October 23, 2025 • 55 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 27: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Today is the dawn of Trump’s new policy: destroy America. Literally.
Well, destroy part of the WHITE HOUSE – Literally. And steal $230 million from the government and pretend he’s going to give it to charity; AND give away 172 million dollars for two private jets for Kristi Noem; AND give Ukraine and eventually Europe to Putin, AND make America a one-party nation, AND get elected Democrats killed, AND destroy America. Literally.
Well, ok, describing this as Trump’s new policy to destroy, steal, give away AND get elected Democrats killed - that’s not ENTIRELY fair. Because it’s not really NEW. He has long tried to stochastically encourage violence against opponents, but now key minions like Tom Emmer and Tom Homan talk about the quote “terrorist wing” of the Democratic party, and, Presto! A January 6th traitor Trump personally pardoned tries to assassinate Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Looks like cause and effect to me.
Josh Marshall just invoked imagery I used in 2016 and he’s right: Trump has entered (actually RE-entered) the stage in which he is the omnipotent petulant child, Anthony, from the terrifying Twilight Zone episode “It’s A Good Life" who could destroy the world and kill people just by thinking it. Josh is right. I was right. Trump is now destroying just because it gives him something to do. And because in his psychosis it no longer matters whether he's constructing or deconstructing, it only matters that HE does it.
ALSO: The Democrats can stop self-flagellating. Party identification has now swung back away from the Republicans and the seven-point margin is nearly as big as the Dems' was in 2012. So let's focus instead on taking out the trash like Graham Platner. For 17 years or so, the populist Maine Democrat somehow didn't know that was a nazi tattoo on his chest, which I suppose is possible. But when it was going to come out, instead of going right to a tattoo parlor and holding a news conference explaining and apologizing as they turned it into something else, he released a drunken video and waited three days to (supposedly) actually fix the problem. He has no judgment. None. Get out.
B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Bob Iger and Disney didn't walk back the Jimmy Kimmel firing because of justice and the 1st Amendment. They did it because of a boycott. The Andrew Cuomo self-destruction tour continues as he confuses the New York Jets and the New York Mets. And The Washington Post columnist who said we'd be fine whether Hillary or Trump was elected is back with more stupidity.
C-Block (49:12) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This time of year, 51 years ago, I was about to sign up to go to Boston University when a radio student there gave me the inside story of the limitations undergrads faced. He talked me out of it. I was 15 and he was 20 and his name was Howard Stern.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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. Today
is the dawn of Trump's new policy destroy America literally well,
(00:33):
destroy the White House literally, and steal two hundred and
thirty million dollars literally from the government and pretend he's
going to give it to charity and give away one
hundred and seventy two million more dollars for two private
jets for Christy Nome and give Ukraine and eventually Europe
to putin and make America one party nation and get
(00:54):
elected democrats killed and destroy America literally. Well, okay, describing
this as Trump's new post policy to destroy steel, giveaway
and get elected democrats killed. Literally, that's not entirely fair
because it's not really new on the kill Democrats thing.
(01:16):
He's been sending out these stochastic signals to the psychopaths
and masochists and humanoids who support him since the day
he launched his candidacy for Dictator of the Universe and
Undeniable Supreme Being in twenty fifteen. But now he has
new allies like house Whip Tom Emmer, or as he
could be known Accessory before the fact. In the arrest
(01:39):
of Trump pardoned January sixth trader Christopher moynihan for allegedly
making a terroristic threat to quote eliminate House Minority Leader
a Keem Jeffries. And now Trump also has his own
mob of would be terrorists and killers and assassins out
there who are personally beholden to him because he pardoned
them when they tried to overthrow our form of government
(02:01):
and kill congressmen and senators on January sixth, twenty twenty.
You all remember that all Americans were briefed about that,
and they remember that except the stupid ones who we
didn't tell. And one of them decided to kill Minority
Leader Jeffries and went to do so. Eight days after
Trump whore Emmer, the Republican House Whip referred to the
(02:21):
quote terrorist wing of the Democratic Party and its quote
hate America rally and frankly, the guy they arrested for
trying to kill Jeffries his defense should be but Tom
Emmer said he was a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So these Democrats can pease their radical pro terrorist wing.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
That is what they are. Tom Emmer. On October tenth,
Christopher moynihan in text messages, by the way, maga gotta
stop texting Christopher moynihan in text messages revealed Tuesday. Quote
a Keem Jeffries makes a new speech in a few
days in NYC. I cannot allow this terrorist to live. Unquote.
(03:05):
The speech was Monday, Wynehan was arrested Sunday. Speaker Mike
Johnson apparently the most uninformed man in America. If Trump
has written it, threatened it, spouted it, or knocked it
down to the bulldozer, Mike has heard nothing about it.
Wait until he learns that Lindbergh has just landed in
Paris for this attempted political assassination of his counterpart in
(03:28):
the Democratic Party. Mike Johnson blames the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Getting back to the threat to hiking Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
This is one of the number of individuals in the
party as a result of January sixth who have been
rearrested on various charges.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Did President Trump make a mistake by just offering up
a blanket part for every single person that was convicted
as a result. I don't know any of any of
the details of this at all. This is the left
in almost every case that is advancing is and not
the right. So let's not make it a part as
an issue. You don't want me to go there. Elected
officials participating in a rally that was paid for by
(04:03):
Sourus Soros, sponsored by communists with signs and placards and
mantras that were repeated that we should bring death to
you fascist politicians. What they mean is they call every
Republican of fascist. Now they're calling for the death of
elected officials.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, George Sorows paid for all the frog costumes and
for all the January sixth terrorists to threaten the king.
Jeffreys and Mike Johnson says, I don't want to make
this partisan, so let me just insist that the left
is entirely at fault. Just the left go back to
(04:40):
your porn app Emmer went back to the terrorism well
on Tuesday, insisting, I guess that invisible no King's protesters
committed invisible violence last Saturday, so quote Democrats can appease
their radical pro terrorist wing. And then yesterday the worst
weakest bully character in this timeline, Tom Holman, Tom, I'll
(05:04):
take it with me, Homan, Tom, I'll have it to go. Homan.
Tom My name literally spells ho Man Homan. He went
back to this crap too.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They're not pulling back how they continue to do it?
This weekend at the No King's protests, I watched more
of the rhetoric.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They've lost their minds, and I'm telling you the Bloodshe's
not over if we don't address their rhetoric.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Is there any way to get Tom Holman to shut
the f up? Oh right? Fifty thousand dollars in a
kava bag. By the way, what's wrong with his voice there?
Did he really say pro TETs? I was listening to
the protests for all my jovial Well, we're all gonna
(05:49):
die any who bon on me here. There is a second,
possibly more malicious component to Trump's long hinted at never
spelled out. That's why they call it stochastic terrorism. NBC
reports that Eric Swallwell, the California congressman, has gotten multiple
threatening messages from Wow, I'm gonna guess that they were Trumpists,
just a stab in the dark there, and Swalwell has
(06:11):
reported them to the Department of Justice, which has done nothing.
They want to put some guy in jail for threatening
the Maga FOP and Erzat's Russian propagandist Benny Johnson. Swalwell
sitting congressoon nothing. This segues into the one party nation
thing you know about the Komy prosecution and Letitia James
(06:34):
and the arrests of Brad Lander and Senator Alex Padilla
and Representative Lamonica MacIvor of New Jersey when they were
assaulted by ice ISIS agents. Well, the Komy and James
cases appear to be collapsing because the prosecutor is not
only an idiot, but nobody seems to be able to
prove she was legally appointed. Makaiv to her credit, has
(06:55):
decided to try to hoist Trump on his own petard
like comy. She has filed to dismiss based on selective
and vindictive prosecution, but she has added some thing cited
a little Supreme Court case called Trump the United States,
in which, as a result of which Congresswoman Mackivor is
claiming legislative immunity she was conducting official oversight duties in
(07:21):
her role as a member of the House. And arresting
her and putting her on jail and no trial. Just
starting the trial is another ice pick to the neck
of democracy because as a representative she cannot accept pro
bono legal aid. So whether or not there ever is
a trial, she has to pay for a lawyer when
(07:43):
this is ICE's fault ices. And then of course there's
knocking down the White House and replacing it with Marrilago
parking lots only with umbrellas and a ballroom. Because when
I think Trump, I think that guy is a dancer.
The analogies right themselves. One in particular, years ago, I
(08:09):
remember having a cordial territorial conversation over imagery about Trump
with another Trump resistance figure. I think this was twenty seventeen,
maybe twenty sixteen. I said, you know, it's obvious Trump
behaves like the character Anthony in the horrifying Twilight Zone
episode It's a Good Life, where it appears that a
(08:31):
little boy stunningly portrayed by the actor William Moomey, can
make things disappear and make it snow in summer, and
can kill people just with his mind. And he has
apparently already destroyed everything in the world except for a
block or two of his hometown, and the terrified adults
(08:53):
who are left are just humoring him rather than taking
the advice of one of them to kill him while
he's distracted, and they don't kill him, and he turns
the guy into a jacket the box and his wife
has to suppress her screams because otherwise she will be next.
So two of us agreed, Hey, Anthony, that's Trump and
(09:17):
the ones around the Anthony those are the Republicans. And
I forget how we decided to share the Anthony comp
But regardless, I truly doubt either of us were first
to think of this. I imagine one of Trump's ex wives
thought of this. And I note that Josh Marshall of
(09:37):
TPM has now invoked Anthony and claimed Trump has shifted
into new territory like Anthony, and I applaud the reference,
and I love Josh, but I doubt only the newness. Still,
Josh raises one really good point that needs Anthony for explanation.
We get why Trump does Putin's bidding, why he is
(10:00):
Putin's whore, We get why Trump wants two hundred and
thirty million dollars, and by the way, Congressman Raskin says,
Trump can do this in secret and only afterwards will
we find out it has already happened. He can get
the two hundred and thirty million dollars and not make
any kind of announcement from the Department of Justice in
a settlement on which he is both the settler and
(10:23):
the settled. Nice we get why he would do anything
to win a Nobel prize, although he seemed just as
pleased the other day to get a small Peacemaker Award
from the Richard Nixon Foundation, an award you could describe
as a small dick award. We get the grift, we
get the graft, We get the humiliating of the underlings.
(10:47):
The ballroom and knocking down the White House. Nobody gets that.
Who the f wants a ballroom at the White House.
Lots of presidents have made lots of structural improvements to
the White House. Hell, it's been remodeled or cleaned up
or hollowed out by everybody from John Adams to Harry Truman.
(11:07):
But you upend the world, destroy what little goodness there
is in the world, in order to get yourself into
the White House as president, to control the White House.
And so the first thing you do is knock part
of it down rather than remodel. On the off chance
that if in ten or twenty years it is still
(11:28):
legal to say the word Trump out loud in this country,
which I doubt one of the few positives you could
have said was yeah, yeah, he nearly killed us all
and he was mad as a hatter. Funny the way
that all turned out. But he did a nice job
fixing up the East Wing. Those are the Trump restorations.
I can still say Trump without going to jail, right, No,
(11:51):
knock it down just cuz just cause you can, because
you're Anthony from the Twilight Zone, and you can wish
it into the cornfield. You can do it if you're
Trump because it gives you something to do. I will
(12:12):
add I have some personal experience with this. Eighteen years ago,
Katie Turrer and I bought into a Trump building here.
We got an apartment, well I bought. She tore down
curtains without checking to see if they were custom and
motorized and cost twenty five thousand dollars to replace. Anyway,
Trump wrote me a fan letter not long after, in
(12:32):
twenty fourteen, I think, just at the point his building
began to fall apart. The elevators didn't run anymore and
the heating broke down. And I'm no dummy. He's always
been Anthony from the Twilight Zone. So I wrote him
back after his fan letter to me, and I thanked
him for his kind words, and I played him. I
(12:53):
know you don't own the building, sir, but as the
son of an architect, I understand the pride of the builder,
Anthony Donald. I know you'd take it personally because it
has your name on it, and the building staff is
doing great, but I think your builders from twenty five
years ago may have taken advantage of your kind nature.
(13:14):
And the phone rang two or three days later, and
it was one of his chief flunkies, and he said
Trump had gotten my letter and really appreciated it and
was delighted. I lived there, and he'd be coming over
to see the problem's first hand. And sure enough, there
he was in the lobby waiting for me. And he
couldn't have greased me more if I had been a
(13:36):
maserati with squeaky axles. And he promised that the heat
would be improved and the elevators would run on time,
and he strode off, and a week later they began
construction on a new revolving door on the south side
of the lobby and the complete remodeling of the gym,
(14:00):
because that's what he saw last on his way out,
and frankly, would he listen to anybody, but about building
stuff when he could listen to those voices inside his
head that he always listens to. And that's why, Josh,
he's building a ballroom and knocking down the East Wing.
Because to a psychopath like Trump, the act of building
is the same as the act of destructing and destruction.
(14:25):
It isn't Trump built this or Trump destroyed that. Those
are the same. To him. The only thing he can
process is I Trump, I Trump Trump did this boom
boom boom bang bang bang fall fall fall. So he
(14:47):
knocks down the East Wing and knocks down democracy and
tries to get Democrats killed by somebody else. Of course,
wish it into the cornfield, everybody wish it into the cornfield.
(15:34):
Then there are the baseline stupid people in his thrall,
in Anthony's thrall here, And I want to thank one
of the stupidest, Jamie Comer. Bless you, bless you for
bringing trump Steen back to the front of the picture.
Holy cow, Just when you think you've dug down far
enough to actually find how low Comber's intelligence is and
(15:57):
in the process also reach the Earth's creamy nugat center,
turns out you still have deeper to go, Oh, he's
dumber than you thought. Way in the Trump the tighter ship.
Can't release the Epstein files, he says, because you've heard this.
Because we can't release the Epstein files because because they
(16:21):
would clear Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
The evidence we've gathered does not implicate President Trump in
any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show
that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So Comer says, they implicate Bill Clinton and they clear Trump.
So whatever you do, don't release them and clear Trump
and send Clinton to the Big House. What Republican would
want those things to happen? My god, that would be
terrible for the Republicans if it cleared Trump and sent
Bill Clinton to the to the to the Big House.
(17:00):
Are the magas buying this? The one who literally cheers
ai images of Trump shitting on him from a plane,
is he buying this? Are he and the others are?
Are they even buying this? Can't release the Epstein files
(17:22):
because they clear Trump and implicate Bell Clinton. Thank you,
Jamie Comer. Meantime, can we stop with the Democratic self flagellation?
Gallup is out with its new political party identification pulling
(17:43):
and guess which Party is in front by seven points. No,
it's not Jamie Comer's party, it's the real Democrats. Surprise,
Forty eight percent of Americans identify as Democrats forty one
percent as Republicans. That margin seven points is larger than
the advantage the Democrats had in the third quarter of
(18:05):
twenty seventeen, a year before Democracy took back the House.
The great polster Elliott Morris of Strengthened Numbers notes seven
points is almost as big as the Dems had during
Obama's re election campaign. He also notes that if you
are still panicking over the hard numbers about increased actual
registrations as Republicans or Democrats, stop doing that. Most of
(18:30):
the data was old, and this is an off year.
There are almost no elections, thus almost no new registrations,
almost no meaning to those registrations that do happen, Which
is a reminder that the next time somebody tells you
the Democratic brand is fatally wounded and moderate this and
republican permanent majority, that remind them that poor opinions of
(18:53):
the Democratic Party as an entity is not an indicator
that people have stopped being Democrats. It is, however, an
indicator that Democrats are pissed at how poorly the party
is run. Sepidly it is fighting back against Trump's latest coup,
how it seems to somehow always snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory. Most of the people unhappy with the
(19:16):
Democrats are the Democrats, which takes us lastly to Maine
and Graham Platner. Hello, mister Platner, Graham Plattner, you out,
get out, Get the f out, the populist candidate for
(19:36):
the Democratic nomination for the Senate to run against Susan
Collins in Maine. And he said stupid things on Reddit
years ago. And then he also revealed Monday night he's
had a you know, a Nazi deathhead skull tattoo on
his chest for like eighteen years, and he didn't know.
He didn't know. Now he knew he had a tattoo.
(19:58):
He didn't know it was a Nazi death's head tattoo.
It would have been better if he didn't know he
had a tat because that would make him just an
eccentric with a really high pain threshold. No, No, he's
had a Nazi death's head skull tattoo on his chessince
two thousand and seven and he ran for Senate, and
(20:18):
then somebody told him it was a Nazi tattoo, so
he did what anybody would do that he released the
topless video of himself drunk dancing at a wedding showing
the tattoo on a podcast. Didn't occur to him to
call a news conference at a tattoo parlor and answer
questions about it and how he could have been so
stupid while he was getting the tattoo covered over or
(20:42):
turned into a bunny rabbit or just removed, like you
would if you suddenly found out your cool tattoo from
when you were in the army or something was actually
a Nazi tattoo, like you would if you weren't a Nazi.
Platner said later he was already planning to have it
removed in the near future. Later and then he claimed
(21:03):
late yesterday he's now had it removed or covered over
or something. Fingers crossed. He hasn't had it covered over
with like a picture Hitler or Trump. And Bernie Sanders
is still endorsing Platner, and other people are still supporting Platner,
and I supported him on this podcast last week, especially
since the Shumerian candidate for the Senate bid is seventy
(21:24):
nine year old term limited main Governor Janet Mills, an
excellent Democrat who would instantly make Susan Collins look like
a kid because Susan Collins is only seventy two And okay,
so what That's not the point right now. The point is,
this isn't Maga, This isn't Paul Ngracia admitting to being
(21:45):
a bit of a Nazi and if you criticize him,
he sends his mommy to your office to try to
threaten you over insults to her thirty year old son. No, no,
this isn't the looney Party. We have to remain nothing
worse than the slightly silly Party. Maybe Mills ultimately is
the Democratic nominee. Maybe it's somebody else, God knows. There
(22:07):
must be a populist Democrat in Maine who has not
had a Nazi tattoo, or at least has had the
minimum intelligence required like an IQ of ffect fourteen, to
immediately get the tattoo removed with the media at present
and apologizing that it was been there in the first place,
and he screwed up and look at him, showing his
(22:29):
pain tolerance by getting it removed with all the cameras rolling.
He didn't have the common sense to get the tattoo
removed first, or in public, or for God's sakes, be creative,
think big, be big, my friend, do it at a
(22:49):
fundraiser for people who are too destitute to get their
Nazi tattoos removed. I don't care. Do it as a
charity event. Listen, years ago, the infamous ex girlfriend and
I got dogs and rings and cohabitation and more or
(23:12):
less matching tattoos. And since we broke up, every once
in a while, every couple of years, I think about
getting my tattoo burned off or changed. And all my
tattoo is is an olive branch. Just doesn't feel right.
(23:34):
She wanted to get a KO on the back of
her neck, and I said, I love you. It's a
wonderful gesture. Just get the oh. Not only is that
a sufficient gesture for me, I'll know what it means.
But look, what if we actually, uh, we don't get married,
(23:56):
then you have just an O that could just stand
for your name, or you could just make up a story.
He doesn't have my initials on your neck, and you
never have to. I don't know, get it burned off.
I had real insight, I would have said, you never
have to explain it to RFK Junior. Graham Plattner's tattoo
(24:22):
or X tattoo is disqualifying. But if somehow you don't
think so Bernie, then the fact that he didn't do
anything about it is even more disqualifying, because that is
about his judgment. And the point about Graham Platner's judgment
is he clearly doesn't have any judgments.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
This is sports Senate, Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I have a sports note. I just have to share this.
It's a baseball history geek note. The San Francisco Giants
have hired the University of Tennessee's baseball coach Tony Vottello
as their new manager. I am somebody who thinks that
ninety eight out of one hundred current Major League baseball
players have unprecedented skills. They can throw and hit and
(25:32):
feel better than anybody who ever came before them, but
only two out of the same one hundred can actually
play baseball without written instructions. As such, I think hiring
a college coach who is used to teaching fundamentals might
be a good thing, but I do want to correct
a historical mistake that is becoming the headline about the
(25:54):
hiring of Tony Vottello from Tennessee to go directly from
college to manage a major league ball club. He would
not be the first college coach hired directly to manage
a major league team, even though he had no previous
pro experience. Been a couple of guys who've been college
coaches and then became managers. Branch Rickey was at the
(26:15):
University of Michigan. Hugo Bezdeck went from Oregon to the
Pittsburgh Pirates in nineteen seventeen. But Hugo Bezdeck had managed
in the miners before he went to Oregon. But this
Vitello route one day, your college coach who's never been
a pro manager or coach, next day or pro manager.
(26:36):
That has happened before. Admittedly it has not happened since
nineteen off seven, and even more admittedly it didn't go
real well. But when Cy Young gave up as player
manager of the Boston Red Sox after six games in
nineteen oh seven, when he said I'm going from Cy
(26:56):
Young to Sayonara, the Red Sox hired the Illinois baseball coach,
and he was a famous one named George Huff as
the manager. Get here to Boston as quickly as you
can get a high speed train. George Huff had played
a little in the low baseball miners in the nineteenth century,
but he had no managerial or coaching experience in the pros.
(27:20):
And it did not go well. He quit after eight games.
He rushed back to the University of Illinois and he
stayed there. And I'm not wishing the Giants any problems
or anything bad, but nineteen oh seven was about as
bad a year for managers on a baseball team as
you could ever think of. The original Red Sox manager
(27:43):
in nineteen oh seven, Chick Stall ended his life in
spring training. Something about a woman, not his wife. We're
still not sure what happened. Then they said, okay, Cy Young,
a Hall of Fame even though we don't have a
Hall of Fame yet, and immortal, the best pitcher ever.
You'll be the player manager six games and he went,
(28:05):
I'm done. Then the Illinois experiment, George Huff, hope you
bought a round ticket. Then they pointed at the first
baseman what's your name, Unglaub, you're the new manager. That
didn't work either. So the Red Sox then bought a
catcher named Deacon Jim McGuire, who was kind of a
player coach with the Yankees. They bought him on waivers.
(28:25):
They made him the manager. Where'd you get this guy?
We bought him on waivers. The Yankees didn't want him
anymore as the eighth string catcher. He's our new manager. Sure, whatever,
he's not dead, is he now? Oh? He's great. Then
five managers in three months, including the college guy who
didn't make it to two weeks. As it would prove,
(28:49):
the Red Sox would go through seven managers, including two
Hall of famers, in three seasons. So Tony Vittello, who
by the way, took a pay cut to go from
the University of Tennessee to manage for the San Francisco Giants,
say this, I mean it sincerely, bon Chance. Also of
(29:13):
interest here, remember the Washington Post writer who reassured us
that whether Trump or Hillary won in twenty sixteen, everything
will be fine. She's back with even more stupid. Speaking
of even more stupid, Andrew Cuomo apparently thinks the New
York Mets play football. That's next. This is Countdown. This
(29:40):
is Countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman. This is Countdown with
Keith Olberman. There's a reason I had both John and
(30:12):
Larry introduce this segment. I'll explain it at the end
of the program, but still ahead on this all new
episode of Countdown. Howard Stern talked me out of going
to Boston University. You heard me. He still doubts this happened,
but every passing year I am more and more convinced.
(30:33):
Now it happened. That was him. Fifty one years ago,
Howard Stern talked me out of going to Boston University
when they were going to pay for the whole thing.
It had to have been him. Maybe it was fifty
one years ago. Today, certainly we are within a couple
of weeks of the exact anniversary. My life changed because
(30:58):
I met Howard Stern when I was fifteen and he
was twenty, and he was complet well, he was complaining.
It had to have been him. I'll lay the evidence
out for you. You make the call. Next. In things
I promised not to tell first, believe it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
(31:19):
of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's other worst persons in the world. And by
the way, I'm very grateful to Howard. Nothing against bu
just worked out, okay at the Brons, worse, ABC, Disney
and Bob Iger. Yes, when push came to shove about
(31:40):
Jimmy Kimmel, they did the right thing, but for the
wrong reasons. Anybody remember that when Trump claimed he'd got
Jimmy Kimmel fired, and then the next thing you know,
Jimmy Kimmel was back on the air, and he didn't
really apologize, and he didn't make a donation, and he
never said anything about what was that guy's name, Kirk,
He never said anything bad about him anyway that Remember
(32:05):
the big l they hung around Trump's neck and the
entire right wing anybody remember that. No, Well, it was
not done for the best of reasons. This is why
it was done. It was done for the most effective
of reasons and the most important of reasons for us
going forward. This is from Oliver Darcy's Invaluable Status newsletter.
(32:28):
We're getting our first look at the scale of the
fallout Disney felt after Yankee Jimmy Kimmel off the air
when Eiger and Dana Walden blinked under pressure from Brendan Carr,
Remember Him and Maga Media sparked a significant subscriber revolt.
In other words, when they took Kimmel off the air
as his new show was about to be recorded. The
(32:49):
research firm Antenna reports three million people immediately canceled their
Disney Plus subscription and four million one hundred thousand cut
Hulu throughout the month of September, far exceeding the previous
three month averages. That meant the churn for Disney Plus
that's a TV streaming term for people leaving people coming
(33:14):
in sward to eight percent for Disney plus ten percent
for Hulu. The standard is the churn of Netflix, which
is two percent. Now, the good news in this is,
as often happens, when people do things for the wrong reasons,
we can use them against them again. Liberal and moderate
(33:34):
boycotts of those who cave to Trump work, work well,
work efficiently. We should do them daily Attention Columbia University,
Attention PEN. The right call at PEN is not merely
to back away from any deals they were about to
make with Trump, but to revoke his degree or at
(33:58):
least claim it's under investigation for irregularities. You could turn
Donald Trump's life into nothing but him attacking Pen over
his degree. He would forget everything else going on in
the world if you said to him Pen might be
withdrawing his degree, which is probably worth investigating anyway. The
(34:24):
gist of this is standing up to Trump is now
popular attention Democrats, speaking of which the runner up, Andrew Cuomo,
New York City mayor candidate, sort of. I don't know
now why I've been complaining about Andrew Cuomo when he
has been providing this much free entertainment. In fact, I'm
(34:47):
beginning to think it would be a bad idea if
he dropped out now and endorsed Zoran Mamdani. I don't
know what I've been complaining about. This is a self destruction,
self defenestration, self humiliation tour. And Andrew Cuomo makes it
better every day. Politico New York's Jeff Cotlan attended an
(35:09):
otherwise sparsely attended interview on stage, apparently at a church
of Cuomo. The other day. Cuomo was asked for reasons
I have no idea about his favorite sports comeback because
he needs a big comeback now, mister Cotland wrote, and
he answered, the nineteen sixty nine Mets were the greatest
(35:30):
comeback of all time. Cuomo says he's probably right about that.
He adds, it was the impossible impossible comeback. We're going
to be fine. We just need a field goal. There's
a true New Yorker. There's a man who remembers those
(35:52):
nineteen sixty nine Mets when they won the Super Bowl
on a field goal. And I guess that means the
New York Jets and Joe Namath played hockey and they
won the the Stanley, the the se Cup, or maybe
(36:18):
that was the New York Nights. The nineteen sixty nine
metsquare the greatest comeback of all time. It was the impossible,
impossible comeback. We're going to be fine. We just need
a field goal. Oh thank you, Andrew Cuomo. It's like,
I don't have to write this. It just happens, and
then they hand it to me, and that's two or
(36:39):
three minutes of my life. I don't have to devote
to writing. But the winner, speaking of the everlasting gift,
the overflowing toilet of stupidity, the worst, the Washington Post
and Kathleen Parker. They published this this week Sunday. In fact,
(37:03):
the headline was, is this the President We've been waiting for?
Trump's miraculous mid East peace deal is a moment of triumph?
That's the Washington Post. You remember the Washington Post. This
is the new Washington Post. Is this the president We've
been waiting for? Trump's miraculous Mid East peace deal is
(37:26):
a moment of triumph? By Kathleen Parker. Name sound familiar.
Every now and then, Kathleen Parker writes, Trump surprises us
by acting statesman like, usually just before he doesn't. Well.
I can't think of an example of this. This was
a case in point, she writes, as the President and
Middle Eastern leaders gathered in Egypt to sign the Trump
Peace plan to end the war in Gaza. By now
(37:48):
many have seen replays of the joyous reunions of hostages
and families, and of course the whole thing fell apart
within hours. And Trump doesn't care, because he just wants
the Nobel Prize, He just wants the headlines. He doesn't
care what happens thereafter. There's a Trump building across town
here in New York that I used to live in
and unlike the twenty fifth anniversary to the day that
(38:09):
the place opened, all the warranties ran out, and the
elevators stopped working, and the heat stopped working and stuff
started to fall off the walls. Because he doesn't have
a long term plan for anything, He just wants the now.
He doesn't understand the future. He doesn't know that it exists.
Kathleen Parker fell for it now. Does her name sound
familiar to you? It is two years now since she
(38:33):
attacked Senator John Fetterman over his policies. No over his
increasing right wing toadying. No over the fact that he
looks like the candimate from the Twilight Zone episode to
Serve Man. Nope over his hoodie. Kathleen Parker wrote in
September twenty twenty three, as little as I have loved
Republicans the past few years, coinciding with the rise of
(38:55):
our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how
to dress. I can't imagine that even he would demean
his officer, his country by dressing down. Wears a red
tie down to his ankles, wears bronzer unevenly applied, dyes
his hair with a mild coffee bean mix, dresses like
(39:22):
a cadaver, frankly, and of course he would never demean
his office with anything in terms of style or appearance. Ballrooms,
gold everywhere. One day he's going to come out and
he's going to be like one of those Egyptian pharaohs,
actually painted in gold. Kathleen Parker tacked Fetterman for his
(39:48):
hoodie and defended Trump, defended the Trump Peace Plan, the
twenty part twenty hour piast settlement to the Middle East.
Kathleen Parker was also the co anchor of CNN's eight
PM newscast with Elliot Spitzer that was up against Let's
see twenty ten. I think what was the was the
(40:10):
MSNBC show call for those days, was that up down
with Keith, Keith, Keith the somebody. Eventually they fired her
and just let Elliott Spitzer go on for a while.
But most famously, if the name Kathleen Parker rings a
bellots because of November fourth, twenty sixteen, it was her
(40:32):
column that was headlined, Calm down, We'll be fine no
matter who wins. After eighteen months of rabble rousing and
anger management, not in a good way. We've created a
sort of attempted nightmare of partisan division and revolutionary strife.
Never before has this country been so divided, goes the
usual chorus of pundits and commentators, except that is for
every other election year since voting began. Our founding fathers,
(40:56):
for all their cleverness, were hardly soft spoken. The Civil
War needs no editorial comments. The nineteen sixties weren't exactly
a paddle boat cruise down the Mississippi. In other words,
our politics have always been thus though with one significant difference.
Calm down, We'll be fine, no matter who wins that,
Kathleen Parker. The Washington Post has self destructed. Almost all
(41:19):
of its innovative and thoughtful reporters, columnists, and editors have
been forced out. It is editorially controlled by a couple
of Brits. The British are universally recognized as the worst
and least principal journalists this side of Moscow. The Post
hired an ombudsman, who is in fact a political censor,
who is there to make sure anything in the paper
(41:41):
will please Trump and not cause Jeff Bezos to have
to get off. Lauren Sanchez, its owner, has either gone
fully fascist or been blackmailed. Into acting fully fascist. And
yet somehow, somehow, Kathleen Parker is still there writing absolutely ludicrous,
(42:01):
ridiculous shit like calm down will be fine no matter
who wins. And now asking is this the president we've
been waiting for? Trump's miraculous Mid East peace deal is
a moment of triumph? Well, you got the moment part right,
didn't it, Kathleen. I'm hoping only that perhaps it will
prove someday that Kathleen Parker buys space in the Washington
(42:25):
Post pays them to print her dribble. Kathleen quick answers
to your questions, miss Parker, No, he's not the president
we've been waiting for, and no, the mid Deal is
not a moment of triumph. And no, you should not
be employed by any news outlet bigger than The Penny Saver,
(42:45):
Today's other worst person. And finally to the number one
(43:28):
story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things.
I promised not to tell. The date on this one,
a Tuesday of this week in nineteen seventy four, is
a guess, and the other principal figure in the story
denies it was him. I usually hate such inexactitude, but
I think the story is worth it because the guy
(43:50):
who denies it was him was Howard Stern, and it
was him. I was fifteen years old and just starting
my college visits. My dad and I flew the very
inexpensive Eastern Shuttle to Boston and Commonwealth Avenue and the
Boston University School of Public Communications, which had surprised us
by not only offering me early admission when I had
(44:12):
not requested it, but which upon arrival knocked us over
by saying they wanted to offer me a merit scholarship,
a free ride, all expenses paid. To be fair. I
was the editor of the high school newspaper and editor
of the yearbook, sports director of the radio station. I'd
been in the drama group. I had researched and had
(44:32):
published a baseball reference book earlier that year, and I
was the associate editor of the first Guide to Sports Memorabilia.
And I had an internship lined up in the public
relations department of the Boston Celtics. So the admission was
not much of a surprise. The merit scholarship, let me
tell you, the merit scholarship appealed fantastically to my father.
(44:53):
My dad had already been socked for five years of
private school because I was too bored to do well
in public school, and now he was facing college money.
This was new territory in Olberman Land. Nobody that we
knew of on either side of my family had graduated
from a four year college since one of my great
(45:15):
grandfathers got a degree in wrought iron design round about
eighteen eighty five, and my dad had been offered a
scholarship at a top architecture college and could not afford
to take it. They were so poor he had to
go to work right out of high school or his
brother had no chance of finishing high school. Free college
(45:36):
and a good one in the field his son wanted
to go into. Dad liked this very much. The tour
of what was then called the School of Public Communications
went well. It was early fall, and there are a
few places in the Northeast that do not look their
best in early fall. We were in the middle of Boston,
but there were trees. It was far from home, but
(45:58):
it was down the block from Fenway Park. I think
the admissions director took us into the main studio of
the Boston University AM station and introduced us to the
disc jockey or pointed at him or something, and then
the admissions director left. He must have because what followed
in the studio was not what that guy wanted me
(46:19):
to hear. The disc jockey was a gaunt, kind of
greasy looking kid, with hair down to the floor and
the attitude of an inquisitor working on too little sleep.
He claimed to be a junior to me. He looked
to be about thirty years old. We were not introduced
by name, or if we were, I had forgotten his
by the time he finished saying it. Where from, kid, Westchester?
(46:42):
I told him, Oh, yeah, I'm from Long Island. You
got a problem with that, I said, Nah, I had
relatives on Long Island. Good answer, So you're applying here.
I told him about the Merit scholarship. Huh, Lodi da
some kind of phenom. I explained about the Celtics internship. Listen, kid,
you sound like you know what you're doing, so don't
(47:03):
make the same mistake Eye did. The first two years.
You don't get to take any radio or TV. Class's
just general studies. I suddenly remembered, having read that. I
asked him what was the point of just repeating high
school for two more years? Exactly okay, you get it.
And what's worse the grad students. They control the real
(47:24):
radio station. It's like organized crime. Here see this radio station,
this crap shack. You can only hear this in the dorms.
And it took me three years just to get two
shows a week here Tuesdays and Thursday's Middays. Nobody's in
the dorms mid days. Total waste of my time and
my exceptional talent. And so far the classes are crap.
(47:44):
So maybe what you do is keep the internship, but
ditch the scholarship. I think it was at this point
that my father said we had to get to the airport.
He did not want me hearing more about ditching the scholarship.
My college admissions had been this, maybe just go to
(48:06):
the best school and let the radio and TV stuff
come to me, but maybe go to a school that
was really good in radio and TV and let the
education just come to me. Then there was this Celtics internship,
confusing things even further. And now the offer of the
free ride from BU. So my radio TV schools were
(48:27):
BU with Ithaca College as the safety, and my good
schools were forgive me. Harvard and Cornell is my safety,
which is kind of unfair because my graduating class in
high school had like seventy kids in it, and four
of us were applying to Harvard, and two of them
had four point zero grade averages dating back to the
womb and I didn't. And my only chance they were
going to accept me would be because I would be
(48:49):
only sixteen. Bu was obviously a yes if they were
going to pay for it. Ithica was a yes. But
I got a tour of the dorms and the elevators
were full of trash. This is not a euphemism, This
is not a value judgment. The elevators had ankle high
garbage in them. Cornell had a communications program, but I
couldn't find out much about it, and I couldn't find
(49:11):
out much about the radio station except that it was
not dominated by grad students. Plus Cornell had accepted me,
and as I expected, Harvard had not. And not that
this still bothers me, but I remember that the letter
was dated April ninth, nineteen seventy five, and it was
waiting for me in the mail when I got back
from the Yankees home opener on the afternoon of Saturday,
April twelve. Not that it still bothers me freaking Harvard.
(49:33):
So I had like a week to choose between Cornell
and a scholarship to be you. And then somewhere I
read a story about how they had found a kid
dead in the hallway of that big freshman dorm we'd
seen in Boston, and I told my dad I would
thus never be comfortable there, And of course that was
just crap. I kept flashing back to what the kid
on the carrier current BU radio station with the stringy
(49:56):
hair down to the floor told me, and I kept thinking,
I'm not going to get any radio experience. Until late
nineteen seventy seven. I just couldn't do it, and so
I went to Cornell and Dad started writing checks. And
before I get to the punchline of this one, I
have to mention sophomore year. My dad drives me and
(50:16):
my stuff up to Cornell and he gets turned around
looking for my dorm, and I say, yeah, the good
part is where we are. If you take the next left,
we'll be at the Cornell Architecture School, and whereupon he
cuts me off and says, yeah, I know, it's Rand Hall,
next left, second building on the right. I said, how
do you know? That he says, Remember I told you
I was offered an architecture scholarship, but I couldn't take
(50:37):
it because we didn't have any money and your uncle
Bill wouldn't have been able to finish high school. And
I said yeah, and he said yeah. The scholarship was
to hear. During all the time I wrestled with which
college is to apply to, let alone which one to
go to. My dad never told me that. Probably the
first time I had respect for him as one sort
(50:58):
of adult to another, and I still do. Anyway, years
later or whenever it was, I'm doing sports in Los
Angeles and late on a Saturday night, this syndicated version
of some New York radio shock jock show comes on
the TV and I look and it's the Don't Make
My Mistake Kid kid from Boston University in nineteen seventy four.
(51:20):
His name turns out to be Howard Stern, and he
looks exactly the same. Years pass and for some reason,
when Howard Stern leaves AM radio to put his show
on satellite. The first day of the satellite show, he
invites people from TV networks and newspapers to cover the
big switch, and from NBC he asks for me. So
(51:43):
I got up and I go and I get a
moment with him, and I do a shtick for my
MSNBC show and then I say, listen, we've met and
he says nah, and I tell him and he says,
I don't remember meeting you, and I say, of course not.
I was fifteen and we were not really introduced. And
I mean, I had no idea it was you until
I saw you on TV. And he says it can't be.
And I say, when you were a junior at BU,
(52:05):
didn't you do only Tuesday and Thursday middays on the
carrier current station? And weren't you already bitter about it
and bitter about management? And he says, yeah, but I
don't remember meeting you. And so this was January two
thousand and six, and every time our paths have crossed since,
we basically have repeated this conversation live or by text
or whatever. And he insists, yeah, but I don't remember
(52:27):
meeting you. And I have to explain that we didn't
meet by name and I was much shorter than and
he says something like how would that work? And sooner
or later I just give up. But it was him
I met Howard Stern in nineteen seventy four when he
was twenty years old and I was fifteen, and he
personally talked me out of going to Boston University. Thank you, Howard,
(52:51):
and nicely as things worked out with Cornell and the
best radio training ground in the country that Cornell contained
and contains. Yes, I'm still bitter about Harvard. It had
(53:17):
to have been him, as I said to him, who
else could it have been. I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shaneil. Our musical directors have Countdown
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on
the guitars, based on drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards.
(53:40):
Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
That's the sports music. Other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. It occurs to me, I
have not asked Howard about this in at least fifteen years,
(54:00):
it's time for me to go back and see if
his memory has improved. My announcer today was, as you
may have noticed, a duet my friends John Dean and
Larry David, and they're together here in this episode on
this date because they'll be happy to know Dodgers in five.
Everything else was as always my fault, and so that
(54:22):
is countdown for today, Day two hundred and seventy seven
of America held hostage again, just eighty six days until
the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term,
unless he kills us all first, or he is removed
sooner by Maga and Epstein, or that pavement patch on
his hand or another stuck escalator or the psychopathy test
(54:44):
or tile and All, or his flying jet made out
of poop, or who knows. The next scheduled countdown is
Monday till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(55:23):
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. Today
is the dawn of Trump's new policy destroy America literally well,
(00:33):
destroy the White House literally, and steal two hundred and
thirty million dollars literally from the government and pretend he's
going to give it to charity and give away one
hundred and seventy two million more dollars for two private
jets for Christy Nome and give Ukraine and eventually Europe
to putin and make America one party nation and get
(00:54):
elected democrats killed and destroy America literally. Well, okay, describing
this as Trump's new post policy to destroy steel, giveaway
and get elected democrats killed. Literally, that's not entirely fair
because it's not really new on the kill Democrats thing.
(01:16):
He's been sending out these stochastic signals to the psychopaths
and masochists and humanoids who support him since the day
he launched his candidacy for Dictator of the Universe and
Undeniable Supreme Being in twenty fifteen. But now he has
new allies like house Whip Tom Emmer, or as he
could be known Accessory before the fact. In the arrest
(01:39):
of Trump pardoned January sixth trader Christopher moynihan for allegedly
making a terroristic threat to quote eliminate House Minority Leader
a Keem Jeffries. And now Trump also has his own
mob of would be terrorists and killers and assassins out
there who are personally beholden to him because he pardoned
them when they tried to overthrow our form of government
(02:01):
and kill congressmen and senators on January sixth, twenty twenty.
You all remember that all Americans were briefed about that,
and they remember that except the stupid ones who we
didn't tell. And one of them decided to kill Minority
Leader Jeffries and went to do so. Eight days after
Trump whore Emmer, the Republican House Whip referred to the
(02:21):
quote terrorist wing of the Democratic Party and its quote
hate America rally and frankly, the guy they arrested for
trying to kill Jeffries his defense should be but Tom
Emmer said he was a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So these Democrats can pease their radical pro terrorist wing.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
That is what they are. Tom Emmer. On October tenth,
Christopher moynihan in text messages, by the way, maga gotta
stop texting Christopher moynihan in text messages revealed Tuesday. Quote
a Keem Jeffries makes a new speech in a few
days in NYC. I cannot allow this terrorist to live. Unquote.
(03:05):
The speech was Monday, Wynehan was arrested Sunday. Speaker Mike
Johnson apparently the most uninformed man in America. If Trump
has written it, threatened it, spouted it, or knocked it
down to the bulldozer, Mike has heard nothing about it.
Wait until he learns that Lindbergh has just landed in
Paris for this attempted political assassination of his counterpart in
(03:28):
the Democratic Party. Mike Johnson blames the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Getting back to the threat to hiking Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
This is one of the number of individuals in the
party as a result of January sixth who have been
rearrested on various charges.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Did President Trump make a mistake by just offering up
a blanket part for every single person that was convicted
as a result. I don't know any of any of
the details of this at all. This is the left
in almost every case that is advancing is and not
the right. So let's not make it a part as
an issue. You don't want me to go there. Elected
officials participating in a rally that was paid for by
(04:03):
Sourus Soros, sponsored by communists with signs and placards and
mantras that were repeated that we should bring death to
you fascist politicians. What they mean is they call every
Republican of fascist. Now they're calling for the death of
elected officials.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, George Sorows paid for all the frog costumes and
for all the January sixth terrorists to threaten the king.
Jeffreys and Mike Johnson says, I don't want to make
this partisan, so let me just insist that the left
is entirely at fault. Just the left go back to
(04:40):
your porn app Emmer went back to the terrorism well
on Tuesday, insisting, I guess that invisible no King's protesters
committed invisible violence last Saturday, so quote Democrats can appease
their radical pro terrorist wing. And then yesterday the worst
weakest bully character in this timeline, Tom Holman, Tom, I'll
(05:04):
take it with me, Homan, Tom, I'll have it to go. Homan.
Tom My name literally spells ho Man Homan. He went
back to this crap too.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They're not pulling back how they continue to do it?
This weekend at the No King's protests, I watched more
of the rhetoric.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They've lost their minds, and I'm telling you the Bloodshe's
not over if we don't address their rhetoric.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Is there any way to get Tom Holman to shut
the f up? Oh right? Fifty thousand dollars in a
kava bag. By the way, what's wrong with his voice there?
Did he really say pro TETs? I was listening to
the protests for all my jovial Well, we're all gonna
(05:49):
die any who bon on me here. There is a second,
possibly more malicious component to Trump's long hinted at never
spelled out. That's why they call it stochastic terrorism. NBC
reports that Eric Swallwell, the California congressman, has gotten multiple
threatening messages from Wow, I'm gonna guess that they were Trumpists,
just a stab in the dark there, and Swalwell has
(06:11):
reported them to the Department of Justice, which has done nothing.
They want to put some guy in jail for threatening
the Maga FOP and Erzat's Russian propagandist Benny Johnson. Swalwell
sitting congressoon nothing. This segues into the one party nation
thing you know about the Komy prosecution and Letitia James
(06:34):
and the arrests of Brad Lander and Senator Alex Padilla
and Representative Lamonica MacIvor of New Jersey when they were
assaulted by ice ISIS agents. Well, the Komy and James
cases appear to be collapsing because the prosecutor is not
only an idiot, but nobody seems to be able to
prove she was legally appointed. Makaiv to her credit, has
(06:55):
decided to try to hoist Trump on his own petard
like comy. She has filed to dismiss based on selective
and vindictive prosecution, but she has added some thing cited
a little Supreme Court case called Trump the United States,
in which, as a result of which Congresswoman Mackivor is
claiming legislative immunity she was conducting official oversight duties in
(07:21):
her role as a member of the House. And arresting
her and putting her on jail and no trial. Just
starting the trial is another ice pick to the neck
of democracy because as a representative she cannot accept pro
bono legal aid. So whether or not there ever is
a trial, she has to pay for a lawyer when
(07:43):
this is ICE's fault ices. And then of course there's
knocking down the White House and replacing it with Marrilago
parking lots only with umbrellas and a ballroom. Because when
I think Trump, I think that guy is a dancer.
The analogies right themselves. One in particular, years ago, I
(08:09):
remember having a cordial territorial conversation over imagery about Trump
with another Trump resistance figure. I think this was twenty seventeen,
maybe twenty sixteen. I said, you know, it's obvious Trump
behaves like the character Anthony in the horrifying Twilight Zone
episode It's a Good Life, where it appears that a
(08:31):
little boy stunningly portrayed by the actor William Moomey, can
make things disappear and make it snow in summer, and
can kill people just with his mind. And he has
apparently already destroyed everything in the world except for a
block or two of his hometown, and the terrified adults
(08:53):
who are left are just humoring him rather than taking
the advice of one of them to kill him while
he's distracted, and they don't kill him, and he turns
the guy into a jacket the box and his wife
has to suppress her screams because otherwise she will be next.
So two of us agreed, Hey, Anthony, that's Trump and
(09:17):
the ones around the Anthony those are the Republicans. And
I forget how we decided to share the Anthony comp
But regardless, I truly doubt either of us were first
to think of this. I imagine one of Trump's ex wives
thought of this. And I note that Josh Marshall of
(09:37):
TPM has now invoked Anthony and claimed Trump has shifted
into new territory like Anthony, and I applaud the reference,
and I love Josh, but I doubt only the newness. Still,
Josh raises one really good point that needs Anthony for explanation.
We get why Trump does Putin's bidding, why he is
(10:00):
Putin's whore, We get why Trump wants two hundred and
thirty million dollars, and by the way, Congressman Raskin says,
Trump can do this in secret and only afterwards will
we find out it has already happened. He can get
the two hundred and thirty million dollars and not make
any kind of announcement from the Department of Justice in
a settlement on which he is both the settler and
(10:23):
the settled. Nice we get why he would do anything
to win a Nobel prize, although he seemed just as
pleased the other day to get a small Peacemaker Award
from the Richard Nixon Foundation, an award you could describe
as a small dick award. We get the grift, we
get the graft, We get the humiliating of the underlings.
(10:47):
The ballroom and knocking down the White House. Nobody gets that.
Who the f wants a ballroom at the White House.
Lots of presidents have made lots of structural improvements to
the White House. Hell, it's been remodeled or cleaned up
or hollowed out by everybody from John Adams to Harry Truman.
(11:07):
But you upend the world, destroy what little goodness there
is in the world, in order to get yourself into
the White House as president, to control the White House.
And so the first thing you do is knock part
of it down rather than remodel. On the off chance
that if in ten or twenty years it is still
(11:28):
legal to say the word Trump out loud in this country,
which I doubt one of the few positives you could
have said was yeah, yeah, he nearly killed us all
and he was mad as a hatter. Funny the way
that all turned out. But he did a nice job
fixing up the East Wing. Those are the Trump restorations.
I can still say Trump without going to jail, right, No,
(11:51):
knock it down just cuz just cause you can, because
you're Anthony from the Twilight Zone, and you can wish
it into the cornfield. You can do it if you're
Trump because it gives you something to do. I will
(12:12):
add I have some personal experience with this. Eighteen years ago,
Katie Turrer and I bought into a Trump building here.
We got an apartment, well I bought. She tore down
curtains without checking to see if they were custom and
motorized and cost twenty five thousand dollars to replace. Anyway,
Trump wrote me a fan letter not long after, in
(12:32):
twenty fourteen, I think, just at the point his building
began to fall apart. The elevators didn't run anymore and
the heating broke down. And I'm no dummy. He's always
been Anthony from the Twilight Zone. So I wrote him
back after his fan letter to me, and I thanked
him for his kind words, and I played him. I
(12:53):
know you don't own the building, sir, but as the
son of an architect, I understand the pride of the builder,
Anthony Donald. I know you'd take it personally because it
has your name on it, and the building staff is
doing great, but I think your builders from twenty five
years ago may have taken advantage of your kind nature.
(13:14):
And the phone rang two or three days later, and
it was one of his chief flunkies, and he said
Trump had gotten my letter and really appreciated it and
was delighted. I lived there, and he'd be coming over
to see the problem's first hand. And sure enough, there
he was in the lobby waiting for me. And he
couldn't have greased me more if I had been a
(13:36):
maserati with squeaky axles. And he promised that the heat
would be improved and the elevators would run on time,
and he strode off, and a week later they began
construction on a new revolving door on the south side
of the lobby and the complete remodeling of the gym,
(14:00):
because that's what he saw last on his way out,
and frankly, would he listen to anybody, but about building
stuff when he could listen to those voices inside his
head that he always listens to. And that's why, Josh,
he's building a ballroom and knocking down the East Wing.
Because to a psychopath like Trump, the act of building
is the same as the act of destructing and destruction.
(14:25):
It isn't Trump built this or Trump destroyed that. Those
are the same. To him. The only thing he can
process is I Trump, I Trump Trump did this boom
boom boom bang bang bang fall fall fall. So he
(14:47):
knocks down the East Wing and knocks down democracy and
tries to get Democrats killed by somebody else. Of course,
wish it into the cornfield, everybody wish it into the cornfield.
(15:34):
Then there are the baseline stupid people in his thrall,
in Anthony's thrall here, And I want to thank one
of the stupidest, Jamie Comer. Bless you, bless you for
bringing trump Steen back to the front of the picture.
Holy cow, Just when you think you've dug down far
enough to actually find how low Comber's intelligence is and
(15:57):
in the process also reach the Earth's creamy nugat center,
turns out you still have deeper to go, Oh, he's
dumber than you thought. Way in the Trump the tighter ship.
Can't release the Epstein files, he says, because you've heard this.
Because we can't release the Epstein files because because they
(16:21):
would clear Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
The evidence we've gathered does not implicate President Trump in
any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show
that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So Comer says, they implicate Bill Clinton and they clear Trump.
So whatever you do, don't release them and clear Trump
and send Clinton to the Big House. What Republican would
want those things to happen? My god, that would be
terrible for the Republicans if it cleared Trump and sent
Bill Clinton to the to the to the Big House.
(17:00):
Are the magas buying this? The one who literally cheers
ai images of Trump shitting on him from a plane,
is he buying this? Are he and the others are?
Are they even buying this? Can't release the Epstein files
(17:22):
because they clear Trump and implicate Bell Clinton. Thank you,
Jamie Comer. Meantime, can we stop with the Democratic self flagellation?
Gallup is out with its new political party identification pulling
(17:43):
and guess which Party is in front by seven points. No,
it's not Jamie Comer's party, it's the real Democrats. Surprise,
Forty eight percent of Americans identify as Democrats forty one
percent as Republicans. That margin seven points is larger than
the advantage the Democrats had in the third quarter of
(18:05):
twenty seventeen, a year before Democracy took back the House.
The great polster Elliott Morris of Strengthened Numbers notes seven
points is almost as big as the Dems had during
Obama's re election campaign. He also notes that if you
are still panicking over the hard numbers about increased actual
registrations as Republicans or Democrats, stop doing that. Most of
(18:30):
the data was old, and this is an off year.
There are almost no elections, thus almost no new registrations,
almost no meaning to those registrations that do happen, Which
is a reminder that the next time somebody tells you
the Democratic brand is fatally wounded and moderate this and
republican permanent majority, that remind them that poor opinions of
(18:53):
the Democratic Party as an entity is not an indicator
that people have stopped being Democrats. It is, however, an
indicator that Democrats are pissed at how poorly the party
is run. Sepidly it is fighting back against Trump's latest coup,
how it seems to somehow always snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory. Most of the people unhappy with the
(19:16):
Democrats are the Democrats, which takes us lastly to Maine
and Graham Platner. Hello, mister Platner, Graham Plattner, you out,
get out, Get the f out, the populist candidate for
(19:36):
the Democratic nomination for the Senate to run against Susan
Collins in Maine. And he said stupid things on Reddit
years ago. And then he also revealed Monday night he's
had a you know, a Nazi deathhead skull tattoo on
his chest for like eighteen years, and he didn't know.
He didn't know. Now he knew he had a tattoo.
(19:58):
He didn't know it was a Nazi death's head tattoo.
It would have been better if he didn't know he
had a tat because that would make him just an
eccentric with a really high pain threshold. No, No, he's
had a Nazi death's head skull tattoo on his chessince
two thousand and seven and he ran for Senate, and
(20:18):
then somebody told him it was a Nazi tattoo, so
he did what anybody would do that he released the
topless video of himself drunk dancing at a wedding showing
the tattoo on a podcast. Didn't occur to him to
call a news conference at a tattoo parlor and answer
questions about it and how he could have been so
stupid while he was getting the tattoo covered over or
(20:42):
turned into a bunny rabbit or just removed, like you
would if you suddenly found out your cool tattoo from
when you were in the army or something was actually
a Nazi tattoo, like you would if you weren't a Nazi.
Platner said later he was already planning to have it
removed in the near future. Later and then he claimed
(21:03):
late yesterday he's now had it removed or covered over
or something. Fingers crossed. He hasn't had it covered over
with like a picture Hitler or Trump. And Bernie Sanders
is still endorsing Platner, and other people are still supporting Platner,
and I supported him on this podcast last week, especially
since the Shumerian candidate for the Senate bid is seventy
(21:24):
nine year old term limited main Governor Janet Mills, an
excellent Democrat who would instantly make Susan Collins look like
a kid because Susan Collins is only seventy two And okay,
so what That's not the point right now. The point is,
this isn't Maga, This isn't Paul Ngracia admitting to being
(21:45):
a bit of a Nazi and if you criticize him,
he sends his mommy to your office to try to
threaten you over insults to her thirty year old son. No, no,
this isn't the looney Party. We have to remain nothing
worse than the slightly silly Party. Maybe Mills ultimately is
the Democratic nominee. Maybe it's somebody else, God knows. There
(22:07):
must be a populist Democrat in Maine who has not
had a Nazi tattoo, or at least has had the
minimum intelligence required like an IQ of ffect fourteen, to
immediately get the tattoo removed with the media at present
and apologizing that it was been there in the first place,
and he screwed up and look at him, showing his
(22:29):
pain tolerance by getting it removed with all the cameras rolling.
He didn't have the common sense to get the tattoo
removed first, or in public, or for God's sakes, be creative,
think big, be big, my friend, do it at a
(22:49):
fundraiser for people who are too destitute to get their
Nazi tattoos removed. I don't care. Do it as a
charity event. Listen, years ago, the infamous ex girlfriend and
I got dogs and rings and cohabitation and more or
(23:12):
less matching tattoos. And since we broke up, every once
in a while, every couple of years, I think about
getting my tattoo burned off or changed. And all my
tattoo is is an olive branch. Just doesn't feel right.
(23:34):
She wanted to get a KO on the back of
her neck, and I said, I love you. It's a
wonderful gesture. Just get the oh. Not only is that
a sufficient gesture for me, I'll know what it means.
But look, what if we actually, uh, we don't get married,
(23:56):
then you have just an O that could just stand
for your name, or you could just make up a story.
He doesn't have my initials on your neck, and you
never have to. I don't know, get it burned off.
I had real insight, I would have said, you never
have to explain it to RFK Junior. Graham Plattner's tattoo
(24:22):
or X tattoo is disqualifying. But if somehow you don't
think so Bernie, then the fact that he didn't do
anything about it is even more disqualifying, because that is
about his judgment. And the point about Graham Platner's judgment
is he clearly doesn't have any judgments.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
This is sports Senate, Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I have a sports note. I just have to share this.
It's a baseball history geek note. The San Francisco Giants
have hired the University of Tennessee's baseball coach Tony Vottello
as their new manager. I am somebody who thinks that
ninety eight out of one hundred current Major League baseball
players have unprecedented skills. They can throw and hit and
(25:32):
feel better than anybody who ever came before them, but
only two out of the same one hundred can actually
play baseball without written instructions. As such, I think hiring
a college coach who is used to teaching fundamentals might
be a good thing, but I do want to correct
a historical mistake that is becoming the headline about the
(25:54):
hiring of Tony Vottello from Tennessee to go directly from
college to manage a major league ball club. He would
not be the first college coach hired directly to manage
a major league team, even though he had no previous
pro experience. Been a couple of guys who've been college
coaches and then became managers. Branch Rickey was at the
(26:15):
University of Michigan. Hugo Bezdeck went from Oregon to the
Pittsburgh Pirates in nineteen seventeen. But Hugo Bezdeck had managed
in the miners before he went to Oregon. But this
Vitello route one day, your college coach who's never been
a pro manager or coach, next day or pro manager.
(26:36):
That has happened before. Admittedly it has not happened since
nineteen off seven, and even more admittedly it didn't go
real well. But when Cy Young gave up as player
manager of the Boston Red Sox after six games in
nineteen oh seven, when he said I'm going from Cy
(26:56):
Young to Sayonara, the Red Sox hired the Illinois baseball coach,
and he was a famous one named George Huff as
the manager. Get here to Boston as quickly as you
can get a high speed train. George Huff had played
a little in the low baseball miners in the nineteenth century,
but he had no managerial or coaching experience in the pros.
(27:20):
And it did not go well. He quit after eight games.
He rushed back to the University of Illinois and he
stayed there. And I'm not wishing the Giants any problems
or anything bad, but nineteen oh seven was about as
bad a year for managers on a baseball team as
you could ever think of. The original Red Sox manager
(27:43):
in nineteen oh seven, Chick Stall ended his life in
spring training. Something about a woman, not his wife. We're
still not sure what happened. Then they said, okay, Cy Young,
a Hall of Fame even though we don't have a
Hall of Fame yet, and immortal, the best pitcher ever.
You'll be the player manager six games and he went,
(28:05):
I'm done. Then the Illinois experiment, George Huff, hope you
bought a round ticket. Then they pointed at the first
baseman what's your name, Unglaub, you're the new manager. That
didn't work either. So the Red Sox then bought a
catcher named Deacon Jim McGuire, who was kind of a
player coach with the Yankees. They bought him on waivers.
(28:25):
They made him the manager. Where'd you get this guy?
We bought him on waivers. The Yankees didn't want him
anymore as the eighth string catcher. He's our new manager. Sure, whatever,
he's not dead, is he now? Oh? He's great. Then
five managers in three months, including the college guy who
didn't make it to two weeks. As it would prove,
(28:49):
the Red Sox would go through seven managers, including two
Hall of famers, in three seasons. So Tony Vittello, who
by the way, took a pay cut to go from
the University of Tennessee to manage for the San Francisco Giants,
say this, I mean it sincerely, bon Chance. Also of
(29:13):
interest here, remember the Washington Post writer who reassured us
that whether Trump or Hillary won in twenty sixteen, everything
will be fine. She's back with even more stupid. Speaking
of even more stupid, Andrew Cuomo apparently thinks the New
York Mets play football. That's next. This is Countdown. This
(29:40):
is Countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman. This is Countdown with
Keith Olberman. There's a reason I had both John and
(30:12):
Larry introduce this segment. I'll explain it at the end
of the program, but still ahead on this all new
episode of Countdown. Howard Stern talked me out of going
to Boston University. You heard me. He still doubts this happened,
but every passing year I am more and more convinced.
(30:33):
Now it happened. That was him. Fifty one years ago,
Howard Stern talked me out of going to Boston University
when they were going to pay for the whole thing.
It had to have been him. Maybe it was fifty
one years ago. Today, certainly we are within a couple
of weeks of the exact anniversary. My life changed because
(30:58):
I met Howard Stern when I was fifteen and he
was twenty, and he was complet well, he was complaining.
It had to have been him. I'll lay the evidence
out for you. You make the call. Next. In things
I promised not to tell first, believe it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
(31:19):
of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's other worst persons in the world. And by
the way, I'm very grateful to Howard. Nothing against bu
just worked out, okay at the Brons, worse, ABC, Disney
and Bob Iger. Yes, when push came to shove about
(31:40):
Jimmy Kimmel, they did the right thing, but for the
wrong reasons. Anybody remember that when Trump claimed he'd got
Jimmy Kimmel fired, and then the next thing you know,
Jimmy Kimmel was back on the air, and he didn't
really apologize, and he didn't make a donation, and he
never said anything about what was that guy's name, Kirk,
He never said anything bad about him anyway that Remember
(32:05):
the big l they hung around Trump's neck and the
entire right wing anybody remember that. No, Well, it was
not done for the best of reasons. This is why
it was done. It was done for the most effective
of reasons and the most important of reasons for us
going forward. This is from Oliver Darcy's Invaluable Status newsletter.
(32:28):
We're getting our first look at the scale of the
fallout Disney felt after Yankee Jimmy Kimmel off the air
when Eiger and Dana Walden blinked under pressure from Brendan Carr,
Remember Him and Maga Media sparked a significant subscriber revolt.
In other words, when they took Kimmel off the air
as his new show was about to be recorded. The
(32:49):
research firm Antenna reports three million people immediately canceled their
Disney Plus subscription and four million one hundred thousand cut
Hulu throughout the month of September, far exceeding the previous
three month averages. That meant the churn for Disney Plus
that's a TV streaming term for people leaving people coming
(33:14):
in sward to eight percent for Disney plus ten percent
for Hulu. The standard is the churn of Netflix, which
is two percent. Now, the good news in this is,
as often happens, when people do things for the wrong reasons,
we can use them against them again. Liberal and moderate
(33:34):
boycotts of those who cave to Trump work, work well,
work efficiently. We should do them daily Attention Columbia University,
Attention PEN. The right call at PEN is not merely
to back away from any deals they were about to
make with Trump, but to revoke his degree or at
(33:58):
least claim it's under investigation for irregularities. You could turn
Donald Trump's life into nothing but him attacking Pen over
his degree. He would forget everything else going on in
the world if you said to him Pen might be
withdrawing his degree, which is probably worth investigating anyway. The
(34:24):
gist of this is standing up to Trump is now
popular attention Democrats, speaking of which the runner up, Andrew Cuomo,
New York City mayor candidate, sort of. I don't know
now why I've been complaining about Andrew Cuomo when he
has been providing this much free entertainment. In fact, I'm
(34:47):
beginning to think it would be a bad idea if
he dropped out now and endorsed Zoran Mamdani. I don't
know what I've been complaining about. This is a self destruction,
self defenestration, self humiliation tour. And Andrew Cuomo makes it
better every day. Politico New York's Jeff Cotlan attended an
(35:09):
otherwise sparsely attended interview on stage, apparently at a church
of Cuomo. The other day. Cuomo was asked for reasons
I have no idea about his favorite sports comeback because
he needs a big comeback now, mister Cotland wrote, and
he answered, the nineteen sixty nine Mets were the greatest
(35:30):
comeback of all time. Cuomo says he's probably right about that.
He adds, it was the impossible impossible comeback. We're going
to be fine. We just need a field goal. There's
a true New Yorker. There's a man who remembers those
(35:52):
nineteen sixty nine Mets when they won the Super Bowl
on a field goal. And I guess that means the
New York Jets and Joe Namath played hockey and they
won the the Stanley, the the se Cup, or maybe
(36:18):
that was the New York Nights. The nineteen sixty nine
metsquare the greatest comeback of all time. It was the impossible,
impossible comeback. We're going to be fine. We just need
a field goal. Oh thank you, Andrew Cuomo. It's like,
I don't have to write this. It just happens, and
then they hand it to me, and that's two or
(36:39):
three minutes of my life. I don't have to devote
to writing. But the winner, speaking of the everlasting gift,
the overflowing toilet of stupidity, the worst, the Washington Post
and Kathleen Parker. They published this this week Sunday. In fact,
(37:03):
the headline was, is this the President We've been waiting for?
Trump's miraculous mid East peace deal is a moment of triumph?
That's the Washington Post. You remember the Washington Post. This
is the new Washington Post. Is this the president We've
been waiting for? Trump's miraculous Mid East peace deal is
(37:26):
a moment of triumph? By Kathleen Parker. Name sound familiar.
Every now and then, Kathleen Parker writes, Trump surprises us
by acting statesman like, usually just before he doesn't. Well.
I can't think of an example of this. This was
a case in point, she writes, as the President and
Middle Eastern leaders gathered in Egypt to sign the Trump
Peace plan to end the war in Gaza. By now
(37:48):
many have seen replays of the joyous reunions of hostages
and families, and of course the whole thing fell apart
within hours. And Trump doesn't care, because he just wants
the Nobel Prize, He just wants the headlines. He doesn't
care what happens thereafter. There's a Trump building across town
here in New York that I used to live in
and unlike the twenty fifth anniversary to the day that
(38:09):
the place opened, all the warranties ran out, and the
elevators stopped working, and the heat stopped working and stuff
started to fall off the walls. Because he doesn't have
a long term plan for anything, He just wants the now.
He doesn't understand the future. He doesn't know that it exists.
Kathleen Parker fell for it now. Does her name sound
familiar to you? It is two years now since she
(38:33):
attacked Senator John Fetterman over his policies. No over his
increasing right wing toadying. No over the fact that he
looks like the candimate from the Twilight Zone episode to
Serve Man. Nope over his hoodie. Kathleen Parker wrote in
September twenty twenty three, as little as I have loved
Republicans the past few years, coinciding with the rise of
(38:55):
our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how
to dress. I can't imagine that even he would demean
his officer, his country by dressing down. Wears a red
tie down to his ankles, wears bronzer unevenly applied, dyes
his hair with a mild coffee bean mix, dresses like
(39:22):
a cadaver, frankly, and of course he would never demean
his office with anything in terms of style or appearance. Ballrooms,
gold everywhere. One day he's going to come out and
he's going to be like one of those Egyptian pharaohs,
actually painted in gold. Kathleen Parker tacked Fetterman for his
(39:48):
hoodie and defended Trump, defended the Trump Peace Plan, the
twenty part twenty hour piast settlement to the Middle East.
Kathleen Parker was also the co anchor of CNN's eight
PM newscast with Elliot Spitzer that was up against Let's
see twenty ten. I think what was the was the
(40:10):
MSNBC show call for those days, was that up down
with Keith, Keith, Keith the somebody. Eventually they fired her
and just let Elliott Spitzer go on for a while.
But most famously, if the name Kathleen Parker rings a
bellots because of November fourth, twenty sixteen, it was her
(40:32):
column that was headlined, Calm down, We'll be fine no
matter who wins. After eighteen months of rabble rousing and
anger management, not in a good way. We've created a
sort of attempted nightmare of partisan division and revolutionary strife.
Never before has this country been so divided, goes the
usual chorus of pundits and commentators, except that is for
every other election year since voting began. Our founding fathers,
(40:56):
for all their cleverness, were hardly soft spoken. The Civil
War needs no editorial comments. The nineteen sixties weren't exactly
a paddle boat cruise down the Mississippi. In other words,
our politics have always been thus though with one significant difference.
Calm down, We'll be fine, no matter who wins that,
Kathleen Parker. The Washington Post has self destructed. Almost all
(41:19):
of its innovative and thoughtful reporters, columnists, and editors have
been forced out. It is editorially controlled by a couple
of Brits. The British are universally recognized as the worst
and least principal journalists this side of Moscow. The Post
hired an ombudsman, who is in fact a political censor,
who is there to make sure anything in the paper
(41:41):
will please Trump and not cause Jeff Bezos to have
to get off. Lauren Sanchez, its owner, has either gone
fully fascist or been blackmailed. Into acting fully fascist. And
yet somehow, somehow, Kathleen Parker is still there writing absolutely ludicrous,
(42:01):
ridiculous shit like calm down will be fine no matter
who wins. And now asking is this the president we've
been waiting for? Trump's miraculous Mid East peace deal is
a moment of triumph? Well, you got the moment part right,
didn't it, Kathleen. I'm hoping only that perhaps it will
prove someday that Kathleen Parker buys space in the Washington
(42:25):
Post pays them to print her dribble. Kathleen quick answers
to your questions, miss Parker, No, he's not the president
we've been waiting for, and no, the mid Deal is
not a moment of triumph. And no, you should not
be employed by any news outlet bigger than The Penny Saver,
(42:45):
Today's other worst person. And finally to the number one
(43:28):
story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things.
I promised not to tell. The date on this one,
a Tuesday of this week in nineteen seventy four, is
a guess, and the other principal figure in the story
denies it was him. I usually hate such inexactitude, but
I think the story is worth it because the guy
(43:50):
who denies it was him was Howard Stern, and it
was him. I was fifteen years old and just starting
my college visits. My dad and I flew the very
inexpensive Eastern Shuttle to Boston and Commonwealth Avenue and the
Boston University School of Public Communications, which had surprised us
by not only offering me early admission when I had
(44:12):
not requested it, but which upon arrival knocked us over
by saying they wanted to offer me a merit scholarship,
a free ride, all expenses paid. To be fair. I
was the editor of the high school newspaper and editor
of the yearbook, sports director of the radio station. I'd
been in the drama group. I had researched and had
(44:32):
published a baseball reference book earlier that year, and I
was the associate editor of the first Guide to Sports Memorabilia.
And I had an internship lined up in the public
relations department of the Boston Celtics. So the admission was
not much of a surprise. The merit scholarship, let me
tell you, the merit scholarship appealed fantastically to my father.
(44:53):
My dad had already been socked for five years of
private school because I was too bored to do well
in public school, and now he was facing college money.
This was new territory in Olberman Land. Nobody that we
knew of on either side of my family had graduated
from a four year college since one of my great
(45:15):
grandfathers got a degree in wrought iron design round about
eighteen eighty five, and my dad had been offered a
scholarship at a top architecture college and could not afford
to take it. They were so poor he had to
go to work right out of high school or his
brother had no chance of finishing high school. Free college
(45:36):
and a good one in the field his son wanted
to go into. Dad liked this very much. The tour
of what was then called the School of Public Communications
went well. It was early fall, and there are a
few places in the Northeast that do not look their
best in early fall. We were in the middle of Boston,
but there were trees. It was far from home, but
(45:58):
it was down the block from Fenway Park. I think
the admissions director took us into the main studio of
the Boston University AM station and introduced us to the
disc jockey or pointed at him or something, and then
the admissions director left. He must have because what followed
in the studio was not what that guy wanted me
(46:19):
to hear. The disc jockey was a gaunt, kind of
greasy looking kid, with hair down to the floor and
the attitude of an inquisitor working on too little sleep.
He claimed to be a junior to me. He looked
to be about thirty years old. We were not introduced
by name, or if we were, I had forgotten his
by the time he finished saying it. Where from, kid, Westchester?
(46:42):
I told him, Oh, yeah, I'm from Long Island. You
got a problem with that, I said, Nah, I had
relatives on Long Island. Good answer, So you're applying here.
I told him about the Merit scholarship. Huh, Lodi da
some kind of phenom. I explained about the Celtics internship. Listen, kid,
you sound like you know what you're doing, so don't
(47:03):
make the same mistake Eye did. The first two years.
You don't get to take any radio or TV. Class's
just general studies. I suddenly remembered, having read that. I
asked him what was the point of just repeating high
school for two more years? Exactly okay, you get it.
And what's worse the grad students. They control the real
(47:24):
radio station. It's like organized crime. Here see this radio station,
this crap shack. You can only hear this in the dorms.
And it took me three years just to get two
shows a week here Tuesdays and Thursday's Middays. Nobody's in
the dorms mid days. Total waste of my time and
my exceptional talent. And so far the classes are crap.
(47:44):
So maybe what you do is keep the internship, but
ditch the scholarship. I think it was at this point
that my father said we had to get to the airport.
He did not want me hearing more about ditching the scholarship.
My college admissions had been this, maybe just go to
(48:06):
the best school and let the radio and TV stuff
come to me, but maybe go to a school that
was really good in radio and TV and let the
education just come to me. Then there was this Celtics internship,
confusing things even further. And now the offer of the
free ride from BU. So my radio TV schools were
(48:27):
BU with Ithaca College as the safety, and my good
schools were forgive me. Harvard and Cornell is my safety,
which is kind of unfair because my graduating class in
high school had like seventy kids in it, and four
of us were applying to Harvard, and two of them
had four point zero grade averages dating back to the
womb and I didn't. And my only chance they were
going to accept me would be because I would be
(48:49):
only sixteen. Bu was obviously a yes if they were
going to pay for it. Ithica was a yes. But
I got a tour of the dorms and the elevators
were full of trash. This is not a euphemism, This
is not a value judgment. The elevators had ankle high
garbage in them. Cornell had a communications program, but I
couldn't find out much about it, and I couldn't find
(49:11):
out much about the radio station except that it was
not dominated by grad students. Plus Cornell had accepted me,
and as I expected, Harvard had not. And not that
this still bothers me, but I remember that the letter
was dated April ninth, nineteen seventy five, and it was
waiting for me in the mail when I got back
from the Yankees home opener on the afternoon of Saturday,
April twelve. Not that it still bothers me freaking Harvard.
(49:33):
So I had like a week to choose between Cornell
and a scholarship to be you. And then somewhere I
read a story about how they had found a kid
dead in the hallway of that big freshman dorm we'd
seen in Boston, and I told my dad I would
thus never be comfortable there, And of course that was
just crap. I kept flashing back to what the kid
on the carrier current BU radio station with the stringy
(49:56):
hair down to the floor told me, and I kept thinking,
I'm not going to get any radio experience. Until late
nineteen seventy seven. I just couldn't do it, and so
I went to Cornell and Dad started writing checks. And
before I get to the punchline of this one, I
have to mention sophomore year. My dad drives me and
(50:16):
my stuff up to Cornell and he gets turned around
looking for my dorm, and I say, yeah, the good
part is where we are. If you take the next left,
we'll be at the Cornell Architecture School, and whereupon he
cuts me off and says, yeah, I know, it's Rand Hall,
next left, second building on the right. I said, how
do you know? That he says, Remember I told you
I was offered an architecture scholarship, but I couldn't take
(50:37):
it because we didn't have any money and your uncle
Bill wouldn't have been able to finish high school. And
I said yeah, and he said yeah. The scholarship was
to hear. During all the time I wrestled with which
college is to apply to, let alone which one to
go to. My dad never told me that. Probably the
first time I had respect for him as one sort
(50:58):
of adult to another, and I still do. Anyway, years
later or whenever it was, I'm doing sports in Los
Angeles and late on a Saturday night, this syndicated version
of some New York radio shock jock show comes on
the TV and I look and it's the Don't Make
My Mistake Kid kid from Boston University in nineteen seventy four.
(51:20):
His name turns out to be Howard Stern, and he
looks exactly the same. Years pass and for some reason,
when Howard Stern leaves AM radio to put his show
on satellite. The first day of the satellite show, he
invites people from TV networks and newspapers to cover the
big switch, and from NBC he asks for me. So
(51:43):
I got up and I go and I get a
moment with him, and I do a shtick for my
MSNBC show and then I say, listen, we've met and
he says nah, and I tell him and he says,
I don't remember meeting you, and I say, of course not.
I was fifteen and we were not really introduced. And
I mean, I had no idea it was you until
I saw you on TV. And he says it can't be.
And I say, when you were a junior at BU,
(52:05):
didn't you do only Tuesday and Thursday middays on the
carrier current station? And weren't you already bitter about it
and bitter about management? And he says, yeah, but I
don't remember meeting you. And so this was January two
thousand and six, and every time our paths have crossed since,
we basically have repeated this conversation live or by text
or whatever. And he insists, yeah, but I don't remember
(52:27):
meeting you. And I have to explain that we didn't
meet by name and I was much shorter than and
he says something like how would that work? And sooner
or later I just give up. But it was him
I met Howard Stern in nineteen seventy four when he
was twenty years old and I was fifteen, and he
personally talked me out of going to Boston University. Thank you, Howard,
(52:51):
and nicely as things worked out with Cornell and the
best radio training ground in the country that Cornell contained
and contains. Yes, I'm still bitter about Harvard. It had
(53:17):
to have been him, as I said to him, who
else could it have been. I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shaneil. Our musical directors have Countdown
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on
the guitars, based on drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards.
(53:40):
Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
That's the sports music. Other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. It occurs to me, I
have not asked Howard about this in at least fifteen years,
(54:00):
it's time for me to go back and see if
his memory has improved. My announcer today was, as you
may have noticed, a duet my friends John Dean and
Larry David, and they're together here in this episode on
this date because they'll be happy to know Dodgers in five.
Everything else was as always my fault, and so that
(54:22):
is countdown for today, Day two hundred and seventy seven
of America held hostage again, just eighty six days until
the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term,
unless he kills us all first, or he is removed
sooner by Maga and Epstein, or that pavement patch on
his hand or another stuck escalator or the psychopathy test
(54:44):
or tile and All, or his flying jet made out
of poop, or who knows. The next scheduled countdown is
Monday till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(55:23):
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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