized, sacrificial murders of our
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children by Republicans and our innocent citizens by Republicans to
a non existent quote constitutional right, unquote. But the sooner
Democrats tell the truth with rage and with revenge. In
their words, the sooner they say, those guys, those kids,
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those Americans are dead because the Republicans stopped gun control.
The sooner we will make some impact. The Second Amendment
argument is a complete lie. The word own is not
in the Second Amendment, and there are no words that
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mean own in the Second Amendment, even though the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights constitute in large part a
property contract. In the seven thousand, six hundred and seventy
six words in the Constitution with all its amendments, the
words vote, votes and voting appear thirty seven times. The
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words rights and right appear fifteen times, but words relating
to money and ownership appear one hundred and three times
and not once in the Second Amendment. If they had
meant own, it would have said own. So to adapt
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what was said after an anti slavery publisher was assassinated
in eighteen thirty seven, is America free or are we
slaves to the mob rule of gun owners and lobbyists
because the Republicans, who are at fault for gun massacres,
managed to fool not only their own cultists, but many
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normal people to do in the Red States under Republican control,
the party line is gun violence is a problem in
the Blue states in the cities. In fact, your chance
of dying by a gun in Texas is nearly three
times more than it is in New York. Your chance
of dying by a gun in Louisiana and Mississippi and
Wyoming is nearly twice as much as it is in Illinois.
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Your chance of dying by a gun in Idaho and
Kansas and Nevada and Indiana and half a dozen other
Red states is twice as much as it is in California.
There are small actions you and I could take to
push back against this nightmare. We could encourage and support
the boycotts by students who have done more than any
other group of Americans. We could demand credit card companies
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refuse to let customers use their credit services to buy
at least the worst of the guns and supplies. We
could demand news organizations show, where possible, the images of
what one of these guns actually does to a human body. Away.
We all showed the images of the Nazi death camps
after World War Two, when so many said it was
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too graphic, Because that is the point. It is too graphic.
It is too graphic to be shown, and therefore it
is too graphic to let happen. Yet after each one
of these, after each one, Republicans immediately try to turn
the subject to the quote mental health crisis, and many
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Democrats buy into this line in whole or in part.
But there is no mental health crisis. Fewer than five
percent of the shooters have any identifiable mental illness, but
one percent of the shooters have guns. The only mental
health crisis is insisting that the weekly mass murders in
this country have nothing to do with guns. More Republicans,
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more gun deaths, more Republicans, more mass shootings, more Republicans,
more dead second graders and first graders and kindergarteners and
LGBTQ people and minorities say it. This is the Republican business.
They enable the gun lobby to sell more guns, to
kill more children, to kill more Americans. Republicans did this,
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and especially two Democrats. Stop invoking God every time this happens.
If you want to pray for the victims of the
latest Republican mass murder or their loved ones, go ahead, please,
but do it in private, or do it at the
end of your speech. The night of the Texas shooting
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in May, Joe Biden made nine references to God, Mr President,
whether you believe there is a God or you don't
is irrelevant. The faithful and the atheist would have to
agree with this. If there is one, God has clearly
left this for us to solve. And the President is,
as Lincoln once said, clothed in immense powers. Use them already.
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We need executive orders to ban and restrict and hobble
the purchase of these weapons of Republican death. It was
Senator Elizabeth Warren who noted that executive orders alone could
broaden the requirement for background checks for virtually every gun buyer,
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and to report multiple purchases, and to raise the minimum
age to buy a gun, and to increase prosecution for
gun trafficking across the Texas border, and to revoke the
license of gun dealers who break the laws, and to
investigate and prosecute the n r A, and to keep
guns out of the hands of any domestic abuser. That's
just what any president could do today. And if a
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court blocks those orders, Mr President, issue another one. Issue
twenty of them, Issue two thousand of them, Issue two
million of them. I want the corrupt Republican judges and
the Republican gun lobby waiting knee deep in it executive orders.
And if that is still not enough, Mr President, if
the Attorney General of Texas confesses, as he did that night,
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that he cannot enforce gun laws, you must do what
Eisenhower and Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson did when other state
attorneys general and other governors confessed that they couldn't or
wouldn't enforce integration laws. Send in troops to enforce them,
or wait, wait for whatever and whoever is to be
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hunted next. Because police arrested two men in Penn Station
in New York Friday night with weapons with plans to
shoot up a synagogue, and last night they closed the
campus at the University of New Orleans over a threat
from a former student, and hours after, five died at
Club Q in Colorado, the Lives of TikTok twitter account
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invoked drag shows again and targeted two more Colorado state representatives.
First and foremost, Mr President, stop dancing around the truth.
These children in Texas, these grocery shoppers in Buffalo, These
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people just out for a Saturday night in a place
they considered their haven. In Colorado Springs, they were killed
by Republicans directly or stochastically say it. Use your immense
powers to clothe these truths with legitimacy and acceptability. When
Republicans come out as they are still removing the dismembered
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bodies of the people the Republicans have decided are suitable
to be hunted, and when Republicans bombit nonsensical excuses claiming
that this happened because the school didn't have high en offenses,
or because the targets weren't hard enough, or they outright
lie and say, if they'd only had a cop in
the school in Ubaldi when the cops stood and watched,
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or they outright lions say, have only there's been a
good guy with a gun in the tops market in
Buffalo when there was a retired cop with a gun
inside and he's dead too, Or when they outright lions say,
if there had only been a cop in Club Q
and Colorado Springs when the shooter was stopped when an
unarmed man grabbed the gun from his hand and hit
him with it. When they do all that, come out
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and say it, President Biden, the Republicans murdered these Americans.
As I said earlier, there are two vital topics today.
The other is the appointment of a special counsel by
the Attorney General Merrick Garland. And for anybody who says
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this is a good idea, or it at least cannot
be a truly bad idea, I have two words. Robert Mueller.
That's next. This is countdown. Forty six days from now,
the second anniversary of Donald Trump's first attempt to overthrow
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this government by violent coup will come and go, and
the new Special Council will not yet have completed decorating
his own office. The second anniversary of the first request
from the National Archives for Trump to return the classified
documents he stole may come and go, and the new
Special Council may not yet have completed indicting the worst
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criminal in this nation's long history. Merrick Garland believes he
has all the time in the world. Merrick Garland does
not seem to understand that there is a presidential election
in less than two years that may sweep him from
office and end any prosecution. Merrick Garland believes American representative
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government is eternal. Merrick Garland believes etiquette is more important
than justice. Merrick Garland may himself now be guilty of
obstruction of justice. Merrick Garland is the wrong man in
the wrong place at the wrong time. He must be dismissed.
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His successor must be instructed by President Biden to instruct
the special Counsel to indict Trump based on the mountainous
evidence that exists now. Or his successor must dismiss that
special counsel and abolish the office as quickly as it
was created. It is not exaggeration nor hyperbole to say
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the future of the democracy depends on this. There are
only three explanations for why Garland appointed a special counsel. First, truly,
he is as clueless as I have suggested earlier about
how fragile democracy is and how finite time is. Or
Garland has reset the clock, pushed the prosecution of the
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treason and the treachery of Donald Trump back to square
one because he believes some mysterious other factors may make
the prosecution of Trump unnecessary and avoid all. Or because
he himself either believes you can't prosecute a former president,
or he sympathizes with Trump and in either case is
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making certain that the prosecution of Trump is impossible. Were
a special counsel necessary, why did Garland wait. The Mari
Lago search was August eight. Garland himself felt the need
to speak to the nation about it and about the
case on August eleven. The documents have been missing for
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nearly two years. If a special counsel is necessary, why
did Garland say the special counsel will decide whether or
not to prosecute. Imagine the landscape, Imagine the changed world.
If what Garland had announced Friday was a special counsel
who would decide which Trump crimes to prosecute, rather than
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continue to for merely my own rage here, let me
quote experts. Many are buying the excuses for this latest
slow walk, this latest return to the starting line. As
near as I can calculate, there are seven major excuses.
The first, a special council will prevent this necessarily grim
and even solemn prosecution from becoming a spectacle. But Matthew
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Miller was on the Biden transition team and is an
advisor to his National Security Council. On Matthew Miller writes, quote,
Garland has good intentions here, but appointing someone who is
basically the U S. Attorney for Donald Trump with the
oversight of two very different cases just recreates the circus
atmosphere that Trump has always used to his advantage, without
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any tangible upside. The second excuse, a special council will
address the reality that both President Biden and Trump are
there would be candidates for the White House in it
will provide separation between the investigation and the campaigns. But
national security lawyer Bradley Moss rights quote. By announcing a
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special counsel this late in the game, Garland just made
it more likely that any potential prosecution of Trump will
bleed into general election season. The third excuse, a special
council would somehow improve or sharpen the investigation and the prosecution.
What Watergate prosecutor Jill Winebanks writes expletives deleted. I think
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a special counsel was a waste of time and money,
insults the prosecutors at d O J, and gains nothing.
The fourth excuse, a special council will keep this by
partisan the council Mr Smith has been reported to be
a Republican or more likely an independent, but even Trump's
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Attorney General William Barr says quote, I personally think they
probably have the basis for legitimately indicting the president. I
don't know. I'm speculating, but given what's gone on, they
probably have the evidence that would check the box. They
have the case unquote. In short, what could be more
bipartisan than this? Trump's attorney general is closer to indicting
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Trump than Biden's is the fifth excuse for this. A
special council will be above the political fray and there
will be no political influence from either party possible. But
within hours of the appointment, Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, quote
hole and rule, look it up. GOP leader is going
to put it in place. That means no money, don't
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promise too many jobs. Whoops defunded the hole and rule
and obscure. Congressional rule from eighteen seventy six allows in
theory for modifications of appropriations already budgeted, like the way
the Justice Department has already been budgeted through septem Congresswoman
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Green is, of course an idiot. Even if the House
passed a home and rule measure to stop the special Counsel,
it would have to pass the Senate, and it won't.
But as stupid as Green is, she has already proven
that the idea of keeping the prosecution sequestered from politics
just because there is a special counsel is utter nonsense.
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And if that were not enough, hours after that came
the admission of the Reverend Rob Shuck that Supreme Court
Justice Samuel Alito not only met privately with donors supporting
the hobby Lobby case in two thousand fourteen, but Shuck
ale edges Alito leaked the decision to them three weeks
before it was announced. And in that context, if you
think there is any kind of separation between the law
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and politics in this country, you are crazy. The sixth
excuse a special council fits this case precisely. It expresses
the intent of the original Special Council regulations. But the
civil liberties lawyer and he'll cut you'all with whom I
want shared a stage and an a c l U
event in Boston wrote the original special Counsel regulations. He
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wrote them now writes that they were designed to be
used when you feared the administration in office might try
to cover up crimes. Quote so to me, I don't
see what the case is for a special counsel, he adds,
I don't think it's needed under the regulations, and I
think it risks delaying this investigation needlessly. He adds, if
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there's anything we've learned, it's that Trump and his base
will criticize anyone who goes against his wishes. It doesn't
matter if it's Merrick, Garland, Jack Smith, or even his
own vice president. They attack anyone who disagrees, and a
special counsel does nothing to change that fact. And lastly,
Neil Cutchall says Attorney General Garland said it was because
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of a conflict of interest because Trump has announced that
he's running and Biden is evidently running in twenty four
as well. That to me, is tantamount to rewarding Donald
Trump for all of the maneuvers that he's making, including
announcing his Canada see right now, and the seventh and
saddest excuse of them. All that history tells us there
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is no way an Attorney general would appoint a special
counsel if he was intending to not prosecute a case.
The expert I would like to quote here would be
Robert Mueller. But Robert Mueller won't say anything. Of course
he doesn't have to. His eternal silence proves that the
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work of a special counsel can give even a president
no choice but to resign, but that the work of
a special Council could also give an Attorney general and
a president license to lie indefinitely that they have been cleared.
I sincerely hope I am wrong about Merrick Garland. I
do not believe I am. Ask yourself this, if you
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were the head of the Justice Department and you were
trying to run the clock out on prosecuting a crime
and trying make sure that it's the clock that gets
blamed and not you, what would you do? You would
do exactly what Merrick Garland just did. Still Ahead, uncountdown.
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As I've mentioned, I have altered the format today to
make room for the two commentaries, so still ahead, worse
persons looking at you, Maggie Haberman and Geraldo Rivera Sports.
The infamous Mickey Mantle lewd questionnaire goes to public auction
and in things I promised not to tell the day,
the Union media guy and all the reporters covering the
(25:54):
football strike except one franked that one that's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead.
It is the second most lewed document in baseball history,
(26:16):
and now you can own it. The most lewed document. No,
you can't have that. It's all mine. I'll explain first.
In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. This
is extraordinary. The actress, comedian and singer Elaine Boosler has
for twenty one years been running a nonprofit rescue called
(26:37):
Tales of Joy, and she has an amazing offer. Anyone
who adopts any of the dogs on the New York
Pound kill list will receive a full year of free
dog food, treats, vaccines, plush, leash, bed, collar toys, standard
vet visits. Now is the time, So many great dogs
(26:58):
need you. Wow. There are eighteen dogs on the kill
list at the n y a CC the New York Pound.
See my Twitter feed and my pinned tweet at tom
Jumbo Grumbo for biographies of all of them. And remember
Elaine's offer. You get freak care from her and free
unconditional love from a dog who otherwise may not live.
(27:19):
I thank you, and I thank Elaine. Postscripts to the
news some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, state Line, Louisville.
Nothing new on the James Comer scandal. You'll remember he
(27:40):
is the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and
has promised investigations of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. He
has not commented on any investigations of the charges made
in two thousand fifteen by his college girlfriend, Marylyn Thomas
that he hit her, threatened her life, drove her to
a clinic to abort their child, then tried to cover
up his involvement in that by getting her to not
(28:00):
write his name in the paperwork. Dateline New York City,
as COVID researches on the West Coast sufficiently that several
communities recommend now that they are residents where masks in
indoor spaces. Again, a couple of pleasantly startling facts. The
percentage of residents in New York City who are fully
vaccinated is now eighty two eighty two. And nationally, for
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all the whining and all the protests and all the
Tucker Carlson It's six and dateline San Francisco el Mo Musk,
using an easily corruptible and heavily bought susceptible online internet
survey that most news organizations have foolishly called a vote
or a poll, has restored Donald Trump's Twitter account. Thus,
(28:50):
here are Trump's lifetime accomplishments. November two thousand sixteen, against
all odds, is elected president of the United States of America.
November two thousand two gets his account reinstate did on
a free website. This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that, not anymore.
(29:25):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. Time for the bi
weekly International Soccer Championship. As you know, if your team
or nation loses the this Cup or the Copa do that.
Don't worry. There will be another championship they can play
for in at most two weeks from now. Twelve years
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of slave labor and selling out soccer's good name came
to a climax yesterday when World Cup host Cutar got
blitzed to zip by Ecuador in the opening game after
an opening ceremony starring Morgan Freeman, and it had to happen.
Mr Freeman finally found a script even he could not
make sound good. The Cup opened in the wake of
(30:09):
the host Qatar. He's asking Los Angeles Time sportswriter Kevin
Baxter to take off his face mask because it was
in the rainbow colors representing the LGBTQ community. Homosexuality is
illegal in cut Oar and bluntly, I don't know why
a team representing the United States is still participating in
this homophobia, especially in light of what's happened in Colorado
(30:30):
on a broader scale. Just before the World Cup began,
the Qatar's banned the seal a sale of beer in
the stadiums after saying they would allow it. Except they
didn't ban the sale of beer in the stadiums, they
just raised the price. Sky Sports reporting that you can
buy beer or any kind of alcohol in the stadium
(30:51):
in a luxury suite, And you can get into a
luxury suite, providing you buy a corporate hospitality ticket, which
will only cost you twenty two thousand, six hundred dollars.
International Soccer's boss Gianni Infantino defended Qatar's greed by saying
the Qataris were being discriminated against, and he knew how
that felt because as a child he had red hair
(31:13):
and freckles. And no, he's not kidding, at least he
does not know. He's not kidding. On a lighter note,
the second most profane document in baseball history is up
for auction next month. Leland's will sell the infamous Mickey
Mantle lewd questionnaire in it. Then Yankees public relations director
(31:35):
Bob Fishel rights to Mantle on December four, v two,
inviting him to the team's nineteen seventy three Old Timer's
Day and asking him what he considered his most outstanding
experience at Yankee Stadium to put it in the program.
Mantel rights back and answers, well, I can't tell you.
I can't tell you what he wrote back and answered,
(31:56):
But Mantel explained it happened under the right field bleachers
near the Yankees bullpen. To the follow up question, this
event occurred on or about to give as much detail
as you can, while Mantel does that too, and the
part I can read is it was about the third
or fourth inning. I had a pulled groin. Thank you,
(32:31):
Nancy Faust, as I said. The mental questionnaire is only
the second most profane document in baseball history. The first
is from eight It followed an apparently exponential explosion in
the use of profanity in the National League, which was
the only major baseball league in eight especially by players
two fans titled Special Instructions to Players. It is so
(32:56):
filled with expletives that in eight it was illegal to
send this document the warning by mail you could be
arrested because of all of the square words in the document.
Copies were hand delivered by messenger to each team's manager.
The manager in turn handed them to players, who were
(33:16):
instructed to read and sign another document confirming they had
read the Special Instructions to Players, and then give the
original back to their manager. I can read you this much.
It quotes players, umpires, and fans as complaining of quote
such brutal language as you blank blanking son of a blank,
(33:37):
and you blank blanking blank, you blank blanking dog, kiss
my blank, you son of a blank. It really makes
the nineteenth century come alive for me. I am not
bidding on the Mantle questionnaire. I am proud to say
there are two copies of the Special Instructions to Players
(33:59):
still known to be extant, and I own both of
them now. The daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
(34:20):
dunning Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. The Bronze Dr Ronnie Jackson, MAGA congressman from Texas,
though you don't see him mentioned the doctor part that
much anymore. Maybe this is why he writes, masks are
just a big lie. They don't work, never have. They
should not be forced on our children. COVID is over,
(34:42):
and everyone who pushed the lies should be locked up.
Everyone who pushed the lie should be locked up. Ronnie
Jackson writes, Ronnie's actually right without knowing it. The lies
about COVID where by people in the Trump administration like
him and the functionally challenged people like Joe Rogan and
David Portnoy pretending to be anti vacts when in fact
they're actually just afraid of the needle. The runner up
(35:04):
Erldo Rivera, HAROLDO Rivera. It's Tom Brokaw doing Heeraldo Rivera's name.
Harold ra tweeted at ten thirty eight pm Friday, for
the good of the nation, Ford pardoned Nixon. For the
good of the nation, Biden should pardon Trump. It will
never occur to Helder that Trump did what he did
(35:24):
in part because Ford pardon Nixon. Because the lesson of
the Ford pardon of Nixon isn't that we should forgive
trespass for the sake of the nation. The lesson affords
pardon of Nixon is that if your president, the more
laws you break, the more likely you are to get
away with it. But our winner, Maggie Haberman, who has
(35:45):
never learned anything, no lessons to be learned. There quote
the new tone of the teleprompter speech during his announcement
is over. Trump, responding to the appointment of a special council,
calls the election rigged as he speaks at Marilago thinks
there's ever been a new Trump tone. Maggie, No, this
(36:12):
was the day Trump truly became president. Heberman two Day's
worst person in the world. Finally to the number one
story on the countdown on this day of scrambled formats,
(36:33):
thank you for your patients and my favorite topic, me
and an abbreviated edition of things I promised not to tell.
And we are now forty years and five days. It
turns out past the end of the nine eight two
National Football League players strike, so I better tell this
story now or wait a year. In March of two
I went from scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's
(36:57):
national sports correspondent based in New York. I have mentioned
previously that they rewarded me by offering me a thousand
dollars less the year than they were giving me freelance,
which tells you everything you need to know about working
in television. CNN also rewarded me by sending me to
the first meeting of the NFL Players Association and the
NFL Management Council to negotiate a new contract and avert
(37:20):
a strike. That year. Kind of missed that target, But
while I did lots of other stories in my first
full year at CNN, I was the football strike guy
until that strike was settled and a new deal was
approved at a mass meeting in Washington. And the mass
meeting in Washington curred just before Thanksgiving, like forty years
ago today, and the damn story had started forty years
(37:43):
ago last March. They are probably fifty seven hundred stories
worth telling you of covering this thing nearly every day
one way or the other for eight months, but this
one might be my favorite. There were I think three
other reporters at that first bargaining session in New York
in March of nineteen eight d two. And if these
(38:05):
are not the three guys I'm thinking of, they became
the three guys in the subsequent meetings later in March,
and then in April when we had some in Washington
and Throughout the early summer, they were Bart Barnes of
the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld of the Associated Press, and
Michael Janofsky of the New York Times. By October, the
four of us had been joined by whom maybe hundred
(38:29):
other reporters, two hundred. The problem with covering any strike,
inside sports or outside of it is you don't have
a lot of news to cover, and the only news
story or editors or producers or readers or viewers want
anyway is this one is the damn thing over yet.
So there was a lot of competition among all of
(38:49):
us for those few news nuggets and sources available to
an ever increasing supply of reporters. Though I have to
say the others, at least the originals were all great
to me and I to them, to the point that
when they moved the talks to the Hunt Valley Resort
compla in Maryland, United Press International and the networks like
us called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland. But there was
(39:12):
such a dearth of news that the Associated Press insisted
there was no such places Hunt Valley, Maryland, and we
were all really in Cockiesville, Maryland. The same story would
come across the U. P I wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and the same story on the AP wire Cockiesville, Maryland.
Then the Associated Press did a story on the dispute
(39:33):
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline cockies Bill
just so there'd be a dispute, just so he had
something to write about. He started laughing and walked away. Anyway, Janovsky,
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janoski was a little abrasive, like literally
(39:57):
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
those aggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, and the
only thing the owners and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Janovsky again. So one long night in the resort
(40:18):
they were using in Cockiesville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of US media types and we started complaining
about Janofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
(40:41):
swimming pool around a corner, down a one foot hallway
into the lobby, which was the press room and press
conference venue. So we waited until we saw Jenovski go
down that hall away from the main lobby and around
the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, And then at
least a dozen of us waited like evil school kids
(41:03):
in the main part of that hallway between the swimming
pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to stand
near the pool to alert us. So has Michael Janovski
of the New York Times turned the corner a hundred
feet away, he saw the nfl P, a press aid
literally pushing some of us, and everybody yelling, and him saying, fine,
(41:23):
it's true, it's true. It's over. Now. I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
from us, their arms flailing through the air, voices raised
a lot of oaths and swear words. In short, we
have convinced Mr Janovsky of the Times that he has
just missed the end of the football strike. Jenovsky sprints
(41:47):
the hundred feet, grabs the Union guy and says, tell me,
tell me it's settled, it's over. Tell me and this man,
Dave had also been a press staffer in the Kennedy administration,
and this was not his first prank against the reporter.
He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I don't work for the
nfl p A anymore. I just quit. If you want
(42:08):
this story, you better get it from the executive director
Ed Garvey or the president Geane Upshaw. So now Jenovsky
grabs Bart Barnes of the WAPO, who had to have
been I don't know, ten years older than Jenovsky was,
and he says, you have to tell me, Bart, I'll
pay you, at which point all of us lose it.
(42:30):
I mean me and the AP guy. Ira, we broke character.
We doubled over with laughter. Now Janovsky froze Dave from
the Union laughed so hard he turned red, and Janowski
marched off, announcing he would get us and get us soon.
I don't think he ever did, though. If I had
to do a phoner for CNN when Janovsky was around
(42:52):
that lobby or any other other places we did this story.
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was lee Eve sports altogether for safer and
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
(43:13):
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
If you're not following or subscribed or whatever, please do so.
Here are our credits. Most of the music, including our
(43:33):
theme here from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed
by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip
Chanelle guitars based on drums by Brian Ray, produced by
t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
(43:53):
music is the Alberman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
ever are announce youre today was Larry David. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this
the six five day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. I
(44:16):
usually say here, arrest him now while we still can,
But of course the Special Council has not yet started
on his job. So furrow your brow and say serious
things about him now while we still can. New episode
tomorrow until then on Keith old Reman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith old Woman
(44:41):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
At the heart of the United States of America is
(00:25):
your right to live without one political party advocating that
you should be killed. The central promise of the United
States of America is your right to be free without
one political party advocating that any election it loses has
been fixed, and that it's presumptive presidential nominee has the
right to overthrow the government. And the essence of the
(00:47):
United States of America is your responsibility to defend it,
which today means your responsibility to recognize that if it
were not so already. Since Friday, it has become clear
we have a choice in this country. We can have
the United States of America with freedom and representative government
(01:08):
and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or we
can have the Republican Party. It is inescapable. We can
no longer have both the stories of the Republican death
cult of the Gun and the Republican death cult of
Trump crossed late Saturday night in Colorado, the disaster of
(01:29):
the appointment of a Special Council ahead, but first this
nightmare in Colorado springs five dead, at least twenty five
injured in a mass shooting, the six hundred and first
in this country this year in Colorado this year, the
ninth in this country this week. This one in an
(01:51):
lgbt Q club which held drag shows and which was
to commemorate Transgender Remembrance Day hours later. This one, after
days and weeks and months of deliberate and publicized home
of phobia and the targeting of the transgendered, and the
demonization of something as unthreatening as men dressed as women
(02:12):
by dozens of the most prominent Republican candidates from Dessantis
to Lake to Bobert, and by virtually all of the
conservative commentators, this one is stochastic terrorism with a direct
link to the Republican Party dissent into fascism and political violence.
The suspect is the grandson of a Maga California state assemblyman,
(02:35):
who had compared January six to Lexington and conquered. Neither
of the usual gun nut excuses that those who are
known to the police to be violent are weeded out
from gun ownership, or that the real cause is mental
illness can possibly apply here, as it only does in
five percent of these shootings. Anyway, it can't apply here
(02:58):
because the suspect was not some stranger to the law.
A year ago there was a standoff and a threat
to kill his mother with a bomb, and yet he
was not prosecuted and not institutionalized, and the sheriff of
his county is allowed denouncer of red flag laws. We
have spent the money to train the cops. We have
(03:19):
spent the money to give the cops the weapons they
said they need. We have pushed for more good guys
with guns. We have trained in active shooter drills everybody
from kindergarteners to stadium ushers. And it did not stop
Colorado Springs, or the University of Virginia, or Buffalo or Uvaldi.
(03:42):
In desperately trying to process and understand this spiraling national disaster,
which gets exponentially worse with every passing week, we always
leave out one component without which these things couldnot possibly happen.
We always leave it out because in some ways, it
is more horrible to contemplate than being in the club
or in the bus, or in the supermarket or in
(04:04):
the school. That component is this. There are people in
this country who want this to keep happening. We live
in a hell where more children die by gunfire in
a year than do on duty police officers and active
military members. The rights cannibalistic obsession is not merely to
(04:30):
own a gun. It is to own a gun so
that they can shoot someone who is without a gun.
The victims are unarmed. Whether it is a psychopath shooting
you in a classroom, or cops shooting some kid, or
some homophobes shooting up another lgbt Q club, it is
(04:51):
not the fight they lust after. It is the unfair fight.
They don't want you to have a gun. They don't
want gun fights. They want to hunt people. They want
to kill people they do not like. They want black
(05:14):
people shot, they want children shot. They want gay people shot,
they want Asian people shot, they want Jewish people shot,
they want liberal people shot. This happens not because this
(05:35):
country fails to act. It acts. This happens not because
the Congress fails to act. It acts. This happens not
because the president fails to act. He acts. This happens
not because mental health professionals fail to act. They act.
This happens not because the filibuster is in the way.
It is a wall of paper. This happens not because
(05:57):
the gun lobbies in the way. It is a wall
of paper. This happens not because the Red States are
in the way. They are a wall of paper. This
happens because the Republicans let it happen. Republicans equal gun massacres,
gun massacres equal Republicans. Without one entire political party prostituting itself,
(06:26):
the gun lobby would lose all of its power. Congress
would be able to route the death cult. The President
would be able to enforce the laws and issue executive orders.
The filibuster would be irrelevant. The Red States would fall
one after the other, and the will of the people,
sixty one percent of whom want an assault weapon ban,
(06:49):
the will of the American people would prevail in the
United States of America. But there is a political party
prostituting itself, and that party is the Republican Party. And
there may or may not be anything we can do
quickly enough to stop these ritualized, sacrificial murders of our
(07:11):
children by Republicans and our innocent citizens by Republicans to
a non existent quote constitutional right, unquote. But the sooner
Democrats tell the truth with rage and with revenge. In
their words, the sooner they say, those guys, those kids,
(07:35):
those Americans are dead because the Republicans stopped gun control.
The sooner we will make some impact. The Second Amendment
argument is a complete lie. The word own is not
in the Second Amendment, and there are no words that
(07:58):
mean own in the Second Amendment, even though the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights constitute in large part a
property contract. In the seven thousand, six hundred and seventy
six words in the Constitution with all its amendments, the
words vote, votes and voting appear thirty seven times. The
(08:19):
words rights and right appear fifteen times, but words relating
to money and ownership appear one hundred and three times
and not once in the Second Amendment. If they had
meant own, it would have said own. So to adapt
(08:42):
what was said after an anti slavery publisher was assassinated
in eighteen thirty seven, is America free or are we
slaves to the mob rule of gun owners and lobbyists
because the Republicans, who are at fault for gun massacres,
managed to fool not only their own cultists, but many
(09:03):
normal people to do in the Red States under Republican control,
the party line is gun violence is a problem in
the Blue states in the cities. In fact, your chance
of dying by a gun in Texas is nearly three
times more than it is in New York. Your chance
of dying by a gun in Louisiana and Mississippi and
Wyoming is nearly twice as much as it is in Illinois.
(09:26):
Your chance of dying by a gun in Idaho and
Kansas and Nevada and Indiana and half a dozen other
Red states is twice as much as it is in California.
There are small actions you and I could take to
push back against this nightmare. We could encourage and support
the boycotts by students who have done more than any
other group of Americans. We could demand credit card companies
(09:49):
refuse to let customers use their credit services to buy
at least the worst of the guns and supplies. We
could demand news organizations show, where possible, the images of
what one of these guns actually does to a human body. Away.
We all showed the images of the Nazi death camps
after World War Two, when so many said it was
(10:10):
too graphic, Because that is the point. It is too graphic.
It is too graphic to be shown, and therefore it
is too graphic to let happen. Yet after each one
of these, after each one, Republicans immediately try to turn
the subject to the quote mental health crisis, and many
(10:33):
Democrats buy into this line in whole or in part.
But there is no mental health crisis. Fewer than five
percent of the shooters have any identifiable mental illness, but
one percent of the shooters have guns. The only mental
health crisis is insisting that the weekly mass murders in
this country have nothing to do with guns. More Republicans,
(10:56):
more gun deaths, more Republicans, more mass shootings, more Republicans,
more dead second graders and first graders and kindergarteners and
LGBTQ people and minorities say it. This is the Republican business.
They enable the gun lobby to sell more guns, to
kill more children, to kill more Americans. Republicans did this,
(11:20):
and especially two Democrats. Stop invoking God every time this happens.
If you want to pray for the victims of the
latest Republican mass murder or their loved ones, go ahead, please,
but do it in private, or do it at the
end of your speech. The night of the Texas shooting
(11:41):
in May, Joe Biden made nine references to God, Mr President,
whether you believe there is a God or you don't
is irrelevant. The faithful and the atheist would have to
agree with this. If there is one, God has clearly
left this for us to solve. And the President is,
as Lincoln once said, clothed in immense powers. Use them already.
(12:07):
We need executive orders to ban and restrict and hobble
the purchase of these weapons of Republican death. It was
Senator Elizabeth Warren who noted that executive orders alone could
broaden the requirement for background checks for virtually every gun buyer,
(12:28):
and to report multiple purchases, and to raise the minimum
age to buy a gun, and to increase prosecution for
gun trafficking across the Texas border, and to revoke the
license of gun dealers who break the laws, and to
investigate and prosecute the n r A, and to keep
guns out of the hands of any domestic abuser. That's
just what any president could do today. And if a
(12:51):
court blocks those orders, Mr President, issue another one. Issue
twenty of them, Issue two thousand of them, Issue two
million of them. I want the corrupt Republican judges and
the Republican gun lobby waiting knee deep in it executive orders.
And if that is still not enough, Mr President, if
the Attorney General of Texas confesses, as he did that night,
(13:15):
that he cannot enforce gun laws, you must do what
Eisenhower and Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson did when other state
attorneys general and other governors confessed that they couldn't or
wouldn't enforce integration laws. Send in troops to enforce them,
or wait, wait for whatever and whoever is to be
(13:38):
hunted next. Because police arrested two men in Penn Station
in New York Friday night with weapons with plans to
shoot up a synagogue, and last night they closed the
campus at the University of New Orleans over a threat
from a former student, and hours after, five died at
Club Q in Colorado, the Lives of TikTok twitter account
(14:00):
invoked drag shows again and targeted two more Colorado state representatives.
First and foremost, Mr President, stop dancing around the truth.
These children in Texas, these grocery shoppers in Buffalo, These
(14:21):
people just out for a Saturday night in a place
they considered their haven. In Colorado Springs, they were killed
by Republicans directly or stochastically say it. Use your immense
powers to clothe these truths with legitimacy and acceptability. When
Republicans come out as they are still removing the dismembered
(14:44):
bodies of the people the Republicans have decided are suitable
to be hunted, and when Republicans bombit nonsensical excuses claiming
that this happened because the school didn't have high en offenses,
or because the targets weren't hard enough, or they outright
lie and say, if they'd only had a cop in
the school in Ubaldi when the cops stood and watched,
(15:04):
or they outright lions say, have only there's been a
good guy with a gun in the tops market in
Buffalo when there was a retired cop with a gun
inside and he's dead too, Or when they outright lions say,
if there had only been a cop in Club Q
and Colorado Springs when the shooter was stopped when an
unarmed man grabbed the gun from his hand and hit
him with it. When they do all that, come out
(15:26):
and say it, President Biden, the Republicans murdered these Americans.
As I said earlier, there are two vital topics today.
The other is the appointment of a special counsel by
the Attorney General Merrick Garland. And for anybody who says
(15:48):
this is a good idea, or it at least cannot
be a truly bad idea, I have two words. Robert Mueller.
That's next. This is countdown. Forty six days from now,
the second anniversary of Donald Trump's first attempt to overthrow
(16:09):
this government by violent coup will come and go, and
the new Special Council will not yet have completed decorating
his own office. The second anniversary of the first request
from the National Archives for Trump to return the classified
documents he stole may come and go, and the new
Special Council may not yet have completed indicting the worst
(16:30):
criminal in this nation's long history. Merrick Garland believes he
has all the time in the world. Merrick Garland does
not seem to understand that there is a presidential election
in less than two years that may sweep him from
office and end any prosecution. Merrick Garland believes American representative
(16:51):
government is eternal. Merrick Garland believes etiquette is more important
than justice. Merrick Garland may himself now be guilty of
obstruction of justice. Merrick Garland is the wrong man in
the wrong place at the wrong time. He must be dismissed.
(17:12):
His successor must be instructed by President Biden to instruct
the special Counsel to indict Trump based on the mountainous
evidence that exists now. Or his successor must dismiss that
special counsel and abolish the office as quickly as it
was created. It is not exaggeration nor hyperbole to say
(17:32):
the future of the democracy depends on this. There are
only three explanations for why Garland appointed a special counsel. First, truly,
he is as clueless as I have suggested earlier about
how fragile democracy is and how finite time is. Or
Garland has reset the clock, pushed the prosecution of the
(17:54):
treason and the treachery of Donald Trump back to square
one because he believes some mysterious other factors may make
the prosecution of Trump unnecessary and avoid all. Or because
he himself either believes you can't prosecute a former president,
or he sympathizes with Trump and in either case is
(18:15):
making certain that the prosecution of Trump is impossible. Were
a special counsel necessary, why did Garland wait. The Mari
Lago search was August eight. Garland himself felt the need
to speak to the nation about it and about the
case on August eleven. The documents have been missing for
(18:39):
nearly two years. If a special counsel is necessary, why
did Garland say the special counsel will decide whether or
not to prosecute. Imagine the landscape, Imagine the changed world.
If what Garland had announced Friday was a special counsel
who would decide which Trump crimes to prosecute, rather than
(19:03):
continue to for merely my own rage here, let me
quote experts. Many are buying the excuses for this latest
slow walk, this latest return to the starting line. As
near as I can calculate, there are seven major excuses.
The first, a special council will prevent this necessarily grim
and even solemn prosecution from becoming a spectacle. But Matthew
(19:26):
Miller was on the Biden transition team and is an
advisor to his National Security Council. On Matthew Miller writes, quote,
Garland has good intentions here, but appointing someone who is
basically the U S. Attorney for Donald Trump with the
oversight of two very different cases just recreates the circus
atmosphere that Trump has always used to his advantage, without
(19:47):
any tangible upside. The second excuse, a special council will
address the reality that both President Biden and Trump are
there would be candidates for the White House in it
will provide separation between the investigation and the campaigns. But
national security lawyer Bradley Moss rights quote. By announcing a
(20:09):
special counsel this late in the game, Garland just made
it more likely that any potential prosecution of Trump will
bleed into general election season. The third excuse, a special
council would somehow improve or sharpen the investigation and the prosecution.
What Watergate prosecutor Jill Winebanks writes expletives deleted. I think
(20:32):
a special counsel was a waste of time and money,
insults the prosecutors at d O J, and gains nothing.
The fourth excuse, a special council will keep this by
partisan the council Mr Smith has been reported to be
a Republican or more likely an independent, but even Trump's
(20:53):
Attorney General William Barr says quote, I personally think they
probably have the basis for legitimately indicting the president. I
don't know. I'm speculating, but given what's gone on, they
probably have the evidence that would check the box. They
have the case unquote. In short, what could be more
bipartisan than this? Trump's attorney general is closer to indicting
(21:18):
Trump than Biden's is the fifth excuse for this. A
special council will be above the political fray and there
will be no political influence from either party possible. But
within hours of the appointment, Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, quote
hole and rule, look it up. GOP leader is going
to put it in place. That means no money, don't
(21:40):
promise too many jobs. Whoops defunded the hole and rule
and obscure. Congressional rule from eighteen seventy six allows in
theory for modifications of appropriations already budgeted, like the way
the Justice Department has already been budgeted through septem Congresswoman
(22:01):
Green is, of course an idiot. Even if the House
passed a home and rule measure to stop the special Counsel,
it would have to pass the Senate, and it won't.
But as stupid as Green is, she has already proven
that the idea of keeping the prosecution sequestered from politics
just because there is a special counsel is utter nonsense.
(22:23):
And if that were not enough, hours after that came
the admission of the Reverend Rob Shuck that Supreme Court
Justice Samuel Alito not only met privately with donors supporting
the hobby Lobby case in two thousand fourteen, but Shuck
ale edges Alito leaked the decision to them three weeks
before it was announced. And in that context, if you
think there is any kind of separation between the law
(22:44):
and politics in this country, you are crazy. The sixth
excuse a special council fits this case precisely. It expresses
the intent of the original Special Council regulations. But the
civil liberties lawyer and he'll cut you'all with whom I
want shared a stage and an a c l U
event in Boston wrote the original special Counsel regulations. He
(23:08):
wrote them now writes that they were designed to be
used when you feared the administration in office might try
to cover up crimes. Quote so to me, I don't
see what the case is for a special counsel, he adds,
I don't think it's needed under the regulations, and I
think it risks delaying this investigation needlessly. He adds, if
(23:29):
there's anything we've learned, it's that Trump and his base
will criticize anyone who goes against his wishes. It doesn't
matter if it's Merrick, Garland, Jack Smith, or even his
own vice president. They attack anyone who disagrees, and a
special counsel does nothing to change that fact. And lastly,
Neil Cutchall says Attorney General Garland said it was because
(23:50):
of a conflict of interest because Trump has announced that
he's running and Biden is evidently running in twenty four
as well. That to me, is tantamount to rewarding Donald
Trump for all of the maneuvers that he's making, including
announcing his Canada see right now, and the seventh and
saddest excuse of them. All that history tells us there
(24:12):
is no way an Attorney general would appoint a special
counsel if he was intending to not prosecute a case.
The expert I would like to quote here would be
Robert Mueller. But Robert Mueller won't say anything. Of course
he doesn't have to. His eternal silence proves that the
(24:34):
work of a special counsel can give even a president
no choice but to resign, but that the work of
a special Council could also give an Attorney general and
a president license to lie indefinitely that they have been cleared.
I sincerely hope I am wrong about Merrick Garland. I
do not believe I am. Ask yourself this, if you
(24:56):
were the head of the Justice Department and you were
trying to run the clock out on prosecuting a crime
and trying make sure that it's the clock that gets
blamed and not you, what would you do? You would
do exactly what Merrick Garland just did. Still Ahead, uncountdown.
(25:32):
As I've mentioned, I have altered the format today to
make room for the two commentaries, so still ahead, worse
persons looking at you, Maggie Haberman and Geraldo Rivera Sports.
The infamous Mickey Mantle lewd questionnaire goes to public auction
and in things I promised not to tell the day,
the Union media guy and all the reporters covering the
(25:54):
football strike except one franked that one that's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead.
It is the second most lewed document in baseball history,
(26:16):
and now you can own it. The most lewed document. No,
you can't have that. It's all mine. I'll explain first.
In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day. This
is extraordinary. The actress, comedian and singer Elaine Boosler has
for twenty one years been running a nonprofit rescue called
(26:37):
Tales of Joy, and she has an amazing offer. Anyone
who adopts any of the dogs on the New York
Pound kill list will receive a full year of free
dog food, treats, vaccines, plush, leash, bed, collar toys, standard
vet visits. Now is the time, So many great dogs
(26:58):
need you. Wow. There are eighteen dogs on the kill
list at the n y a CC the New York Pound.
See my Twitter feed and my pinned tweet at tom
Jumbo Grumbo for biographies of all of them. And remember
Elaine's offer. You get freak care from her and free
unconditional love from a dog who otherwise may not live.
(27:19):
I thank you, and I thank Elaine. Postscripts to the
news some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, state Line, Louisville.
Nothing new on the James Comer scandal. You'll remember he
(27:40):
is the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and
has promised investigations of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. He
has not commented on any investigations of the charges made
in two thousand fifteen by his college girlfriend, Marylyn Thomas
that he hit her, threatened her life, drove her to
a clinic to abort their child, then tried to cover
up his involvement in that by getting her to not
(28:00):
write his name in the paperwork. Dateline New York City,
as COVID researches on the West Coast sufficiently that several
communities recommend now that they are residents where masks in
indoor spaces. Again, a couple of pleasantly startling facts. The
percentage of residents in New York City who are fully
vaccinated is now eighty two eighty two. And nationally, for
(28:27):
all the whining and all the protests and all the
Tucker Carlson It's six and dateline San Francisco el Mo Musk,
using an easily corruptible and heavily bought susceptible online internet
survey that most news organizations have foolishly called a vote
or a poll, has restored Donald Trump's Twitter account. Thus,
(28:50):
here are Trump's lifetime accomplishments. November two thousand sixteen, against
all odds, is elected president of the United States of America.
November two thousand two gets his account reinstate did on
a free website. This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that, not anymore.
(29:25):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. Time for the bi
weekly International Soccer Championship. As you know, if your team
or nation loses the this Cup or the Copa do that.
Don't worry. There will be another championship they can play
for in at most two weeks from now. Twelve years
(29:46):
of slave labor and selling out soccer's good name came
to a climax yesterday when World Cup host Cutar got
blitzed to zip by Ecuador in the opening game after
an opening ceremony starring Morgan Freeman, and it had to happen.
Mr Freeman finally found a script even he could not
make sound good. The Cup opened in the wake of
(30:09):
the host Qatar. He's asking Los Angeles Time sportswriter Kevin
Baxter to take off his face mask because it was
in the rainbow colors representing the LGBTQ community. Homosexuality is
illegal in cut Oar and bluntly, I don't know why
a team representing the United States is still participating in
this homophobia, especially in light of what's happened in Colorado
(30:30):
on a broader scale. Just before the World Cup began,
the Qatar's banned the seal a sale of beer in
the stadiums after saying they would allow it. Except they
didn't ban the sale of beer in the stadiums, they
just raised the price. Sky Sports reporting that you can
buy beer or any kind of alcohol in the stadium
(30:51):
in a luxury suite, And you can get into a
luxury suite, providing you buy a corporate hospitality ticket, which
will only cost you twenty two thousand, six hundred dollars.
International Soccer's boss Gianni Infantino defended Qatar's greed by saying
the Qataris were being discriminated against, and he knew how
that felt because as a child he had red hair
(31:13):
and freckles. And no, he's not kidding, at least he
does not know. He's not kidding. On a lighter note,
the second most profane document in baseball history is up
for auction next month. Leland's will sell the infamous Mickey
Mantle lewd questionnaire in it. Then Yankees public relations director
(31:35):
Bob Fishel rights to Mantle on December four, v two,
inviting him to the team's nineteen seventy three Old Timer's
Day and asking him what he considered his most outstanding
experience at Yankee Stadium to put it in the program.
Mantel rights back and answers, well, I can't tell you.
I can't tell you what he wrote back and answered,
(31:56):
But Mantel explained it happened under the right field bleachers
near the Yankees bullpen. To the follow up question, this
event occurred on or about to give as much detail
as you can, while Mantel does that too, and the
part I can read is it was about the third
or fourth inning. I had a pulled groin. Thank you,
(32:31):
Nancy Faust, as I said. The mental questionnaire is only
the second most profane document in baseball history. The first
is from eight It followed an apparently exponential explosion in
the use of profanity in the National League, which was
the only major baseball league in eight especially by players
two fans titled Special Instructions to Players. It is so
(32:56):
filled with expletives that in eight it was illegal to
send this document the warning by mail you could be
arrested because of all of the square words in the document.
Copies were hand delivered by messenger to each team's manager.
The manager in turn handed them to players, who were
(33:16):
instructed to read and sign another document confirming they had
read the Special Instructions to Players, and then give the
original back to their manager. I can read you this much.
It quotes players, umpires, and fans as complaining of quote
such brutal language as you blank blanking son of a blank,
(33:37):
and you blank blanking blank, you blank blanking dog, kiss
my blank, you son of a blank. It really makes
the nineteenth century come alive for me. I am not
bidding on the Mantle questionnaire. I am proud to say
there are two copies of the Special Instructions to Players
(33:59):
still known to be extant, and I own both of
them now. The daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
(34:20):
dunning Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. The Bronze Dr Ronnie Jackson, MAGA congressman from Texas,
though you don't see him mentioned the doctor part that
much anymore. Maybe this is why he writes, masks are
just a big lie. They don't work, never have. They
should not be forced on our children. COVID is over,
(34:42):
and everyone who pushed the lies should be locked up.
Everyone who pushed the lie should be locked up. Ronnie
Jackson writes, Ronnie's actually right without knowing it. The lies
about COVID where by people in the Trump administration like
him and the functionally challenged people like Joe Rogan and
David Portnoy pretending to be anti vacts when in fact
they're actually just afraid of the needle. The runner up
(35:04):
Erldo Rivera, HAROLDO Rivera. It's Tom Brokaw doing Heeraldo Rivera's name.
Harold ra tweeted at ten thirty eight pm Friday, for
the good of the nation, Ford pardoned Nixon. For the
good of the nation, Biden should pardon Trump. It will
never occur to Helder that Trump did what he did
(35:24):
in part because Ford pardon Nixon. Because the lesson of
the Ford pardon of Nixon isn't that we should forgive
trespass for the sake of the nation. The lesson affords
pardon of Nixon is that if your president, the more
laws you break, the more likely you are to get
away with it. But our winner, Maggie Haberman, who has
(35:45):
never learned anything, no lessons to be learned. There quote
the new tone of the teleprompter speech during his announcement
is over. Trump, responding to the appointment of a special council,
calls the election rigged as he speaks at Marilago thinks
there's ever been a new Trump tone. Maggie, No, this
(36:12):
was the day Trump truly became president. Heberman two Day's
worst person in the world. Finally to the number one
story on the countdown on this day of scrambled formats,
(36:33):
thank you for your patients and my favorite topic, me
and an abbreviated edition of things I promised not to tell.
And we are now forty years and five days. It
turns out past the end of the nine eight two
National Football League players strike, so I better tell this
story now or wait a year. In March of two
I went from scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's
(36:57):
national sports correspondent based in New York. I have mentioned
previously that they rewarded me by offering me a thousand
dollars less the year than they were giving me freelance,
which tells you everything you need to know about working
in television. CNN also rewarded me by sending me to
the first meeting of the NFL Players Association and the
NFL Management Council to negotiate a new contract and avert
(37:20):
a strike. That year. Kind of missed that target, But
while I did lots of other stories in my first
full year at CNN, I was the football strike guy
until that strike was settled and a new deal was
approved at a mass meeting in Washington. And the mass
meeting in Washington curred just before Thanksgiving, like forty years
ago today, and the damn story had started forty years
(37:43):
ago last March. They are probably fifty seven hundred stories
worth telling you of covering this thing nearly every day
one way or the other for eight months, but this
one might be my favorite. There were I think three
other reporters at that first bargaining session in New York
in March of nineteen eight d two. And if these
(38:05):
are not the three guys I'm thinking of, they became
the three guys in the subsequent meetings later in March,
and then in April when we had some in Washington
and Throughout the early summer, they were Bart Barnes of
the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld of the Associated Press, and
Michael Janofsky of the New York Times. By October, the
four of us had been joined by whom maybe hundred
(38:29):
other reporters, two hundred. The problem with covering any strike,
inside sports or outside of it is you don't have
a lot of news to cover, and the only news
story or editors or producers or readers or viewers want
anyway is this one is the damn thing over yet.
So there was a lot of competition among all of
(38:49):
us for those few news nuggets and sources available to
an ever increasing supply of reporters. Though I have to
say the others, at least the originals were all great
to me and I to them, to the point that
when they moved the talks to the Hunt Valley Resort
compla in Maryland, United Press International and the networks like
us called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland. But there was
(39:12):
such a dearth of news that the Associated Press insisted
there was no such places Hunt Valley, Maryland, and we
were all really in Cockiesville, Maryland. The same story would
come across the U. P I wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and the same story on the AP wire Cockiesville, Maryland.
Then the Associated Press did a story on the dispute
(39:33):
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline cockies Bill
just so there'd be a dispute, just so he had
something to write about. He started laughing and walked away. Anyway, Janovsky,
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janoski was a little abrasive, like literally
(39:57):
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
those aggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, and the
only thing the owners and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Janovsky again. So one long night in the resort
(40:18):
they were using in Cockiesville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of US media types and we started complaining
about Janofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
(40:41):
swimming pool around a corner, down a one foot hallway
into the lobby, which was the press room and press
conference venue. So we waited until we saw Jenovski go
down that hall away from the main lobby and around
the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, And then at
least a dozen of us waited like evil school kids
(41:03):
in the main part of that hallway between the swimming
pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to stand
near the pool to alert us. So has Michael Janovski
of the New York Times turned the corner a hundred
feet away, he saw the nfl P, a press aid
literally pushing some of us, and everybody yelling, and him saying, fine,
(41:23):
it's true, it's true. It's over. Now. I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
from us, their arms flailing through the air, voices raised
a lot of oaths and swear words. In short, we
have convinced Mr Janovsky of the Times that he has
just missed the end of the football strike. Jenovsky sprints
(41:47):
the hundred feet, grabs the Union guy and says, tell me,
tell me it's settled, it's over. Tell me and this man,
Dave had also been a press staffer in the Kennedy administration,
and this was not his first prank against the reporter.
He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I don't work for the
nfl p A anymore. I just quit. If you want
(42:08):
this story, you better get it from the executive director
Ed Garvey or the president Geane Upshaw. So now Jenovsky
grabs Bart Barnes of the WAPO, who had to have
been I don't know, ten years older than Jenovsky was,
and he says, you have to tell me, Bart, I'll
pay you, at which point all of us lose it.
(42:30):
I mean me and the AP guy. Ira, we broke character.
We doubled over with laughter. Now Janovsky froze Dave from
the Union laughed so hard he turned red, and Janowski
marched off, announcing he would get us and get us soon.
I don't think he ever did, though. If I had
to do a phoner for CNN when Janovsky was around
(42:52):
that lobby or any other other places we did this story.
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was lee Eve sports altogether for safer and
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
(43:13):
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
If you're not following or subscribed or whatever, please do so.
Here are our credits. Most of the music, including our
(43:33):
theme here from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed
by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip
Chanelle guitars based on drums by Brian Ray, produced by
t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
(43:53):
music is the Alberman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
ever are announce youre today was Larry David. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this
the six five day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. I
(44:16):
usually say here, arrest him now while we still can,
But of course the Special Council has not yet started
on his job. So furrow your brow and say serious
things about him now while we still can. New episode
tomorrow until then on Keith old Reman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith old Woman
(44:41):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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