September 11, 2025 • 59 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 12: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: I suppose it could've been worse. Rather than reacting to Russia’s drone attack on Poland the way he did (“What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”) Trump could’ve done the Martin Sheen bit from “Dead Zone” where as the messianic psychopath president Greg Stillson he starts World War 3 and announces “The missiles are flying hallelujah, hallelujah.”
"What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace…?” Seriously, jackass? That’s your JOB, you great decaying pile of burger grease. YOU are supposed to KNOW “what’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace?” and if you DON’T, get out, turn the government over to a general or an ex-general or somebody who understands that your owner Putin PLAYED YOU AGAIN, and that when everybody, everybody in this country with an IQ greater than 47 said that we have to support Ukraine because if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine his next stop was Poland and you twisted your bulbous face into that stupid 45-degree angled smirk, you were WRONG and everybody else in AMERICA – all 340,111,000 of us – WE were RIGHT.
There are 10,000 American troops IN Poland. What would have happened if mere DEBRIS from one of the drones destroyed in the air hit a U-S base, or ONE U-S soldier? Would Trump have tweeted out a shrug emoji? Does it even register any more that even in the narrowest of views of this disaster – Trump IS the commander-in-chief and he is RESPONSIBLE for keeping American soldiers safe.
ANYBODY NOTICE THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL'S OLD LAWYER went on CNN and admitted that there was a quid pro quo that got her moved from a high-octane Florida prison to Club Fed in Texas? Now there’s ANOTHER Trumpstein cover-up?
AND LASTLY, No I’m not in favor of shooting commentators. Or politicians. Or anybody. But my god, this is America. All we have done for virtually all our history is shoot political opponents. Add to it THIS America that MAGA wanted, where the military is politicized, and politics are militarized, and Trump has spent a decade stochastically encouraging terrorism against, and assassination of, his opponents, where conservatives REPEATEDLY call for the killing of Trump’s opponents. Trump was shot a year ago and not one of his supporters was willing to support meaningful gun restrictions.
You can have many reactions to the death of Charlie Kirk and I hope sorrow and disgust are among them for you as they are for me - but surprise shouldn’t be one of them. Kirk himself said in April 2023: "You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am -- I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal."
B-Block (30:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The online poster who says it's ok for JD Vance to boast about war crimes because his mother was an addict. We started, writes an Andrew Klavan, to lose our civil rights as a result of the civil war. And to prostitute yourself as Jeff Shell has: from liberal anti-Trump head of NBC to installing a political officer inside CBS News to rat on journalism and anti-Trump facts. What a waste of life.
C-Block (42:07) 24 YEARS SINCE 9/11: Apart from applying the "midpoint" rule to really sense how long ago something was (9/11 was the "midpoint" between September 1977 and today) there is one story that has stayed with me permanently. The man's name was Tomas Reyes, he wasn't anywhere near the World Trade Center - but he was supposed to be. How I came to meet him as part of my reporting on that horrible day.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
(00:28):
will get to the murder of Charlie Kirk and the
hot and cold running hypocrisy coming from all directions about
it and about political violence in this country in a moment.
But there is a more important story. Rather than reacting
to Russia's drone attack on Poland the way that he did,
what's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go.
(00:52):
It could have been worse. Trump could have done the
Martin Sheen bit from the movie Dead Zone, whereas the
messianic psychopathic president Greg Stilson he starts World War three
and announces the missiles are flying, Hallelujah, hallelujah. That would
be worse, although to be fair, it would indicate that
(01:15):
Trump had had some idea what was happening. What's with
Russia violating Poland's airspace? Seriously, asshole, that's your job, you
great decaying pile of burger grease. You are the one
who is supposed to know what's with Russia violating Poland's airspace?
(01:37):
And if you don't know, get the f out. Get
the f out now, turn the government over to a
general or an ex general or somebody who understands that
your owner Putin played you again, and that when everybody,
everybody in this country with an IQ greater than forty seven,
had said that we have to support Ukraine because if
we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, his next stop
(02:00):
would be Poland. And you twisted your bulbous, useless face
into that stupid forty five degree angled smirk. You were wrong,
and everybody else in America, everybody else in America, oh,
three hundred and one hundred and eleven thousand of us,
we were right. Trump, There are ten thousand American troops
(02:22):
in Poland. Did you know that what would have happened
if mere debris from one of the Russian drones destroyed
in mid air had hit a US base in Poland
or hit one US soldier in Poland? What would you
(02:43):
have done? Then, Trump tweet out a shrug emoji. Does
it even register anymore that, even in the narrowest of
possible views of this disaster, Trump is the commander in chief.
He is responsible for keeping American soldiers safe in Poland.
(03:06):
In many respects, it not only could be worse than this,
Trump not realizing Putin had attacked Poland. Attacked Poland, just
did his test marketing for an attempt to rebuild the
nineteen eighties Soviet Union. Attacked Poland to see if he
could get any response from Trump besides d ye. It
(03:27):
not only could be worse than that, it is in
fact worse than that. For the second time in two days,
somebody Trump thinks is his friend on the international stage
deliberately attacked an American ally, an American ally whom Trump
had personally just been shown with the President of Poland
(03:47):
was at the White House last week, and Putin sent
drones over his country this week, just like the way
Trump took the bribe of a free jet that'll actually
cost a billion from Qatar in May, and then Netanyahu
bombed Qatar this week while Katar was trying to negotiate
a ceasefire, and Trump's inert response to this was to
(04:08):
say he disapproved. Trump does not realize that Netnyahu first
and now Putin have attacked him by proxy. They needed
to see just how brain dead he is, how unfit
for a true international crisis that they could provoke he
(04:29):
would be. And the answer is, you have no flippin' idea.
I mean in the past, Trump has at least pretended
to be opposed to Putin taking over all of Western
Europe and then having too much strength for us to
stop him taking over anything else he wanted on any
other continent he wanted. I thought there would be something,
(04:51):
at least pretending to be furious, something that indicated he
understood the grave implications of what Putin did in Poland,
even if it were somehow an accident, which it was not.
The Russian dictator attacked mainstream Europe Tuesday night, and Trump
(05:15):
couldn't even be bothered to come up with good phony
outrage or yet another toothless deadline by which Putin had
better make nice, or or Trump will sanction Russia's import
of American catchup or gold plated toilet something something. There
(05:40):
are a thousand problems with having a deteriorating, low iq
narcissist as the leader of your country, and we discover
a new one every day. But this is the real problem.
When the problems he has to confront are not something
that come from the diseased mind of Stephen Miller nor
the half baked one of Sean Hannity, he has no
idea what to do Poland attacked what up debt? You
(06:07):
would think that at some point even the drunkards and
religious nuts and terminal PTSD cases who make up the
Republican caucuses in the House and Senate would realize that
the you know, future of the planet is at stake.
You know, when all the President can come up with
as a response to Russian aggression five hundred miles east
of Berlin is here we go. Even the Tim Burchett's
(06:30):
and Derek van Orden's and Tim Scott's would have to
realize that, never mind the world being exponentially more at
risk today than it was Tuesday afternoon, that their own
asses are exponentially more at risk today than they were
Tuesday afternoon. But who am I kidding? A Democratic congresswoman
reminds the House yesterday that gender affirming care that they
(06:52):
want to eliminate includes quotes, boob jobs, and botox, And
she seriously and steadfastly announces that she supports boob jobs
and botox. And Nancy Mays starts screaming, literally shouting on
the floor of the House because she's a little sensitive
that her ex communications director outed her boob job. I
(07:16):
think the ex communications director meant the boob job they
did between Nancy's ears. That's what Republicans are worried about.
That and Charlie Kirk not Putin going over the edge
and the Poles having to shoot down the drones. He
lobbed into their country just to see if anybody, anybody
(07:38):
would react appropriately. We were just tested. Trump failed. As
always with Trump and Putin, I am reminded of Nebel,
Chamberlain and Hitler, but this time it is something new.
Among the dozens of stupid, gullible mistakes the pre war
British Prime Minister made was his assumption that his appeasement
(08:01):
of Hitler meant the Germans would always view russ Usha
as the enemy, and if war came, Germany and England
would somehow work together to fight Russia and not each other. Then,
on the twenty third of August nineteen thirty nine, the
Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop flew to the Kremlin and signed
(08:22):
a non aggression pact with the Soviets. The Malotov ribbentropped pack.
Chamberlain had a trusted advisor and met even more naive
than himself, Sir Horace Wilson, And the legend goes that
as Molotov and ribent Trop were meeting in Moscow, Prime
Minister Chamberlain was on vacation up country somewhere fishing, and
(08:48):
that's where Horace Wilson rushed to find Chamberlain the shocking
news that the Communists and the Nazis were suddenly on
the same side and England was screwed. He rushed there
to tell Chamberlaine this. The story goes that Wilson found
Chamberlain in a stream in waist high boots, waiters trying
(09:13):
to catch I don't know minnows. Chamberlain blandly asked him,
what are you doing here, Horace, and Wilson shouted, Hitler
has done a deal with Stalin. They've signed a non
aggression pact, and Chamberlain laughed, Oh no, Horace, you must
(09:34):
have misheard. Wilson then screamed, Ribbentrop is having dinner with
Molotov in the Kremlin right now, And it finally sunk
in on Chamberlain that for years Hitler had been playing
him like the proverbial two dollars banjo. His response then
supposedly was great, Scott, we must recall Parliament immediately, and
(09:57):
Chamberlain wasn't deranged or a foreign agent, or another imbecile
or in mental decline or all of the above like Trump,
He was just wrong. We have a Chamberlain who doesn't
even have the presence of mind to shout great Scott
(10:18):
when Putin attacks Poland my god, Putin could launch nuclear
missiles at this country, and they could interrupt Trump rereading
the Epstein files while ketchup bonging, and Trump would say
here we go, or I disapprove, or oh no, General,
you must have misheard. And then the next sound would
(10:38):
have been the astronauts on the space station looking out
the portholes and one of them saying, hey, what was
that noise down there? Speaking of nobody noticing anybody noticed
(11:16):
that Galene Maxwell's previous lawyer went on CNN and admitted
that there was a quid pro quo that got her
moved from a high teen Florida prison to club fed
in Texas. Anybody noticed that at all? But now there
is yet another trump Stein cover up already in progress.
Anybody Arthur Aidala, Maxwell's attorney in her sex trafficking trial
(11:42):
three years ago, Yeah, that went well for both of them,
goes on CNN and is asked about why Maxwell suddenly
got better digs after she lied to Trump's ex lawyer,
the Assistant Attorney General, about how he had nothing to
do with Epstein, and how she had nothing to do
with Epstein, and how nobody had nothing to do with Epstein.
(12:03):
Mister Idala then says, when anybody who's represented by a
lawyer who knows what they're doing, there's always a quid
pro quo. The larger context of that quote is important,
but it doesn't materially change what mister Idallas said, and
everybody has foolishly skated past. He is asked and he responds,
(12:23):
here's the full quote. Well, there are things I'm not
allowed to talk about, right, So there are things I
can't talk about. Obviously, I can talk in generalities. Anybody
who's represented by a lawyer who knows what they're doing,
goes in and meets with the government, there's always a
quid pro quo. Anytime the government wants information from a citizen,
the citizen says, well, I have a right to remain silent.
(12:44):
If you want me to give up that right, I
need something in return. Usually it's a plea bargain. Usually
your charges are going to be lowered and your exposure.
That's the confirmation that Trump has already made a deal
with Klain Maxwell about the Epstein files. Never mind pardoning
her later or I muting the sentence, or whatever is
(13:06):
to come. Trump has already made a deal as part
of the Trumpstein cover up. And we have as the
source for this Maxwell's former attorney, which takes us to
the other new Trumpstein cover up of the week, the
Birthday book. A. It's his signature. I've already posted my
(13:27):
letter from Trump online. It's the same signature. He has
written thousands of suck up letters. I got one. They
are all his signature. He calls in news crews now
to watch him sign his name. He loves signing his name.
It's his signature. There are two forms of it. One
(13:50):
he just signs Donald and the other he signs Donald Trump. B.
If you think it isn't his signature, it has to
have been forged in two thousand and three by Epstein. Bah.
Somebody actually suggested Epstein forge that whole disgusting drawing and
(14:14):
maybe the whole book with obviously great prescience. I know
what's gonna happen twenty two years from now, after I'm
dead and Trump is re elected president. I mean the
same kind of prescience that fits the Trump theory that
the Obama birth certificate was faked in Hawaii in nineteen
sixty one. That's some long term planning. Man, We need
(14:37):
those guys running the government. Caro Lyon Levitt said, the
book isn't fake and the letters aren't fake, but that's
not Trump's signature. And you could see something new on
her face as she said that. It was a pout
of annoyance that she so obviously had to bullshit on
his behalf once again. I posit that, for whatever perverse reason,
(15:02):
the guy most interested in keeping the Trumpstein saga alive,
because part of a predator's nature is to compulsively boast,
is Trump himself quote. I don't comment on something that's
a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff.
It's a dead issue. Yeah, except Trump had existed. The
letter from him to Epstein didn't exist. Not I've seen it.
(15:23):
It's a fake. Jeffrey had that printed up. It didn't exist. Oh,
it exists, but it's not his signature. But it exists,
But it didn't exist, but it's not his signature. But
On and on and on. It's a dead issue. The
only dead issue around here is the naive belief that
Trump isn't the star of the Epstein files. Trump can't
(15:46):
help himself. The other day he said crime in Washington
would be literally down to zero if only they stopped
calling those problems that a man and wife have in
the home crimes, in other words, decriminalized domestic violence. A
call to decriminalize domestic violence is a look for a
guy who buried his first wife out back on the
(16:09):
golf course. The magas who actually cared about the Epstein
prosecution for whatever reason, Tom Massey and such are still
pushing to force a House vote to release all the
DOJ files, a vote by the end of the month.
Mike Johnson, you know, Mike Trump was an FBI informant,
(16:30):
But I want to emphasize I never said Trump was
an FBI informant. Johnson. He can manipulate the rules to
prevent that vote as is about to happen on that day,
which of course will only inflame the case again and
anew at the end of his month. It's as if
Trump is planning ahead to make sure this story never
(16:50):
goes away. And once again some of the denials are hilarious.
You'd think with this much of a story they would
have worked on them. Just take a day and everybody
come up with a good denial. President Trump's legal team
will continue to aggressively pursue litigation, Levitt wrote, that does
(17:12):
not mean they are suing about this story. Continue to
aggressively pursue litigation about what and anyway in this story
they can't sue. There's discovery. And never mind Trump being
deposed about Epstein and girls. Any records, any records, any letters,
(17:35):
anything on a computer somewhere would immediately be in the
hands of Rupert Murdoch. Then there was the denial from
Congressman Derrick Van Orden, whose CTE seems to be getting worse.
He called the signature the book the drawing a quote fallacy.
(17:55):
Fallacy is not only the wrong word. A fallacy is
an erroneous belief, not a fake item of some kind.
But fallacy is also a partial hominem for the word phallic,
nice Freudian slip. Derek, And most interestingly, did you see
(18:15):
any defense of Trump about this book, about his poem
about the drawing, about the signature, from his children, from
his wife, from his friends if he has any. The
only time the family factored into this was when my
former ESPN colleague Molly Knight finished the week's adventures in
(18:35):
trumpstein Land with the searing most that this was an
awful tough way for Don Junior to find out that
his dad does two send birthday cards. Lastly, no, I'm
(19:00):
not in favor of shooting commentators. I'm a commentator, but
my god, can we stop with the hypocrisy about this.
This is America. All we have done for virtually all
of our history isshoot political opponents. The biggest politically based
(19:25):
entertainment hit of this century is a play about Alexander Hamilton,
who was shot by the vice president of the United States.
Add to that two hundred and twenty year legacy, this
new America that MAGA wanted, where the military is politicized
(19:48):
and politics are militarized, and the fact that Trump has
spent the last decade stochastically encouraging terrorism against and assassination
of his opponents, where conservatives repeatedly call for the killing
of Trump's opponents. I mean, Trump was shot a year ago,
and not one of his supporters was willing to support
(20:10):
meaningful gun restrictions. Well, guns have no place in America.
We might as well be a gun on the flag.
So you can have many reactions to the death of
Charlie Kirk, and I hope sorrow and disgust are among
them for you, as they are for me. But what
should not be among them is surprise. And again, you
(20:33):
can be utterly opposed to shooting people without repeating America's
age old lie to itself, that comforting lie that violence
has no part in our political system. It is woven
in as surely as the stars on the flag. Sorry,
are you opposed to this? I am say you're opposed
(20:55):
to it. Don't pretend this is some great shock for
the record, To be fair, I don't think anybody shouted
kill yourself at me in public since seventeen, maybe eighteen.
But do you think the death threats to me have
(21:17):
ever stopped the ones that started in two thousand and six.
They have not, and each one of them has not
surprised me. We've had forty six different presidents, and four
were killed by guns, and a fifth was injured by
(21:37):
a gun, and two were shot while campaigning to return
to office, and at least twelve others were the targets
of credible assassination plots, almost always involving guns. That's nineteen
hell Gerald Ford was shot at from close range twice
in a span of seventeen days. Fifty years ago. This month,
(22:01):
pick any day on your calendar, and it's the anniversary
of somebody getting shot or shot at in the political
environment of this country. And what have we had in
this country during those times when we haven't just had
a president or politician shot or shot at, or a
commentator shot or shot at, we've had a constant, escalating
(22:21):
call for violence and murder. And the latest rage among
right wing commentators public executions quote, death penalty should be public,
should be quick, it should be televised. I think at
a certain age it's an initiation. One commentator said in
February of last year. He proposed making kids above the
(22:43):
age of twelve watch making them watch public executions. He
suggested guillotines be used. He suggested pay per view television
of these things sponsored by Coca Cola, and he wanted
to broaden the definition of capital offenses. The same commentator
also wanted the death penalty for opposing Trump. Quote. As
(23:08):
far as other death penalties, I think what some of
those guys did to Donald Trump to use the instruments
of government to destroy the constitutional order that should be
under consideration. And the same commentator thought it was just
too bad that there's this estimated three hundred and ninety
three million guns in this country and that there would
(23:30):
be gun deaths always, but that that was a fair
trade off because that was the way to protect the
Second Amendment. And that quote and the one before it,
and the one before that, those all are from Charlie Kirk.
This is from April fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
You will never live in a society when you have
an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death.
That is nonsense, it's drivel. But I am I think
it's I think it's worth it. I think it's worth
to have a cost of fortunately some gun debts every
single year so that we can have the Second Amendment
to protect our other God given rights. That is a
(24:12):
prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They
live in a complete alternate universe.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Charlie Kirk, April five, twenty twenty three. Did he deserve
to get shot because he said that? No? I have
a very ask not for whom the bell tolls. It
tolls for the assessment of this situation, particularly when it
comes to political commentators. No, we should not kill commentators
(24:39):
with guns. We should not kill presidents with guns. We
should not kill Americans with guns. Say it, dedicate yourself
to it, Live it, act to make America into the
other place, maybe for the first time in two hundred years.
But please, the cliches and the empty words and the
(25:04):
how could this happen in America? And we are in
a bad place and it's getting worse. They are meaningless.
We have always been in this place. They are as
meaningless words as are the insulting fallbacks about thoughts and prayers.
I wish it were otherwise. In many ways I have
(25:26):
dedicated my life to trying to make it otherwise. But
this is who we are. This is Countdown with Keith
Oberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown twenty four years.
(26:08):
Using the old midpoint theory of making your jaw drop
about how long ago something actually was twenty four years
since nine eleven, The midpoint theory notes that twenty four
years before nine to eleven would have been September eleventh,
(26:28):
nineteen seventy seven, I was eighteen, Carter was president. I
was in college covering World Trade Center future hero Amon
mckenay as he starred in lacrosse and football. He was
only twenty two. I covered nine to eleven for forty
days without a break, on TV, on radio locally, and
(26:49):
on networks. And I don't know how many people I
met or stories I covered on the streets of New
York in those stricken months. But for all the time
since one guy who that day did not get closer
than seventy five blocks away from ground zero, his story
(27:09):
still resonates with me in the way no other story
from that day does. Let me tell you about Thomas Reyes,
the man who wasn't there. Next in things I promise
not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still
more new idiots to talk about the roundup of the miscrants,
morons and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other
(27:31):
worst persons in the world, the bronze worse. Remember when J. V.
Vance wrote quote, killing cartel members who poison our fellow
citizens is the highest and best use of our military. Well,
he was raked over the coals for that, and appropriately so,
(27:51):
except by someone named Jennifer M. Greenberg, who retweeted this
and added it would be wise for those criticizing jd
Vance to recall that his mother was a drug addict
who nearly died mu little times right in front of him.
This issue is extremely personal to him and he cannot
be expected to have any sympathy with cartels. Okay, look,
(28:16):
I get it. We all have something in our lives
that we view out of proportion, and it's a good
thing that we do that advocating for something that is
not the most important thing in the world or the
most important factor in how the world should be conducted.
Having people advocate for these things is essential, or these
(28:37):
things will never get addressed or done or even known about.
And this is not to diminish addiction or opioids or
fentanyl or the damage that they can do secondhand to
a child if their parents succumbs to these things. But
functioning in the real world, being a real human being,
(28:57):
is knowing when the greater issue you are dealing with
is so large and your personal responsibility for that greater
issue is so large that you have to for a
moment put your own history aside or at minimum, you
have to not let it be the decisive part of
your actions or even of your public pronouncements. For JD. Vance,
(29:20):
who I think is a failed I think is an
irreparably failed human being. I grieve about his mother. For JD. Vance,
Vice President of the United States, you do not have
the right to violate the constitution turn the US military
into a death squad against people who may have been
criminals and may have just been guys on a boat.
(29:41):
And you certainly do not have the right to glory
in the war crime you have just participated in because
of what happened to your mother. War crime, mister Vance,
war crime, Miss Greenberg, when he goes to trial someday,
they are not going to let JV. Vance off with
probation because of what happened to his mother. Tragic as
(30:02):
it is, on that level, this is almost as stupid
as pointing to Trump's crazy mother and father and saying
you want to know what's wrong with them, take a
look at them. At some point they don't factor into it.
Vance is long past that point. So no, Miss Greenberg,
I have no sympathy for the cartels either, and we
(30:23):
have no evidence the people our government murdered in the
Caribbean were part of any cartel. So miss Greenberg kindly
shut the f up, and mister Vance, if that was
a factor in what she wrote, resign and turn yourself
in to the International Court of Justice. Runner up. Rarely
it is that I get surprised by these anymore. But
(30:43):
this is from a host on the Ben Shapiro shit show,
The Daily Wire. This guy used to work for Glenn
Beck's The Blaze, and he's an author of some kind,
and I'll identify him after I read his quote, which
I think will speak for itself in many respects. Quote.
So much of what is tyrannical in this country arose
from the post Civil War of men and the civil
(31:06):
rights laws that have been taken over by the left
and used to silence people and strip us of our
free association rights. I'm obviously in favor of civil rights
and that everybody gets treated fairly, but the left takes
over every social issue, and the Civil War kind of
left us in many ways less free than we were. No,
(31:28):
this was not written by Robert E. Lee Back from
the Dead, nor Jefferson Davis. So opposing political violence with
all my heart, I still want to say that I
believe the Second Amendment is as important today as when
it was written. The Second Amendment was enacted because the
States asked the question, if the federal government is going
to have an army, how would we defend ourselves against
(31:50):
the federal government?
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Well, despite that last minute, tangent off into a real
understanding of what the Second Amendment is. The guy is
arguing that the Civil War weakened personal freedom, you know,
abolition and the right to vote for all, first males
and then people above a given age, and then they
(32:13):
lowered the age, and then you know, anti segregation and lynching.
Yet those are all apparently impositions on his rights. The
subtext here is the ku Klux Klan and the National
Rifle Association and the Federalist Society, Supreme Court, the leaders
in domestic terrorism since eighteen sixty five. At how they
(32:37):
have been mistreated by the Libs. When we gave them
the right not to be slaves anymore, we never said
they could be president. Now, the name of the speaker
of that, Andrew Claven, seventy year old something, son of
Gene Claven. A lot of people of a certain age
(33:02):
from the same area that I'm from gasped just now.
Gene Claven, for forty years was one of the great, generous,
inclusive people of New York City radio, a legend, a
brilliant comedian, maybe a creative genius, and a creative genius
on a morning radio show when most people, myself included
(33:23):
from a personal experience, most people are zombies on morning radio,
not Gene Claven. So when they say the apple didn't
fall far from the tree, sometimes the apple shrivels and
rots and turns into Andrew Claven. Everything would have been
fine if we hadn't had that Civil war. But our winner,
Jeff Schell. I've told my story with Jeff Shell before.
(33:48):
The short version is this one of three executives at
Fox Sports working for Rubert Murdoch whom I could trust
not to lie to me or to everybody else every hour.
Really enjoyed his company. He gave me advice that benefited
me at the expence of the company. Sometimes. When he
switched to NBC and I was leaving MSNBC in twenty
(34:10):
ten and eleven, he tried to talk me out of it.
When they made him chairman of NBC in twenty nineteen,
I reached out the night the rumor broke and he
reached back like two hours later said he wanted to
talk about having me go back on the air anchoring
at MSNBC, And then we went back and forth. There
was that little pandemic that slowed things down, But after
(34:32):
the pandemic ended, we still went back and forth for
nearly two years, with him scheduling meetings with me and
then canceling the meetings, and then scheduling meetings with me
and the head of NBC News and him, and then
canceling those meetings, and then the whole thing finally blew up,
and ten years of negotiations of various seriousness came to
a final end in the fall of twenty twenty one,
(34:53):
and Shell put out a statement to a media reporter
because it leaked after ten years of secrecy, that he
was never really thinking of having me come back to
MSA NBC and it was all my fault because I
didn't realize that he was lying, and I should have
known he was lying. Now that's a flex. In twenty
(35:17):
twenty three, NBC fired Jeffschell on the spot for cause,
and he was chairman for a really sleazy affair and
job manipulation thing with a CNBC talent, and he went
to sue them and all the lawyers in the world.
He went to my lawyer and she began the process
(35:38):
of representing him and vetting the case. And I never
even said anything to her. I didn't say, you can't
represent him, I will go somewhere. I didn't do anything.
We never talked about it. I found about it in
the papers that he was going there. The next thing
I know, there's no lawsuit. My lawyer sends me a
quick email going in case you were worried, I'm not
(35:59):
representing him. He didn't get any money. He was just done.
They fired him, and in that rare case of somebody
getting fired from a job like that, it was and
don't let the door hit you in the ass on
the way out. Jeffs. Shell and then these fascists, these
Ellisons who are merging CBS and their company and bringing
(36:21):
in the ridiculous Barry Weiss hired Jeffschell to run CBS
and Jeff Shell from whom I have email after email
after email in which he agrees from twenty nineteen to
twenty twenty that Trump is going to kill us all
and Trump must be stopped. Jeff Shell has become a
(36:43):
Trumpest inside man at CBS. Like the parasite, he actually
is collaborating with the insertion of a Trumpest plant inside
CBS News to oversee what CBS News reports from here
on and what it is no longer permitted to report.
CBS has appointed a man named Kenneth Weinstein to be
(37:05):
the new CBS News ombudsman. Could have been worse, could
have been Stephen Miller. Otherwise, this is as bad as
it gets. Kenneth Weinstein never worked in news. He was
CEO of the Hudson Institute, another fascist think tank. Oliver
Darcy in Status wrote Weinstein's record includes a stream of
(37:27):
alarmist rhetoric popular in right wing media circles. In February,
for example, he declared in a New York Post column
that women in Europe quote can no longer walk safely
at night in cities because of the influx of Muslim migrants.
In the same piece, he mocked quote media elites for
warning about NATO's future, while deriding the alliance as one
(37:48):
that caters to the interests of progressive elites and insisting
it needs to undergo a radical shift. So Kenneth Weinstein
is a to use a phrase similar to that a
radical shit. The New York Times added installing an ombudsman
at CBS News was one of sky Dance's commitments to
the Trump administration. That's a nice way of saying bribe
(38:13):
this year, when the company sought approval for its merger
with Paramount. The agreement, in fact, is to keep that
am boodsman in place, telling on people and preventing things
Trump does not like from getting on the air or
punishing the people who somehow managed to get those things
on the air. That job has to be filled for
(38:33):
at least two years. That is what CBS gave to
Donald Trump, not just the money. The money is for show.
The money is for him to boast. The money is
for him to stroke his mentally ill ego. The power
is Donald Trump now by proxy runs CBS News. More
(38:55):
from The Times, Weinstein donated roughly forty thousand dollars to
Republican and pro Trump political groups last year, according to
federal disclosure forums. That's right, CBS News, You're worth forty
thousand dollars. Mister Weinstein has served on federal advisory boards
under both Democratic and Republican presidents. In twenty twenty, mister
Trump nominated him to serve as ambassador to Japan. They
(39:20):
never voted on that. He didn't become ambassador. Hmmm. A
statement from Paramount said, mister Weinstein will serve as an
independent internal advocate for journalistic integrity and transparency. Unquote, no, no,
he will not. He will serve as a Trump spy
inside CBS News And unfortunately, for the vast majority of
people there who want to tell you the truth, this
(39:42):
is the death of CBS News. So what has this
got to do with Jeff Shell, the aforementioned worst person
in the world today? Mister Weinstein quote will report to
Jeff Shell, the new president of CBS's parent company, Paramount,
which recently merged with the Hollywood studio Skydance. Quote. I've
known him for many years and have great respect or
(40:04):
his integrity, sound judgment, and thoughtful approach to complex issues,
Jeff Shell liar said in a statement, also praising his
quote calm measured perspective. Those quotes from Jeff Shell, who
says you should have known he lies all the time.
Some men are born whoes, some men achieve hoaring, and
(40:28):
others have horedem thrust upon them. And then there are
creatures like Jeff Shell, whose best defense for betrayal is
to publicly say you should have known they were lying,
so it's your fault who achieve the goal of a
lifetime running NBC even in these days. And then they
f it up so badly that they not only don't
(40:50):
get any severance, but no lawyer thinks they have ground
for a lawsuit or even a settlement, or even a
free uber home. And then they're somehow offered a similar
job at another network with one little catch. The little
catch is they have to become a fascist. They have
(41:11):
to participate in the dismantling of freedom of the press
in this country from the position of power in their
own industry, which is supposed to defend freedom of the
press of their own country, the dismantling of their own
country traitor, just so they can claim they can be
(41:37):
president or leader of something again when they should be
cleaning out toilets. And after five years, as the old
joke goes, they give them a brush like Quizzling or
Marshall Patan or Jeff Sheell parasite today's other worst person.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And Lord.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Shouldn't learn I was lying. Nothing of importance happened to
me on September eleventh, two thousand and one. I mean,
(42:28):
against statistical probability. I had friends acquaintances in each of
the two towers and three out of the four planes,
and I only learned of the death of one of
them from the missing posters. I rather unexpectedly became a
street news reporter for old friends, one who ran an
(42:48):
LATV station and one who ran an LA all news
radio station. I felt more keenly that day than any
other in my life that I was the descendant of
countless New York cops and firefighters. My grandfather, my mother's
father drove a hook and ladder in the Bronx. I
have his badge. I was taken by cops for a
series of harrowing behind the police line walks behind ground zero.
(43:10):
I can still hear in my head the matter of
factness of a dispatcher's voice coming across one of the
radios saying body parts found on fourteenth floor of the
World Financial Center, and another equally weary and broken voice
repeating it body parts found on fourteenth floor of World
Financial Center. I didn't see the attacks my apartment then
(43:31):
only faced uptown. When I woke up that morning, all
I saw was as beautiful a sky as I had
ever seen before and to this day have ever seen since.
By the time I got down to the street, there
were already people with glazed eyes and dust covered shoes
and pants who were just reaching my neighborhood from their
(43:52):
walk from the Trade Center. The Trade Center was seventy
five blocks south of where I lived. I was the
witness who didn't see anything. However, I had already been
on the radio in La three times, and I was
on my way to Times Square for a television shot
when I realized it was now hours later and I
(44:13):
had neton, and I was just passing one of my places,
a restaurant called Red Eye Grill, and unbelievably it was open,
half a dozen waiters, familiar faces, hugs, tears. They made
me my regular meal, they didn't charge me for it.
Then I went to the restroom to wash up, and
there was an attendant in there, and I recognized him too.
And after I was finished, being even more embarrassed than
(44:35):
usual at the whole process of somebody handing me a
washcloth in a bathroom, I reached to give him a tip,
and I found exactly three quarters in my pocket and
a fifty dollars bill in my wallet, and the attendant said, oh,
I'll take those quarters. I can't use the payphone with
a fifty And I didn't understand what he meant, so
I asked him, what do you mean? He introduced himself.
(44:56):
His name was Thomas Reyis, he explained. Two weeks earlier,
Thomas Reyess said he had been laid off by an
investment firm that he had worked for downtown. They liked him,
he liked them, but jobs like his came and went,
and he was out fired on August twenty fourth, two
thousand and one. But he said they told him that
if he wanted to, he could keep his desk for
(45:17):
a couple of weeks, maybe even a month. He could
come in and use their computer and call around looking
for work, maybe even pick up a shift at the
firm here and there freelance. But to that point, in
large part because labor Day had been the previous Monday,
and in New York you leave for labor Day a
week before and you come back a week after. There
(45:37):
were no openings yet for him in the investment business
or anything else that he could find. But years before
he had worked odd jobs at that place, the Red
Eye Grill, including as the attendant in the men's room,
and this was the only place where they had offered
him a paycheck to do anything. He was still going
to his old job and his old desk every day
(46:00):
except when Red Eye called and said they needed him
in the men's room he had been on Wall Street.
He was now not just the men's room attendant. He
was the backup men's room attendant at a restaurant in Midtown.
And that morning, seven am, seven point thirty, he was
(46:20):
going out the door to his desk in the investment
firm to work the phones again when his cell phone rang.
The guy doing the mid day shift in the men's
room at Red Eye Grill on Seventh Avenue had called
in sick. He had, if he wanted it, eight hours
of work coming to him sixty bucks seventy five with
(46:40):
tips if he wanted it. And so that was how
Thomas Reyis was in the men's room at the Red
Eye Grill at fifty seventh Street and sixth Avenue, handing
out very few towels to very few customers. On September eleventh,
two thousand and one rather than sitting at his desk
in the World Trade Center, And that is also why
(47:02):
he wanted my quarters and not my fifty dollars bill,
because he was trying to use the restaurant payphone to
call his friends who still worked at the investment firm's office,
which was on floors one hundred and one, one hundred
and two, one hundred three, one hundred four and one
hundred five of World Trade Center Building number one, because
(47:23):
his old firm was Canter Fitzgerald, and he was not
there that day only because the full time men's room
attendant at the restaurant had called in sick, and I
wished him luck with his phone calls, and I got
out of there as quickly as I could because I
had seen the video and he clearly had not seen
the video. They were all dead at Canter Fitzgerald, including
(47:44):
two classmates of mine from college, Amon mcaaney Mike Tanner.
They were dead in the pyre of the building in
which I had started my television career twenty years and
a month before. The brother of another friend of mine
was in the other tower. I had a friend, one
of my cameramen on my show at Fox Sports, who
I'd worked with literally three months before, Tom Peccarelli. He
(48:07):
was on one plane. The former MSNBC guest Barbara Olson
was on another. A hockey acquaintance of mine, Garnet Ace Bailey,
was on a third plane. I went to the bar
at the Red Eye Grill, and I asked the bartender
to change the fifty for me and to give me
all the coins he could spare. It's probably five dollars worth,
(48:28):
and I kept two tens for myself just in case.
And I went back to the men's room and I
gave the rest and all the coins to Thomas Reyes
for his phone calls. Apparently the battery was gone on
his cell, and I hope I did a good job
not letting him know that none of his friends would
be answering. I mentioned Mike Tanner. I did not know
(48:49):
he was dead until much later. September twenty fourth About
Amon Mcanany, I knew right away that morning he had
been one of the heroes of the nineteen ninety three
attack on the Trade Center. On that day, he had
guided a human chain of survivors one hundred flights of
smoky stairwells. He worked on one of the uppermost floors,
(49:10):
but this time, in two thousand and one, there were
no chains for him to lead, though no one who
knew him has ever had a seconds doubt that he tried.
Mike Tennor was the starting quarterback and Amon Mcananney the
starting wide receiver. In the first sporting event I ever
covered for money fifteen dollars from United Press International to
(49:31):
cover a Cornell football game in nineteen seventy six. And
wouldn't you know the only thing that happened all day
was Amon dropping a punt setting up the other guy's
field goal. Cornell loses three to nothing, and I'm supposed
to write two hundred words about it and telling this
story as methodically as possible. I only summon up about
one hundred and ten words, and the UPI man in
(49:53):
Albany taking in my story says, no, that's okay. You
don't have to pad it out with ninety words on
the early fall weather. We'll still send you the fifteen
bucks kid. And I found out about Mike Tanner the
way too many people found out about loved ones or
friends or fellow alumni, or just anonymous to them, smiling
faces who suddenly counted every bit as much as those
(50:15):
we knew. In that horrible month. Mike's face and name
were on a missing poster on Canal Street in Manhattan.
I stopped and stared at it for five minutes. I
missed a report I was supposed to file for KFWB
radio in Los Angeles. Somehow the circumstances of finding out
that way foretold accurately how much shock and pain there
(50:39):
was yet to come. But the point is I had
a nine to eleven story, and you did too, probably
even at remote distances, even friend of a friend of
a friend. Some lucky ones don't. Some went through their
entire lives and go through their entire lives still unaffected
by nine to eleven. And now with time, more and
(51:03):
more people think of it Pearl Harbor, like World War two,
like the assassination of Lincoln. Then it has to be
that way, or we would never survive. But for those
of us who still have the stories, Democrats have them
and Republicans have them, and those who thought the Iraq
War made sense have them, and those who knew it
(51:24):
for what it was have them. We were all in
that sad thing together, and we always will be. But Unfortunately,
as the anniversaries of nine to eleven began, President Bush
and the Republicans were making it clear that somehow their
part of this enforced tragic togetherness was more important than
(51:45):
the part of their critics. The only positive of nine
to eleven and the days and weeks and years that
so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity
here in New York and throughout the country. The government,
the president in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to the President's party tabled
(52:10):
that reality. Those who doubted the mechanics of his election
the year before ignored that. Those who wondered about his
qualifications forgot that nearly unanimous support of his government was granted.
And that is something that cannot be taken away from
that government by its critics. It can only be squandered
(52:33):
by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds,
but to take political advantage of them. Terrorists did not
come and steal our newly regained sense of being American
first and political fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats, nor did
the media, nor did the people. The president and those
(52:55):
around him, and those who followed him in his party.
They did that. They promised bipartisanship and showed that to
them bipartisanship meant that their party would rule and the
rest of us would follow, or be branded with ever
escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as
(53:17):
those who, in Vice President Cheney's words, validate the strategy
of the terrorists. These men promised protection and then showed
that to them protection meant going to war against the
despot whose hand they had once shaken, who did not
have WMD, who did not have a damn thing to
(53:39):
do with nine to eleven, against whom plans have been
laid many years before nine to eleven. The polite phrase
for how so many of us were duped into supporting
a war, or at least acquiescing to it on the
false premise that it had something to do with nine
to eleven, is lying by inference. The impolite phrase is
(54:04):
war crime. The America we live in now, in which
one party believes its hatred is love, its fascism is freedom,
it's depravity is purity. That began as the nine to
eleven anniversaries began to follow one upon the other, after
taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and the love and
(54:26):
transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously
transforming it into fear and suspicion, and turning that fear
into the campaign slogan of election after election, we arrived
in a world in which when Trump enacted the worst
imaginable cliche wrapping himself in a flag, wrapping himself in
(54:49):
an American flag, the morons thought that proved he loved America.
So two have they succeeded in this and are still succeeding,
and still, although they don't call it that, this government, well,
the government of Trump, the government in waiting of Trump,
(55:13):
uses nine to eleven, uses the hatreds of nine to
eleven as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans. This
is an odd point at which to site a television program,
especially one from March nineteen sixty. But long ago, a
series called The Twilight Zone broadcast a riveting episode called
(55:34):
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. In brief, a
meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extraterrestrials disguised as humans.
The electricity goes out in a neighborhood. One neighbor pleads
for calm. Suddenly his lights and only the lights in
his house, go back on. Someone therefore suggests he must
(55:58):
be the alien. Then another man's car starts suddenly. As
charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are
inevitably produced, an alien is shot. He turns out to
be just another neighbor who was returning from going for help.
(56:19):
The camera then pulls back to a nearby hill where
two extraterrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can
jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no
need to actually attack, you just turn off a few
of the human machines, and then quote, they picked the
most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves. And then,
(56:44):
in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums
it up with words of remarkable prescience, Given where we
have found ourselves in ever increasing measures since September eleventh,
two thousand and one, the tools of conquest do not
necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fall out. There
(57:04):
are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be
found only in the minds of men. For the record,
prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless,
frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its
(57:26):
own for the children, and the children yet unborn. I've
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
(57:46):
for listening. I will never forget mister Rayes. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, our musical directors of Countdown.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboard.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
(58:08):
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtis CVSPN Inc.
Is our sports music. Other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my
friend Tony Kornheiser, who has just re upped for another
three years, co hosting Pardon the Interruption on the Worldwide Leader.
(58:33):
One of the great fun days of my life. I
co hosted that show with Tony. I guess three or
four times. He said it was one of the great
thrills of his career, and I said, boy, you haven't
had much of a career, have you. In any event,
congratulations my friend. I'm delighted to see you will still
be working at age two hundred and six. Everything else was,
(58:54):
as always my fault. And that's countdown for today. Day
two hundred and thirty five of America held hostage again,
and just one two hundred and thirty seven days until
this scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brained term,
unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein, or
the pavement on his hand, or wherever his signature turns
(59:16):
up next. In any event, the next schedule countdown is Monday.
Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(59:46):
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. I
(00:28):
will get to the murder of Charlie Kirk and the
hot and cold running hypocrisy coming from all directions about
it and about political violence in this country in a moment.
But there is a more important story. Rather than reacting
to Russia's drone attack on Poland the way that he did,
what's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go.
(00:52):
It could have been worse. Trump could have done the
Martin Sheen bit from the movie Dead Zone, whereas the
messianic psychopathic president Greg Stilson he starts World War three
and announces the missiles are flying, Hallelujah, hallelujah. That would
be worse, although to be fair, it would indicate that
(01:15):
Trump had had some idea what was happening. What's with
Russia violating Poland's airspace? Seriously, asshole, that's your job, you
great decaying pile of burger grease. You are the one
who is supposed to know what's with Russia violating Poland's airspace?
(01:37):
And if you don't know, get the f out. Get
the f out now, turn the government over to a
general or an ex general or somebody who understands that
your owner Putin played you again, and that when everybody,
everybody in this country with an IQ greater than forty seven,
had said that we have to support Ukraine because if
we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, his next stop
(02:00):
would be Poland. And you twisted your bulbous, useless face
into that stupid forty five degree angled smirk. You were wrong,
and everybody else in America, everybody else in America, oh,
three hundred and one hundred and eleven thousand of us,
we were right. Trump, There are ten thousand American troops
(02:22):
in Poland. Did you know that what would have happened
if mere debris from one of the Russian drones destroyed
in mid air had hit a US base in Poland
or hit one US soldier in Poland? What would you
(02:43):
have done? Then, Trump tweet out a shrug emoji. Does
it even register anymore that, even in the narrowest of
possible views of this disaster, Trump is the commander in chief.
He is responsible for keeping American soldiers safe in Poland.
(03:06):
In many respects, it not only could be worse than this,
Trump not realizing Putin had attacked Poland. Attacked Poland, just
did his test marketing for an attempt to rebuild the
nineteen eighties Soviet Union. Attacked Poland to see if he
could get any response from Trump besides d ye. It
(03:27):
not only could be worse than that, it is in
fact worse than that. For the second time in two days,
somebody Trump thinks is his friend on the international stage
deliberately attacked an American ally, an American ally whom Trump
had personally just been shown with the President of Poland
(03:47):
was at the White House last week, and Putin sent
drones over his country this week, just like the way
Trump took the bribe of a free jet that'll actually
cost a billion from Qatar in May, and then Netanyahu
bombed Qatar this week while Katar was trying to negotiate
a ceasefire, and Trump's inert response to this was to
(04:08):
say he disapproved. Trump does not realize that Netnyahu first
and now Putin have attacked him by proxy. They needed
to see just how brain dead he is, how unfit
for a true international crisis that they could provoke he
(04:29):
would be. And the answer is, you have no flippin' idea.
I mean in the past, Trump has at least pretended
to be opposed to Putin taking over all of Western
Europe and then having too much strength for us to
stop him taking over anything else he wanted on any
other continent he wanted. I thought there would be something,
(04:51):
at least pretending to be furious, something that indicated he
understood the grave implications of what Putin did in Poland,
even if it were somehow an accident, which it was not.
The Russian dictator attacked mainstream Europe Tuesday night, and Trump
(05:15):
couldn't even be bothered to come up with good phony
outrage or yet another toothless deadline by which Putin had
better make nice, or or Trump will sanction Russia's import
of American catchup or gold plated toilet something something. There
(05:40):
are a thousand problems with having a deteriorating, low iq
narcissist as the leader of your country, and we discover
a new one every day. But this is the real problem.
When the problems he has to confront are not something
that come from the diseased mind of Stephen Miller nor
the half baked one of Sean Hannity, he has no
idea what to do Poland attacked what up debt? You
(06:07):
would think that at some point even the drunkards and
religious nuts and terminal PTSD cases who make up the
Republican caucuses in the House and Senate would realize that
the you know, future of the planet is at stake.
You know, when all the President can come up with
as a response to Russian aggression five hundred miles east
of Berlin is here we go. Even the Tim Burchett's
(06:30):
and Derek van Orden's and Tim Scott's would have to
realize that, never mind the world being exponentially more at
risk today than it was Tuesday afternoon, that their own
asses are exponentially more at risk today than they were
Tuesday afternoon. But who am I kidding? A Democratic congresswoman
reminds the House yesterday that gender affirming care that they
(06:52):
want to eliminate includes quotes, boob jobs, and botox, And
she seriously and steadfastly announces that she supports boob jobs
and botox. And Nancy Mays starts screaming, literally shouting on
the floor of the House because she's a little sensitive
that her ex communications director outed her boob job. I
(07:16):
think the ex communications director meant the boob job they
did between Nancy's ears. That's what Republicans are worried about.
That and Charlie Kirk not Putin going over the edge
and the Poles having to shoot down the drones. He
lobbed into their country just to see if anybody, anybody
(07:38):
would react appropriately. We were just tested. Trump failed. As
always with Trump and Putin, I am reminded of Nebel,
Chamberlain and Hitler, but this time it is something new.
Among the dozens of stupid, gullible mistakes the pre war
British Prime Minister made was his assumption that his appeasement
(08:01):
of Hitler meant the Germans would always view russ Usha
as the enemy, and if war came, Germany and England
would somehow work together to fight Russia and not each other. Then,
on the twenty third of August nineteen thirty nine, the
Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop flew to the Kremlin and signed
(08:22):
a non aggression pact with the Soviets. The Malotov ribbentropped pack.
Chamberlain had a trusted advisor and met even more naive
than himself, Sir Horace Wilson, And the legend goes that
as Molotov and ribent Trop were meeting in Moscow, Prime
Minister Chamberlain was on vacation up country somewhere fishing, and
(08:48):
that's where Horace Wilson rushed to find Chamberlain the shocking
news that the Communists and the Nazis were suddenly on
the same side and England was screwed. He rushed there
to tell Chamberlaine this. The story goes that Wilson found
Chamberlain in a stream in waist high boots, waiters trying
(09:13):
to catch I don't know minnows. Chamberlain blandly asked him,
what are you doing here, Horace, and Wilson shouted, Hitler
has done a deal with Stalin. They've signed a non
aggression pact, and Chamberlain laughed, Oh no, Horace, you must
(09:34):
have misheard. Wilson then screamed, Ribbentrop is having dinner with
Molotov in the Kremlin right now, And it finally sunk
in on Chamberlain that for years Hitler had been playing
him like the proverbial two dollars banjo. His response then
supposedly was great, Scott, we must recall Parliament immediately, and
(09:57):
Chamberlain wasn't deranged or a foreign agent, or another imbecile
or in mental decline or all of the above like Trump,
He was just wrong. We have a Chamberlain who doesn't
even have the presence of mind to shout great Scott
(10:18):
when Putin attacks Poland my god, Putin could launch nuclear
missiles at this country, and they could interrupt Trump rereading
the Epstein files while ketchup bonging, and Trump would say
here we go, or I disapprove, or oh no, General,
you must have misheard. And then the next sound would
(10:38):
have been the astronauts on the space station looking out
the portholes and one of them saying, hey, what was
that noise down there? Speaking of nobody noticing anybody noticed
(11:16):
that Galene Maxwell's previous lawyer went on CNN and admitted
that there was a quid pro quo that got her
moved from a high teen Florida prison to club fed
in Texas. Anybody noticed that at all? But now there
is yet another trump Stein cover up already in progress.
Anybody Arthur Aidala, Maxwell's attorney in her sex trafficking trial
(11:42):
three years ago, Yeah, that went well for both of them,
goes on CNN and is asked about why Maxwell suddenly
got better digs after she lied to Trump's ex lawyer,
the Assistant Attorney General, about how he had nothing to
do with Epstein, and how she had nothing to do
with Epstein, and how nobody had nothing to do with Epstein.
(12:03):
Mister Idala then says, when anybody who's represented by a
lawyer who knows what they're doing, there's always a quid
pro quo. The larger context of that quote is important,
but it doesn't materially change what mister Idallas said, and
everybody has foolishly skated past. He is asked and he responds,
(12:23):
here's the full quote. Well, there are things I'm not
allowed to talk about, right, So there are things I
can't talk about. Obviously, I can talk in generalities. Anybody
who's represented by a lawyer who knows what they're doing,
goes in and meets with the government, there's always a
quid pro quo. Anytime the government wants information from a citizen,
the citizen says, well, I have a right to remain silent.
(12:44):
If you want me to give up that right, I
need something in return. Usually it's a plea bargain. Usually
your charges are going to be lowered and your exposure.
That's the confirmation that Trump has already made a deal
with Klain Maxwell about the Epstein files. Never mind pardoning
her later or I muting the sentence, or whatever is
(13:06):
to come. Trump has already made a deal as part
of the Trumpstein cover up. And we have as the
source for this Maxwell's former attorney, which takes us to
the other new Trumpstein cover up of the week, the
Birthday book. A. It's his signature. I've already posted my
(13:27):
letter from Trump online. It's the same signature. He has
written thousands of suck up letters. I got one. They
are all his signature. He calls in news crews now
to watch him sign his name. He loves signing his name.
It's his signature. There are two forms of it. One
(13:50):
he just signs Donald and the other he signs Donald Trump. B.
If you think it isn't his signature, it has to
have been forged in two thousand and three by Epstein. Bah.
Somebody actually suggested Epstein forge that whole disgusting drawing and
(14:14):
maybe the whole book with obviously great prescience. I know
what's gonna happen twenty two years from now, after I'm
dead and Trump is re elected president. I mean the
same kind of prescience that fits the Trump theory that
the Obama birth certificate was faked in Hawaii in nineteen
sixty one. That's some long term planning. Man, We need
(14:37):
those guys running the government. Caro Lyon Levitt said, the
book isn't fake and the letters aren't fake, but that's
not Trump's signature. And you could see something new on
her face as she said that. It was a pout
of annoyance that she so obviously had to bullshit on
his behalf once again. I posit that, for whatever perverse reason,
(15:02):
the guy most interested in keeping the Trumpstein saga alive,
because part of a predator's nature is to compulsively boast,
is Trump himself quote. I don't comment on something that's
a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff.
It's a dead issue. Yeah, except Trump had existed. The
letter from him to Epstein didn't exist. Not I've seen it.
(15:23):
It's a fake. Jeffrey had that printed up. It didn't exist. Oh,
it exists, but it's not his signature. But it exists,
But it didn't exist, but it's not his signature. But
On and on and on. It's a dead issue. The
only dead issue around here is the naive belief that
Trump isn't the star of the Epstein files. Trump can't
(15:46):
help himself. The other day he said crime in Washington
would be literally down to zero if only they stopped
calling those problems that a man and wife have in
the home crimes, in other words, decriminalized domestic violence. A
call to decriminalize domestic violence is a look for a
guy who buried his first wife out back on the
(16:09):
golf course. The magas who actually cared about the Epstein
prosecution for whatever reason, Tom Massey and such are still
pushing to force a House vote to release all the
DOJ files, a vote by the end of the month.
Mike Johnson, you know, Mike Trump was an FBI informant,
(16:30):
But I want to emphasize I never said Trump was
an FBI informant. Johnson. He can manipulate the rules to
prevent that vote as is about to happen on that day,
which of course will only inflame the case again and
anew at the end of his month. It's as if
Trump is planning ahead to make sure this story never
(16:50):
goes away. And once again some of the denials are hilarious.
You'd think with this much of a story they would
have worked on them. Just take a day and everybody
come up with a good denial. President Trump's legal team
will continue to aggressively pursue litigation, Levitt wrote, that does
(17:12):
not mean they are suing about this story. Continue to
aggressively pursue litigation about what and anyway in this story
they can't sue. There's discovery. And never mind Trump being
deposed about Epstein and girls. Any records, any records, any letters,
(17:35):
anything on a computer somewhere would immediately be in the
hands of Rupert Murdoch. Then there was the denial from
Congressman Derrick Van Orden, whose CTE seems to be getting worse.
He called the signature the book the drawing a quote fallacy.
(17:55):
Fallacy is not only the wrong word. A fallacy is
an erroneous belief, not a fake item of some kind.
But fallacy is also a partial hominem for the word phallic,
nice Freudian slip. Derek, And most interestingly, did you see
(18:15):
any defense of Trump about this book, about his poem
about the drawing, about the signature, from his children, from
his wife, from his friends if he has any. The
only time the family factored into this was when my
former ESPN colleague Molly Knight finished the week's adventures in
(18:35):
trumpstein Land with the searing most that this was an
awful tough way for Don Junior to find out that
his dad does two send birthday cards. Lastly, no, I'm
(19:00):
not in favor of shooting commentators. I'm a commentator, but
my god, can we stop with the hypocrisy about this.
This is America. All we have done for virtually all
of our history isshoot political opponents. The biggest politically based
(19:25):
entertainment hit of this century is a play about Alexander Hamilton,
who was shot by the vice president of the United States.
Add to that two hundred and twenty year legacy, this
new America that MAGA wanted, where the military is politicized
(19:48):
and politics are militarized, and the fact that Trump has
spent the last decade stochastically encouraging terrorism against and assassination
of his opponents, where conservatives repeatedly call for the killing
of Trump's opponents. I mean, Trump was shot a year ago,
and not one of his supporters was willing to support
(20:10):
meaningful gun restrictions. Well, guns have no place in America.
We might as well be a gun on the flag.
So you can have many reactions to the death of
Charlie Kirk, and I hope sorrow and disgust are among
them for you, as they are for me. But what
should not be among them is surprise. And again, you
(20:33):
can be utterly opposed to shooting people without repeating America's
age old lie to itself, that comforting lie that violence
has no part in our political system. It is woven
in as surely as the stars on the flag. Sorry,
are you opposed to this? I am say you're opposed
(20:55):
to it. Don't pretend this is some great shock for
the record, To be fair, I don't think anybody shouted
kill yourself at me in public since seventeen, maybe eighteen.
But do you think the death threats to me have
(21:17):
ever stopped the ones that started in two thousand and six.
They have not, and each one of them has not
surprised me. We've had forty six different presidents, and four
were killed by guns, and a fifth was injured by
(21:37):
a gun, and two were shot while campaigning to return
to office, and at least twelve others were the targets
of credible assassination plots, almost always involving guns. That's nineteen
hell Gerald Ford was shot at from close range twice
in a span of seventeen days. Fifty years ago. This month,
(22:01):
pick any day on your calendar, and it's the anniversary
of somebody getting shot or shot at in the political
environment of this country. And what have we had in
this country during those times when we haven't just had
a president or politician shot or shot at, or a
commentator shot or shot at, we've had a constant, escalating
(22:21):
call for violence and murder. And the latest rage among
right wing commentators public executions quote, death penalty should be public,
should be quick, it should be televised. I think at
a certain age it's an initiation. One commentator said in
February of last year. He proposed making kids above the
(22:43):
age of twelve watch making them watch public executions. He
suggested guillotines be used. He suggested pay per view television
of these things sponsored by Coca Cola, and he wanted
to broaden the definition of capital offenses. The same commentator
also wanted the death penalty for opposing Trump. Quote. As
(23:08):
far as other death penalties, I think what some of
those guys did to Donald Trump to use the instruments
of government to destroy the constitutional order that should be
under consideration. And the same commentator thought it was just
too bad that there's this estimated three hundred and ninety
three million guns in this country and that there would
(23:30):
be gun deaths always, but that that was a fair
trade off because that was the way to protect the
Second Amendment. And that quote and the one before it,
and the one before that, those all are from Charlie Kirk.
This is from April fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
You will never live in a society when you have
an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death.
That is nonsense, it's drivel. But I am I think
it's I think it's worth it. I think it's worth
to have a cost of fortunately some gun debts every
single year so that we can have the Second Amendment
to protect our other God given rights. That is a
(24:12):
prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They
live in a complete alternate universe.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Charlie Kirk, April five, twenty twenty three. Did he deserve
to get shot because he said that? No? I have
a very ask not for whom the bell tolls. It
tolls for the assessment of this situation, particularly when it
comes to political commentators. No, we should not kill commentators
(24:39):
with guns. We should not kill presidents with guns. We
should not kill Americans with guns. Say it, dedicate yourself
to it, Live it, act to make America into the
other place, maybe for the first time in two hundred years.
But please, the cliches and the empty words and the
(25:04):
how could this happen in America? And we are in
a bad place and it's getting worse. They are meaningless.
We have always been in this place. They are as
meaningless words as are the insulting fallbacks about thoughts and prayers.
I wish it were otherwise. In many ways I have
(25:26):
dedicated my life to trying to make it otherwise. But
this is who we are. This is Countdown with Keith
Oberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown twenty four years.
(26:08):
Using the old midpoint theory of making your jaw drop
about how long ago something actually was twenty four years
since nine eleven, The midpoint theory notes that twenty four
years before nine to eleven would have been September eleventh,
(26:28):
nineteen seventy seven, I was eighteen, Carter was president. I
was in college covering World Trade Center future hero Amon
mckenay as he starred in lacrosse and football. He was
only twenty two. I covered nine to eleven for forty
days without a break, on TV, on radio locally, and
(26:49):
on networks. And I don't know how many people I
met or stories I covered on the streets of New
York in those stricken months. But for all the time
since one guy who that day did not get closer
than seventy five blocks away from ground zero, his story
(27:09):
still resonates with me in the way no other story
from that day does. Let me tell you about Thomas Reyes,
the man who wasn't there. Next in things I promise
not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still
more new idiots to talk about the roundup of the miscrants,
morons and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other
(27:31):
worst persons in the world, the bronze worse. Remember when J. V.
Vance wrote quote, killing cartel members who poison our fellow
citizens is the highest and best use of our military. Well,
he was raked over the coals for that, and appropriately so,
(27:51):
except by someone named Jennifer M. Greenberg, who retweeted this
and added it would be wise for those criticizing jd
Vance to recall that his mother was a drug addict
who nearly died mu little times right in front of him.
This issue is extremely personal to him and he cannot
be expected to have any sympathy with cartels. Okay, look,
(28:16):
I get it. We all have something in our lives
that we view out of proportion, and it's a good
thing that we do that advocating for something that is
not the most important thing in the world or the
most important factor in how the world should be conducted.
Having people advocate for these things is essential, or these
(28:37):
things will never get addressed or done or even known about.
And this is not to diminish addiction or opioids or
fentanyl or the damage that they can do secondhand to
a child if their parents succumbs to these things. But
functioning in the real world, being a real human being,
(28:57):
is knowing when the greater issue you are dealing with
is so large and your personal responsibility for that greater
issue is so large that you have to for a
moment put your own history aside or at minimum, you
have to not let it be the decisive part of
your actions or even of your public pronouncements. For JD. Vance,
(29:20):
who I think is a failed I think is an
irreparably failed human being. I grieve about his mother. For JD. Vance,
Vice President of the United States, you do not have
the right to violate the constitution turn the US military
into a death squad against people who may have been
criminals and may have just been guys on a boat.
(29:41):
And you certainly do not have the right to glory
in the war crime you have just participated in because
of what happened to your mother. War crime, mister Vance,
war crime, Miss Greenberg, when he goes to trial someday,
they are not going to let JV. Vance off with
probation because of what happened to his mother. Tragic as
(30:02):
it is, on that level, this is almost as stupid
as pointing to Trump's crazy mother and father and saying
you want to know what's wrong with them, take a
look at them. At some point they don't factor into it.
Vance is long past that point. So no, Miss Greenberg,
I have no sympathy for the cartels either, and we
(30:23):
have no evidence the people our government murdered in the
Caribbean were part of any cartel. So miss Greenberg kindly
shut the f up, and mister Vance, if that was
a factor in what she wrote, resign and turn yourself
in to the International Court of Justice. Runner up. Rarely
it is that I get surprised by these anymore. But
(30:43):
this is from a host on the Ben Shapiro shit show,
The Daily Wire. This guy used to work for Glenn
Beck's The Blaze, and he's an author of some kind,
and I'll identify him after I read his quote, which
I think will speak for itself in many respects. Quote.
So much of what is tyrannical in this country arose
from the post Civil War of men and the civil
(31:06):
rights laws that have been taken over by the left
and used to silence people and strip us of our
free association rights. I'm obviously in favor of civil rights
and that everybody gets treated fairly, but the left takes
over every social issue, and the Civil War kind of
left us in many ways less free than we were. No,
(31:28):
this was not written by Robert E. Lee Back from
the Dead, nor Jefferson Davis. So opposing political violence with
all my heart, I still want to say that I
believe the Second Amendment is as important today as when
it was written. The Second Amendment was enacted because the
States asked the question, if the federal government is going
to have an army, how would we defend ourselves against
(31:50):
the federal government?
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Well, despite that last minute, tangent off into a real
understanding of what the Second Amendment is. The guy is
arguing that the Civil War weakened personal freedom, you know,
abolition and the right to vote for all, first males
and then people above a given age, and then they
(32:13):
lowered the age, and then you know, anti segregation and lynching.
Yet those are all apparently impositions on his rights. The
subtext here is the ku Klux Klan and the National
Rifle Association and the Federalist Society, Supreme Court, the leaders
in domestic terrorism since eighteen sixty five. At how they
(32:37):
have been mistreated by the Libs. When we gave them
the right not to be slaves anymore, we never said
they could be president. Now, the name of the speaker
of that, Andrew Claven, seventy year old something, son of
Gene Claven. A lot of people of a certain age
(33:02):
from the same area that I'm from gasped just now.
Gene Claven, for forty years was one of the great, generous,
inclusive people of New York City radio, a legend, a
brilliant comedian, maybe a creative genius, and a creative genius
on a morning radio show when most people, myself included
(33:23):
from a personal experience, most people are zombies on morning radio,
not Gene Claven. So when they say the apple didn't
fall far from the tree, sometimes the apple shrivels and
rots and turns into Andrew Claven. Everything would have been
fine if we hadn't had that Civil war. But our winner,
Jeff Schell. I've told my story with Jeff Shell before.
(33:48):
The short version is this one of three executives at
Fox Sports working for Rubert Murdoch whom I could trust
not to lie to me or to everybody else every hour.
Really enjoyed his company. He gave me advice that benefited
me at the expence of the company. Sometimes. When he
switched to NBC and I was leaving MSNBC in twenty
(34:10):
ten and eleven, he tried to talk me out of it.
When they made him chairman of NBC in twenty nineteen,
I reached out the night the rumor broke and he
reached back like two hours later said he wanted to
talk about having me go back on the air anchoring
at MSNBC, And then we went back and forth. There
was that little pandemic that slowed things down, But after
(34:32):
the pandemic ended, we still went back and forth for
nearly two years, with him scheduling meetings with me and
then canceling the meetings, and then scheduling meetings with me
and the head of NBC News and him, and then
canceling those meetings, and then the whole thing finally blew up,
and ten years of negotiations of various seriousness came to
a final end in the fall of twenty twenty one,
(34:53):
and Shell put out a statement to a media reporter
because it leaked after ten years of secrecy, that he
was never really thinking of having me come back to
MSA NBC and it was all my fault because I
didn't realize that he was lying, and I should have
known he was lying. Now that's a flex. In twenty
(35:17):
twenty three, NBC fired Jeffschell on the spot for cause,
and he was chairman for a really sleazy affair and
job manipulation thing with a CNBC talent, and he went
to sue them and all the lawyers in the world.
He went to my lawyer and she began the process
(35:38):
of representing him and vetting the case. And I never
even said anything to her. I didn't say, you can't
represent him, I will go somewhere. I didn't do anything.
We never talked about it. I found about it in
the papers that he was going there. The next thing
I know, there's no lawsuit. My lawyer sends me a
quick email going in case you were worried, I'm not
(35:59):
representing him. He didn't get any money. He was just done.
They fired him, and in that rare case of somebody
getting fired from a job like that, it was and
don't let the door hit you in the ass on
the way out. Jeffs. Shell and then these fascists, these
Ellisons who are merging CBS and their company and bringing
(36:21):
in the ridiculous Barry Weiss hired Jeffschell to run CBS
and Jeff Shell from whom I have email after email
after email in which he agrees from twenty nineteen to
twenty twenty that Trump is going to kill us all
and Trump must be stopped. Jeff Shell has become a
(36:43):
Trumpest inside man at CBS. Like the parasite, he actually
is collaborating with the insertion of a Trumpest plant inside
CBS News to oversee what CBS News reports from here
on and what it is no longer permitted to report.
CBS has appointed a man named Kenneth Weinstein to be
(37:05):
the new CBS News ombudsman. Could have been worse, could
have been Stephen Miller. Otherwise, this is as bad as
it gets. Kenneth Weinstein never worked in news. He was
CEO of the Hudson Institute, another fascist think tank. Oliver
Darcy in Status wrote Weinstein's record includes a stream of
(37:27):
alarmist rhetoric popular in right wing media circles. In February,
for example, he declared in a New York Post column
that women in Europe quote can no longer walk safely
at night in cities because of the influx of Muslim migrants.
In the same piece, he mocked quote media elites for
warning about NATO's future, while deriding the alliance as one
(37:48):
that caters to the interests of progressive elites and insisting
it needs to undergo a radical shift. So Kenneth Weinstein
is a to use a phrase similar to that a
radical shit. The New York Times added installing an ombudsman
at CBS News was one of sky Dance's commitments to
the Trump administration. That's a nice way of saying bribe
(38:13):
this year, when the company sought approval for its merger
with Paramount. The agreement, in fact, is to keep that
am boodsman in place, telling on people and preventing things
Trump does not like from getting on the air or
punishing the people who somehow managed to get those things
on the air. That job has to be filled for
(38:33):
at least two years. That is what CBS gave to
Donald Trump, not just the money. The money is for show.
The money is for him to boast. The money is
for him to stroke his mentally ill ego. The power
is Donald Trump now by proxy runs CBS News. More
(38:55):
from The Times, Weinstein donated roughly forty thousand dollars to
Republican and pro Trump political groups last year, according to
federal disclosure forums. That's right, CBS News, You're worth forty
thousand dollars. Mister Weinstein has served on federal advisory boards
under both Democratic and Republican presidents. In twenty twenty, mister
Trump nominated him to serve as ambassador to Japan. They
(39:20):
never voted on that. He didn't become ambassador. Hmmm. A
statement from Paramount said, mister Weinstein will serve as an
independent internal advocate for journalistic integrity and transparency. Unquote, no, no,
he will not. He will serve as a Trump spy
inside CBS News And unfortunately, for the vast majority of
people there who want to tell you the truth, this
(39:42):
is the death of CBS News. So what has this
got to do with Jeff Shell, the aforementioned worst person
in the world today? Mister Weinstein quote will report to
Jeff Shell, the new president of CBS's parent company, Paramount,
which recently merged with the Hollywood studio Skydance. Quote. I've
known him for many years and have great respect or
(40:04):
his integrity, sound judgment, and thoughtful approach to complex issues,
Jeff Shell liar said in a statement, also praising his
quote calm measured perspective. Those quotes from Jeff Shell, who
says you should have known he lies all the time.
Some men are born whoes, some men achieve hoaring, and
(40:28):
others have horedem thrust upon them. And then there are
creatures like Jeff Shell, whose best defense for betrayal is
to publicly say you should have known they were lying,
so it's your fault who achieve the goal of a
lifetime running NBC even in these days. And then they
f it up so badly that they not only don't
(40:50):
get any severance, but no lawyer thinks they have ground
for a lawsuit or even a settlement, or even a
free uber home. And then they're somehow offered a similar
job at another network with one little catch. The little
catch is they have to become a fascist. They have
(41:11):
to participate in the dismantling of freedom of the press
in this country from the position of power in their
own industry, which is supposed to defend freedom of the
press of their own country, the dismantling of their own
country traitor, just so they can claim they can be
(41:37):
president or leader of something again when they should be
cleaning out toilets. And after five years, as the old
joke goes, they give them a brush like Quizzling or
Marshall Patan or Jeff Sheell parasite today's other worst person.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And Lord.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Shouldn't learn I was lying. Nothing of importance happened to
me on September eleventh, two thousand and one. I mean,
(42:28):
against statistical probability. I had friends acquaintances in each of
the two towers and three out of the four planes,
and I only learned of the death of one of
them from the missing posters. I rather unexpectedly became a
street news reporter for old friends, one who ran an
(42:48):
LATV station and one who ran an LA all news
radio station. I felt more keenly that day than any
other in my life that I was the descendant of
countless New York cops and firefighters. My grandfather, my mother's
father drove a hook and ladder in the Bronx. I
have his badge. I was taken by cops for a
series of harrowing behind the police line walks behind ground zero.
(43:10):
I can still hear in my head the matter of
factness of a dispatcher's voice coming across one of the
radios saying body parts found on fourteenth floor of the
World Financial Center, and another equally weary and broken voice
repeating it body parts found on fourteenth floor of World
Financial Center. I didn't see the attacks my apartment then
(43:31):
only faced uptown. When I woke up that morning, all
I saw was as beautiful a sky as I had
ever seen before and to this day have ever seen since.
By the time I got down to the street, there
were already people with glazed eyes and dust covered shoes
and pants who were just reaching my neighborhood from their
(43:52):
walk from the Trade Center. The Trade Center was seventy
five blocks south of where I lived. I was the
witness who didn't see anything. However, I had already been
on the radio in La three times, and I was
on my way to Times Square for a television shot
when I realized it was now hours later and I
(44:13):
had neton, and I was just passing one of my places,
a restaurant called Red Eye Grill, and unbelievably it was open,
half a dozen waiters, familiar faces, hugs, tears. They made
me my regular meal, they didn't charge me for it.
Then I went to the restroom to wash up, and
there was an attendant in there, and I recognized him too.
And after I was finished, being even more embarrassed than
(44:35):
usual at the whole process of somebody handing me a
washcloth in a bathroom, I reached to give him a tip,
and I found exactly three quarters in my pocket and
a fifty dollars bill in my wallet, and the attendant said, oh,
I'll take those quarters. I can't use the payphone with
a fifty And I didn't understand what he meant, so
I asked him, what do you mean? He introduced himself.
(44:56):
His name was Thomas Reyis, he explained. Two weeks earlier,
Thomas Reyess said he had been laid off by an
investment firm that he had worked for downtown. They liked him,
he liked them, but jobs like his came and went,
and he was out fired on August twenty fourth, two
thousand and one. But he said they told him that
if he wanted to, he could keep his desk for
(45:17):
a couple of weeks, maybe even a month. He could
come in and use their computer and call around looking
for work, maybe even pick up a shift at the
firm here and there freelance. But to that point, in
large part because labor Day had been the previous Monday,
and in New York you leave for labor Day a
week before and you come back a week after. There
(45:37):
were no openings yet for him in the investment business
or anything else that he could find. But years before
he had worked odd jobs at that place, the Red
Eye Grill, including as the attendant in the men's room,
and this was the only place where they had offered
him a paycheck to do anything. He was still going
to his old job and his old desk every day
(46:00):
except when Red Eye called and said they needed him
in the men's room he had been on Wall Street.
He was now not just the men's room attendant. He
was the backup men's room attendant at a restaurant in Midtown.
And that morning, seven am, seven point thirty, he was
(46:20):
going out the door to his desk in the investment
firm to work the phones again when his cell phone rang.
The guy doing the mid day shift in the men's
room at Red Eye Grill on Seventh Avenue had called
in sick. He had, if he wanted it, eight hours
of work coming to him sixty bucks seventy five with
(46:40):
tips if he wanted it. And so that was how
Thomas Reyis was in the men's room at the Red
Eye Grill at fifty seventh Street and sixth Avenue, handing
out very few towels to very few customers. On September eleventh,
two thousand and one rather than sitting at his desk
in the World Trade Center, And that is also why
(47:02):
he wanted my quarters and not my fifty dollars bill,
because he was trying to use the restaurant payphone to
call his friends who still worked at the investment firm's office,
which was on floors one hundred and one, one hundred
and two, one hundred three, one hundred four and one
hundred five of World Trade Center Building number one, because
(47:23):
his old firm was Canter Fitzgerald, and he was not
there that day only because the full time men's room
attendant at the restaurant had called in sick, and I
wished him luck with his phone calls, and I got
out of there as quickly as I could because I
had seen the video and he clearly had not seen
the video. They were all dead at Canter Fitzgerald, including
(47:44):
two classmates of mine from college, Amon mcaaney Mike Tanner.
They were dead in the pyre of the building in
which I had started my television career twenty years and
a month before. The brother of another friend of mine
was in the other tower. I had a friend, one
of my cameramen on my show at Fox Sports, who
I'd worked with literally three months before, Tom Peccarelli. He
(48:07):
was on one plane. The former MSNBC guest Barbara Olson
was on another. A hockey acquaintance of mine, Garnet Ace Bailey,
was on a third plane. I went to the bar
at the Red Eye Grill, and I asked the bartender
to change the fifty for me and to give me
all the coins he could spare. It's probably five dollars worth,
(48:28):
and I kept two tens for myself just in case.
And I went back to the men's room and I
gave the rest and all the coins to Thomas Reyes
for his phone calls. Apparently the battery was gone on
his cell, and I hope I did a good job
not letting him know that none of his friends would
be answering. I mentioned Mike Tanner. I did not know
(48:49):
he was dead until much later. September twenty fourth About
Amon Mcanany, I knew right away that morning he had
been one of the heroes of the nineteen ninety three
attack on the Trade Center. On that day, he had
guided a human chain of survivors one hundred flights of
smoky stairwells. He worked on one of the uppermost floors,
(49:10):
but this time, in two thousand and one, there were
no chains for him to lead, though no one who
knew him has ever had a seconds doubt that he tried.
Mike Tennor was the starting quarterback and Amon Mcananney the
starting wide receiver. In the first sporting event I ever
covered for money fifteen dollars from United Press International to
(49:31):
cover a Cornell football game in nineteen seventy six. And
wouldn't you know the only thing that happened all day
was Amon dropping a punt setting up the other guy's
field goal. Cornell loses three to nothing, and I'm supposed
to write two hundred words about it and telling this
story as methodically as possible. I only summon up about
one hundred and ten words, and the UPI man in
(49:53):
Albany taking in my story says, no, that's okay. You
don't have to pad it out with ninety words on
the early fall weather. We'll still send you the fifteen
bucks kid. And I found out about Mike Tanner the
way too many people found out about loved ones or
friends or fellow alumni, or just anonymous to them, smiling
faces who suddenly counted every bit as much as those
(50:15):
we knew. In that horrible month. Mike's face and name
were on a missing poster on Canal Street in Manhattan.
I stopped and stared at it for five minutes. I
missed a report I was supposed to file for KFWB
radio in Los Angeles. Somehow the circumstances of finding out
that way foretold accurately how much shock and pain there
(50:39):
was yet to come. But the point is I had
a nine to eleven story, and you did too, probably
even at remote distances, even friend of a friend of
a friend. Some lucky ones don't. Some went through their
entire lives and go through their entire lives still unaffected
by nine to eleven. And now with time, more and
(51:03):
more people think of it Pearl Harbor, like World War two,
like the assassination of Lincoln. Then it has to be
that way, or we would never survive. But for those
of us who still have the stories, Democrats have them
and Republicans have them, and those who thought the Iraq
War made sense have them, and those who knew it
(51:24):
for what it was have them. We were all in
that sad thing together, and we always will be. But Unfortunately,
as the anniversaries of nine to eleven began, President Bush
and the Republicans were making it clear that somehow their
part of this enforced tragic togetherness was more important than
(51:45):
the part of their critics. The only positive of nine
to eleven and the days and weeks and years that
so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity
here in New York and throughout the country. The government,
the president in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to the President's party tabled
(52:10):
that reality. Those who doubted the mechanics of his election
the year before ignored that. Those who wondered about his
qualifications forgot that nearly unanimous support of his government was granted.
And that is something that cannot be taken away from
that government by its critics. It can only be squandered
(52:33):
by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds,
but to take political advantage of them. Terrorists did not
come and steal our newly regained sense of being American
first and political fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats, nor did
the media, nor did the people. The president and those
(52:55):
around him, and those who followed him in his party.
They did that. They promised bipartisanship and showed that to
them bipartisanship meant that their party would rule and the
rest of us would follow, or be branded with ever
escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as
(53:17):
those who, in Vice President Cheney's words, validate the strategy
of the terrorists. These men promised protection and then showed
that to them protection meant going to war against the
despot whose hand they had once shaken, who did not
have WMD, who did not have a damn thing to
(53:39):
do with nine to eleven, against whom plans have been
laid many years before nine to eleven. The polite phrase
for how so many of us were duped into supporting
a war, or at least acquiescing to it on the
false premise that it had something to do with nine
to eleven, is lying by inference. The impolite phrase is
(54:04):
war crime. The America we live in now, in which
one party believes its hatred is love, its fascism is freedom,
it's depravity is purity. That began as the nine to
eleven anniversaries began to follow one upon the other, after
taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and the love and
(54:26):
transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously
transforming it into fear and suspicion, and turning that fear
into the campaign slogan of election after election, we arrived
in a world in which when Trump enacted the worst
imaginable cliche wrapping himself in a flag, wrapping himself in
(54:49):
an American flag, the morons thought that proved he loved America.
So two have they succeeded in this and are still succeeding,
and still, although they don't call it that, this government, well,
the government of Trump, the government in waiting of Trump,
(55:13):
uses nine to eleven, uses the hatreds of nine to
eleven as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans. This
is an odd point at which to site a television program,
especially one from March nineteen sixty. But long ago, a
series called The Twilight Zone broadcast a riveting episode called
(55:34):
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. In brief, a
meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extraterrestrials disguised as humans.
The electricity goes out in a neighborhood. One neighbor pleads
for calm. Suddenly his lights and only the lights in
his house, go back on. Someone therefore suggests he must
(55:58):
be the alien. Then another man's car starts suddenly. As
charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are
inevitably produced, an alien is shot. He turns out to
be just another neighbor who was returning from going for help.
(56:19):
The camera then pulls back to a nearby hill where
two extraterrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can
jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no
need to actually attack, you just turn off a few
of the human machines, and then quote, they picked the
most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves. And then,
(56:44):
in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums
it up with words of remarkable prescience, Given where we
have found ourselves in ever increasing measures since September eleventh,
two thousand and one, the tools of conquest do not
necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fall out. There
(57:04):
are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be
found only in the minds of men. For the record,
prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless,
frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its
(57:26):
own for the children, and the children yet unborn. I've
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
(57:46):
for listening. I will never forget mister Rayes. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, our musical directors of Countdown.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboard.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
(58:08):
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtis CVSPN Inc.
Is our sports music. Other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my
friend Tony Kornheiser, who has just re upped for another
three years, co hosting Pardon the Interruption on the Worldwide Leader.
(58:33):
One of the great fun days of my life. I
co hosted that show with Tony. I guess three or
four times. He said it was one of the great
thrills of his career, and I said, boy, you haven't
had much of a career, have you. In any event,
congratulations my friend. I'm delighted to see you will still
be working at age two hundred and six. Everything else was,
(58:54):
as always my fault. And that's countdown for today. Day
two hundred and thirty five of America held hostage again,
and just one two hundred and thirty seven days until
this scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brained term,
unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein, or
the pavement on his hand, or wherever his signature turns
(59:16):
up next. In any event, the next schedule countdown is Monday.
Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(59:46):
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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