December 8, 2025 • 48 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 38: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: It’s not simple gaslighting about the price of gas: It’s neurological disintegration; obsessive repetition of the same lie. He has now - for the 14th time in 28 weeks - announced with shock and excited surprise that gas has "just hit" $1.98 a gallon (or "$1.99" or "under $2.00"). It's not just a lie; it's something he heard, could not understand in the first place, and is repeating at regular intervals as if he just heard it moments earlier.
It is a classic sign of neurological crisis. And it is proof that invoking the 25th Amendment is imperative. And won’t happen. Any more than Trump realizing he already TOLD that lie.
ALSO: Jack Smith still has a way to make the second half of his report convicting Trump public, while it turns out he tried to get rid of Aileen Cannon a year ago. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that ESPN's Stephen A. Smith may be the Jill Stein of 2028 - a stalking horse pretending to be a Democrat while being pushed by fascists. We know this much: he's mailing it in. He thinks the name of the governor of Florida is named "Ron Santis."
AND TRUMP AND MELANIA talking about "Pile Driving" at night in the White House? That must be the first time in eighteen years.
B-Block (35:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Shamwow guy is back and, what else, running for Congress as a MAGA because he can't keep this up all day. Bari Weiss obviously never saw the Mary Tyler Moore Show: she's fired her old CBS News Anchors before she's fired her NEW CBS News Anchors. And Jake Tapper really does it: after he put his thumb on the scale for Trump in the Biden debate and wrote a book and sold it on CNN about Biden's acuity, he's defending Trump's mental instability.
C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Hal Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees whose franchise has increased in value by three billion in just the last four years, is trying to convince people that maybe the Yankees aren't profitable. This is clownage as old as sports itself: the saga of the year the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers insisted "we lost two million last year!"
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It's
not just simple gas lighting about the price of gas.
(00:27):
It is neurological disintegration. It is obsessive repetition of the
same lie, and the most terrifying part of all, Trump
seems to be unaware that he is presenting this as
something brand new, as if it were the first time,
when in fact he blurts out in shock and excited
surprise this same goddamn thing an average of once every
(00:52):
two weeks, and still thinks it's the first time. Saturday
on social media, gasoline hit a dollar in ninety nine
a gallon yesterday in certain states. Since the seventeenth of April.
This is the fourteenth time he has claimed as if
it were true, but more importantly, as if it were
breaking news, the gas just hit dollar ninety eight or
(01:17):
dollar ninety nine, fourteen separate times, and each time he
has been expecting the world to share his surprise. It's
the goddamned Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore movie Fifty First Dates,
where she has no short term memory and every day
she forgets that they're dating. Only this is the President
(01:38):
of the United States, not Drew effing Barrymore, and every
day or nearly every day, he forgets where the f
he is and what the f just happened, even about
the price of gas. April seventeenth. Quote, you have gasoline
that hit a dollar ninety eight yesterday in a couple
of states. April eighteenth. The next day literally already forgot.
(02:02):
Quote gasoline in three states hit a dollar ninety eight
a gallon. April twenty second. Quote. I see that we
had a couple of states where gasoline was at a
dollar ninety eight a gallon. April twenty third. Gasoline is
less than two dollars a gallon in Alabama. May second. Quote,
gasoline just broke a dollar ninety eight a gallon, lowest
in years. May nineteenth. Quote they're buying gasoline now for
(02:27):
a dollar ninety nine. And by the way, they had
asked him about cutting snap benefits. July first quote, gasoline
just hit a dollar ninety nine in five states. July first,
minutes later, quote we just hit in five states a
dollar ninety nine. A dollar ninety eight. July ninth. Quote,
there's two states, three states that we're selling gasoline at
(02:49):
a dollar ninety nine. You haven't seen that for a
long time. July twenty second on Twitter, quote we hit
a dollar ninety nine a gallon today in five different states.
That got a community note. Then something happen. Happened, nothing
until October twenty ninth, And on October twenty ninth, quote,
(03:10):
we're going to see two dollars gasoline pretty soon. November sixth,
quote we're almost two dollars for gasoline. December second, quote
a dollar ninety nine in some places, we're going to
be I think at two dollars a gallon. We could
even crack that at some point. And then December sixth, Saturday,
back to gasoline, just hit a dollar ninety nine, like
(03:33):
he hadn't mentioned it fourteen times in twenty eight weeks.
So what about that brief pass by of reality between
July twenty second and October twenty ninth where he got
a vague idea that what he'd been saying or thinking
about a dollar ninety eight a gallon of gas was
(03:54):
not reality when his broken brain apparently reset and he
decided it had not happened yet, but he had new
breaking news that it would. I will point out reminding
you first of the logical fallacy about how event A
can happen and then event B can happen, And that
does not automatically mean event A caused event B. That
(04:15):
October twenty ninth was two and a half weeks after
his physical at Walter Reid with the MRI, and god
knows what else. But now he's got a giant patch
bandage above the veins on his right hand. Here we have,
in real time evidence of Trump's dementia, and I use
the term dementia generically. It could be any neurological crisis.
(04:37):
But here is a log of him saying the same
thing wildly untrue, mathematically off by roughly fifty percent of
not just saying it fourteen different times, but saying it
with the delight and surprise and pride and for him,
the sincerity of somebody who just found out the good news.
(04:58):
And that is a classical symptom of neurological collapse gas lighting. Yeah,
this is that rare occasion where it would be better
if this was just another one of his sleezy lies,
or another fourteen of his sleezy lies, like his unshakable
stupidity about political asylum being the same as insane asylum.
(05:22):
For once, it is not his deception that matters. It
is his personal conviction that it's new. It is a nightmare,
and it is proof that invoking the twenty fifth Amendment
is imperative and won't happen. It won't happen anymore than
Trump realizing he already told that lie about the price
(05:42):
of a gallon of gas will happen. And incidentally, they
(06:09):
have tracked down where the initial falsehood got into his
brain and took up residence there, surely as if it
were one of Bobby Kennedy's worms. In April, the oil
industry reported that the price of unblended gasoline as it
arrives in this country was you guessed at a dollar
ninety eight a gallon. Of course, you cannot put the
unblended gasoline in your car. It might blow up. The
(06:33):
blending that is required before that can happen. Putting it
in your car, that is, adds about a dollar per gallon.
So gasoline, in fact, had just hit two ninety eight
a gallon, But he heard a dollar ninety eight, and
it is there and brand new and exciting to him
every week and day since, which leads me to the question,
(06:56):
what's the price of pipe bombs these days. The FBI,
This FBI, His FBI arrests a guy for January fifth,
twenty twenty one's placement of pipe bombs at DNC and
RNC headquarters in Washington, and he reportedly is confessed and
is a twenty twenty election denier. And this was placed
somewhere behind the soccer World Efing Cup as a lead
(07:19):
news story, and the story had been sourced everywhere, from
NBC to CNN to Fox News. Not a deep state
plot who defunk it? Not a DC police officer slandered
by Glenn Beck's website, Not somebody made up fabricated by
the now FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. And this happens
(07:41):
at its crickets. If that had been anything but another
lunatic under the delusion that Trump actually won the twenty
twenty election that he lost, this would have been wall
to wall on every news organization in America trying to
suck up to Trump. But the media instead skated past
it like it didn't efing matter. And somehow Bongino still
(08:05):
in office rather than in jail, even though even Sean
Hannity called him out for his twenty twenty one lies
that this was anti Trump, or an inside job, or
a massive FBI cover up as massive as your hair.
Bungino Bongino proudly now says, quote, I was paid in
(08:26):
the past for my opinions. One day I'll be back
in that space. But that's not what I'm paid for now.
I'm paid to be your deputy director. And we base
investigations on facts. So formerly a lying whore, now not lying,
just a Trump horror and in the future a whore again.
And if we're going to put you in any space whatsoever,
(08:48):
can I suggest it be the space that contains the sun? Now,
please let me circle back briefly to Trump's brain Washington
post on what has become the airplane hangar he is
building next to the White House. Quote. On Tuesday, Trump
said during a cabinet meeting that the pile drivers operate
(09:10):
all night and have created a disagreement in his marriage.
The president says he loves the sound, while First Lady
Milania Trump has asked him to make the constant pounding stop,
a request he's denied. Sorry, darlin, that's progress. Trump said.
He told her, unquote, what was she on a zoom call?
(09:36):
Holy cow? The pile drivers operate all night. Just saying here,
but I bet that's the first time Trump and Millenia
have discussed pile driving in like eighteen years now. About
(10:00):
a couple of Smiths. Maybe the last chance to finally
punish for his treachery with Putin and Russia comes next week,
when Jack Smith is supposed to be grilled in closed
door testimony by the House Committee on however bullshit it
is this time? This is Jim Jordan's committee this time.
And whereas the Maga monkeys think Jim Jordan's gonna get
(10:21):
Smith on behalf of Vladimir Trump, I would think a
likelier outcome, maybe half of one percent, as Jordan winds
up incriminating himself in some way in the questions and
Smith finally puts him in jail. Anyway, Jack Smith, of
course is trying to get this all made public. He
may join a suit to make what he found public,
(10:45):
and he is certainly acting to try to make this
hearing in front of Congress public and on the record,
which of course would allow him to get in a
lot of the findings of his investigation into Trump's treachery
and any and all measures that could be taken to
enable that should be effected because there was, is and
will continue to be a conspiracy involving Donald Trump at
(11:07):
one end, and Russia and Russian intel and Russian leadership
at the other. There is all the hoax claims will
never erase this if Trump escapes justice, others will not.
The further away we get from Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump,
(11:27):
the more we understand that Merrick Garland we'll go down
in history as one of the great and most damaging
idiots in our history. I mean so damaging. He could
have been Trump's attorney general. It's slipped by this story
because there are only the twenty four hundred hours in
a Trumpest day. But the Carol Lennig book on Prosecuting
(11:52):
the Scumbag has all sorts of maddening details. If your
BP is high, skip this part. Yes, Smith did try
to get Eileen Cannon removed as the judge in Florida
in the document's case. I'll quote in August twenty twenty four,
as Smith and his team were finishing up their appeal
of Canon's ruling, he had also secretly concluded that Cannon
(12:16):
should be removed as the presiding judge. Smith presented the
appeal to Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Pretlonger for her approval,
as special Council regulations required. He also asked her if
he could seek to have Canon removed by the Appellate Court,
an unprecedented move for a special counsel. Smith's team believed
(12:36):
Cannon had made decisions that strained the law or bypassed precedent,
many of them favoring Trump. In one episode that had
surprised prosecutors. Canon issued a sealed order in August twenty
twenty three, launching an investigation into potential prosecutorial misconduct, citing
news reports. Canon did not specify what reports she was hearing,
(13:01):
but the day before her order, the conservative Fox News
to television program Life Liberty in Levin had featured a
Trump defense attorney accusing Smith's team of strong arm tactics,
the very tactics Cannon wanted to dig into the final
straw where Smith came when Cannon dismissed the case, citing
(13:22):
Thomas's non binding opinion. In other words, this all turned
on something that Mark Levin had on Fox. Preloger approved
the appeal of Cannon's ruling, but rejected Smith's plan to
seek the judge's removal, saying he didn't have a strong
enough basis to do so. Smith decided not to ask
(13:44):
Garland to overrule Preloger. If Smith had asked and Garland
then turned him down, the Justice Department would have been
required to notify Congress and the disagreement would surely have
become public. So that's why he didn't go to remove
Eileen Cannon, because he didn't know whether or not the
Attorney General of the Nied States was smart enough to
(14:06):
realize that they had a corrupt judge ruling on their case.
To them, the consequences of that becoming public were too risky.
I mean, that's where we ended. After we had started
the day of the Mary Lago search discovering the troves
of secret documents that Trump stole. In August twenty twenty two,
(14:29):
Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen was briefed about the appalling
crime and what the search produced, and again from Lennig
quote Olsen turned to his top Justice Department expert on
the mishandling of classified records, Julie Edelstein, to ask what
they should do next. She delivered a startling assessment. If
it was anybody else we would arrest him tomorrow, Edelstein said.
(14:53):
Knowingly taking classified documents outside of a secure government facility
was a crime, plain and simple, she explained. Trying to
conceal them after receiving a MA subpoena to return all
classified records as Trump had made the crime far worse,
she argued, But Olsen's team knew that with Trump all
(15:13):
bets were off. The Justice Department would invariably treat the
former president more gingerly. One more then we'll move on
to Smith Number two, The failure of Merrick Garland. It's
almost indescribably broad and far reaching. Garland watched Cassidy Hutchinson,
(15:40):
the courageous White House Aid at the January sixth hearings.
He watched on TV because why would he have pressed
to get her testimony? What was he? The Attorney General?
He had all the time in the world, after all,
and it turned out he had virtually none of the
smarts in the world. Lennegg reports. Merrick Garland turned to
a colleague as Cassidy Hutchinson told her story and asked
(16:06):
did we know about her? And the aid answered, now, sir, honestly,
the attempts to prosecute Jack Smith, and Komy and James
and the others are blights upon the history of human government.
But if Trump went after Merrick Garland and tried to
put him behind bars, I wouldn't lift a finger to
stop him. There is one item of hope with Jack Smith.
(16:31):
The watchdog group American Oversight got the Eleventh Circuit Court
of Appeals to confirm that the former Flamenco correspondent of
the Miami Nuevo Herald, Eileen Cannon, has been guilty of
an undue delay in ruling on the American Oversight suit
to force the release of volume two of the Jack
Smith Report, the Smoking Gun Book. The court has given
(16:55):
Cannon sixty days, which should be up right after the
new year. But of course Trump has moved to block
this because, after all, Eileen Cannon is his concierge, Judge,
she's an employee of his. Someday, now about the other
Smith anybody remember Jill Stein, Chase, Oliver Cornell West, Robert F.
(17:23):
Kennedy Junior. Has he been in as has Robert Has
rfk Junior been in the news at all lately? Any
of the other assholes who ran or pretended to run
for president as nominal liberals or democrats in twenty sixteen
or twenty or twenty four. I mean, remember that Kennedy
claimed to be a democrat and a human being. And
(17:45):
there were, of course all funded by conservative groups and
lunatics and even groups with direct ties to Trump and Maga.
Remember the spoilers, the stalking horses, the true enemies of democracy.
I think the first twenty twenty eight version of them
is now among us, warming up in the bullpen. And
(18:07):
his name is Stephen A. Smith. Smith as in Jack Smith,
but without the you know, ethics or patriotism you have
heard here and elsewhere. That Stephen A. Smith is running
one of those campaigns to get people to convince him
to run for the president because there's nobody else. Oh
(18:29):
if I have to owe Okay. He has been doing
this for many months now on his hilariously knowledge free
political podcast and on the hilariously sheep in Sheep's Clothing
conservative channel that claims to be a neutral news nation,
the Nick at Night of Old Newscasters, And he's been
(18:53):
doing this with multiple appearances on the show of his
own friend Jean Hemmity. Now just that should be enough
to dismiss any notion. Anybody might that Stephen A. Smith
is a liberal, or has an IQ in three digits,
or is a democrat, or is anything but a tool.
(19:13):
I think, and this is a hunch, I think he
is a tool or maybe a tool of more right
wing funders looking to throw out a spoiler. I mean,
think about it. Stephen A. Smith is a maga billionaire's
idea of somebody who would appeal to left wing voters,
but happily for democracy. Steven A. Smith is a moron.
(19:38):
The ESPN Act works on ESPN because honestly, it's a
pretty good act. I say, this is somebody who used
to have a pretty good act on ESPN. Ultimately, no
matter what the act is, whether it's sincerity and intelligence
and witty, brilliant humor, or it's Stephen A. Smith, how
(19:59):
often is it important? Once a year maybe I say,
this is frankly one of the pillars of ESPN's history.
That was the point we were there when it mattered,
and also the other three hundred and sixty four days
of the year. So he does the same bit the
(20:21):
ESPN Act on Hannity's show the other day, but about
politics and announces he has breaking news and has one
critic on Twitter noted with evident astonishment. Probably never saw
him on ESPN. Then he gave an opinion. Yeah, yeah,
that's steven A All all in one motion. Is it
(20:42):
an act? No, steven A Smith no longer knows that
there is a difference between breaking news and his opinion. Happily,
steven A. Smith is a moron, and he's also mailing
this politics stuff in. He just is not doing the
work clearly. I mean, you can criticize him for lots
(21:04):
of stuff. I've known him twenty years and we'd always
gotten along well enough until he decided to become a
political prostitute like this. But you know, for all my
criticisms of him, he rarely just gets basic sports facts wrong.
He knows the the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia in
the sixties. He knows that he gets like one political
(21:29):
fact wrong per hour. It's hilarious. So after some nonsense
speech to Hannity the other night about how Gavin Newsom
can't win unless he goes to the middle because roe
Canna quick asks Stephen who roe Canna is, steven A
announced that Newsom can't win because of Hannity, because Newsom
(21:51):
went on Hannity's show when Newsom, as you will recall
debated Ron Santis unquote asumably that's what Stephen A. Thinks.
The name of the governor of Florida is Ron Santis.
(22:12):
Leave off the duh for I don't know diminutive, it's
Steven It's Ron.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Duh Santis duh as in duh.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Clearly, Stephen A. Smith has conflated Ron du Santis and
Baseball Hall of Famer Ron Santo, and for good measure,
disgraced ex Congressman George Santos as well. Hell throw in
Simpson's character Santos l helper christ if sports Stephen A. Smith.
(22:54):
We're doing one of his phony debate shows with politics,
Stephen A. Smith. There would be nothing left of politics,
Stephen A. Smith, but a tip on the bill for
dinner of one and a half percent, Which reminds me
(23:16):
that we have not just entered a time in which
Trump's utter deficiency on the world stage has begun to
harm individual Americans in America and make people think Steven A. Smith, Oh,
maybe he could be president of the United States. Yeah,
the rest of us are dead. It's always that way.
Trump's conviction that he only understands anything when he doesn't
(23:38):
even know what an MRI is for has always been there.
He's kind of Stupidity doesn't just happen. It has to
be nurtured and grown for years or decades, like a
colony of termites. But it is appearing now on multiple fronts,
and there has to be some sort of official, formal,
seemingly meaningless but actually deeply meaningful response. And when Trump's
(24:00):
special representative to the Ukraine Russia crisis is another imbecile
named Whitcaw I believe his first name is half turns
out to be carrying water, not even for Trump, but
for Putin. The termites are at the front door, and
they're standing on each other's shoulders and hitting the doorbell.
If Putin says he cannot sign a deal with Ukraine
(24:20):
because he doesn't believe the government of Ukraine is legitimate,
someone from this country has to stand up and tell
him that he has no choice, and if he refuses,
we will use all measures to starve him and his
country into the ground. And if India buys oil from
him to keep him afloat, we will starve India into
the ground. There's lots of things we can do to
destabilize those governments. We must treat him as Marco Rubio
(24:44):
dreams of treating Maduro of Venezuela. We must see not
the leader of some other superpower, but we must see
Putin for what he is, a desperate dictator of a
dissolving country that has bounced its last payroll checks to
its soldiers. We should have not a Marco Rubio, but
somebody in his place who can recognize that enough pressure,
(25:04):
just verbal pressure, applied in the right place, and that
unpaid Russian military might very well decide to remove Putin
on its own. So we damn well better get that
message out to them, and to Putin and to the
rest of America. We the sane people. We need to
get the message out as loudly and quickly as possible.
(25:25):
And of course we can't officially. The Trump government is
not an American government. It is corrupt beyond redemption. It
is influenced, manipulated, controlled, owned by others who are not
in this country. And so since we can't until and
unless the Democrats amass enough of a legislative majority to
(25:47):
impeach and remove this glowing orange turd, and the even
dumber people around him until that point. We need what
we do not have, which is a structure akin to
the British opposition shadow government. The Conservatives in Britain have
a shadow Defense Minister, a shadow Chancellor and senior shadow
(26:10):
leaders who can at a moment's notice articulate their party's
vision of foreign or domestic policy. When something big happens,
you hear from the government, and then you hear from
the shadow spokesman or the shadow secretary of whatever. We
need that. That is why the support given to America's
(26:32):
service members who have faced or will face illegal orders
from a corrupt and lawless commander in chief and his
moron secretary of Defense, the support from the six members
of the House and Senate. That should not be the
end of that. That should be the template. There should
be a show half an hour of that six Democrats
(26:54):
every week. The howling, hysterical, murderous threats of Trump and
pond scum like Stephen Miller and Derek Van Orden should
not give anyone pause. It should give them inspiration to
realize this hit home perfectly and to make videos like
that once a week. We need six more democratic national
(27:15):
office holders with international experience to now make the video
about Putin and the need for regime change in Russia
and threats to India. We need six more democratic national
office holders who have served with American units in foreign
countries relying on local help to make that video about
how John Ratcliffe has betrayed our allies in advance by
(27:36):
agreeing to throw everybody out from Afghanistan because one guy
went crazy. We need six more democratic national office holders who,
unlike Trump, have both read and sworn to uphold the
Constitution to make that video about how Trump's threat to
kill the first six is a violation of everything this
country's ever stood for, and how it demands his legal
(27:58):
removal from office as quickly as possible. We need a
shadow democratic government in this country now, Not merely to
advance democratic electoral goals, not merely to afford our citizens
of breath of fresh air of reality from people who
are not spectacularly stupid and lost and all seem stoned
(28:20):
out of their gords. We need a shadow government in
this country for more than one reason, and one reason
more than any other, because the official government of this
country isn't any good at anything anymore. Now, for the
(28:43):
view of the competent people. Here is Senator also of
interest here, Yes, there was somebody out there rationalizing Trump
falling asleep at last week's cabinet meeting ten times. Because
seventy nine year old men do that, it's not unusual,
he says. Only this guy rationalizing that is a man
who is still poisoning CNN every day and America every
(29:06):
day with advertisements for his own book, which was about
the mental acuity of Joe Biden. Yes, Jake Tapper, the
worst person in the world. Next, George Caroling, A pleasure
to have you here. Thank you. This is the best
news show ever. I toilet to one of your producers,
(29:27):
and I want you to know that I've seen them
all and it's just for especially the first thirty five minutes.
Thank you. So it's just unparalleled. I got bad news
between you and I. We got six minutes to completely
spred that in. Yeah, that's good. Still ahead on this
(30:00):
all new edition of Countdown. Here we go again. Another
sports team owner is claiming his franchise is not actually profitable.
Usually this is what you would think. It would be bullshit.
As I will explain, there's a great history story about
this in the LA Dodgers, but it requires a special
degree of bullshittitude to try to sell it today in
(30:23):
twenty twenty five, when the team you own is the
New York Yankees on the verge of going out of business?
Are you a house time runner gonna have to reuse
last year's uniforms dipshit next first? Believe it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens.
(30:45):
You've got to today's other worst versus the world, the
Bronze Worse Vince Schlomy. That name rang a distant cord.
Think back, harken back, the Shamwaw Guy, the slap chop Guy,
(31:07):
the Carnival Barker used to sell the Shammis and slap
chop crap items in these high speed, breakneck straight to
TV pitches with double entendres and complaints about he could
could keep this up all day, and everybody laughed because
it really was a great stick until until Vin Shlomi
was arrested in Miami Beach in two thousand and nine
(31:29):
after a fight with a lady of the evening who
he said bit his tongue and wouldn't let go. I
guess because he couldn't keep that up all day either. Well,
guess what Vin Shlomy's doing now, Yes, sir, you got it.
He has filed to run for the House of Representatives
(31:50):
No in this country from Texas as a Republican to
destroy wokeism memory of Charlie Kirk. I mean, you laugh,
(32:12):
But right now, who would make more sense as Speaker
of the House, Mike Johnson or the slap chop guy,
the runner up worser our perpetual heroine, Barry Weiss, The
new boss of CBS News is running out of talent.
There was an old Mary Tyler Moore episode which I
(32:34):
really enjoyed when it first came out. It's still very funny,
in which Lou Grant tells her as the assistant news
director at WJMTV in Minnesota, tells her to fire the
newscaster and replace him with a sportscaster rather and replace
him with a new sportscaster. And she fires the sportscaster,
and then there's nobody to do the sports, and she
(32:55):
can't find a new sportscaster, and all the other candidates
are worse and lou says to her, Finally, Hey, this
is the advice I thought you didn't need. Never fire
your old sportscaster until you've hired your new sportscaster. Got
to laugh around my offices for thirty years easily. Well, Sir,
(33:19):
Barry Weise didn't hear that one. Barry Weise didn't see
that episode of Mary Tyler Moore. I doubt Barry Weiss
knows who the hell Mary Tyler Moore was. Mary Tyler
Moore was successful. John Dickerson has already walked out as
co anchor of the CBS Evening News. Now my friend,
certainly acquaintance, acquaintance, friend for acquaintance, Maurice Dubois is also gone.
(33:43):
He's leaving. So who Barry? Who anchors the CBS Evening News.
You've run out of anchors. You have fired your anchors
of the CBS Evening News before you have hired your
new anchors of Never fire your anchor of the CBS
Evening News before you hire your new anchor of the
CBS Evening News. Who are you gonna get the slap
(34:04):
chop guy? I'm sorry he's busy running for Congress because
he can't do this all day. What are you gonna get, Barry,
But this some turd ghost of Walter kronk Kite, CBS
News run. I suffice and survive on the taste of
human brain s Walter Cronkite, CBS News. But our winner
(34:28):
even worse than all that, Jake Tapper still at CNN,
where the audience is now approaching from a downwards direction,
like the coyote and the roadrunner and the coyote thing.
It is now approaching downwards what we had there in
terms of an audience when I got to CNN at
(34:49):
the end of year one in nineteen eighty one. No,
it wasn't in black and white because they hadn't invented
color TV yet. You may recall that Jake Tapper refused
to fact check Trump during the Trump Biden debate last year,
thus putting his thumb on the scale for Trump. And
they had all sorts of wonderful rationalizations for it, but
(35:12):
they put their thumbs on the scale. I think that
was his thumb. Then Jake wrote a book about Biden's frailty,
and he spent the first half of this year selling
it on CNN in the middle of the news every
fourteen seconds or so old, flailing lost, old flailing lost,
(35:34):
old flailing lost even after he was no longer president,
and the guy in the office was old and flailing
and lost. So after last week's three hour Trump cabinet
meeting where Trump kept falling asleep, Jake Tapper tried for
quite a while to mock Trump and mock the trumpest
explanation that he was just keeping his eyes closed so
he could concentrate on what the speaker was saying. And
(35:58):
then Jake ran out of bullshit, He ran out of
the ability to try to be neutral. Jake Tapper showed
his real colors. He's seventy nine years old, Jake Tapper said, earnestly,
this is not abnormal for a seventy nine year old
to be sleeping. Jake, your horror, Jake, and a hypocritical one.
(36:23):
Tapper Today's other worst person in the to the number
one story on the countdown, Here we go again. It's
(36:44):
a tradition as old as the business itself. But more
to our purposes, it is a story as old as
the business of sports itself. The owner of a sports franchise,
a troubled young man named hal Steinbrenner, wants you to
believe that the franchise he owns may not have made
a profit last year. The franchise is called the New
(37:04):
York Yankees. And if the New York Yankees did not
make a profit last year, major League Baseball should just
go the hell out of business right now. Stop wasting
all that money on the electricity bill to put the
lights on in the stadiums. If it's that bad, just
go away, which it's not. Years ago, the Yankees banned
(37:28):
me when I suggested that all that Hal Steinbrenner had
in common with his father, my friend, George Steinbrenner, was
his ability to get angry instead of smart, which his
father did occasionally, but which Hal does all the damn time.
I suggested that to be certain, at least for me
to be certain that how was George's son, I would
need to see a paternity test. Well I still haven't
(37:51):
seen it. And the Yankees being the Yankees, I have
not been back at Yankee Stadium where they made me pay,
because I will not pay them again. Been back to
work a couple of times. If I never go there
again in my life, it's their loss. A reporter suggested
recently to hal Steinbrenner, that Forbes magazine had calculated that
while the Yankees' player payroll was over three hundred million dollars,
(38:14):
their revenues were over seven hundred million dollars. Is it fair,
the reporter asked, to assume the Yankees made a profit
last season. No, it's not fair, actually, Hal said, in
that wonderfully charming way of his. So you lost money
or you broke even I don't get into it, but
that's not a fair statement or an accurate statement, okay,
(38:39):
Hal sure. Forbes put the value of the franchise that
his dad paid. It was actually about seven million. They
bumped it up to make the seller's CBS look a
little bit better, about seven million in nineteen seventy two,
very little of it his own money. Forbes put the
value now of that franchise that dad paid seven million
for a little over half a century ago, at five
(39:02):
and one quarter billion dollars as if twenty twenty one. Now,
Forbes says the Yankees are worth eight point two billion.
That's almost three billion more than just four years ago.
And I can't even do the math relatives of the
price from nineteen seventy two seven million, eight point two billion.
(39:22):
It's like eleveny billion times more, three billion more than
four years ago. How but no, you didn't make money
last year. How is that possible? Well, because accounting can
make the money do everything except stand up and sing
the score from Hamilton, and sometimes the accounting doesn't even
have to be creative. I found this out decades ago
(39:44):
when I worked local TV sports in LA. And this
story is second hand, but I'm pretty sure Gil Stratton
told it to me. And Gil was gold. If you've
ever seen the movie Stalog seventeen, and if you have it,
you should like right now. Gil played William Holden's right
hand man, Cookie, and Gil narrates the film too. And
he was in the Wild One with Marlon Brando, and
(40:06):
he co starred on Broadway with Judy Garland. And Gil
was a baseball umpire and Gil was the number one
TV sportscaster in LA from nineteen fifty four to about
nineteen seventy five. And he stayed on the air so
long that eventually he worked with me and then for me,
and he never complained about that once loved the business,
loved doing it, and he knew everything that had ever
(40:28):
happened in Los Angeles in a city that almost deliberately
erases its past as quickly as possible. Gil was one
of those living history books, and I always tell this
one story of his whenever a sports owner or commissioner
says his team or league lost money. After some research,
(40:49):
it turns out the year of the story has to
have been nineteen sixty four. From the details in the anecdote,
we know the Dodgers had won the World Series the
year before, but had not been in the Pennant Race
in the year in question, so that had to be
nineteen sixty eight or early. Because one of the three
men in the story, the Dodgers vice president, Fresco Thompson,
passed away on November thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight. So the
(41:13):
nineteen sixty four season, which it has to be, ends
at Dodgers Stadium fifty eight years ago this week, late
on the afternoon of Sunday, October fourth. The Dodgers have
just won, but it's not enough to save them from
a losing season. Eighty and eighty two, just under fourteen
thousand people have paid to get in, which means two million,
two hundred and twenty eight thousand, and seven hundred and
(41:35):
fifty one souls have dropped some cash into the till
of the infamous Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. That was a
lot of fans in nineteen sixty four. The stench of
Walter O'Malley reeks through history. He is still the villain
in sports in New York City, where he moved the
Brooklyn Dodgers out, something from which the borough of Brooklyn
(41:57):
has never recovered, even though the historical record is pretty
clear that the Dodgers did have an attendance problem in Brooklyn,
and the City of New York did not think it
was worth it to merely sell O'Malley the land he
thought was ideal for a sports stadium. O'Malley was right
about the land. The land is now where they put
the Barclays Center, an arena at public expense. O'Malley wanted
(42:19):
to pay for his building himself. Anyway, back to nineteen
sixty four, a sixth place Dodger season has just ended,
and either that day or the next day or the
day after that, fifty eight years ago this week, one
of the three men who basically run the franchise, vice
president and general manager, Buzzy Bavesi, leans in through the
doorway of Walter O'Malley's office in Dodger Stadium, where the
(42:42):
man who got rich for closing on mortgages during the depression,
including the mortgage on the Dodgers. That's how he became
the owner. He is, as usual, sitting behind his desk,
thumbing through accountant's ledgers, smoking a large cigar and using
a long plastic holder. See it the winter meetings. Boss
(43:02):
O'Malley never looks up from his financial books. At least
we had a decent fiscal year, I mean with Kofax,
Hurd and all. Now O'Malley looks up and he growls,
why do you mean dacent fiscal year? We lost two
million dollars. Walter O'Malley does not now have to tell
Buzzy Bavasi to leave his office, because Buzzy Bavasi feels
(43:24):
as if he has just been shot. We lost two
million dollars, he thinks to himself, we lost two million dollars.
Two million dollars. The hallway of the executive offices of
the Dodgers on the Loge level of Dodger Stadium swirls
around him. Two million. Just four years earlier, when baseball
had sold the rights to put an expansion franchise in
(43:47):
that same city, Los Angeles, to Gene Autry. The price
had been two million, one hundred thousand dollars. Two million
was literally the price of a Major League baseball franchise
in the early sixties. Buzzy Bavasi staggered down the hallway.
The sweat poured from every part of his body. His
vision blurred, and he found it difficult to breathe. He
(44:09):
almost fell into the open doorway of the third man
who ran the Dodgers, the other senior vice president, Fresco Thompson.
Buzz Fresco said, with considerable alarm, you okay, Buzzy Ravesei
barely croaked the word no, but the rest of the
sentence he fairly shouted. O'Malley just told me we lost
two million dollars this year. Fresco Thompson laughed, And now
(44:35):
Vivasi's terror turned to anger. What the hell are you
laughing at two million? We lost two million? Don't you
know what this means? We'll have to fire everybody. We'll
have to trade kofax. At least we have to trade
morey wills, which two million, and we lost two million
and now the worst suddenly occurs to Buzzy Vesi. Jesus Fresco,
(44:59):
He's gonna fire one of us, isn't he? Ravesi had
not noticed Fresco's Thompson laughter, growing you Italian idiot, Bavasi.
Only Fresco Thompson did not say, Italian, how long you
been working for this guy O'Malley. Bavesi spit out the
answer nineteen fifty. Thompson calmly replied, Ah, yeah, nearly as
(45:20):
long as I have, and you still haven't figured him out.
Buzzy VSI was lost. The franchise was teetering on bankruptcy
in front of their eyes, but Thompson was focused, for
some reason, on how long they had each known Walter O'Malley.
They were all about to get fired by Walter O'Malley Fresco.
Thompson stood up and put his arm around his still
(45:40):
shaken colleague. When O'Malley says we lost two million this year,
buzz what that greedy bastard means is last year, when
we won the World Series, we made a profit of
six million dollars. This year, when we finished in sixth place,
(46:02):
we only made a profit of four million dollars. So
in his mind, that means this year we lost two million.
We didn't lose two million, we made four million. So
the next time you hear the owner of a sports
franchise or the commissioner of a sports league tell you
(46:24):
it or he has quote lost unquote eleventy billion dollars,
just remember this is almost always Walter O'Malley math, and
it only means that's how much lower this year's phenomenal
profits are compared to last year's phenomenal profits. I've done
(46:57):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Most of our Countdown music was a arrange produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel. Our musical
directors have Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mister
Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister
Schanel handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
(47:19):
The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis Curtesy of ESPN is the sports music Why I
didn't use it? Just now with the George and hal
Steinbrenner story I don't know sorry. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
was from an interview I did in two thousand and
(47:39):
eight with the late, great, immortal George Carlin. Everything else was,
as always my fault. Let's countdown for today. Day three
hundred and twenty two of America held hostage again, but
just forty one days until the scheduled end of Trump's
lane doc and lame brained term unless he is removed
sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or the next mystery MRI,
(48:05):
or he drops a FIFA piece trophy on his own
head who knows what he put the metal on himself
till the next edition. I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production
(48:42):
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. It's
not just simple gas lighting about the price of gas.
(00:27):
It is neurological disintegration. It is obsessive repetition of the
same lie, and the most terrifying part of all, Trump
seems to be unaware that he is presenting this as
something brand new, as if it were the first time,
when in fact he blurts out in shock and excited
surprise this same goddamn thing an average of once every
(00:52):
two weeks, and still thinks it's the first time. Saturday
on social media, gasoline hit a dollar in ninety nine
a gallon yesterday in certain states. Since the seventeenth of April.
This is the fourteenth time he has claimed as if
it were true, but more importantly, as if it were
breaking news, the gas just hit dollar ninety eight or
(01:17):
dollar ninety nine, fourteen separate times, and each time he
has been expecting the world to share his surprise. It's
the goddamned Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore movie Fifty First Dates,
where she has no short term memory and every day
she forgets that they're dating. Only this is the President
(01:38):
of the United States, not Drew effing Barrymore, and every
day or nearly every day, he forgets where the f
he is and what the f just happened, even about
the price of gas. April seventeenth. Quote, you have gasoline
that hit a dollar ninety eight yesterday in a couple
of states. April eighteenth. The next day literally already forgot.
(02:02):
Quote gasoline in three states hit a dollar ninety eight
a gallon. April twenty second. Quote. I see that we
had a couple of states where gasoline was at a
dollar ninety eight a gallon. April twenty third. Gasoline is
less than two dollars a gallon in Alabama. May second. Quote,
gasoline just broke a dollar ninety eight a gallon, lowest
in years. May nineteenth. Quote they're buying gasoline now for
(02:27):
a dollar ninety nine. And by the way, they had
asked him about cutting snap benefits. July first quote, gasoline
just hit a dollar ninety nine in five states. July first,
minutes later, quote we just hit in five states a
dollar ninety nine. A dollar ninety eight. July ninth. Quote,
there's two states, three states that we're selling gasoline at
(02:49):
a dollar ninety nine. You haven't seen that for a
long time. July twenty second on Twitter, quote we hit
a dollar ninety nine a gallon today in five different states.
That got a community note. Then something happen. Happened, nothing
until October twenty ninth, And on October twenty ninth, quote,
(03:10):
we're going to see two dollars gasoline pretty soon. November sixth,
quote we're almost two dollars for gasoline. December second, quote
a dollar ninety nine in some places, we're going to
be I think at two dollars a gallon. We could
even crack that at some point. And then December sixth, Saturday,
back to gasoline, just hit a dollar ninety nine, like
(03:33):
he hadn't mentioned it fourteen times in twenty eight weeks.
So what about that brief pass by of reality between
July twenty second and October twenty ninth where he got
a vague idea that what he'd been saying or thinking
about a dollar ninety eight a gallon of gas was
(03:54):
not reality when his broken brain apparently reset and he
decided it had not happened yet, but he had new
breaking news that it would. I will point out reminding
you first of the logical fallacy about how event A
can happen and then event B can happen, And that
does not automatically mean event A caused event B. That
(04:15):
October twenty ninth was two and a half weeks after
his physical at Walter Reid with the MRI, and god
knows what else. But now he's got a giant patch
bandage above the veins on his right hand. Here we have,
in real time evidence of Trump's dementia, and I use
the term dementia generically. It could be any neurological crisis.
(04:37):
But here is a log of him saying the same
thing wildly untrue, mathematically off by roughly fifty percent of
not just saying it fourteen different times, but saying it
with the delight and surprise and pride and for him,
the sincerity of somebody who just found out the good news.
(04:58):
And that is a classical symptom of neurological collapse gas lighting. Yeah,
this is that rare occasion where it would be better
if this was just another one of his sleezy lies,
or another fourteen of his sleezy lies, like his unshakable
stupidity about political asylum being the same as insane asylum.
(05:22):
For once, it is not his deception that matters. It
is his personal conviction that it's new. It is a nightmare,
and it is proof that invoking the twenty fifth Amendment
is imperative and won't happen. It won't happen anymore than
Trump realizing he already told that lie about the price
(05:42):
of a gallon of gas will happen. And incidentally, they
(06:09):
have tracked down where the initial falsehood got into his
brain and took up residence there, surely as if it
were one of Bobby Kennedy's worms. In April, the oil
industry reported that the price of unblended gasoline as it
arrives in this country was you guessed at a dollar
ninety eight a gallon. Of course, you cannot put the
unblended gasoline in your car. It might blow up. The
(06:33):
blending that is required before that can happen. Putting it
in your car, that is, adds about a dollar per gallon.
So gasoline, in fact, had just hit two ninety eight
a gallon, But he heard a dollar ninety eight, and
it is there and brand new and exciting to him
every week and day since, which leads me to the question,
(06:56):
what's the price of pipe bombs these days. The FBI,
This FBI, His FBI arrests a guy for January fifth,
twenty twenty one's placement of pipe bombs at DNC and
RNC headquarters in Washington, and he reportedly is confessed and
is a twenty twenty election denier. And this was placed
somewhere behind the soccer World Efing Cup as a lead
(07:19):
news story, and the story had been sourced everywhere, from
NBC to CNN to Fox News. Not a deep state
plot who defunk it? Not a DC police officer slandered
by Glenn Beck's website, Not somebody made up fabricated by
the now FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. And this happens
(07:41):
at its crickets. If that had been anything but another
lunatic under the delusion that Trump actually won the twenty
twenty election that he lost, this would have been wall
to wall on every news organization in America trying to
suck up to Trump. But the media instead skated past
it like it didn't efing matter. And somehow Bongino still
(08:05):
in office rather than in jail, even though even Sean
Hannity called him out for his twenty twenty one lies
that this was anti Trump, or an inside job, or
a massive FBI cover up as massive as your hair.
Bungino Bongino proudly now says, quote, I was paid in
(08:26):
the past for my opinions. One day I'll be back
in that space. But that's not what I'm paid for now.
I'm paid to be your deputy director. And we base
investigations on facts. So formerly a lying whore, now not lying,
just a Trump horror and in the future a whore again.
And if we're going to put you in any space whatsoever,
(08:48):
can I suggest it be the space that contains the sun? Now,
please let me circle back briefly to Trump's brain Washington
post on what has become the airplane hangar he is
building next to the White House. Quote. On Tuesday, Trump
said during a cabinet meeting that the pile drivers operate
(09:10):
all night and have created a disagreement in his marriage.
The president says he loves the sound, while First Lady
Milania Trump has asked him to make the constant pounding stop,
a request he's denied. Sorry, darlin, that's progress. Trump said.
He told her, unquote, what was she on a zoom call?
(09:36):
Holy cow? The pile drivers operate all night. Just saying here,
but I bet that's the first time Trump and Millenia
have discussed pile driving in like eighteen years now. About
(10:00):
a couple of Smiths. Maybe the last chance to finally
punish for his treachery with Putin and Russia comes next week,
when Jack Smith is supposed to be grilled in closed
door testimony by the House Committee on however bullshit it
is this time? This is Jim Jordan's committee this time.
And whereas the Maga monkeys think Jim Jordan's gonna get
(10:21):
Smith on behalf of Vladimir Trump, I would think a
likelier outcome, maybe half of one percent, as Jordan winds
up incriminating himself in some way in the questions and
Smith finally puts him in jail. Anyway, Jack Smith, of
course is trying to get this all made public. He
may join a suit to make what he found public,
(10:45):
and he is certainly acting to try to make this
hearing in front of Congress public and on the record,
which of course would allow him to get in a
lot of the findings of his investigation into Trump's treachery
and any and all measures that could be taken to
enable that should be effected because there was, is and
will continue to be a conspiracy involving Donald Trump at
(11:07):
one end, and Russia and Russian intel and Russian leadership
at the other. There is all the hoax claims will
never erase this if Trump escapes justice, others will not.
The further away we get from Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump,
(11:27):
the more we understand that Merrick Garland we'll go down
in history as one of the great and most damaging
idiots in our history. I mean so damaging. He could
have been Trump's attorney general. It's slipped by this story
because there are only the twenty four hundred hours in
a Trumpest day. But the Carol Lennig book on Prosecuting
(11:52):
the Scumbag has all sorts of maddening details. If your
BP is high, skip this part. Yes, Smith did try
to get Eileen Cannon removed as the judge in Florida
in the document's case. I'll quote in August twenty twenty four,
as Smith and his team were finishing up their appeal
of Canon's ruling, he had also secretly concluded that Cannon
(12:16):
should be removed as the presiding judge. Smith presented the
appeal to Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Pretlonger for her approval,
as special Council regulations required. He also asked her if
he could seek to have Canon removed by the Appellate Court,
an unprecedented move for a special counsel. Smith's team believed
(12:36):
Cannon had made decisions that strained the law or bypassed precedent,
many of them favoring Trump. In one episode that had
surprised prosecutors. Canon issued a sealed order in August twenty
twenty three, launching an investigation into potential prosecutorial misconduct, citing
news reports. Canon did not specify what reports she was hearing,
(13:01):
but the day before her order, the conservative Fox News
to television program Life Liberty in Levin had featured a
Trump defense attorney accusing Smith's team of strong arm tactics,
the very tactics Cannon wanted to dig into the final
straw where Smith came when Cannon dismissed the case, citing
(13:22):
Thomas's non binding opinion. In other words, this all turned
on something that Mark Levin had on Fox. Preloger approved
the appeal of Cannon's ruling, but rejected Smith's plan to
seek the judge's removal, saying he didn't have a strong
enough basis to do so. Smith decided not to ask
(13:44):
Garland to overrule Preloger. If Smith had asked and Garland
then turned him down, the Justice Department would have been
required to notify Congress and the disagreement would surely have
become public. So that's why he didn't go to remove
Eileen Cannon, because he didn't know whether or not the
Attorney General of the Nied States was smart enough to
(14:06):
realize that they had a corrupt judge ruling on their case.
To them, the consequences of that becoming public were too risky.
I mean, that's where we ended. After we had started
the day of the Mary Lago search discovering the troves
of secret documents that Trump stole. In August twenty twenty two,
(14:29):
Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen was briefed about the appalling
crime and what the search produced, and again from Lennig
quote Olsen turned to his top Justice Department expert on
the mishandling of classified records, Julie Edelstein, to ask what
they should do next. She delivered a startling assessment. If
it was anybody else we would arrest him tomorrow, Edelstein said.
(14:53):
Knowingly taking classified documents outside of a secure government facility
was a crime, plain and simple, she explained. Trying to
conceal them after receiving a MA subpoena to return all
classified records as Trump had made the crime far worse,
she argued, But Olsen's team knew that with Trump all
(15:13):
bets were off. The Justice Department would invariably treat the
former president more gingerly. One more then we'll move on
to Smith Number two, The failure of Merrick Garland. It's
almost indescribably broad and far reaching. Garland watched Cassidy Hutchinson,
(15:40):
the courageous White House Aid at the January sixth hearings.
He watched on TV because why would he have pressed
to get her testimony? What was he? The Attorney General?
He had all the time in the world, after all,
and it turned out he had virtually none of the
smarts in the world. Lennegg reports. Merrick Garland turned to
a colleague as Cassidy Hutchinson told her story and asked
(16:06):
did we know about her? And the aid answered, now, sir, honestly,
the attempts to prosecute Jack Smith, and Komy and James
and the others are blights upon the history of human government.
But if Trump went after Merrick Garland and tried to
put him behind bars, I wouldn't lift a finger to
stop him. There is one item of hope with Jack Smith.
(16:31):
The watchdog group American Oversight got the Eleventh Circuit Court
of Appeals to confirm that the former Flamenco correspondent of
the Miami Nuevo Herald, Eileen Cannon, has been guilty of
an undue delay in ruling on the American Oversight suit
to force the release of volume two of the Jack
Smith Report, the Smoking Gun Book. The court has given
(16:55):
Cannon sixty days, which should be up right after the
new year. But of course Trump has moved to block
this because, after all, Eileen Cannon is his concierge, Judge,
she's an employee of his. Someday, now about the other
Smith anybody remember Jill Stein, Chase, Oliver Cornell West, Robert F.
(17:23):
Kennedy Junior. Has he been in as has Robert Has
rfk Junior been in the news at all lately? Any
of the other assholes who ran or pretended to run
for president as nominal liberals or democrats in twenty sixteen
or twenty or twenty four. I mean, remember that Kennedy
claimed to be a democrat and a human being. And
(17:45):
there were, of course all funded by conservative groups and
lunatics and even groups with direct ties to Trump and Maga.
Remember the spoilers, the stalking horses, the true enemies of democracy.
I think the first twenty twenty eight version of them
is now among us, warming up in the bullpen. And
(18:07):
his name is Stephen A. Smith. Smith as in Jack Smith,
but without the you know, ethics or patriotism you have
heard here and elsewhere. That Stephen A. Smith is running
one of those campaigns to get people to convince him
to run for the president because there's nobody else. Oh
(18:29):
if I have to owe Okay. He has been doing
this for many months now on his hilariously knowledge free
political podcast and on the hilariously sheep in Sheep's Clothing
conservative channel that claims to be a neutral news nation,
the Nick at Night of Old Newscasters, And he's been
(18:53):
doing this with multiple appearances on the show of his
own friend Jean Hemmity. Now just that should be enough
to dismiss any notion. Anybody might that Stephen A. Smith
is a liberal, or has an IQ in three digits,
or is a democrat, or is anything but a tool.
(19:13):
I think, and this is a hunch, I think he
is a tool or maybe a tool of more right
wing funders looking to throw out a spoiler. I mean,
think about it. Stephen A. Smith is a maga billionaire's
idea of somebody who would appeal to left wing voters,
but happily for democracy. Steven A. Smith is a moron.
(19:38):
The ESPN Act works on ESPN because honestly, it's a
pretty good act. I say, this is somebody who used
to have a pretty good act on ESPN. Ultimately, no
matter what the act is, whether it's sincerity and intelligence
and witty, brilliant humor, or it's Stephen A. Smith, how
(19:59):
often is it important? Once a year maybe I say,
this is frankly one of the pillars of ESPN's history.
That was the point we were there when it mattered,
and also the other three hundred and sixty four days
of the year. So he does the same bit the
(20:21):
ESPN Act on Hannity's show the other day, but about
politics and announces he has breaking news and has one
critic on Twitter noted with evident astonishment. Probably never saw
him on ESPN. Then he gave an opinion. Yeah, yeah,
that's steven A All all in one motion. Is it
(20:42):
an act? No, steven A Smith no longer knows that
there is a difference between breaking news and his opinion. Happily,
steven A. Smith is a moron, and he's also mailing
this politics stuff in. He just is not doing the
work clearly. I mean, you can criticize him for lots
(21:04):
of stuff. I've known him twenty years and we'd always
gotten along well enough until he decided to become a
political prostitute like this. But you know, for all my
criticisms of him, he rarely just gets basic sports facts wrong.
He knows the the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia in
the sixties. He knows that he gets like one political
(21:29):
fact wrong per hour. It's hilarious. So after some nonsense
speech to Hannity the other night about how Gavin Newsom
can't win unless he goes to the middle because roe
Canna quick asks Stephen who roe Canna is, steven A
announced that Newsom can't win because of Hannity, because Newsom
(21:51):
went on Hannity's show when Newsom, as you will recall
debated Ron Santis unquote asumably that's what Stephen A. Thinks.
The name of the governor of Florida is Ron Santis.
(22:12):
Leave off the duh for I don't know diminutive, it's
Steven It's Ron.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Duh Santis duh as in duh.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Clearly, Stephen A. Smith has conflated Ron du Santis and
Baseball Hall of Famer Ron Santo, and for good measure,
disgraced ex Congressman George Santos as well. Hell throw in
Simpson's character Santos l helper christ if sports Stephen A. Smith.
(22:54):
We're doing one of his phony debate shows with politics,
Stephen A. Smith. There would be nothing left of politics,
Stephen A. Smith, but a tip on the bill for
dinner of one and a half percent, Which reminds me
(23:16):
that we have not just entered a time in which
Trump's utter deficiency on the world stage has begun to
harm individual Americans in America and make people think Steven A. Smith, Oh,
maybe he could be president of the United States. Yeah,
the rest of us are dead. It's always that way.
Trump's conviction that he only understands anything when he doesn't
(23:38):
even know what an MRI is for has always been there.
He's kind of Stupidity doesn't just happen. It has to
be nurtured and grown for years or decades, like a
colony of termites. But it is appearing now on multiple fronts,
and there has to be some sort of official, formal,
seemingly meaningless but actually deeply meaningful response. And when Trump's
(24:00):
special representative to the Ukraine Russia crisis is another imbecile
named Whitcaw I believe his first name is half turns
out to be carrying water, not even for Trump, but
for Putin. The termites are at the front door, and
they're standing on each other's shoulders and hitting the doorbell.
If Putin says he cannot sign a deal with Ukraine
(24:20):
because he doesn't believe the government of Ukraine is legitimate,
someone from this country has to stand up and tell
him that he has no choice, and if he refuses,
we will use all measures to starve him and his
country into the ground. And if India buys oil from
him to keep him afloat, we will starve India into
the ground. There's lots of things we can do to
destabilize those governments. We must treat him as Marco Rubio
(24:44):
dreams of treating Maduro of Venezuela. We must see not
the leader of some other superpower, but we must see
Putin for what he is, a desperate dictator of a
dissolving country that has bounced its last payroll checks to
its soldiers. We should have not a Marco Rubio, but
somebody in his place who can recognize that enough pressure,
(25:04):
just verbal pressure, applied in the right place, and that
unpaid Russian military might very well decide to remove Putin
on its own. So we damn well better get that
message out to them, and to Putin and to the
rest of America. We the sane people. We need to
get the message out as loudly and quickly as possible.
(25:25):
And of course we can't officially. The Trump government is
not an American government. It is corrupt beyond redemption. It
is influenced, manipulated, controlled, owned by others who are not
in this country. And so since we can't until and
unless the Democrats amass enough of a legislative majority to
(25:47):
impeach and remove this glowing orange turd, and the even
dumber people around him until that point. We need what
we do not have, which is a structure akin to
the British opposition shadow government. The Conservatives in Britain have
a shadow Defense Minister, a shadow Chancellor and senior shadow
(26:10):
leaders who can at a moment's notice articulate their party's
vision of foreign or domestic policy. When something big happens,
you hear from the government, and then you hear from
the shadow spokesman or the shadow secretary of whatever. We
need that. That is why the support given to America's
(26:32):
service members who have faced or will face illegal orders
from a corrupt and lawless commander in chief and his
moron secretary of Defense, the support from the six members
of the House and Senate. That should not be the
end of that. That should be the template. There should
be a show half an hour of that six Democrats
(26:54):
every week. The howling, hysterical, murderous threats of Trump and
pond scum like Stephen Miller and Derek Van Orden should
not give anyone pause. It should give them inspiration to
realize this hit home perfectly and to make videos like
that once a week. We need six more democratic national
(27:15):
office holders with international experience to now make the video
about Putin and the need for regime change in Russia
and threats to India. We need six more democratic national
office holders who have served with American units in foreign
countries relying on local help to make that video about
how John Ratcliffe has betrayed our allies in advance by
(27:36):
agreeing to throw everybody out from Afghanistan because one guy
went crazy. We need six more democratic national office holders who,
unlike Trump, have both read and sworn to uphold the
Constitution to make that video about how Trump's threat to
kill the first six is a violation of everything this
country's ever stood for, and how it demands his legal
(27:58):
removal from office as quickly as possible. We need a
shadow democratic government in this country now, Not merely to
advance democratic electoral goals, not merely to afford our citizens
of breath of fresh air of reality from people who
are not spectacularly stupid and lost and all seem stoned
(28:20):
out of their gords. We need a shadow government in
this country for more than one reason, and one reason
more than any other, because the official government of this
country isn't any good at anything anymore. Now, for the
(28:43):
view of the competent people. Here is Senator also of
interest here, Yes, there was somebody out there rationalizing Trump
falling asleep at last week's cabinet meeting ten times. Because
seventy nine year old men do that, it's not unusual,
he says. Only this guy rationalizing that is a man
who is still poisoning CNN every day and America every
(29:06):
day with advertisements for his own book, which was about
the mental acuity of Joe Biden. Yes, Jake Tapper, the
worst person in the world. Next, George Caroling, A pleasure
to have you here. Thank you. This is the best
news show ever. I toilet to one of your producers,
(29:27):
and I want you to know that I've seen them
all and it's just for especially the first thirty five minutes.
Thank you. So it's just unparalleled. I got bad news
between you and I. We got six minutes to completely
spred that in. Yeah, that's good. Still ahead on this
(30:00):
all new edition of Countdown. Here we go again. Another
sports team owner is claiming his franchise is not actually profitable.
Usually this is what you would think. It would be bullshit.
As I will explain, there's a great history story about
this in the LA Dodgers, but it requires a special
degree of bullshittitude to try to sell it today in
(30:23):
twenty twenty five, when the team you own is the
New York Yankees on the verge of going out of business?
Are you a house time runner gonna have to reuse
last year's uniforms dipshit next first? Believe it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens.
(30:45):
You've got to today's other worst versus the world, the
Bronze Worse Vince Schlomy. That name rang a distant cord.
Think back, harken back, the Shamwaw Guy, the slap chop Guy,
(31:07):
the Carnival Barker used to sell the Shammis and slap
chop crap items in these high speed, breakneck straight to
TV pitches with double entendres and complaints about he could
could keep this up all day, and everybody laughed because
it really was a great stick until until Vin Shlomi
was arrested in Miami Beach in two thousand and nine
(31:29):
after a fight with a lady of the evening who
he said bit his tongue and wouldn't let go. I
guess because he couldn't keep that up all day either. Well,
guess what Vin Shlomy's doing now, Yes, sir, you got it.
He has filed to run for the House of Representatives
(31:50):
No in this country from Texas as a Republican to
destroy wokeism memory of Charlie Kirk. I mean, you laugh,
(32:12):
But right now, who would make more sense as Speaker
of the House, Mike Johnson or the slap chop guy,
the runner up worser our perpetual heroine, Barry Weiss, The
new boss of CBS News is running out of talent.
There was an old Mary Tyler Moore episode which I
(32:34):
really enjoyed when it first came out. It's still very funny,
in which Lou Grant tells her as the assistant news
director at WJMTV in Minnesota, tells her to fire the
newscaster and replace him with a sportscaster rather and replace
him with a new sportscaster. And she fires the sportscaster,
and then there's nobody to do the sports, and she
(32:55):
can't find a new sportscaster, and all the other candidates
are worse and lou says to her, Finally, Hey, this
is the advice I thought you didn't need. Never fire
your old sportscaster until you've hired your new sportscaster. Got
to laugh around my offices for thirty years easily. Well, Sir,
(33:19):
Barry Weise didn't hear that one. Barry Weise didn't see
that episode of Mary Tyler Moore. I doubt Barry Weiss
knows who the hell Mary Tyler Moore was. Mary Tyler
Moore was successful. John Dickerson has already walked out as
co anchor of the CBS Evening News. Now my friend,
certainly acquaintance, acquaintance, friend for acquaintance, Maurice Dubois is also gone.
(33:43):
He's leaving. So who Barry? Who anchors the CBS Evening News.
You've run out of anchors. You have fired your anchors
of the CBS Evening News before you have hired your
new anchors of Never fire your anchor of the CBS
Evening News before you hire your new anchor of the
CBS Evening News. Who are you gonna get the slap
(34:04):
chop guy? I'm sorry he's busy running for Congress because
he can't do this all day. What are you gonna get, Barry,
But this some turd ghost of Walter kronk Kite, CBS
News run. I suffice and survive on the taste of
human brain s Walter Cronkite, CBS News. But our winner
(34:28):
even worse than all that, Jake Tapper still at CNN,
where the audience is now approaching from a downwards direction,
like the coyote and the roadrunner and the coyote thing.
It is now approaching downwards what we had there in
terms of an audience when I got to CNN at
(34:49):
the end of year one in nineteen eighty one. No,
it wasn't in black and white because they hadn't invented
color TV yet. You may recall that Jake Tapper refused
to fact check Trump during the Trump Biden debate last year,
thus putting his thumb on the scale for Trump. And
they had all sorts of wonderful rationalizations for it, but
(35:12):
they put their thumbs on the scale. I think that
was his thumb. Then Jake wrote a book about Biden's frailty,
and he spent the first half of this year selling
it on CNN in the middle of the news every
fourteen seconds or so old, flailing lost, old flailing lost,
(35:34):
old flailing lost even after he was no longer president,
and the guy in the office was old and flailing
and lost. So after last week's three hour Trump cabinet
meeting where Trump kept falling asleep, Jake Tapper tried for
quite a while to mock Trump and mock the trumpest
explanation that he was just keeping his eyes closed so
he could concentrate on what the speaker was saying. And
(35:58):
then Jake ran out of bullshit, He ran out of
the ability to try to be neutral. Jake Tapper showed
his real colors. He's seventy nine years old, Jake Tapper said, earnestly,
this is not abnormal for a seventy nine year old
to be sleeping. Jake, your horror, Jake, and a hypocritical one.
(36:23):
Tapper Today's other worst person in the to the number
one story on the countdown, Here we go again. It's
(36:44):
a tradition as old as the business itself. But more
to our purposes, it is a story as old as
the business of sports itself. The owner of a sports franchise,
a troubled young man named hal Steinbrenner, wants you to
believe that the franchise he owns may not have made
a profit last year. The franchise is called the New
(37:04):
York Yankees. And if the New York Yankees did not
make a profit last year, major League Baseball should just
go the hell out of business right now. Stop wasting
all that money on the electricity bill to put the
lights on in the stadiums. If it's that bad, just
go away, which it's not. Years ago, the Yankees banned
(37:28):
me when I suggested that all that Hal Steinbrenner had
in common with his father, my friend, George Steinbrenner, was
his ability to get angry instead of smart, which his
father did occasionally, but which Hal does all the damn time.
I suggested that to be certain, at least for me
to be certain that how was George's son, I would
need to see a paternity test. Well I still haven't
(37:51):
seen it. And the Yankees being the Yankees, I have
not been back at Yankee Stadium where they made me pay,
because I will not pay them again. Been back to
work a couple of times. If I never go there
again in my life, it's their loss. A reporter suggested
recently to hal Steinbrenner, that Forbes magazine had calculated that
while the Yankees' player payroll was over three hundred million dollars,
(38:14):
their revenues were over seven hundred million dollars. Is it fair,
the reporter asked, to assume the Yankees made a profit
last season. No, it's not fair, actually, Hal said, in
that wonderfully charming way of his. So you lost money
or you broke even I don't get into it, but
that's not a fair statement or an accurate statement, okay,
(38:39):
Hal sure. Forbes put the value of the franchise that
his dad paid. It was actually about seven million. They
bumped it up to make the seller's CBS look a
little bit better, about seven million in nineteen seventy two,
very little of it his own money. Forbes put the
value now of that franchise that dad paid seven million
for a little over half a century ago, at five
(39:02):
and one quarter billion dollars as if twenty twenty one. Now,
Forbes says the Yankees are worth eight point two billion.
That's almost three billion more than just four years ago.
And I can't even do the math relatives of the
price from nineteen seventy two seven million, eight point two billion.
(39:22):
It's like eleveny billion times more, three billion more than
four years ago. How but no, you didn't make money
last year. How is that possible? Well, because accounting can
make the money do everything except stand up and sing
the score from Hamilton, and sometimes the accounting doesn't even
have to be creative. I found this out decades ago
(39:44):
when I worked local TV sports in LA. And this
story is second hand, but I'm pretty sure Gil Stratton
told it to me. And Gil was gold. If you've
ever seen the movie Stalog seventeen, and if you have it,
you should like right now. Gil played William Holden's right
hand man, Cookie, and Gil narrates the film too. And
he was in the Wild One with Marlon Brando, and
(40:06):
he co starred on Broadway with Judy Garland. And Gil
was a baseball umpire and Gil was the number one
TV sportscaster in LA from nineteen fifty four to about
nineteen seventy five. And he stayed on the air so
long that eventually he worked with me and then for me,
and he never complained about that once loved the business,
loved doing it, and he knew everything that had ever
(40:28):
happened in Los Angeles in a city that almost deliberately
erases its past as quickly as possible. Gil was one
of those living history books, and I always tell this
one story of his whenever a sports owner or commissioner
says his team or league lost money. After some research,
(40:49):
it turns out the year of the story has to
have been nineteen sixty four. From the details in the anecdote,
we know the Dodgers had won the World Series the
year before, but had not been in the Pennant Race
in the year in question, so that had to be
nineteen sixty eight or early. Because one of the three
men in the story, the Dodgers vice president, Fresco Thompson,
passed away on November thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight. So the
(41:13):
nineteen sixty four season, which it has to be, ends
at Dodgers Stadium fifty eight years ago this week, late
on the afternoon of Sunday, October fourth. The Dodgers have
just won, but it's not enough to save them from
a losing season. Eighty and eighty two, just under fourteen
thousand people have paid to get in, which means two million,
two hundred and twenty eight thousand, and seven hundred and
(41:35):
fifty one souls have dropped some cash into the till
of the infamous Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. That was a
lot of fans in nineteen sixty four. The stench of
Walter O'Malley reeks through history. He is still the villain
in sports in New York City, where he moved the
Brooklyn Dodgers out, something from which the borough of Brooklyn
(41:57):
has never recovered, even though the historical record is pretty
clear that the Dodgers did have an attendance problem in Brooklyn,
and the City of New York did not think it
was worth it to merely sell O'Malley the land he
thought was ideal for a sports stadium. O'Malley was right
about the land. The land is now where they put
the Barclays Center, an arena at public expense. O'Malley wanted
(42:19):
to pay for his building himself. Anyway, back to nineteen
sixty four, a sixth place Dodger season has just ended,
and either that day or the next day or the
day after that, fifty eight years ago this week, one
of the three men who basically run the franchise, vice
president and general manager, Buzzy Bavesi, leans in through the
doorway of Walter O'Malley's office in Dodger Stadium, where the
(42:42):
man who got rich for closing on mortgages during the depression,
including the mortgage on the Dodgers. That's how he became
the owner. He is, as usual, sitting behind his desk,
thumbing through accountant's ledgers, smoking a large cigar and using
a long plastic holder. See it the winter meetings. Boss
(43:02):
O'Malley never looks up from his financial books. At least
we had a decent fiscal year, I mean with Kofax,
Hurd and all. Now O'Malley looks up and he growls,
why do you mean dacent fiscal year? We lost two
million dollars. Walter O'Malley does not now have to tell
Buzzy Bavasi to leave his office, because Buzzy Bavasi feels
(43:24):
as if he has just been shot. We lost two
million dollars, he thinks to himself, we lost two million dollars.
Two million dollars. The hallway of the executive offices of
the Dodgers on the Loge level of Dodger Stadium swirls
around him. Two million. Just four years earlier, when baseball
had sold the rights to put an expansion franchise in
(43:47):
that same city, Los Angeles, to Gene Autry. The price
had been two million, one hundred thousand dollars. Two million
was literally the price of a Major League baseball franchise
in the early sixties. Buzzy Bavasi staggered down the hallway.
The sweat poured from every part of his body. His
vision blurred, and he found it difficult to breathe. He
(44:09):
almost fell into the open doorway of the third man
who ran the Dodgers, the other senior vice president, Fresco Thompson.
Buzz Fresco said, with considerable alarm, you okay, Buzzy Ravesei
barely croaked the word no, but the rest of the
sentence he fairly shouted. O'Malley just told me we lost
two million dollars this year. Fresco Thompson laughed, And now
(44:35):
Vivasi's terror turned to anger. What the hell are you
laughing at two million? We lost two million? Don't you
know what this means? We'll have to fire everybody. We'll
have to trade kofax. At least we have to trade
morey wills, which two million, and we lost two million
and now the worst suddenly occurs to Buzzy Vesi. Jesus Fresco,
(44:59):
He's gonna fire one of us, isn't he? Ravesi had
not noticed Fresco's Thompson laughter, growing you Italian idiot, Bavasi.
Only Fresco Thompson did not say, Italian, how long you
been working for this guy O'Malley. Bavesi spit out the
answer nineteen fifty. Thompson calmly replied, Ah, yeah, nearly as
(45:20):
long as I have, and you still haven't figured him out.
Buzzy VSI was lost. The franchise was teetering on bankruptcy
in front of their eyes, but Thompson was focused, for
some reason, on how long they had each known Walter O'Malley.
They were all about to get fired by Walter O'Malley Fresco.
Thompson stood up and put his arm around his still
(45:40):
shaken colleague. When O'Malley says we lost two million this year,
buzz what that greedy bastard means is last year, when
we won the World Series, we made a profit of
six million dollars. This year, when we finished in sixth place,
(46:02):
we only made a profit of four million dollars. So
in his mind, that means this year we lost two million.
We didn't lose two million, we made four million. So
the next time you hear the owner of a sports
franchise or the commissioner of a sports league tell you
(46:24):
it or he has quote lost unquote eleventy billion dollars,
just remember this is almost always Walter O'Malley math, and
it only means that's how much lower this year's phenomenal
profits are compared to last year's phenomenal profits. I've done
(46:57):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Most of our Countdown music was a arrange produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel. Our musical
directors have Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mister
Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister
Schanel handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
(47:19):
The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis Curtesy of ESPN is the sports music Why I
didn't use it? Just now with the George and hal
Steinbrenner story I don't know sorry. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
was from an interview I did in two thousand and
(47:39):
eight with the late, great, immortal George Carlin. Everything else was,
as always my fault. Let's countdown for today. Day three
hundred and twenty two of America held hostage again, but
just forty one days until the scheduled end of Trump's
lane doc and lame brained term unless he is removed
sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or the next mystery MRI,
(48:05):
or he drops a FIFA piece trophy on his own
head who knows what he put the metal on himself
till the next edition. I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production
(48:42):
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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