May 12, 2025 • 62 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 125: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: What do you like least? Suspending Habeas Corpus? Breaking the law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying the law? Or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable illegal bribe from the government of Qatar that the Attorney General has ruled ISN’T illegal and by the way the Attorney General used to be a lobbyist FOR the government of Qatar?
They’re all nation-destroying events but bluntly there is no way back from a suspension of Habeas Corpus. It’s a one-man dictatorship then – because if you think SUSPENDING Habeas Corpus ‘just for undocumented immigrants’ is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things. One is: that there would be NO HEARINGS and NO LEGAL RECOURSE for ANYONE seized in this way so that all they would have to do is CLAIM that YOU are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you would not have a hearing at which you could prove you were a citizen, and you would not have a lawyer to appeal the decision not to GIVE you a hearing. And Stephen Miller didn't even say 'we'd only suspend it for undocumented immigrants.'
Of course threatening to arrest members of Congress for exerting their legal right of oversight to the Concentration Camp ICE just opened in Newark by accusing them of assaulting agents (you know: The Congresswoman hit my fist with her face!) is bad and it mainlines back to the idea that they could just arrest them and under suspended Habeas Corpus just disappear them. As Congressman Michael 'I'm Too Dumb To Realize I'm Calling For My Own Arrest' McCaul now says of the Jersey Democrats "you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement. And I think perhaps that’s what it comes down to.”
ALSO: Trump's new Qatari plane is an illegal, impeachable offense but since the AG already registered as a Qatari agent, just hit the shrug emoji. They've accused The Secretary of Scotch with plagiarism at Princeton. They fired the Librarian of Congress and Karoline Lie-vitt is so stupid she thinks kids check books out of the Library of Congress. Trump now wants Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. Attorney in DC, which allows us to flash back to the time she lost a page of her speech announcing she was running for Senate and just stood there until they found it for her.
And of course, there's a new Pope. Father Bob. Father Bob the White Sox fan. Meaning our Nancy Faust, who went back to the White Sox games yesterday to reprise her role as the greatest stadium organist of all time, is right when she says "Who knew? All those years I literally had a papal audience!"
B-Block (46:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: This time they're all people I know and used to respect who have failed the world. Gavin Newsom has again proposed appeasing Trump. Bob Iger has again carried an immeasurable amount of propaganda water for Trump. And Claire Shipman, whom I adored, has stood by as Columbia University (you know, the place with the Journalism School) suspended four of its own student reporters for...reporting.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. So
which do you like worst, suspending habeas corpus breaking the
(00:28):
law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying
the law, or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable
illegal bribe from the government of Kutthar that the Attorney
General has ruled isn't illegal. And by the way, the
Attorney General used to be a lobbyist for the government
of Kutthar. Coincidence, No doubt, they are all nation destroying events.
(00:52):
But bluntly, there is no way back from a suspension
of habeas corpus. It becomes a one man dictatorship then,
Because if you think suspending habeas corpus just for undocumented
immigrants is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things.
One is that there would be no hearings and no
legal recourse for anyone seized in this way, so that
(01:16):
all they would have to do is claim that you
are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you
would not have a hearing at which you could prove
you were a citizen, and you would not have a
lawyer to appeal the decision not to give you a hearing.
Alexandria Accassio Cortes born in the Bronx High School in
(01:39):
Yorktown Heights, not according to Christy Nomes records. In her file,
we have her down as being born elsewhere, and she's illegal.
And if you ask any other questions, we'll just get
your file, which also has you being born elsewhere and
your illegal. And if you somehow get in to see
(01:59):
a judge somewhere on her behalf or on your own behalf,
we'll just get the judge file, which also has the
judge being born elsewhere, and they're illegal. And maybe eighteen
days ago you would have laughed at the idea that
they could ever arrest a judge. And if you're still laughing,
let me reintroduce you to Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee.
(02:20):
That's the first and most obvious problem. There is no limit.
Once habeas corpus is suspended for whatever reason about whatever
group of people, habeas corpus is the limit. Suspend that,
and there are no limits. It is then one quick
(02:43):
final jump to making this place the Trump States of America.
But there is a second thing to remember. The one
man dictatorship to which I refer is not Trump. He
is the ever more feeble front man here, and they
lie to him to make him think it's him. The
one man dictatorship, on the ethnic cleansing, on the elimination
(03:05):
of the judiciary, the erasure of your baseline rights to
not be kidnapped by the proud boys gang dressed up
as government agents. The one man dictatorship is actually run
by Stephen fing Miller. And where in this happy announcement
does Stephen Miller say anything about suspending habeas corpus only
(03:29):
four immigrants.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course is
the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of
the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a
time of invasion. So would say that's an option we're
actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on
whether the courts do the right thing or not.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I heard invasion there the only invasion is by the
disease that he is Maga, just as the invasion of
Germany was by the disease that was Nazism. I also
heard it depends on whether the courts do the right
thing or not, because sure they'd use habeas corpus to
continue to round up undocumented immigrants and citizens and anybody
(04:10):
else who doesn't look white enough. But the reference to
the courts by Miller is not inadvertent. That is a
warning to the judges, and the warning is your next
I presented the nightmares of habeas corpus and arresting members
of Congress and the Katari airplane bribe as three separate issues,
(04:32):
but they're really not separate. Certainly, the first two are
not separate. Michael McCall is one of the Trump gangsters
from Texas, and he is absolutely fine with Homeland Security
threatening to arrest Representatives Rob Menendez and Lamonica Machiver and
Bonnie Watson Coleman on a charge of, I guess a
(04:53):
charge of being beaten up by Homeland Security as they
exercise their Congressional right to inspect the ICE concentration camp
in Delaney Hall in Newark. The congresswoman hit an officer's
fist with her face. The Homeland Gestapo spent the weekend
dropping hints that the three congress people are going to
(05:15):
the Big House, just as they arrested Newark's mayor ros Baraka,
who knew it was coming because he's not a member
of Congress, and bus does not have legal privilege to
inspect a concentration camp with one hundred cells in it
being reopened in the city he's supposed to be in
charge of and was elected to do so. But what
(05:36):
this thug McCall said yesterday ties this all together and ominously,
so he went on face the nation and postulated a
conspiracy between the Jersey Democrats and the imaginary invaders from
the nation of MS thirteen Land asked specifically about arresting
(05:58):
members of Congress, and remember he's a member of Congress,
this fascist McCall answered, quote and peacefully protest in this country,
but you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our
law enforcement. And I think perhaps that's what it comes
down to. Well, if we live in a dictatorship, that's
(06:19):
exactly what it comes down to. Steven Miller decides who
should be disappeared if you defend them, and the Ice
Death Squad chief Tom Homan has already said this, like
I already said in twenty sixteen that someday somebody would
say this, if you defend them, Steven Miller can decide
that you should also be disappeared. And if you are
(06:40):
a judge who tries to merely enforce the law giving
either of you due process. The judge can be disappeared.
And if you're a member of Congress who protests, you are,
according to the guy at the next desk, complicit with
gang violence against our law enforcement, and you can be disappeared.
(07:04):
Even the leading Trump gangsters are morons. So in this equation,
of course, McCall has forgotten this most elemental bit of logic.
One members of the House of Representatives can be seized
for exercising their legal rights as members of the House
of Representatives. Thus two, Michael McCall is a member of
the House of Representatives. Thus three. That means Michael McCall
(07:27):
can well. Even if he hasn't figured it out, you
already have Trump his mind rapidly going is not uninvolved here.
After reich Schleiter Miller glibly referred to habeas corpus to
stop the invasion, which is going on only inside his
diseased mind. The White House was quick to leak to
(07:49):
CNN that while Trump himself has not mentioned habeas corpus,
that's what he meant last month when he insisted there
were steps he could take against the courts, against the
judges against the laws, against the Constitution, and against America.
Quoting him, then there are ways to mitigate it, and
there's some very strong ways. There's one way that's been
(08:11):
used by three very highly respected presidents. He then elaborated
on this in the same way he usually does, by
simply repeating himself with the words in a different order.
There is one way used successfully by three presidents, all
highly respected. I am waiting for him to further clarify
this by adding quote three to one, all is successfully
(08:34):
respected way there is highly used presidents. There's one more
snake in this bag, and it is the response to
this by the Senate, and for once it is bipartisan
naivete Amy Klobashar said they would never approve the suspension
(08:55):
of Habeas Corpus. Tom Barrasso said he doesn't believe Habeas
Corpus's suspension will ever come to Congress. And of course
they're both right, though neither of them understands the implications
of why they're right. It'll never come to Congress because
while there's some chance Trump would ask for a formal suspension,
he really can't take that chance. He'll just do it.
(09:16):
Like everything else. He'll just do it. I really need
to find out what the Latin translation of the Trump
motto is. You know, try and stop me. He will
just do it, especially now that McCall has conveniently reminded
not just the Democrats at the Newark concentration camp, but
(09:39):
any Republicans who might waiver that those who don't voluntarily
vote for the furer's legislation will be accused of being
complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement and will
be arrested. And no, you can't have a lawyer, silly,
We just suspended Habeas corpus. By the way, that Pollyanna
(10:01):
answer from that authoritarian stooge Senator Barack as Hoole had
to be pulled out of him. He was on Meet
the Press and he was asked about whether he'd support
suspending Habeas Corpus. He was asked three times. The first
two times he simply went into the same speech defending
(10:22):
Trump like an Elmo doll whose string has been pulled.
The third time he said he didn't think it would
ever come to Congress, whereupon the feckless Kristen Welker beamed
at him and thanked him so effusively you would have
thought he'd just given a million to her favorite charity.
(10:42):
And by the way, Barasso still never answered your question. Welker,
good work. Welker did not bother the fill in guy
on CBS did not bother nobody, as near as I
can tell, bothered to ask the question posed the other
day by Harvey Wilkinson, now in his forty first year
(11:04):
as a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals
for the Fourth Circuit, appointed by Reagan, who twenty years
ago was on w Bush's short list for the Supreme Court.
But Bush chose Harriet Myers, who was basically a paralegal,
and when she washed out, he picked Alito instead. Because
w Bush remains eternally an asshole anyway, Judge Wilkinson, who
(11:31):
he skipped, perhaps because of thoughts like this, asks this question,
if today the executive claims the right to deport without
due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance
will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American
citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home. Our
(11:56):
baseline American crisis is in the answer to that question. None,
none at all, Judge. No assurance of any kind. Judge.
In fact, the executive is doing this now. If forced
to place a bet, I would say, they won't arrest
(12:17):
members of Congress or judges and rendition them or just
keep them in communicado in Newark. They will, however, threaten
them endlessly. That's the value here. And that started Friday
with Stephen Miller. It extended to the leak to Caitlin
Collins Friday night and the attempt to entrap the members
(12:38):
of the House and Newark's mayor, and then McCall's helpful
drawing of a line between defending constitutional rights and complicity
with gang violence against law enforcement, a line that does
not exist. The threat is far more valuable than the
(12:59):
act because video of congress people being dragged off by
brown shirts wearing masks might actually wake some part of
the public up. But I thought that about the first
videos Friday, and I thought that about the arrest of
Judge dougan iiO, and sadly, wakefulness in this case may
(13:23):
have to wait until those members of the public and
the media are already in one of those thousand cells
at the Newark Delaney Hall concentration camp. Don't worry, I
(13:59):
didn't forget the four hundred billion dollar bribe of Trump
by the Royal Family of Qatar a seven forty seven,
probably five hundred billion. With the accouterments they're going to
add to it. It'll be the new Air Force one
after they check to see if there are any listening devices,
(14:19):
or after they install some. When Trump leaves office, it
will simply be donated to the Trump Presidential Library, which
as you know, is wallet sized. The bad news is
it is a brazenly illegal, absolutely impeachable offense. Tomorrow. If
(14:44):
this had been Obama or any other president, the president
would have been impeached and by Wednesday it would have
been out of office. There is that little quote in
the Constitution thingy what reads, no person holding any office
of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent
of the Congress, except of any President, imlia to office
(15:05):
or title of any kind whatever, from any King, prince
or foreign state. Hey, you hit the trifecta. That's a
king of prince and a foreign state. Well done, Trump,
be I mean, my god, the Founding Fathers couldn't have
hit the nail on the head anymore cleanly. If that
sentence ended. This means you Trump. It's so bad. Even
(15:29):
Laura Lumer literally says this is a quote stain on
the administration, and she's disappointed in Trump. Laura Lumer rapidly
becoming the Senator Susan Collins of the Reich. So that's
the bad news. The good news is, thanks to Trump's
(15:51):
Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, by the time Trump accepts
this bribe, the plane will not be able to take
off or land at any airport in America. The punch
line is that ABC reports the Department of Justice has
already helped to draft an analysis concluding sure it's legal
for the Department of Defense to accept the airplane as
(16:14):
a gift from kut R and then just later give
it to the Trump Library, which, as you know, is
now available in a new easy to carry flight bag
with spinner wheels. And who runs this Department of Justice?
What wrote all that? Why? It's DEI hire Pam Blondie,
(16:34):
former registered foreign agent of the Embassy of the State
of Kutr. So no conflict there. Pam Bondi learned her
law at Stetson, not the school, just the hat kind
(17:03):
of amazingly, ham Bondi might be his best personnel story
right now. The campus newspaper of the Princetonian found out
that the Secretary of Scotch Pete Hegseth clearly borrowed the
writing of others in his senior thesis at Princeton, where
I assume he only took weekend classes eight cut and pastes.
(17:29):
It appears here is one. See if you see any
similarity here. I know it's borderline, but just listen. September twelfth,
two thousand and one, Washington Post quote after Cards, whisper
Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen to
the second grader's read, and soon was smiling again. He
joked that they read so well they must be sixth graders.
(17:52):
Heg Seth's thesis two thousand and three, quoting Hegseth After Cards,
whisper Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen
to the second graders, joking that they read like sixth graders.
I don't know. It might be close. It's not in quotes,
there's no footnote, there's no The Washington Post reported nothing.
(18:15):
I think he took out two words, so well isn't
in there. The Princetonian quoted three experts who said you
cannot define this as serious plagiarism. I mean, it's hegseeth.
How could it be serious? But all eight lifted passages
(18:36):
quote violate Princeton's Rights Rules Responsibilities a set of policies
and procedures that govern academic integrity eg. SETH integrity Low.
Trump has fired the Librarian of Congress. A reporter asked
the impossibly stupid Secretary of Lying, Caroline Levitt, the President
(19:02):
fired the Librarian of Congress. Why this is Levitt's answer,
There were concuning things she had done at the Library
of Congreth in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate
book in the library for a children miss. There are
(19:23):
no children in the Library of Congress. It's the record
of every book published in America. It's the other kind
of library. It's a research library and a records library.
There is no DEI. Caroline Levitt is a fricking moron.
(19:47):
On the other hand, it can and probably is worse.
Trump probably thinks a library is a part of the
female anatomy. And then there's Janine Piro, the new interim
US Attorney for the District to column to be appointed
after a Republican senator said that the last Trump interim
(20:09):
US Attorney for the District of Columbia was two fascist, stupid,
and sloppy. Even for him, he didn't use those words.
I'm speaking for him. The question now is does the
president get two interim appointments free of Senate approval for
the same job or only one? Because if you can
(20:30):
get two, you never have to go to the Senate
at all for any approvals. You just change your interim
guy every one hundred and twenty days. This has never
been adjudicated before. On the other hand, when Reagan tried
to appoint a second interim US Marshal in nineteen eighty six,
his own Office of Legal Counsel said no, and that
(20:50):
opinion no was written by a lawyer in the Office
of Legal Counsel named Samuel Alito. On top of all this,
Pierro is an idiot. That's not just my opinion here
for change, it's her opinion. Simon Malloy read her book,
(21:15):
and well she she calls herself an idiot. Malloy writes, quote,
you only get about one page into Janine Piro's new book, Liars,
Leakers and Liberals, The Case against the Anti Trump Conspiracy
before she calls herself an idiot. It's not entirely clear
whether she meant to do it or if she just
(21:36):
got lost in the rapture of the pros, but she
definitely calls yourself an idiot. Quote. We know what the
liberal media think of Trump voters. They're deplorables, idiots, rednecks,
and people who cling to God, guns and religion. Piro writes,
to those charges, I plead guilty, guilty, and proud unquote.
(22:02):
Among the charges Janine pre laid out is being an idiot,
and a sentence later, she says she's proud of being
guilty of all those charges, including being an idiot, and
she is an idiot. Holy cow. She was investigated by
(22:25):
federal prosecutors after she was caught on tape discussing with
the soon to be jailed ex New York City Police
chief Bernie Carrick Rudy Giuliani stooge. She was caught on
tape discussing how to bug her husband's boat in hopes
of capturing evidence that he was being unfaithful to her.
(22:45):
And of course, you know the story of page ten.
You don't Page ten from Piro's two thousand and five
announcement that she was running for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.
She gets up in a big ballroom in Manhattan and
Wooden Lee reads her beach well the first nine pages
(23:08):
of her speech, and then she couldn't find page ten.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Hillary clintons to a page ten. She's got Yeah, like
so many New Yorkers, I am tired of the bickering
that has tied our nation's political system in knots.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And there, of course you see Janine Piro's qualifications to
be the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. They
telescope that, by the way, in that clip. I remember
this going on for eight to ten days, all right,
It was like a minute or two. But she didn't
(23:55):
she didn't add lib or continue her speech from memory,
or make a joke out of it, and just cut
to page eleven with cameras rolling in front of her
in a big ballroom announcing that she should be the senator.
She just stopped and stood there and waited until somebody
(24:16):
from her own staff gave her their copy of page ten.
I'll just wait still. None of them, heg Seth Piro Levitt,
none of them can ever top Trump's own personal stupidity.
(24:36):
First off, he hired all of these moochs. Secondly, he
proclaimed last Thursday, you may recall as victory in World
War two day, and happily nobody noticed, except they noticed
another gaff about this. They put out a meme to
celebrate May eighth, which of course was the actual anniversary
(24:59):
of V Day victory in Europe, ending the European part
of Worldorld War two. And the meme celebrating the end
of the European part of World War two was the
statue of the Marines raising the flag at Ewo Jima
in the Pacific Theater on Mount Suribachi, which isn't in Europe,
(25:23):
which happened on February twenty third, which isn't in May. Look,
I may be the most religious person on this planet
who does not adhere to a single, actual recognized religion.
(25:44):
I don't think any of them has it right. I
don't like how any of them are run. And I
think the human being has yet to be born who
has correctly divined the purpose of life, if any. But
I am now thinking of becoming a Catholic. Did they
really select an American pope with African American heritage who
(26:06):
did his missions in South America and is from Chicago,
and is a Chicago White Sox fan, and has been
located not just in newspaper photos taken during the White
Sox appearance in the two thousand and five World Series,
but appears on the video of the Fox broadcast of
the first game of the two thousand and five World Series.
(26:29):
I'll get back to the White Sox part in full
in a moment. And yes, I am trying to figure
out if this means when he was just father Bob,
the new Pope used to watch me on sportseedter or
on the World Series telecast that I anchored in ninety
seven and two thousand, in which the White Sox did
not play. But for now, let me just quote our
(26:50):
own Nancy Faust, stadium organist at the White Sox games
all those years when the Pope was in the building,
who noted dryly that little did she know, but all
that time she literally had a papal audience. Thank you,
(27:17):
Nancy Faust and your holiness the Maglio or Doniez fan
Robbie Jenks. But first, more importantly, did they really select
an anti Trump pope? I mean, I know the papal
conclave is supposedly about discerning a divine message as to
(27:37):
who you should say the next Pope is, and then
the vote Diisol got at the annual guild meeting at
our college radio station. We used to pretend that's what
drove us to select the new general manager and the
vice presidents and stuff. I got elected twice in those conclaves,
So I tend to doubt divine intervention in any election.
(28:02):
I just think it's obvious. The Cardinals saw a great
candidate under any circumstances, with an amazingly varied resume, and
they said, hey, you know what, if we make him pope,
he will not only replace Trump as the most famous
American in the world, but he will be a counterweight
to his evil. If this pope criticizes Trump and advance
(28:26):
and this entire culture of brutality and vengeance, and we
believe he already has online, what's Trump going to do
to him? Slap him with tariffs? He's American, American pope's first.
I cannot help but think that they saw a need,
an actual need in the world for something or somebody
(28:49):
to push back against Trump, and good grief, they actually
accepted what almost no organization in this whole world has
the responsibility to try to push back. He is the
resistance Pope, whether that was the plan or not, he
is the resistance Pope. And given the papacies abysmal track
(29:11):
record in the decades between the last Pope Leo's opposition
to slavery and John Paul the Second's involvement in the
fall of the Russian occupying force in Poland, it's about
goddamn time, your holiness. I can only imagine what the
new Pope is imagining he might be able to do
(29:33):
to Trump, and with impunity, because on the right, there
isn't the slightest doubt that the conclave chose Robert Privos
deliberately as the anti Trump. I mean, they have gone
nuts and there's nothing they can do about it. This time.
They can't fire him, they can't get Doge to defund him.
(29:56):
Elon Musk's cyber truck means nothing to him. If the fundamentalist,
ecstatic vision snake handlers who support Trump didn't already hate
the Catholics, they are ready for war now, and they
can't have one because they could not win one. The
Trump whisperer of the moment, the astoundingly clownish. Laura Lumer
(30:21):
replied to the election with just three words, all in caps,
woke Marxist Pope. That in turn led to one of
the all time great Blue Sky posts from the Irish
American polysci professor at Michigan Don moynihan, using a screenshot
of Lumer's post as the punchline and reading in full quote,
(30:43):
Cassicks are read Conclaves are dope. Wake up, babe, we
got a woke Marxist pope. Oh my god, is that funny?
If I can find a tune, I may have to
sing that on Thursday's podcast. Anyway, If Pope Leo can
counterbalance and undermine Trump, if he can hit him up
(31:04):
side his head with some metaphorical woke Marxist pope whip action,
I'll convert. And before I drop this subject, back to
the White Sox and the Pope for a moment. It
occurred to me after the election that the number of
White Sox fans I have known has been few because
there are few, but they are all vivid, exceptional individuals.
(31:29):
As a caveat. The team owner is Jerry Reinsdorf, who
is two hundred and six years old and who tried
to get me fired by ESPN in nineteen ninety five.
So there's that. Not saying every White Sox fan or
person is good. I'm just saying they're vivid. The others.
(31:50):
I mentioned Nancy Faust, who returned to the White Sox
Park Sunday to play the organ again, total coincidence of
timing after too many years away, and as I said
last week, immediately became the current team's best player. She's generous, proactive,
a dear friend, a gifted musician, and she manages to
balance a sweet, diminutive, affable personality with the acerbic knife
(32:14):
wielding viewpoint of a Chicago Steve Adore. There's the late
ed Farmer Farmio, whom the new Pope had to have
listened to. He was a radio voice of the White
Sox for decades after having pitched for them, after having
grown up in Chicago and been a prep baseball pitcher there.
A star. He was intellectual, he was athletic. He was
(32:38):
one of a kind. He played and then broadcast for
years with continuing kidney problems. He knew pain, and not
just of seeing the White Sox every day. He saw
them finally win the World Series and broadcast the games,
and he never stopped talking. I believe though he had
passed several years ago, he's still talking. An exceptional person
(33:04):
would do anything for you, was constantly involved in charities
and giving people lifts. And the day I met him,
I was at their ballpark and he said, how are
you getting home? And I said, you mean the hotel? Yeah,
where you're staying? I told him the Drake Hotel. Hey,
I drive right past there. Well, that's half an hour
out of my way. I'll give you a lift. There's
(33:24):
my friend. Jason Bennetti, lifelong Socks fan, overcame many diseases
and things in his own life, and most importantly, people's
stupid reactions to the things. He overcame to become the
voice of the Chicago White Sox, to grow up and
become the play by play announcer of your childhood team,
and then, when the working circumstances were not what they
(33:48):
should have been, to have the steel to say, yes,
this was my childhood dream. I am no longer a child.
I am going to go to Detroit instead. I knew
Bill Veck, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, who
bought the team rather than let them moved to Seattle
in nineteen seventy six. He'd already owned them once. He
(34:09):
was the one who put them in the World Series
the previous time before two thousand and five, when the
Pope attended. He got them in in nineteen fifty nine
and then sold the team. And he did all kinds
of crazy things in his various capacities in the teams
he owned in Saint Louis and Cleveland, and then the
White Sox. The story of Bill Beck is probably summarized
by this, Among other things, he was the guy who said,
(34:31):
you know what that outfield wall at Wrigley Park where
the Cubs play, Wrigley Field, rather what that needs. I'm
confusing it with its original name, Cubbs Park. That outfield
fence here at Wrigleyfield that needs ivy. I'll go and
plant some ivy every time you see the ivy at
Wrigley Field. Bill Veck, his father was president of the Cubs.
(34:53):
He wound up owning the White Sox. He lost part
of a leg in Second World War service, and I
saw him do this the last time I saw him,
in nineteen eighty or eighty one. He used to smoke
a lot. He used to stub out his cigarettes on
his wooden leg. President Obama was a White Sox fan
(35:15):
throughout a first pitch at one of the games of
the American League Championship Series that they ran roughshod through
on the way to the World Series in two thousand
and five. There are lots of pictures. Google him in
a white Sox jacket, a white Sox uniform, and think
of this for a moment. How popular the Chicago Cubs are.
It's an easy thing to be a Cubs fan in
some senses. Yes, you had to suffer between the years
(35:37):
nineteen oh eight and twenty sixteen without winning the World Series.
Oh boohoo, everybody felt sorry for you. You automatically got
a free beer. The games were played during the day,
so you could drink all afternoon and then go out
on the town on public transportation and get drunk again
at night. Terrible, terrible existence. In any event, Obama, No,
(36:01):
he did not take advantage of that. He did not
say I'm a Cubs fan. He just reveled in being
a white Sox fan, an Illinois senator running for president,
identifying not with the easy Cubs but with the White Sox.
In fact, that was the first thing I admired about
(36:23):
Barack Obama. And lastly, of these exceptional White Sox fans,
there was the late Gene Shepherd, humorist radio rack on
tour the O tour of the movie A Christmas Story.
He wrote it, he narrated the movie itself, He played
the angry old man in the hat in the line
(36:45):
for Santa at the department store, and most importantly, he
lived it. He was, in fact little Ralphie. Geene Shepherd
was also a lifetime White Sox fan. And if you
don't know baseball, the White Sox were the team that
the long suffering Cubs fans and the long suffering Red
Sox fans and the long suffering everybody else fans looked
down on. The Cubs had a cathedral for a stadium
(37:09):
with Bill Veck's ivy on the walls. The Socks had
an even older ballpark that looked even older the day
it had opened in nineteen oh nine. People think of
it fondly now. It was a dump. The Cubs had
not won the World Series since nineteen oh eight. The
White Sox won it in nineteen seventeen and had a
dynasty with the second or third greatest hitter of all
(37:32):
time at its center Shoeles Joe Jackson, and they should
have won the World Series again in nineteen nineteen and
probably nineteen twenty by eight of their players, including Jackson,
at least agreed to accept bribes small bribes to deliberately
lose the nineteen nineteen World Series. They would not win
a World Series again until two thousand and five. With
(37:52):
as it proves, their guy the pulpe in the stands.
And no no martyrdom jokes here please, except for the
Martin joke from White Sox fan Geene Shepherd. I have
never read anything like this by any fan of any team.
(38:13):
It summarizes the White Sox and their fans and thus
the new pope completely. To quote Geene Shepherd, if I
were going to storm a pillbox, going to sheer utter
certain death, and the colonel said, Shepherd picked six guys,
(38:33):
I'd pick six White Sox fans because they have known
death every day of their lives and it holds no
terror for them. Wow, cassocks are read. Conclaves are dope.
(38:56):
Wake up, babe, we got a woke Marxist also of
interest here. Actually, let me do this SNL dead Pope
joke now, because who knows when I'll get to quote
this again for anyone who didn't see it when it happened.
(39:18):
On August sixth, nineteen seventy eight, Pope Paul the sixth,
the two hundred and sixty third Pope in a series
of two hundred and sixty seven collect them mall died.
He was succeeded by Pope John Paul, who took the
names of his two predecessors, John and Paul, leading to
the joke that his successor would take the name John Paul.
George Ringo then, in a genuine shock that I can
(39:41):
still remember from the time as vividly as it was
that day, on the twenty eighth of September nineteen seventy eight,
not two months later, Pope John Paul died. He was
succeeded by John Paul the Second on October sixteenth. And
on Saturday, September thirtieth, of the Year of the Three
Popes nineteen seventy eight, Bill Murray was anchoring the weekend
(40:04):
Update mock newscast on Saturday Night Live. He approached it
if you never saw him as he did, Nick the
Lounge singer kind of mixed with the groundskeeper from Caddy
Shack that he also played. He started to read the
news of Pope John Paul's passing and then stopped and
shouted and looked around the stage as he did, Wait
(40:27):
a minute, who's running this news department? A dead pope?
We already did this story? Come on anyway? Also of
interest here worst Persons is not just three reprobates, but
three reprobates I know and once respected, including Claire Shipman.
(40:49):
And Claire Shipman needs to resign as co chair and
acting president at Columbia University after her school suspended four
student reporters for reporting. That's next. This is countdown. This
(41:10):
is countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead on this all
(41:34):
new editiative. Countdown. What do you name a dog who
smiles all the time and loves every human she meets? Well,
her pet little boy named her smiles her story Next first,
believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
talk about, the roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning
(41:54):
Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons
in the world. As preface, most of these times, these
people annoy me. They often enrage me, but rarely do
they disappoint me personally. They are on this list because
they're maga and maga is a disease, or because they're
(42:18):
conservative and conservativism is at its heart. I've got mine,
now you go get yours. But even if my ancestors
have rigged the system to make sure I can never
lose mine and you can never gain yours, it's always
at least that. Rarely is it personal. Rarely is it
personal disappointment, and even betrayal from people I know even
(42:40):
more rare and the first worst Person's list appeared on
MSNBC on like June thirtieth, I think, two thousand and five,
and the first one was in defense of Tucker Carlson's
MSNBC show. More specifically, it was in defense after a
New York Times critic called for it to be canceled,
(43:01):
like a week after it debuted, when all the TV
critics ever did in those days was slam MSNBC for
canceling new shows too quickly. So nearly twenty years of
worse persons, and even more rare than a personal worse
person is when all three are people I know and
at one point respected and even worked with, who have
(43:23):
failed utterly, irredeemably, irretrievably failed. In fact, in twenty years,
I can't think of three of them appearing on one list,
and yet here we are the bronze worse and it's
personal Governor Gavin Newsom of California. I don't know if
(43:43):
he thinks he's moving inexorably towards some position where he's
the only Democratic choice for the nomination in twenty eight
because the Trump dictatorship will choose the Democratic nominee in
twenty eight, or if he's just this stupid but here
he goes again. Trump and John Voight, who between them
are now one hundred and sixty five years old. And
(44:05):
Voight turns out to be from the town next to
my hometown, and he went to the Catholic school called
Steppinac that was close enough to my school that occasionally
Steppinac and Hackley shared the same bus home to our
towns in the afternoons. Trump and vod devised this truly
(44:27):
stupid one hundred percent tariff on films produced in foreign lands,
and I don't know what does that even mean. Bollywood,
anything with a scene in it shot at Octoberfest All
Movies with Gary Oldman. The next day, Newsom responded to
this by springing into action, and instead of defending America's
(44:48):
film capital, the state he is governor of, he issued
a statement reading, We're eager to partner with the Trump administration.
Stop just at that point, go to the end of
the Santa Monica peer, get a good running start, and
leap into the ocean. There's more to his statement, We're
eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen
(45:11):
domestic production and make America film again. MafA one letter
short of Mafia. Good call. Gav Newsom thinks he's going
to get seven and a half billion in movie making
incentives out of Trump by capitulating to him and riffing
(45:32):
on his MAGA fascist catchphrase, Gavin, you are a jackass.
The only way you get seven and a half billion
out of Trump is to give him fifteen billion and
then maybe you'll get half of it back. Just a moron,
quite literally, Gavin Newsom could have been president, but instead
(45:53):
he's decided to join the vshy opposition. Him and Joe Scarborough. Boys,
your hair ain't gonna get you elected, Not in the
hair era of Trump and Javier Milay and Boris Johnson.
Your hair disqualifies you. Also Joe Scaraberer and Gavin Newsom,
(46:17):
Your stupidity disqualifies you, and your scumbagginess disqualifies you. The
runner up worser also personal Bob Eiger, chairman of Disney,
who is on his what fifth sellout to Trump? The
deal to settle Trump's nonsense lawsuit against George Stephanopolis and
ABC News and thus in the process kind of legally
(46:37):
bribed Trump, then giving Trump his choice of interviewers and
leaving George and David Muir off the list five sellouts
to Trump? What is it? Bob six? This is six
or seven according to a filing with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. Disney has now added a new channel to
its Hulu and Live TV streaming services, the channel, news Max.
(47:03):
News Max has for thirty years been the thing you
read or watch when you think Fox News is just
too damn liberal. I hate that liberal, Harris Faulkner. It
is not only propaganda Newsmax, that is, but it's poorly done,
self contradictory, stupid propaganda. It's literally for the people who
(47:27):
aren't smart enough to understand Fox News and the fascists
think it's lack of distribution and decreasing carriage on cable
and satellite is a conspiracy against them, a conspiracy against fascism.
You bet you're ass Newsmax. Except for Disney and Bob Iiger, who,
(47:48):
as I have mentioned, I have known since March nineteen
seventy nine, who I have worked for three times, who
I got a call from the day I first left
ESPN in ninety seven, in which he asked me to
call him personally if I ever wanted to return to ESPN.
And who then did the corporate j Leno chose a
successor as the head of Disney, then Bob missed having
(48:11):
the job. He may have helped spread the stories that
his successor didn't have it. Presto, the successor gets fired.
Who gets the job back? Why?
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Bob?
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Bob j Leno Iger, Bob j Leno Ron McLean Iger
and what has he done with it? Wore himself out
to Trump again? But our winner the worst. And I'm
gonna sound really happy about this, because really I am
(48:42):
crying inside. Claire Shipman, who I praised here and waxed
nostalgic about not two months ago, perhaps my favorite, or
at least my second favorite, of my original six White
House correspondence on the MSNBC White House in Crisis show
during Clinton Lewinsky and I ran in to her at
(49:05):
the Animal Medical Center in March. She's still lovely and
a delight, and I knew I could always count on
her ethics and toughness, especially now that she was co
chair of the board of Trustees at Columbia University. And
if she continues on her current path, my friend Claire
should resign. The president of Columbia. The one that was
(49:29):
there when I saw Claire. That president of Columbia has
since gone into the volcano to try to appease Trump.
Claire has succeeded that one as acting president, and she
has been appalling. Now I guess I can defer to
her on the decision to call the New York City
cops in to address a campus building takeover. As I
(49:53):
noted here previously, five years before I got to Cornell,
justifiably angry African American students took over a campus building
there and they were carrying long guns. This was in
response to cross burning on campus. This was as a
minor complaint they were literally burning crosses in front of
(50:13):
black sororities at Cornell in nineteen sixty nine and seventy.
I think I understand where you're coming from, So I
have a pretty high threshold about calling the cops on
student protesters. But I can see there are circumstances where
you might be justified in doing that if the protesters
(50:33):
tried to, say, burn the building down, rather than set
a nearby dumpster on fire. By the way, I assumed
that dumpster was set on fire, and that wasn't just
Claire's career as an educator spontaneously combusting. Anyway, Claire did
something that on the ethical scale, was far worse than
calling the cops in to arrest some of her own students.
(50:56):
She has sat idly by and without comment as Columbia
and the still differently named College for Women there, Barnard
suspended four student journalists for the crime of covering the
other students' protests. Sawyer Huckabee of w KCR Radio at
(51:17):
Columbia first was prevented by campus cops from leaving the
library as the siege ended Wednesday, and then he was
suspended Thursday afternoon for his quote involvement unquote. In the protest,
dozens of Columbia students were issued interim suspensions. Huckaby included
five hours later Huckabee suspension, which his ID was inoperative.
(51:39):
He was ordered to leave campus blutly. His college life
and life life were jeopardized. Somebody wised up and canceled
his suspension. But also on Thursday, Barnard's Dean Leslie Greenwage
Grenage Grinage, Grinage. It's a mean sounding name, isn't it,
(52:00):
suspended two female reporters from the radio station and a
third from the Columbia campus newspaper. Same restrictions, get out
your IDs, no longer work, you can't go to class,
you can't take exams. What time of year is it, Oh,
it's exam time. You may be done here in fact,
and they let those suspensions sit overnight and did not
(52:22):
lift them until the next morning after news got out.
The Columbia Columbia as in the Columbia Journalism School Columbia
had suspended four reporters for reporting Were you ever suspended
in school or in college? I was suspended in college
(52:44):
for not finishing a swimming test. I swear I got
the letter as I was leaving home for the start
of the spring semester, about a five hour trip, the
longest five hours of my life to that point. What
would I do if they did not reinstate me? Where
would I go? I was going to a school that
(53:05):
technically I was not allowed to go to. Could I
go on the campus to protest? To just ask what
about the tuition for the just starting semester? What about
my entire future at the school? And then, as somebody
who had been thrown out of Cornell or suspended at Cornell,
what do I do now? I was eighteen? Now it
(53:28):
was great that when I got to Ithaca and went
to the registrar's office and basically asked the question help,
the administrator looked at the letter and laughed and said, well,
this is stupid. And she wrote on the letter reinstated
effective immediately, and said she'd send me a formal letter
in the mail immediately. And then she looked on a
(53:48):
calendar and she handed me a slip reading swimming test appointment,
and she told me to write down a day and
a time on it. And it was all resolved that fast.
That was great, And still those five hours are burned
into my brain. Forty eight years later. Imagine being one
of these reporters at Columbia, at a university known uniquely
(54:11):
in the Ivy League, perhaps in American academia for its
journalism programs undergraduate and graduate, and with a true journalist,
a reporter from CNN, NBC and ABC as both its
acting president and co chair of the board. Imagine the
sense of dread and betrayal, and even after the lifting
(54:31):
of the suspension, the sense of your university, the people
you are buying a product from deciding to let you
get away with this this time, but reminding you they
could screw you into the ground whenever they want to
talk about chilling dissent and chilling reporting. You're supposed to
be when it says journalism school, Claire, You're supposed to
(54:54):
be for journalism. These weren't radical protesters. These weren't even
columnists or loudmouthed on air commentators. These were four students
who were doing what Claire Shipman used to do, what
she used to do when she earned her reputation and
(55:15):
her livelihood and eventually wound up in the position to
become the person running the university. And she let them
twist slowly in the wind, and she let freedom of
the press at Columbia University twists slowly in the wind.
It's already bad enough that Claire was at the center
as Columbia cut a deal with Trump, a deal in
(55:37):
which Trump wants a handpicked judge to appoint a handpicked
enforcer for Trump's fascist demands for how the university should
run from now on. That was bad enough, maybe it
was necessary for survival. But this suspending student reporters Claire.
This makes one question whether anybody should give a damn
(55:58):
whether Columbia University survives or not. The shame I feel
about Claire Ship may only be matched by what seems
to be her incapacity to feel any shame for what
she's done, or any awareness that her job right now
is to walk up to Trump and spit in his
face on behalf of Columbia, on behalf of those briefly
(56:18):
suspended journalists, on behalf of Academia, on behalf of America,
the Cardinals chosen anti Trump, Pope, you folded, go spit
metaphorically in Trump's face. Claire, do it. It's your last chance.
(56:41):
Cancel the deal with Trump. Harvard did, and if you
won't do that, get out, resign and take the Barnard
Dean with you, and for that matter, take Columbia with you,
because right now your university is headed towards becoming just
another Trump whorehouse shipman. I am so ashamed, Claire truly
(57:10):
today's worst person in the world. For the first time
(57:33):
in a while, time for another dog in need. You
can help. Every dog has its day today. It's personal,
a lot of personal. In this show. In February of
last year, I introduced you to a big, lovely Bernese
Mountain dog called Smiles. Called Smiles because she does NonStop.
Her default position is to smile, and she loves every
(57:57):
human she's ever met, especially her pet little boy. She
is the size of a large bicycle. She was just
about to turn three years old last year when she
suddenly became sick. It was cancer. In fact, it was lymphoma.
Everybody chipped in and thank you for helping. She got chemo.
(58:18):
She tolerated it well, she barely noticed it. In fact,
she got better fast, and she and her little boy
have had a great year. And now the cancer is back.
And so for my friend Andrew Bloonner. Is the cost
of the treatment for smiles. The good news is we
know she can handle it, and even with the recurrence,
(58:38):
the vets are predicting eighty to eighty five percent likelihood
of success of getting her back into remission. You might
ask why spend thousands of dollars on the health of
just one dog. My primary answer is this because you can.
And my secondary answer is I'm thinking of her pet,
(59:00):
little boy. Andrew's gofund me for smiles is is at
GoFundMe dot com and in the search engine type in
three words smiles, mountain dog, smiles, mountain dog. Anything you
can give will be gratefully welcomed. And just publicizing smiles
(59:22):
and this GoFundMe will help. I'll put the link out
on Twitter again and retweeting it can make all the
difference and smiles. Thank you and her little Boy. Thanks you,
and I thank you. I've done all the damage I
(59:59):
can do here. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and
John Phillip Schaneil, the musical directors have Countdown Ra produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers Now are satirical
and pithy. Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
organist ever, Nancy Faust, now back doing cameos with the
(01:00:23):
White Sox, or as they are now known, the Vatican's
Team or the Vaticans South Sides Team. The sports music
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtisy ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
(01:00:45):
my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as ever, my fault.
And if you happen to know whether or not the
Pope used to watch me or Kenny or anybody else
on Sports Center in the nineties, just get a hold
of me. I'd just like to know. That's countdown for today,
Day one, one hundred and thirteen of America held hostage,
(01:01:07):
just one three hundred and fifty days until the scheduled
end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless
Musk removes him sooner. Where the actuarial tables do or
we do, or the next scheduled countdown is Thursday is
always bulletins as the news warrants remember Trump is laying
the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must
(01:01:30):
be stopped till next time. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck Trump, peach Ten Who's
got Yeah? Like so many New Yorkers, I am Countdown
(01:01:53):
with Keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. So
which do you like worst, suspending habeas corpus breaking the
(00:28):
law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying
the law, or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable
illegal bribe from the government of Kutthar that the Attorney
General has ruled isn't illegal. And by the way, the
Attorney General used to be a lobbyist for the government
of Kutthar. Coincidence, No doubt, they are all nation destroying events.
(00:52):
But bluntly, there is no way back from a suspension
of habeas corpus. It becomes a one man dictatorship then,
Because if you think suspending habeas corpus just for undocumented
immigrants is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things.
One is that there would be no hearings and no
legal recourse for anyone seized in this way, so that
(01:16):
all they would have to do is claim that you
are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you
would not have a hearing at which you could prove
you were a citizen, and you would not have a
lawyer to appeal the decision not to give you a hearing.
Alexandria Accassio Cortes born in the Bronx High School in
(01:39):
Yorktown Heights, not according to Christy Nomes records. In her file,
we have her down as being born elsewhere, and she's illegal.
And if you ask any other questions, we'll just get
your file, which also has you being born elsewhere and
your illegal. And if you somehow get in to see
(01:59):
a judge somewhere on her behalf or on your own behalf,
we'll just get the judge file, which also has the
judge being born elsewhere, and they're illegal. And maybe eighteen
days ago you would have laughed at the idea that
they could ever arrest a judge. And if you're still laughing,
let me reintroduce you to Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee.
(02:20):
That's the first and most obvious problem. There is no limit.
Once habeas corpus is suspended for whatever reason about whatever
group of people, habeas corpus is the limit. Suspend that,
and there are no limits. It is then one quick
(02:43):
final jump to making this place the Trump States of America.
But there is a second thing to remember. The one
man dictatorship to which I refer is not Trump. He
is the ever more feeble front man here, and they
lie to him to make him think it's him. The
one man dictatorship, on the ethnic cleansing, on the elimination
(03:05):
of the judiciary, the erasure of your baseline rights to
not be kidnapped by the proud boys gang dressed up
as government agents. The one man dictatorship is actually run
by Stephen fing Miller. And where in this happy announcement
does Stephen Miller say anything about suspending habeas corpus only
(03:29):
four immigrants.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course is
the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of
the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a
time of invasion. So would say that's an option we're
actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on
whether the courts do the right thing or not.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I heard invasion there the only invasion is by the
disease that he is Maga, just as the invasion of
Germany was by the disease that was Nazism. I also
heard it depends on whether the courts do the right
thing or not, because sure they'd use habeas corpus to
continue to round up undocumented immigrants and citizens and anybody
(04:10):
else who doesn't look white enough. But the reference to
the courts by Miller is not inadvertent. That is a
warning to the judges, and the warning is your next
I presented the nightmares of habeas corpus and arresting members
of Congress and the Katari airplane bribe as three separate issues,
(04:32):
but they're really not separate. Certainly, the first two are
not separate. Michael McCall is one of the Trump gangsters
from Texas, and he is absolutely fine with Homeland Security
threatening to arrest Representatives Rob Menendez and Lamonica Machiver and
Bonnie Watson Coleman on a charge of, I guess a
(04:53):
charge of being beaten up by Homeland Security as they
exercise their Congressional right to inspect the ICE concentration camp
in Delaney Hall in Newark. The congresswoman hit an officer's
fist with her face. The Homeland Gestapo spent the weekend
dropping hints that the three congress people are going to
(05:15):
the Big House, just as they arrested Newark's mayor ros Baraka,
who knew it was coming because he's not a member
of Congress, and bus does not have legal privilege to
inspect a concentration camp with one hundred cells in it
being reopened in the city he's supposed to be in
charge of and was elected to do so. But what
(05:36):
this thug McCall said yesterday ties this all together and ominously,
so he went on face the nation and postulated a
conspiracy between the Jersey Democrats and the imaginary invaders from
the nation of MS thirteen Land asked specifically about arresting
(05:58):
members of Congress, and remember he's a member of Congress,
this fascist McCall answered, quote and peacefully protest in this country,
but you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our
law enforcement. And I think perhaps that's what it comes
down to. Well, if we live in a dictatorship, that's
(06:19):
exactly what it comes down to. Steven Miller decides who
should be disappeared if you defend them, and the Ice
Death Squad chief Tom Homan has already said this, like
I already said in twenty sixteen that someday somebody would
say this, if you defend them, Steven Miller can decide
that you should also be disappeared. And if you are
(06:40):
a judge who tries to merely enforce the law giving
either of you due process. The judge can be disappeared.
And if you're a member of Congress who protests, you are,
according to the guy at the next desk, complicit with
gang violence against our law enforcement, and you can be disappeared.
(07:04):
Even the leading Trump gangsters are morons. So in this equation,
of course, McCall has forgotten this most elemental bit of logic.
One members of the House of Representatives can be seized
for exercising their legal rights as members of the House
of Representatives. Thus two, Michael McCall is a member of
the House of Representatives. Thus three. That means Michael McCall
(07:27):
can well. Even if he hasn't figured it out, you
already have Trump his mind rapidly going is not uninvolved here.
After reich Schleiter Miller glibly referred to habeas corpus to
stop the invasion, which is going on only inside his
diseased mind. The White House was quick to leak to
(07:49):
CNN that while Trump himself has not mentioned habeas corpus,
that's what he meant last month when he insisted there
were steps he could take against the courts, against the
judges against the laws, against the Constitution, and against America.
Quoting him, then there are ways to mitigate it, and
there's some very strong ways. There's one way that's been
(08:11):
used by three very highly respected presidents. He then elaborated
on this in the same way he usually does, by
simply repeating himself with the words in a different order.
There is one way used successfully by three presidents, all
highly respected. I am waiting for him to further clarify
this by adding quote three to one, all is successfully
(08:34):
respected way there is highly used presidents. There's one more
snake in this bag, and it is the response to
this by the Senate, and for once it is bipartisan
naivete Amy Klobashar said they would never approve the suspension
(08:55):
of Habeas Corpus. Tom Barrasso said he doesn't believe Habeas
Corpus's suspension will ever come to Congress. And of course
they're both right, though neither of them understands the implications
of why they're right. It'll never come to Congress because
while there's some chance Trump would ask for a formal suspension,
he really can't take that chance. He'll just do it.
(09:16):
Like everything else. He'll just do it. I really need
to find out what the Latin translation of the Trump
motto is. You know, try and stop me. He will
just do it, especially now that McCall has conveniently reminded
not just the Democrats at the Newark concentration camp, but
(09:39):
any Republicans who might waiver that those who don't voluntarily
vote for the furer's legislation will be accused of being
complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement and will
be arrested. And no, you can't have a lawyer, silly,
We just suspended Habeas corpus. By the way, that Pollyanna
(10:01):
answer from that authoritarian stooge Senator Barack as Hoole had
to be pulled out of him. He was on Meet
the Press and he was asked about whether he'd support
suspending Habeas Corpus. He was asked three times. The first
two times he simply went into the same speech defending
(10:22):
Trump like an Elmo doll whose string has been pulled.
The third time he said he didn't think it would
ever come to Congress, whereupon the feckless Kristen Welker beamed
at him and thanked him so effusively you would have
thought he'd just given a million to her favorite charity.
(10:42):
And by the way, Barasso still never answered your question. Welker,
good work. Welker did not bother the fill in guy
on CBS did not bother nobody, as near as I
can tell, bothered to ask the question posed the other
day by Harvey Wilkinson, now in his forty first year
(11:04):
as a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals
for the Fourth Circuit, appointed by Reagan, who twenty years
ago was on w Bush's short list for the Supreme Court.
But Bush chose Harriet Myers, who was basically a paralegal,
and when she washed out, he picked Alito instead. Because
w Bush remains eternally an asshole anyway, Judge Wilkinson, who
(11:31):
he skipped, perhaps because of thoughts like this, asks this question,
if today the executive claims the right to deport without
due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance
will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American
citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home. Our
(11:56):
baseline American crisis is in the answer to that question. None,
none at all, Judge. No assurance of any kind. Judge.
In fact, the executive is doing this now. If forced
to place a bet, I would say, they won't arrest
(12:17):
members of Congress or judges and rendition them or just
keep them in communicado in Newark. They will, however, threaten
them endlessly. That's the value here. And that started Friday
with Stephen Miller. It extended to the leak to Caitlin
Collins Friday night and the attempt to entrap the members
(12:38):
of the House and Newark's mayor, and then McCall's helpful
drawing of a line between defending constitutional rights and complicity
with gang violence against law enforcement, a line that does
not exist. The threat is far more valuable than the
(12:59):
act because video of congress people being dragged off by
brown shirts wearing masks might actually wake some part of
the public up. But I thought that about the first
videos Friday, and I thought that about the arrest of
Judge dougan iiO, and sadly, wakefulness in this case may
(13:23):
have to wait until those members of the public and
the media are already in one of those thousand cells
at the Newark Delaney Hall concentration camp. Don't worry, I
(13:59):
didn't forget the four hundred billion dollar bribe of Trump
by the Royal Family of Qatar a seven forty seven,
probably five hundred billion. With the accouterments they're going to
add to it. It'll be the new Air Force one
after they check to see if there are any listening devices,
(14:19):
or after they install some. When Trump leaves office, it
will simply be donated to the Trump Presidential Library, which
as you know, is wallet sized. The bad news is
it is a brazenly illegal, absolutely impeachable offense. Tomorrow. If
(14:44):
this had been Obama or any other president, the president
would have been impeached and by Wednesday it would have
been out of office. There is that little quote in
the Constitution thingy what reads, no person holding any office
of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent
of the Congress, except of any President, imlia to office
(15:05):
or title of any kind whatever, from any King, prince
or foreign state. Hey, you hit the trifecta. That's a
king of prince and a foreign state. Well done, Trump,
be I mean, my god, the Founding Fathers couldn't have
hit the nail on the head anymore cleanly. If that
sentence ended. This means you Trump. It's so bad. Even
(15:29):
Laura Lumer literally says this is a quote stain on
the administration, and she's disappointed in Trump. Laura Lumer rapidly
becoming the Senator Susan Collins of the Reich. So that's
the bad news. The good news is, thanks to Trump's
(15:51):
Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, by the time Trump accepts
this bribe, the plane will not be able to take
off or land at any airport in America. The punch
line is that ABC reports the Department of Justice has
already helped to draft an analysis concluding sure it's legal
for the Department of Defense to accept the airplane as
(16:14):
a gift from kut R and then just later give
it to the Trump Library, which, as you know, is
now available in a new easy to carry flight bag
with spinner wheels. And who runs this Department of Justice?
What wrote all that? Why? It's DEI hire Pam Blondie,
(16:34):
former registered foreign agent of the Embassy of the State
of Kutr. So no conflict there. Pam Bondi learned her
law at Stetson, not the school, just the hat kind
(17:03):
of amazingly, ham Bondi might be his best personnel story
right now. The campus newspaper of the Princetonian found out
that the Secretary of Scotch Pete Hegseth clearly borrowed the
writing of others in his senior thesis at Princeton, where
I assume he only took weekend classes eight cut and pastes.
(17:29):
It appears here is one. See if you see any
similarity here. I know it's borderline, but just listen. September twelfth,
two thousand and one, Washington Post quote after Cards, whisper
Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen to
the second grader's read, and soon was smiling again. He
joked that they read so well they must be sixth graders.
(17:52):
Heg Seth's thesis two thousand and three, quoting Hegseth After Cards,
whisper Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen
to the second graders, joking that they read like sixth graders.
I don't know. It might be close. It's not in quotes,
there's no footnote, there's no The Washington Post reported nothing.
(18:15):
I think he took out two words, so well isn't
in there. The Princetonian quoted three experts who said you
cannot define this as serious plagiarism. I mean, it's hegseeth.
How could it be serious? But all eight lifted passages
(18:36):
quote violate Princeton's Rights Rules Responsibilities a set of policies
and procedures that govern academic integrity eg. SETH integrity Low.
Trump has fired the Librarian of Congress. A reporter asked
the impossibly stupid Secretary of Lying, Caroline Levitt, the President
(19:02):
fired the Librarian of Congress. Why this is Levitt's answer,
There were concuning things she had done at the Library
of Congreth in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate
book in the library for a children miss. There are
(19:23):
no children in the Library of Congress. It's the record
of every book published in America. It's the other kind
of library. It's a research library and a records library.
There is no DEI. Caroline Levitt is a fricking moron.
(19:47):
On the other hand, it can and probably is worse.
Trump probably thinks a library is a part of the
female anatomy. And then there's Janine Piro, the new interim
US Attorney for the District to column to be appointed
after a Republican senator said that the last Trump interim
(20:09):
US Attorney for the District of Columbia was two fascist, stupid,
and sloppy. Even for him, he didn't use those words.
I'm speaking for him. The question now is does the
president get two interim appointments free of Senate approval for
the same job or only one? Because if you can
(20:30):
get two, you never have to go to the Senate
at all for any approvals. You just change your interim
guy every one hundred and twenty days. This has never
been adjudicated before. On the other hand, when Reagan tried
to appoint a second interim US Marshal in nineteen eighty six,
his own Office of Legal Counsel said no, and that
(20:50):
opinion no was written by a lawyer in the Office
of Legal Counsel named Samuel Alito. On top of all this,
Pierro is an idiot. That's not just my opinion here
for change, it's her opinion. Simon Malloy read her book,
(21:15):
and well she she calls herself an idiot. Malloy writes, quote,
you only get about one page into Janine Piro's new book, Liars,
Leakers and Liberals, The Case against the Anti Trump Conspiracy
before she calls herself an idiot. It's not entirely clear
whether she meant to do it or if she just
(21:36):
got lost in the rapture of the pros, but she
definitely calls yourself an idiot. Quote. We know what the
liberal media think of Trump voters. They're deplorables, idiots, rednecks,
and people who cling to God, guns and religion. Piro writes,
to those charges, I plead guilty, guilty, and proud unquote.
(22:02):
Among the charges Janine pre laid out is being an idiot,
and a sentence later, she says she's proud of being
guilty of all those charges, including being an idiot, and
she is an idiot. Holy cow. She was investigated by
(22:25):
federal prosecutors after she was caught on tape discussing with
the soon to be jailed ex New York City Police
chief Bernie Carrick Rudy Giuliani stooge. She was caught on
tape discussing how to bug her husband's boat in hopes
of capturing evidence that he was being unfaithful to her.
(22:45):
And of course, you know the story of page ten.
You don't Page ten from Piro's two thousand and five
announcement that she was running for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.
She gets up in a big ballroom in Manhattan and
Wooden Lee reads her beach well the first nine pages
(23:08):
of her speech, and then she couldn't find page ten.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Hillary clintons to a page ten. She's got Yeah, like
so many New Yorkers, I am tired of the bickering
that has tied our nation's political system in knots.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And there, of course you see Janine Piro's qualifications to
be the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. They
telescope that, by the way, in that clip. I remember
this going on for eight to ten days, all right,
It was like a minute or two. But she didn't
(23:55):
she didn't add lib or continue her speech from memory,
or make a joke out of it, and just cut
to page eleven with cameras rolling in front of her
in a big ballroom announcing that she should be the senator.
She just stopped and stood there and waited until somebody
(24:16):
from her own staff gave her their copy of page ten.
I'll just wait still. None of them, heg Seth Piro Levitt,
none of them can ever top Trump's own personal stupidity.
(24:36):
First off, he hired all of these moochs. Secondly, he
proclaimed last Thursday, you may recall as victory in World
War two day, and happily nobody noticed, except they noticed
another gaff about this. They put out a meme to
celebrate May eighth, which of course was the actual anniversary
(24:59):
of V Day victory in Europe, ending the European part
of Worldorld War two. And the meme celebrating the end
of the European part of World War two was the
statue of the Marines raising the flag at Ewo Jima
in the Pacific Theater on Mount Suribachi, which isn't in Europe,
(25:23):
which happened on February twenty third, which isn't in May. Look,
I may be the most religious person on this planet
who does not adhere to a single, actual recognized religion.
(25:44):
I don't think any of them has it right. I
don't like how any of them are run. And I
think the human being has yet to be born who
has correctly divined the purpose of life, if any. But
I am now thinking of becoming a Catholic. Did they
really select an American pope with African American heritage who
(26:06):
did his missions in South America and is from Chicago,
and is a Chicago White Sox fan, and has been
located not just in newspaper photos taken during the White
Sox appearance in the two thousand and five World Series,
but appears on the video of the Fox broadcast of
the first game of the two thousand and five World Series.
(26:29):
I'll get back to the White Sox part in full
in a moment. And yes, I am trying to figure
out if this means when he was just father Bob,
the new Pope used to watch me on sportseedter or
on the World Series telecast that I anchored in ninety
seven and two thousand, in which the White Sox did
not play. But for now, let me just quote our
(26:50):
own Nancy Faust, stadium organist at the White Sox games
all those years when the Pope was in the building,
who noted dryly that little did she know, but all
that time she literally had a papal audience. Thank you,
(27:17):
Nancy Faust and your holiness the Maglio or Doniez fan
Robbie Jenks. But first, more importantly, did they really select
an anti Trump pope? I mean, I know the papal
conclave is supposedly about discerning a divine message as to
(27:37):
who you should say the next Pope is, and then
the vote Diisol got at the annual guild meeting at
our college radio station. We used to pretend that's what
drove us to select the new general manager and the
vice presidents and stuff. I got elected twice in those conclaves,
So I tend to doubt divine intervention in any election.
(28:02):
I just think it's obvious. The Cardinals saw a great
candidate under any circumstances, with an amazingly varied resume, and
they said, hey, you know what, if we make him pope,
he will not only replace Trump as the most famous
American in the world, but he will be a counterweight
to his evil. If this pope criticizes Trump and advance
(28:26):
and this entire culture of brutality and vengeance, and we
believe he already has online, what's Trump going to do
to him? Slap him with tariffs? He's American, American pope's first.
I cannot help but think that they saw a need,
an actual need in the world for something or somebody
(28:49):
to push back against Trump, and good grief, they actually
accepted what almost no organization in this whole world has
the responsibility to try to push back. He is the
resistance Pope, whether that was the plan or not, he
is the resistance Pope. And given the papacies abysmal track
(29:11):
record in the decades between the last Pope Leo's opposition
to slavery and John Paul the Second's involvement in the
fall of the Russian occupying force in Poland, it's about
goddamn time, your holiness. I can only imagine what the
new Pope is imagining he might be able to do
(29:33):
to Trump, and with impunity, because on the right, there
isn't the slightest doubt that the conclave chose Robert Privos
deliberately as the anti Trump. I mean, they have gone
nuts and there's nothing they can do about it. This time.
They can't fire him, they can't get Doge to defund him.
(29:56):
Elon Musk's cyber truck means nothing to him. If the fundamentalist,
ecstatic vision snake handlers who support Trump didn't already hate
the Catholics, they are ready for war now, and they
can't have one because they could not win one. The
Trump whisperer of the moment, the astoundingly clownish. Laura Lumer
(30:21):
replied to the election with just three words, all in caps,
woke Marxist Pope. That in turn led to one of
the all time great Blue Sky posts from the Irish
American polysci professor at Michigan Don moynihan, using a screenshot
of Lumer's post as the punchline and reading in full quote,
(30:43):
Cassicks are read Conclaves are dope. Wake up, babe, we
got a woke Marxist pope. Oh my god, is that funny?
If I can find a tune, I may have to
sing that on Thursday's podcast. Anyway, If Pope Leo can
counterbalance and undermine Trump, if he can hit him up
(31:04):
side his head with some metaphorical woke Marxist pope whip action,
I'll convert. And before I drop this subject, back to
the White Sox and the Pope for a moment. It
occurred to me after the election that the number of
White Sox fans I have known has been few because
there are few, but they are all vivid, exceptional individuals.
(31:29):
As a caveat. The team owner is Jerry Reinsdorf, who
is two hundred and six years old and who tried
to get me fired by ESPN in nineteen ninety five.
So there's that. Not saying every White Sox fan or
person is good. I'm just saying they're vivid. The others.
(31:50):
I mentioned Nancy Faust, who returned to the White Sox
Park Sunday to play the organ again, total coincidence of
timing after too many years away, and as I said
last week, immediately became the current team's best player. She's generous, proactive,
a dear friend, a gifted musician, and she manages to
balance a sweet, diminutive, affable personality with the acerbic knife
(32:14):
wielding viewpoint of a Chicago Steve Adore. There's the late
ed Farmer Farmio, whom the new Pope had to have
listened to. He was a radio voice of the White
Sox for decades after having pitched for them, after having
grown up in Chicago and been a prep baseball pitcher there.
A star. He was intellectual, he was athletic. He was
(32:38):
one of a kind. He played and then broadcast for
years with continuing kidney problems. He knew pain, and not
just of seeing the White Sox every day. He saw
them finally win the World Series and broadcast the games,
and he never stopped talking. I believe though he had
passed several years ago, he's still talking. An exceptional person
(33:04):
would do anything for you, was constantly involved in charities
and giving people lifts. And the day I met him,
I was at their ballpark and he said, how are
you getting home? And I said, you mean the hotel? Yeah,
where you're staying? I told him the Drake Hotel. Hey,
I drive right past there. Well, that's half an hour
out of my way. I'll give you a lift. There's
(33:24):
my friend. Jason Bennetti, lifelong Socks fan, overcame many diseases
and things in his own life, and most importantly, people's
stupid reactions to the things. He overcame to become the
voice of the Chicago White Sox, to grow up and
become the play by play announcer of your childhood team,
and then, when the working circumstances were not what they
(33:48):
should have been, to have the steel to say, yes,
this was my childhood dream. I am no longer a child.
I am going to go to Detroit instead. I knew
Bill Veck, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, who
bought the team rather than let them moved to Seattle
in nineteen seventy six. He'd already owned them once. He
(34:09):
was the one who put them in the World Series
the previous time before two thousand and five, when the
Pope attended. He got them in in nineteen fifty nine
and then sold the team. And he did all kinds
of crazy things in his various capacities in the teams
he owned in Saint Louis and Cleveland, and then the
White Sox. The story of Bill Beck is probably summarized
by this, Among other things, he was the guy who said,
(34:31):
you know what that outfield wall at Wrigley Park where
the Cubs play, Wrigley Field, rather what that needs. I'm
confusing it with its original name, Cubbs Park. That outfield
fence here at Wrigleyfield that needs ivy. I'll go and
plant some ivy every time you see the ivy at
Wrigley Field. Bill Veck, his father was president of the Cubs.
(34:53):
He wound up owning the White Sox. He lost part
of a leg in Second World War service, and I
saw him do this the last time I saw him,
in nineteen eighty or eighty one. He used to smoke
a lot. He used to stub out his cigarettes on
his wooden leg. President Obama was a White Sox fan
(35:15):
throughout a first pitch at one of the games of
the American League Championship Series that they ran roughshod through
on the way to the World Series in two thousand
and five. There are lots of pictures. Google him in
a white Sox jacket, a white Sox uniform, and think
of this for a moment. How popular the Chicago Cubs are.
It's an easy thing to be a Cubs fan in
some senses. Yes, you had to suffer between the years
(35:37):
nineteen oh eight and twenty sixteen without winning the World Series.
Oh boohoo, everybody felt sorry for you. You automatically got
a free beer. The games were played during the day,
so you could drink all afternoon and then go out
on the town on public transportation and get drunk again
at night. Terrible, terrible existence. In any event, Obama, No,
(36:01):
he did not take advantage of that. He did not
say I'm a Cubs fan. He just reveled in being
a white Sox fan, an Illinois senator running for president,
identifying not with the easy Cubs but with the White Sox.
In fact, that was the first thing I admired about
(36:23):
Barack Obama. And lastly, of these exceptional White Sox fans,
there was the late Gene Shepherd, humorist radio rack on
tour the O tour of the movie A Christmas Story.
He wrote it, he narrated the movie itself, He played
the angry old man in the hat in the line
(36:45):
for Santa at the department store, and most importantly, he
lived it. He was, in fact little Ralphie. Geene Shepherd
was also a lifetime White Sox fan. And if you
don't know baseball, the White Sox were the team that
the long suffering Cubs fans and the long suffering Red
Sox fans and the long suffering everybody else fans looked
down on. The Cubs had a cathedral for a stadium
(37:09):
with Bill Veck's ivy on the walls. The Socks had
an even older ballpark that looked even older the day
it had opened in nineteen oh nine. People think of
it fondly now. It was a dump. The Cubs had
not won the World Series since nineteen oh eight. The
White Sox won it in nineteen seventeen and had a
dynasty with the second or third greatest hitter of all
(37:32):
time at its center Shoeles Joe Jackson, and they should
have won the World Series again in nineteen nineteen and
probably nineteen twenty by eight of their players, including Jackson,
at least agreed to accept bribes small bribes to deliberately
lose the nineteen nineteen World Series. They would not win
a World Series again until two thousand and five. With
(37:52):
as it proves, their guy the pulpe in the stands.
And no no martyrdom jokes here please, except for the
Martin joke from White Sox fan Geene Shepherd. I have
never read anything like this by any fan of any team.
(38:13):
It summarizes the White Sox and their fans and thus
the new pope completely. To quote Geene Shepherd, if I
were going to storm a pillbox, going to sheer utter
certain death, and the colonel said, Shepherd picked six guys,
(38:33):
I'd pick six White Sox fans because they have known
death every day of their lives and it holds no
terror for them. Wow, cassocks are read. Conclaves are dope.
(38:56):
Wake up, babe, we got a woke Marxist also of
interest here. Actually, let me do this SNL dead Pope
joke now, because who knows when I'll get to quote
this again for anyone who didn't see it when it happened.
(39:18):
On August sixth, nineteen seventy eight, Pope Paul the sixth,
the two hundred and sixty third Pope in a series
of two hundred and sixty seven collect them mall died.
He was succeeded by Pope John Paul, who took the
names of his two predecessors, John and Paul, leading to
the joke that his successor would take the name John Paul.
George Ringo then, in a genuine shock that I can
(39:41):
still remember from the time as vividly as it was
that day, on the twenty eighth of September nineteen seventy eight,
not two months later, Pope John Paul died. He was
succeeded by John Paul the Second on October sixteenth. And
on Saturday, September thirtieth, of the Year of the Three
Popes nineteen seventy eight, Bill Murray was anchoring the weekend
(40:04):
Update mock newscast on Saturday Night Live. He approached it
if you never saw him as he did, Nick the
Lounge singer kind of mixed with the groundskeeper from Caddy
Shack that he also played. He started to read the
news of Pope John Paul's passing and then stopped and
shouted and looked around the stage as he did, Wait
(40:27):
a minute, who's running this news department? A dead pope?
We already did this story? Come on anyway? Also of
interest here worst Persons is not just three reprobates, but
three reprobates I know and once respected, including Claire Shipman.
(40:49):
And Claire Shipman needs to resign as co chair and
acting president at Columbia University after her school suspended four
student reporters for reporting. That's next. This is countdown. This
(41:10):
is countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead on this all
(41:34):
new editiative. Countdown. What do you name a dog who
smiles all the time and loves every human she meets? Well,
her pet little boy named her smiles her story Next first,
believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
talk about, the roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning
(41:54):
Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons
in the world. As preface, most of these times, these
people annoy me. They often enrage me, but rarely do
they disappoint me personally. They are on this list because
they're maga and maga is a disease, or because they're
(42:18):
conservative and conservativism is at its heart. I've got mine,
now you go get yours. But even if my ancestors
have rigged the system to make sure I can never
lose mine and you can never gain yours, it's always
at least that. Rarely is it personal. Rarely is it
personal disappointment, and even betrayal from people I know even
(42:40):
more rare and the first worst Person's list appeared on
MSNBC on like June thirtieth, I think, two thousand and five,
and the first one was in defense of Tucker Carlson's
MSNBC show. More specifically, it was in defense after a
New York Times critic called for it to be canceled,
(43:01):
like a week after it debuted, when all the TV
critics ever did in those days was slam MSNBC for
canceling new shows too quickly. So nearly twenty years of
worse persons, and even more rare than a personal worse
person is when all three are people I know and
at one point respected and even worked with, who have
(43:23):
failed utterly, irredeemably, irretrievably failed. In fact, in twenty years,
I can't think of three of them appearing on one list,
and yet here we are the bronze worse and it's
personal Governor Gavin Newsom of California. I don't know if
(43:43):
he thinks he's moving inexorably towards some position where he's
the only Democratic choice for the nomination in twenty eight
because the Trump dictatorship will choose the Democratic nominee in
twenty eight, or if he's just this stupid but here
he goes again. Trump and John Voight, who between them
are now one hundred and sixty five years old. And
(44:05):
Voight turns out to be from the town next to
my hometown, and he went to the Catholic school called
Steppinac that was close enough to my school that occasionally
Steppinac and Hackley shared the same bus home to our
towns in the afternoons. Trump and vod devised this truly
(44:27):
stupid one hundred percent tariff on films produced in foreign lands,
and I don't know what does that even mean. Bollywood,
anything with a scene in it shot at Octoberfest All
Movies with Gary Oldman. The next day, Newsom responded to
this by springing into action, and instead of defending America's
(44:48):
film capital, the state he is governor of, he issued
a statement reading, We're eager to partner with the Trump administration.
Stop just at that point, go to the end of
the Santa Monica peer, get a good running start, and
leap into the ocean. There's more to his statement, We're
eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen
(45:11):
domestic production and make America film again. MafA one letter
short of Mafia. Good call. Gav Newsom thinks he's going
to get seven and a half billion in movie making
incentives out of Trump by capitulating to him and riffing
(45:32):
on his MAGA fascist catchphrase, Gavin, you are a jackass.
The only way you get seven and a half billion
out of Trump is to give him fifteen billion and
then maybe you'll get half of it back. Just a moron,
quite literally, Gavin Newsom could have been president, but instead
(45:53):
he's decided to join the vshy opposition. Him and Joe Scarborough. Boys,
your hair ain't gonna get you elected, Not in the
hair era of Trump and Javier Milay and Boris Johnson.
Your hair disqualifies you. Also Joe Scaraberer and Gavin Newsom,
(46:17):
Your stupidity disqualifies you, and your scumbagginess disqualifies you. The
runner up worser also personal Bob Eiger, chairman of Disney,
who is on his what fifth sellout to Trump? The
deal to settle Trump's nonsense lawsuit against George Stephanopolis and
ABC News and thus in the process kind of legally
(46:37):
bribed Trump, then giving Trump his choice of interviewers and
leaving George and David Muir off the list five sellouts
to Trump? What is it? Bob six? This is six
or seven according to a filing with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. Disney has now added a new channel to
its Hulu and Live TV streaming services, the channel, news Max.
(47:03):
News Max has for thirty years been the thing you
read or watch when you think Fox News is just
too damn liberal. I hate that liberal, Harris Faulkner. It
is not only propaganda Newsmax, that is, but it's poorly done,
self contradictory, stupid propaganda. It's literally for the people who
(47:27):
aren't smart enough to understand Fox News and the fascists
think it's lack of distribution and decreasing carriage on cable
and satellite is a conspiracy against them, a conspiracy against fascism.
You bet you're ass Newsmax. Except for Disney and Bob Iiger, who,
(47:48):
as I have mentioned, I have known since March nineteen
seventy nine, who I have worked for three times, who
I got a call from the day I first left
ESPN in ninety seven, in which he asked me to
call him personally if I ever wanted to return to ESPN.
And who then did the corporate j Leno chose a
successor as the head of Disney, then Bob missed having
(48:11):
the job. He may have helped spread the stories that
his successor didn't have it. Presto, the successor gets fired.
Who gets the job back? Why?
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Bob?
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Bob j Leno Iger, Bob j Leno Ron McLean Iger
and what has he done with it? Wore himself out
to Trump again? But our winner the worst. And I'm
gonna sound really happy about this, because really I am
(48:42):
crying inside. Claire Shipman, who I praised here and waxed
nostalgic about not two months ago, perhaps my favorite, or
at least my second favorite, of my original six White
House correspondence on the MSNBC White House in Crisis show
during Clinton Lewinsky and I ran in to her at
(49:05):
the Animal Medical Center in March. She's still lovely and
a delight, and I knew I could always count on
her ethics and toughness, especially now that she was co
chair of the board of Trustees at Columbia University. And
if she continues on her current path, my friend Claire
should resign. The president of Columbia. The one that was
(49:29):
there when I saw Claire. That president of Columbia has
since gone into the volcano to try to appease Trump.
Claire has succeeded that one as acting president, and she
has been appalling. Now I guess I can defer to
her on the decision to call the New York City
cops in to address a campus building takeover. As I
(49:53):
noted here previously, five years before I got to Cornell,
justifiably angry African American students took over a campus building
there and they were carrying long guns. This was in
response to cross burning on campus. This was as a
minor complaint they were literally burning crosses in front of
(50:13):
black sororities at Cornell in nineteen sixty nine and seventy.
I think I understand where you're coming from, So I
have a pretty high threshold about calling the cops on
student protesters. But I can see there are circumstances where
you might be justified in doing that if the protesters
(50:33):
tried to, say, burn the building down, rather than set
a nearby dumpster on fire. By the way, I assumed
that dumpster was set on fire, and that wasn't just
Claire's career as an educator spontaneously combusting. Anyway, Claire did
something that on the ethical scale, was far worse than
calling the cops in to arrest some of her own students.
(50:56):
She has sat idly by and without comment as Columbia
and the still differently named College for Women there, Barnard
suspended four student journalists for the crime of covering the
other students' protests. Sawyer Huckabee of w KCR Radio at
(51:17):
Columbia first was prevented by campus cops from leaving the
library as the siege ended Wednesday, and then he was
suspended Thursday afternoon for his quote involvement unquote. In the protest,
dozens of Columbia students were issued interim suspensions. Huckaby included
five hours later Huckabee suspension, which his ID was inoperative.
(51:39):
He was ordered to leave campus blutly. His college life
and life life were jeopardized. Somebody wised up and canceled
his suspension. But also on Thursday, Barnard's Dean Leslie Greenwage
Grenage Grinage, Grinage. It's a mean sounding name, isn't it,
(52:00):
suspended two female reporters from the radio station and a
third from the Columbia campus newspaper. Same restrictions, get out
your IDs, no longer work, you can't go to class,
you can't take exams. What time of year is it, Oh,
it's exam time. You may be done here in fact,
and they let those suspensions sit overnight and did not
(52:22):
lift them until the next morning after news got out.
The Columbia Columbia as in the Columbia Journalism School Columbia
had suspended four reporters for reporting Were you ever suspended
in school or in college? I was suspended in college
(52:44):
for not finishing a swimming test. I swear I got
the letter as I was leaving home for the start
of the spring semester, about a five hour trip, the
longest five hours of my life to that point. What
would I do if they did not reinstate me? Where
would I go? I was going to a school that
(53:05):
technically I was not allowed to go to. Could I
go on the campus to protest? To just ask what
about the tuition for the just starting semester? What about
my entire future at the school? And then, as somebody
who had been thrown out of Cornell or suspended at Cornell,
what do I do now? I was eighteen? Now it
(53:28):
was great that when I got to Ithaca and went
to the registrar's office and basically asked the question help,
the administrator looked at the letter and laughed and said, well,
this is stupid. And she wrote on the letter reinstated
effective immediately, and said she'd send me a formal letter
in the mail immediately. And then she looked on a
(53:48):
calendar and she handed me a slip reading swimming test appointment,
and she told me to write down a day and
a time on it. And it was all resolved that fast.
That was great, And still those five hours are burned
into my brain. Forty eight years later. Imagine being one
of these reporters at Columbia, at a university known uniquely
(54:11):
in the Ivy League, perhaps in American academia for its
journalism programs undergraduate and graduate, and with a true journalist,
a reporter from CNN, NBC and ABC as both its
acting president and co chair of the board. Imagine the
sense of dread and betrayal, and even after the lifting
(54:31):
of the suspension, the sense of your university, the people
you are buying a product from deciding to let you
get away with this this time, but reminding you they
could screw you into the ground whenever they want to
talk about chilling dissent and chilling reporting. You're supposed to
be when it says journalism school, Claire, You're supposed to
(54:54):
be for journalism. These weren't radical protesters. These weren't even
columnists or loudmouthed on air commentators. These were four students
who were doing what Claire Shipman used to do, what
she used to do when she earned her reputation and
(55:15):
her livelihood and eventually wound up in the position to
become the person running the university. And she let them
twist slowly in the wind, and she let freedom of
the press at Columbia University twists slowly in the wind.
It's already bad enough that Claire was at the center
as Columbia cut a deal with Trump, a deal in
(55:37):
which Trump wants a handpicked judge to appoint a handpicked
enforcer for Trump's fascist demands for how the university should
run from now on. That was bad enough, maybe it
was necessary for survival. But this suspending student reporters Claire.
This makes one question whether anybody should give a damn
(55:58):
whether Columbia University survives or not. The shame I feel
about Claire Ship may only be matched by what seems
to be her incapacity to feel any shame for what
she's done, or any awareness that her job right now
is to walk up to Trump and spit in his
face on behalf of Columbia, on behalf of those briefly
(56:18):
suspended journalists, on behalf of Academia, on behalf of America,
the Cardinals chosen anti Trump, Pope, you folded, go spit
metaphorically in Trump's face. Claire, do it. It's your last chance.
(56:41):
Cancel the deal with Trump. Harvard did, and if you
won't do that, get out, resign and take the Barnard
Dean with you, and for that matter, take Columbia with you,
because right now your university is headed towards becoming just
another Trump whorehouse shipman. I am so ashamed, Claire truly
(57:10):
today's worst person in the world. For the first time
(57:33):
in a while, time for another dog in need. You
can help. Every dog has its day today. It's personal,
a lot of personal. In this show. In February of
last year, I introduced you to a big, lovely Bernese
Mountain dog called Smiles. Called Smiles because she does NonStop.
Her default position is to smile, and she loves every
(57:57):
human she's ever met, especially her pet little boy. She
is the size of a large bicycle. She was just
about to turn three years old last year when she
suddenly became sick. It was cancer. In fact, it was lymphoma.
Everybody chipped in and thank you for helping. She got chemo.
(58:18):
She tolerated it well, she barely noticed it. In fact,
she got better fast, and she and her little boy
have had a great year. And now the cancer is back.
And so for my friend Andrew Bloonner. Is the cost
of the treatment for smiles. The good news is we
know she can handle it, and even with the recurrence,
(58:38):
the vets are predicting eighty to eighty five percent likelihood
of success of getting her back into remission. You might
ask why spend thousands of dollars on the health of
just one dog. My primary answer is this because you can.
And my secondary answer is I'm thinking of her pet,
(59:00):
little boy. Andrew's gofund me for smiles is is at
GoFundMe dot com and in the search engine type in
three words smiles, mountain dog, smiles, mountain dog. Anything you
can give will be gratefully welcomed. And just publicizing smiles
(59:22):
and this GoFundMe will help. I'll put the link out
on Twitter again and retweeting it can make all the
difference and smiles. Thank you and her little Boy. Thanks you,
and I thank you. I've done all the damage I
(59:59):
can do here. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and
John Phillip Schaneil, the musical directors have Countdown Ra produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers Now are satirical
and pithy. Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
organist ever, Nancy Faust, now back doing cameos with the
(01:00:23):
White Sox, or as they are now known, the Vatican's
Team or the Vaticans South Sides Team. The sports music
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtisy ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
(01:00:45):
my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as ever, my fault.
And if you happen to know whether or not the
Pope used to watch me or Kenny or anybody else
on Sports Center in the nineties, just get a hold
of me. I'd just like to know. That's countdown for today,
Day one, one hundred and thirteen of America held hostage,
(01:01:07):
just one three hundred and fifty days until the scheduled
end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless
Musk removes him sooner. Where the actuarial tables do or
we do, or the next scheduled countdown is Thursday is
always bulletins as the news warrants remember Trump is laying
the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must
(01:01:30):
be stopped till next time. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck Trump, peach Ten Who's
got Yeah? Like so many New Yorkers, I am Countdown
(01:01:53):
with Keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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