December 14, 2023 • 41 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 90: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dementia J. Trump has really lived up to the name. Or - DOWN to it.
In a jaw-dropping development, even for him, even for his declining acuity, even in the vast Fog of Trump, he has just endorsed TWO rival candidates in the same congressional Republican primary. Saturday, at the Young Republicans banquet, Trump endorses Bo Hines, hoping to be chosen as the Republican running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District. Then yesterday, Trump writes “Addison McDowell just announced he is running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District… has my Complete and Total endorsement."
There are SIX Republicans in the primary. Plenty of time for Trump to endorse all six of them. The primary isn’t until the 5th of March. This should stop being a surprise. The man is mentally impaired, declining fast, doesn’t know which number World War the NEXT World War would be, continually confuses Obama for Biden, doesn’t know what city he’s in, thinks Hungary’s Viktor Orban is the dictator of Turkey, and this is after he STARTED with any one (or more) of a dozen psychological and maybe physiological problems that could be summarized under the heading “his brain doesn’t work right.” It is not just a question of what Trump would do that he wanted to do but thought he couldn’t get away with the first time. It is also a question of what Trump would do that he would never know he was doing – out of sheer mental incapacitation.
Like endorsing two candidates in the same race. Within 89 hours.
Just to put a cherry on top of this cake of crazy, as I was recording the podcast Trump was speaking in Iowa. He was supposed to boast about the "U.S. Economy." But he didn't say that. He said the "Eunice Economy." Eunice. So good economic news for anybody named Eunice.
Also: Hunter Biden humiliates Jim Comer and Jim Jordan, and the Republicans address the danger that Joe Biden is to America by launching a formal inquiry into impeaching him and then immediately going on vacation for the rest of the year. The show trial impeachment of Joe Biden is SO fraudulent that it has even by noticed by Chuck Todd, who has written 1,947 of the dumbest words imaginable on the topic, including the idea - as if he had dreamt it up - that the concept of impeachment has now been diluted.
What Chuck did not mention but I will, is the role NBC News played on the day impeachment - and our original form of government - died. September 21, 1998, the day NBC and all the other networks prostituted themselves to the GOP and ran, unseen and unedited and without any context, Bill Clinton's Grand Jury testimony that had been illegally given to the Republican-run House Judiciary Committee and then illegally broadcast on all the networks while not one of tv's "journalists" made one complaint. It was before Chuck's time at NBC. It was NOT before mine.
B-Block (27:21) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Running the gamut from Twitter-X to Tesla to putting his thumb on the finger for Republican politicians, Elon Musk wins all three medals.
C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Any one, in any profession, can have a similar experience. But only in broadcasting does it signal the death of your youth. "Hey," your new colleague says. "I used to listen to you when I was a KID." I've been on both sides of the equation and I'll tell you those stories.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. Dementia J.
Trump really is dementia J. Trump in a jaw dropping development,
(00:29):
even for him, even for his declining acuity, even in
the vast fog of Trump. He has just endorsed two
rival candidates in the same congressional Republican primary Saturday night
the New York Young Republicans Club. Beau Hines is here.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He's going to be a congressman very shortly.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
BOHINZ. Thank you. Saturday night, Trump endorsed beau Hines, hoping
to be chosen as the Republican running for North Carolina's
sixth congressional district. Yesterday three five pm, Trump writes, Addison
McDowell just announced he is running for North Carolina sixth
congressional district. Has my complete and total endorsement, unquote, except
(01:16):
for that stuff about bo Hines. He's going to be
a congressman very shortly, something Bohines tweeted out at least twice.
He's going to be a congressman very shortly. Bohines is,
as is Addison McDowell, on the same party ticket from
the same district, and for that matter, maybe also Christian
(01:39):
Costelli will be a congressman very shortly, also from the
North Carolina six, and Mary Ann Contogianis also also from
the North Carolina six. And Jay Wagner from the North
Carolina six and the favorite in the sixth Republican field,
former Congressman Mark Walker. I really thought he would endorse
conto Gianis. She's a plastic surgeon. There is plenty of
(02:02):
time for Trump to endorse her to yours, all six
of them, the primary till the fifth of March, you know,
the day after the election. Subversion trial is supposed to start.
More on that. In a moment eighty nine hours apart,
endorses one guy in public, endorses another guy online, same race,
but it's Biden who has cognitive problems. And as always,
(02:28):
wait there's more. The guy dementia j Trump endorsed, I
mean the second guy. He endorsed, McDowell. He has not
even officially announced his campaign or filed the paperwork, as
the Capitol Hill corresponded for the News and Observer of
Charlotte wrote it plainly but accurately. In a surprising move, Wednesday,
(02:50):
Trump announced his support in a North Carolina congressional race
for a candidate who hadn't publicly announced a campaign. This
should stop being a surprise and should stop being something
you only hear about on this podcast. The man is
(03:11):
mentally impaired, declining fast. He doesn't know which number World
war the next World war would be. He continually confuses
Obama for Biden. He doesn't know what city he's in.
He thinks Hungary's victor orbon is the dictator of Turkey.
And this is actor He started with anyone or more
(03:31):
of a dozen different psychological and maybe physiological problems that
could be summarized under the heading his brain don't work
right with your vote.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
By Christmas, and we're going to have it by Christmas
twenty twenty four, that's just shortly after the election. Because
of the momentum of our victory, we will have a
unis economy roaring back.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It is not just a question of what Trump would
do that he wanted to do but thought he couldn't
get away with the first time. It is also a
question of what Trump would do that he would know
he was doing out of sheer mental incapacitation, like endorsing
(04:12):
two candidates in the same race within eighty nine hours
on the legal front, and I'm sad to say this
is yet to include somebody moving against Trump under Florida's
Baker Act, which says that anyone can be forced to
undergo involuntary examination if three things are true. One quote,
(04:34):
they are mentally or emotionally impaired to the extent they
cannot control their own actions or understand reality. Well, yeah,
since nineteen forty six. Two quote, they have refused voluntary examination,
or because of a mental illness, they cannot understand that
an examination is necessary. Uh, person, woman, man, camera TV.
(04:55):
I aced it. And three quote Without treatment, they may
suffer personal neglect or may cause harm to themselves or others. Wow,
three for three, one hundred percent, mister Trump, you aste it.
On the legal front, it may be time for Jacksmith
(05:16):
to drop one of the charges against Trump in the
election stealing case eighteen US Code fifteen oh five obstruction
of an official proceeding, because I'm beginning to suspect that
even this corrupt and compromised Supreme Court will not have
the blindness to send the country into virtual revolution by
agreeing with Trump that he and all presidents are cloaked
(05:37):
by something that he and his lawyers and maybe his
doctors dreamed up called presidential immunity, but they have now
announced the Supreme Court that is that they will hear
an appeal of a case in which Joseph Fisher was
convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding for pushing up
(05:57):
against Capitol police on January sixth and encouraging others to
enter the capitol, and Fisher appealed and his mouth Jesus
argued that the statute has only ever been applied to
the destruction of documents, and that he was convicted on
the charge even though the DOJ did not even contend
he hoped to destroy any actual electoral votes. One Trump
(06:20):
appointed judge has agreed with him. Literally dozens of other
judges hearing Fisher's case and the three hundred and twenty
six other January sixth insurrectionists convicted of obstruction of an
official proceeding, including the three court panel to which DOJ
appealed the verdict for Fisher and against obstruction of an
(06:40):
official preceding. All of those judges, dozens of them ruled
against this claim, insisting it is a distinction without a difference,
and if the law applies to trying to obstruct an
official proceeding by tearing up paper. It sure as hell
also applies to trying to obstruct an official proceeding by
tearing up limbs, and especially by the way Trump did it.
(07:03):
And Jack Smith still should drop the charge because the
point isn't about what exactly eighteen US Code fifteen oh
five applies to and what it does not apply to.
It is that the Supreme Court is going to weigh
in and it can find for the DOJ and against Trump.
And that's still a win for Trump because it runs
(07:24):
out more of the clock January, February March April. When
will it rule? Jack Smith already showed he is aware
of this. He asked the Supreme Court to bypass appeals
rulings and decide immediately right now. Get it over with
about the presidential immunity nonsense. He should do the same here.
Drop obstruction of official proceeding, pursue conspiracy to defraud the
(07:46):
United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against
the right to vote and have one votes counted. Because
as it is, Judge Chutkin just paused all procedural deadlines
in the election stealing case because the DC Circuit Court
of Appeals and or the Supreme Court have not definitively
put a stake through the heart of this presidential immunity bullshit.
(08:10):
Just yesterday, Trump's lawyers John Lauro, Todd Blanche, John Sour
how many others? No men can count that high. His
lawyers resorted to complaining that the proposed trial schedule would
disrupt their family holiday and travel plans for Christmas and
(08:31):
New Years, like they wouldn't build Trump more for those hours,
and like they or any families they might might once
or might yet have, would care about Christmas if it
meant instead more billable hours at higher rates. Quote, it
is as if the Special Council growled with his grinch
(08:52):
fingers nervously drumming, I must find some way to keep
Christmas from coming. But how boys, your client just endorsed
two guys in the same race, and he's low by
his cult members because he's a sadist. Maybe you want
to drop any future references to the Grinch, though, Who
(09:13):
am I to tell you how to run up your bill? Seriously,
mister Special Counsel. The March fourth trial start d day,
the launch the launch of dementia j Trump into the
sun is already in jeopardy. The nation is on fire.
What matters is how much you can pull out of
(09:34):
the burning building in time, not that you try to
pull all of it out. Also, hey, Jim Jordan, who
defied a congressional subpoena as part of the crowd of
cowards threatening to prosecute Hunter Biden for defying a congressional subpoena.
Nancy Mace was just there and hope she'd get to
(09:56):
see more pictures of hunters.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Junk James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and their co
leagues have distorted the facts by cherry picking lines from
a bank statement, manipulating texts I sent, editing the testimony
of my friends and former business partners, and misstating personal
(10:19):
information that was stolen from me. There is no fairness
or decency in what these Republicans are doing. They have
lied over and over about every aspect of my personal
and professional life, so much so that their lies have
(10:40):
become the false facts believed by too many people. No
matter how many times it is debunked, they continue to
insist that my father's support of Ukraine against Russia is
the result of a non existent bribe they displayed naked
photos of me during an oversight hearing, And they have
(11:03):
taken the light of my dad's life love, the light
of my dad's love for me, and presented it as darkness.
They have no shame.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I like Hunter Biden. I like that aggressiveness. I like
that anger. I like that righteous indignation. I like the
naming of the coward's names. As with his father, I'd
like him to swear more. And the gist of his
argument is demonstrably true. Not only should you never go
(11:37):
into a closed hearing with a Republican, especially a proven
liar like James Comber, a man accused by his own
college girlfriend of beating her and calling her mother up
and saying he was going to kill her. Not only
should you never give a creature like that the chance
to manipulate you the way Joseph McCarthy used to manipulate
them innocent, but you should never let comer hell Joseph
(12:00):
macomber move more than a foot in either direction without
reminding everybody. He offered Hunter Biden his choice of a
private deposition or the public hearing hunter Biden showed up
for yesterday.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Hunter Biden's more than welcome to come in front of
the committeier he's invited today.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We will drop her.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
We're in the downhill phase of this investigation now because
we have so many documents, and we can bring these
people in for depositions, for committee arrings, whichever they choose.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I stole that mashup off Congress and Moskowitz's feed as
two Hunter's father all Trump's House Republican slaves made their
squeaks of protests and let loose the tiny slivers of
their souls that Trump still doesn't own. And yet every
goddamned one of them, even ken Buck, righteous lame duck,
(12:48):
morelike milkshake duck, every one of them has now voted
to further the Republicans show trial. Hours after the Dow Jones,
which Republicans consider the only barometer of the nation's health,
hit an all time high. The phony impeachment has now
moved from committee examination, which isn't a thing, to a
(13:08):
formal inquiry, which also isn't a thing. Biden's transgressions are
so urgent, so pressing, so threatening to the life of
the nation that the Republicans voted on this inquiry and
then immediately went on vacation for the rest of the year. Well,
to be fair, they have to get back to their
home districts because you never know when Lord and Master
(13:31):
Trump will endorse them and their primary challengers, worms useless,
self debasing worms in a bottomless pit of Trump's manure. Well, frankly,
there is one bit of imagery I immediately regret, but
this impeachment KABOOKI theater. There is more evidence against James
(13:53):
Comer about his college girlfriend than there is about Joe
Biden about anything, So why not open an inquiry about
James Comer too? This crap is so obviously and nauseatingly
purely pulled a that you know who wrote a piece
bemoaning the perversion of the impeachment process. You know who
even noticed this, Chuck Todd. And that's ironic because long
(14:16):
before Chuck Todd was at NBC News, but not before
I was. You know which network let itself be played
like the proverbial two dollars banjo by a corrupt Speaker
of the House and an even more corrupt special prosecutor
to impeach Bill Clinton solely to dirty him up. You
know which network let themselves be used like that, be
(14:37):
prostituted like that NBC News impeachments used to feel like
the ultimate political punishment, writes Chuck Todd, But somewhere along
the way, impeachment became just another political campaign tactic. Somewhere
along the way. Gee, thanks, Chuck. Nobody had noticed that
(15:02):
earlier this year, or you know, in nineteen ninety eight
when it first happened. But good on you for writing
one nine hundred and forty eight words in your column
on nbcnews dot com, which is apparently a regular thing
now to which you have devoted yourself since they fired
you from Meet the Press. Good insight, like both siding
the impeachment of Trump for blackmailing another head of state
(15:23):
for dirt on his own rival for his own presidency,
and then the other impeachment of Trump for trying to
you know, end democracy, both siding that with the impeachment
of Bill Clinton for as Chuck slipped and wrote, an
affair with an intern. Chuck also graced us with two
uses of the cliche the political death penalty and such
(15:43):
watered down I can't offend Trump. He might be fewer
in thirteen months insights. As quote, much of the impeachment
fever on the right is driven by Trump and his
grievance campaign. No crap, Chuck, really much. There's the obligatory,
as I've said numerous times to any elected Republican I've
(16:04):
interview about Hunter Biden, and then the moral appeal to
how Republicans concerned about politicians making money off of government
should also be outraged by the Trump family and cronies.
And you wonder if Chuck really thinks there are still
human beings inside any elected Republican he's interviewed, who has
already let Trump pull his bone marrow out of him
(16:27):
with a sippy straw. I mean now that Chris Solizza,
like Skynet, has become self aware and actually made an
online joke asking which face was more punishable, Vivi gramaswamis
or Chris Silizza's. We need a new source of this
kind of old dribble that Chris used to do for us,
(16:50):
and now Chuck has taken over the reins. But honestly,
I'd rather have read about NBC's role in the perversion
of impeachment into this undisguised political character assassination, because even
before I read Chuck, and I'll give him this, he
reads just as smarmy as he sounds, I was thinking
(17:10):
about Monday, September twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, which might
someday be agreed upon as the official end date of
the original American form of government. That morning, just after
nine am, a feed began in a television control room
being controlled by the House Judiciary Committee, then as now
(17:32):
run by a bunch of scumbag Republicans who could defect
to the Russian Duma tomorrow and fit in seamlessly, maybe
not even needing translators. One of them finally figured out
how to press play on one of the videotape machines
with their Satanist hoofs, and in the master controls at
NBC News and ABC News and CBS News and CNN
(17:55):
and c SPAN and Fox News and CNBC and MSNBC
and countless other networks and outlets around the nation, somebody
in each one of them said, here it comes, and
there started playing on all American networks exactly at the
same time it was being fed out by the Republican
Judiciary Committee. There came the videotaped grand jury testimony of
(18:17):
William Jefferson Clinton, forty second President of the United States,
in the Special Council's investigation into what that old dead
pervert ken Starr liked to pretend was not sex with
an intern, broadcast immediately by the Republicans in the Judiciary
Committee at their command, via every network in this country
(18:38):
into every home using television at nine am September twenty one,
nineteen ninety eight. Grand jury testimony secret sacro sanct not
even to be quoted outside the courtroom without the consent
of the witness. On August seventeenth of that year, President
(18:58):
Clinton had testified to four hours of pornographic questions from
the staff of this dead psycho Star, and within days
that untouchable videotape of his untouchable testimony had been illegally
given to the House Judiciary Committee by the dead's Special
(19:18):
Councils scumbag Star, and literally thirty six days later, the
House Judiciary Committee illegally gave it to the broadcast networks
and the cable networks for public dissemination, and every one
of them, every goddamned last one of them. NBC included
an MSNBC where I was the principal anchor, and CBS
at ABC and all the others, every goddamn last one
(19:40):
of them transmitted it live and without interruption for four
goddamned hours, just as it was received from the Republicans
in the House. Not one network, not one even dared
to say, we're going to delay this like ten minutes
so we can provide some context to what you're seeing.
(20:00):
Not one let alone dared to say, Hey, is this journalism?
Is this? Uh? Is this right? Is this? Isn't this
grand jury testimony? Is this America? Not one of the
supposed great television newsmen of the day, Not Peter Jennings,
not Jim Lair, not Bernard Shaw, not Sam Donaldson, not
(20:22):
that great flaming fraud Brokaw, not even Dan Rather, nor
my late friend Tim Russert. Not one of them succeeded,
nor to my knowledge, even tried to even slow down
the total hijacking of American TV news by one political
party intent on removing the president from the other political party,
who had been elected not two years before by a
(20:44):
margin of two hundred and twenty electoral votes. Not one
goddamned journalist in television stood up and said no. None
of them tried to intervene on behalf of the secrecy
of the grand jury. None of them tried to intervene
on behalf of the dignity of the presidency, even when
the president has not been dignified. None of them even
(21:07):
tried to intervene to make the world safe for impeachment.
We may have begun to lose our political souls when
Ronald Reagan's people got the Iranians to delay releasing the
hostages to help him win the nineteen eighty election over
Jimmy Carter. We may have begun to lose that soul
(21:28):
the day Richard Nixon green lighted the Watergate cover up. Hell,
we may have begun to lose it during the months
after the crooked and contested eighteen seventy six presidential campaign.
Blamed Tilden. But whatever we had left went out that
window on September twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, when the
last line of defense, ably manned by slobs like Andy
(21:55):
Lack and Andrew Hayward and David Weston, the last line
of defense protecting our form of government, said what are
you talking about? We can't do what's right. Fox News
is running this live. We'll get killed in the ratings.
We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs. Gentlemen, that
(22:17):
was it. Everything since that date has been in one
fashion or other reruns. I didn't get a harump out
of that guy. You watch your ass. Also of interest,
here a liar who got caught lying while running for
(22:39):
Congress is running again, and he needed to get Elon
Musk to pull a few springs so people would not
know he's lying again. And given that the guys I
just mentioned there, Andrew Lack, Andrew Hayward, David Weston, they
were the presidents of NBC News and CBS News and
ABC News, and they were two dollars banjos upon which Newton,
(23:00):
Gingrich and ken Starr played. Given that they were the
presidents of the new work news divisions, what do you
think Elon frickin' Musk did when faced with a choice
of right or expediency? Do you think he stood up
for what was right? That's next, This is countdown. This
(23:27):
is countdown with Keith Olberman still a come on, countdown.
(23:52):
It is happening today to broadcasters and podcasters and streamers
who were born in the year two thousand. That unexpected
moment universal to life, but particularly annoying when you're a broadcaster,
when you're thirty years old, or twenty five, or in
my case, you're twenty and some other broadcaster you're working
(24:13):
with comes up to you and says, you know, I
used to listen to you when I was a kid.
It is literally the day your own youth dies. I've
been on both ends of this conversation. I've been the
sayer and the sae. Details next in things I promise
not to tell first time for the daily roundup of
the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
(24:34):
todays worst persons in the world. And first an update, Well,
even a climate change conference run by an oil sultan
can't get away with not mentioning the fatality of fossil fuels.
It turns out, hours after I recorded yesterday's COP twenty
eight did put out a closing statement encouraging quote transitioning
(24:55):
away from fossil fuels and energy systems by around twenty fifty,
which of course will be too late, and of course
it's non binding, and of course the Republicans will repudiate
it if they seize power, in which half of these
grotesquely and deliberately ignorant people in that party think is
woke because it has the word transition in it. Now
(25:16):
to today's medalists the bronze worse. Elon Musk is a
little crapshack social media site x formerly Twitter, the sports
illustrated of social media. It broke yesterday, at least the
links to other news sites and other real media locations
broke for several hours in the middle of the business day,
and sis Musk has denuded the place of all its
(25:38):
actual value except a disseminating white supremacism and other hatred,
b fundraising for dogs on death row, and c links
to news sites and other real news media locations. We
got our first look at what Twitter would be without
news organizations and others tweeting links of their own work.
Turns out we can live without it. Even the dogs
(26:00):
can live without it. We're developing an app for the dogs.
Nice work, oh, runner up worser Elon Musk. His little crapshag.
Car company, Tesla, the sports illustrated of the automotive industry,
has a small problem. There are about two million Teslas
on America roads today and the company is now recalling
about roughly two million. Out of the roughly two million,
(26:25):
the autopilot feature does not work correctly, and it turns out, yes,
it did contribute to many of the thousands of crashes
during which autopilot was engaged. Happily, there's no indication Elmo
has to recall the cyber truck what it's because they've
made so few cyber trucks that Musk can evade safety
(26:45):
testing on them. So far. To borrow a line from
my old friend David Letterman, you got here in a Tesla. Congratulations,
you've cheated death. But the gold medal winner the worst
Elon Musk, right wing nut job, his party, the Republicans,
the sports illustrated to political parties can depend on Musk
(27:07):
to do its bidding for them. The Ohio senator who
hopes to someday challenge Mitch McConnell for the Senate leadership,
the leadership in chins am I right. Jd Vance posted
at two thirty four pm Monday, that quote. In twenty
twenty two, National Democrats lied about JR. Madjuski and his
service record. Too many Republicans ran from these dishonest smears
(27:31):
instead of fighting them. Jr. Is running for Congress in
twenty twenty four, and I'm proud to support him. Unquote.
Then there's a picture of Vance's Lord and Master Dementia J.
Trump with Majuski, who claimed still claims he was in
combat and he's never in combat. Hours later, community notes
the Underground the French Resistance of Twitter correct Advances lie
(27:54):
quote Jr. Madjuski did, in fact misrepresent his service record
during his twenty twenty two congressional campaign, According to United
States military documents obtained by the Associated Press through a
public records request, one quote and underneath that are links
to the Air Force Times. But at seven forty five
pm Monday, Majuski tweeted, quote, hey elon Musk, the disinformation
(28:18):
Dems are adding false community notes to Senator Vance's post,
and he provided his own link to the fascist propaganda
site Breitbart. By ten fifty pm Tuesday, a little over
twenty seven hours later, Madjuskei tweets again false community notes removed.
So Majuskie or Advance or somebody got Musk or somebody
(28:40):
else at Twitter X how many people still work there
besides Musk? That Nancy woman from NBC did she do this?
Somebody silenced the last lonely burp of honest free speech
on Twitter, free speech being the other thing Musk sells
besides self crashing cars. Did so to defend a Republican
muck who padded his military resume because Elon has decided
(29:04):
fashion will allow him to sell even more self crashing cars. Elon,
free speech is meaningless unless you let people that you
don't like say things you don't like, unless the truth
hurts a fascist, which case you have to urinate on
free speech. Musk two days worst person in the world,
(29:42):
see the number one story on the Countdown, and my
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
I believe it was this time of year, early winter,
thirty nine years ago that the CBS television station here
in New York, Channel two dismissed a news reporter named
Charles Crawford. I was reminded of him the other day
because he bridges two stages of my life that from
(30:03):
this advanced age, I feel like two separate lives. Until
I was about fifteen and went out on my first date,
I spent all of my time doing about four things
and four things only, going to school, going to baseball games,
collecting sports memorabilia, and trying to figure out how I
was going to be a sportscaster or sportswriter when I
(30:25):
grew up. Incidentally, i think I'm now up to doing
about six things and six things only anyway. In nineteen
seventy one, the fact that there were adults who collected
baseball cards and spent literally hundreds of dollars on some
of them was sprung on an unsuspecting America. The first
big card convention, a gussied up flea market in a
(30:49):
Detroit area hotel over a three day weekend to which
some people traveled from other states, was so completely unbelievable
that CBS News sent a crew and a reporter to
cover it. The story closed out in an addition to
the CBS Evening News one night, and I think it's
so shocked Anchorman Walter Cronkite that he said gush or
(31:13):
something before recovering to sign off. That's why it was Monday,
August twenty third, nineteen seventy one. Swalder Cronkite, CBS. The
couple a thousand of us who constituted the entirety of
the known baseball card hobby all led out a squeal
of delight in front of our black and white TVs
(31:34):
and the mainstreaming of baseball cards began. The most amazing
part of it was it was almost all adults. There
was a kid my age in Indianapolis named Elliott Dock
who had a fabulous collection. There was another one near
Philly named Robert Liftson, and he and I have been
friends fifty years now, and he was over at the
apartment in December talking cards. There were some other older
(31:57):
teenagers seventeen eighteen nineteen, but other than that it was
all adults, adults who had either secretly never stopped acting
baseball cards or had resumed collecting them, and who could
enjoy everything from a newly issued Reggie Jackson card to
a newly discovered example from the set issued by Kalamazoo
Bats Cigarettes in eighteen eighty eight. In nineteen seventy two,
(32:21):
the first such card show in the metropolitan New York
area was held, and at the age of thirteen, I
went with my parents and sister in tow and I had,
for me anyway, a transcendent experience, and they did not,
unless you consider a summer weekend in a hotel in
Lake Groundkunkam and New York transcendent. At least there was
a pool and it didn't rain anyway. The next year,
(32:45):
in partnership with some others, one of the really good
people in the hobby, an adult named Mike Ehrenstein, also
still a friend of mine fifty years later, the man
who basically invented everything from plastic sheets to keep your
cards in to reprints of old cards to cards of
minor league players. He staged the first show in New
York City in the Union Hall, all the way downtown,
(33:07):
Bang on ast your place, over the Memorial Day weekend.
He was told he was going to lose his shirt
on this. In fact, by early Friday evening, like two
hours after the thing opened, the crowd was so large
and dense I could not see from my chair behind
the table I had bought from which I was selling
my duplicates, to the table directly across the aisle from me,
(33:29):
which was no more than twenty feet away. It was
such a success Mike hurriedly booked the hall for a
second show for Thanksgiving. Well, by now nineteen seventy three,
if you put a bunch of these crazy adults paying
good money to buy old baseball cards, twenty five dollars
for a nineteen fifty two tops Mickey Mantle. Are these
(33:51):
people escape bees from a psychiatric facility? Well, if you
did that, some reporter was going to show up and
cover the lunacy. This was especially true of local television news,
especially on a weekend where a story it was not
exactly like every other story that you could shoot before noon,
develop the film and get it on the air at
six pm. That was a gift from the gods, Which
(34:15):
is how I came to see a little commotion at
the front door of that nineteen seventy three Memorial Day
weekend card show and see emerging from the commotion a
man carrying a small TV camera, followed by another man
carrying a big TV boom microphone, followed by another man
who was Charles Crawford, the reporter from Channel two News.
I knew it was him because I knew everybody on
(34:37):
TV in New York in nineteen seventy three by sight,
because I watched as much TV news as I could,
because bluntly I was studying it. My dad was at
my table with me, and while I hoped that mister
Crawford would come over and interview me among the hundreds
of collectors and dealers there, my dad was a little
less reliant on happenstance an accident, and was more bands on.
(35:01):
Be right back, he said. And the next thing I
knew he was button holding Charles Crawford and gesturing back
towards me. And the next thing I knew after that,
Charles Crawford was standing in front of my table, asking
me a few questions, but mostly asking me to show
his cameraman how I was able to use my quote
filing system so sophisticated it allows him to find any
card a collector might want in seconds. That was it
(35:25):
my television debut, No sound bite, not even my name,
just my hands pulling out a drawer from a small
filing cabinet and definitely locating a nineteen sixty eight Rico
Petrocelli card or whatever it was. There was also about
three seconds of me looking straight towards the camera, just
as Charles Crawford told me to my eyes, a mixture
(35:46):
of abject fear and an inscrutable scheming quality, which quite
bluntly at its essence, amounted to my internal dialogue about
how I could get Charles Crawford to surrender his camera
crew in his job so I could go leave the
card show and work for Channel two News that night.
I have gone into cruciating detail about my career timeline,
(36:07):
and for purposes of the Charles Crawford story, I will
only hit the bullet points. This is the year nineteen
seventy three. By nineteen seventy five, I was on the
air at the professional commercial radio station owned by Cornell Students.
In nineteen seventy eight, I was an intern at the
news assignment desk and for the sportscaster at another New
York TV station, Channel five. In nineteen seventy nine, I
(36:29):
got my first full time job at UPI's radio network.
In nineteen eighty one, I got my first TV gig
as a substitute sports reporter for CNN in New York.
In nineteen eighty two, I got that job full time.
And now back to nineteen eighty three, when they started
letting me anchor for the first time a daily four
minute sportscast every night at five point forty five in
(36:50):
the middle of the newscast that was co anchored by
CNN's Vice president and New York Bureau chief, Mary Alice Williams.
One day now, at the age of nearly twenty five,
a cynical veteran of twenty eight months in television. I
came down from our offices on the twenty fifth floor
to our studio in the lobby of one World Trade
Center to do my sportscast. But apparently Mary Alice Williams
(37:14):
was off that day because when I got to the
anchor desk at five forty two or so, the anchor
at the desk in her place was Charles Crawford, the
same Charles Crawford, the Charles Crawford who had put me
on TV a decade before from the nineteen seventy three
card show at the District sixty five Union Hall on
(37:34):
Astor Place. A co anchor in Atlanta teased my sportscast,
and when when we went to the commercial break, Charles
Crawford introduced himself to me and I said we've met,
and he said, oh, how when? And I said, well,
I'll tell you now so you can recover during the sportscast.
And as I quickly recounted it and quoted his narration
(37:54):
word for word, this fourteen year old has a filing
system so sophisticated it allows him to find any car
to collector might want in seconds. I told him that,
and his face got whiter and whiter and whiter. And
he told me not to worry if he got up
and left while I was doing the sports cast, because
he needed to walk around for a bit and get
some air. To his credit, when we came back from
(38:17):
my report, he introduced me as his old friend when
he came back and said, don't misunderstand me. I'm not
offended or anything. I'm glad you made it, but just
remember this will happen to you someday too. I mean,
I'm only forty seven. And I laughed, and I told
him it already had happened to me. That I had
gone back to my college radio station a year after
(38:38):
I had graduated, and a kid walked up to me
and said he was just starting to train as a
sportscaster there and he had been listening to me since
he was eleven years old. And I went whiter than
Charles Crawford did on that set, and I said, the
hell does that work. I'm only twenty one. I only
started here five years ago. And he explained he was
(39:01):
still attending Ithaca High School at the moment he was
only sixteen. And I told Charles Crawford that my response
was not like his to go for a walk. I said,
I went out and went for a drink, and Charles said,
that's also my plan. As soon as the newscast is over,
I'll buy you one. It couldn't have been nicer. And
just as I was leaving CNN the next spring, they
(39:21):
were hiring him full time, and he eventually became CNN's
chief science correspondent. He was still with them in the
late nineties, and he passed away in twenty sixteen at
the age of eighty one. I remember him for the
nineteen seventy three Card Show, of course, but also for
that drink at the bar that was literally one hundred
yards from CNN New York front door. He had all
kinds of advice about dealing with TV executives. These people
(39:44):
are as dangerous as anything in this world. And I
was a pilot instructor in the Air Force for eight years.
(40:05):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Do me a solid. Tell somebody who
does not listen to listen. Tell them they can call
me up and say they used to listen to me
when they were a kid. Get them to listen. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at
the Old Women Broadcasting Empire in New York. Countdown musical
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle arranged, produced, and
(40:27):
performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is
courtesy ESPN, Inc. Was written by Mitch Warren Davis. It's
called the Old Woman Theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
(40:49):
and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my friend
John Dean, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this the one thousand and seventy
third day since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the Democrats elected government of the United States. Use the
Insurrection Act against him and them while we still can,
(41:11):
and before he endorses somebody else. In the North Carolina
sixth the next scheduled Countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the
news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Because of the momentum of our victory, we will have
a Unis economy.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Roaring Back Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Dementia J.
Trump really is dementia J. Trump in a jaw dropping development,
(00:29):
even for him, even for his declining acuity, even in
the vast fog of Trump. He has just endorsed two
rival candidates in the same congressional Republican primary Saturday night
the New York Young Republicans Club. Beau Hines is here.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He's going to be a congressman very shortly.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
BOHINZ. Thank you. Saturday night, Trump endorsed beau Hines, hoping
to be chosen as the Republican running for North Carolina's
sixth congressional district. Yesterday three five pm, Trump writes, Addison
McDowell just announced he is running for North Carolina sixth
congressional district. Has my complete and total endorsement, unquote, except
(01:16):
for that stuff about bo Hines. He's going to be
a congressman very shortly, something Bohines tweeted out at least twice.
He's going to be a congressman very shortly. Bohines is,
as is Addison McDowell, on the same party ticket from
the same district, and for that matter, maybe also Christian
(01:39):
Costelli will be a congressman very shortly, also from the
North Carolina six, and Mary Ann Contogianis also also from
the North Carolina six. And Jay Wagner from the North
Carolina six and the favorite in the sixth Republican field,
former Congressman Mark Walker. I really thought he would endorse
conto Gianis. She's a plastic surgeon. There is plenty of
(02:02):
time for Trump to endorse her to yours, all six
of them, the primary till the fifth of March, you know,
the day after the election. Subversion trial is supposed to start.
More on that. In a moment eighty nine hours apart,
endorses one guy in public, endorses another guy online, same race,
but it's Biden who has cognitive problems. And as always,
(02:28):
wait there's more. The guy dementia j Trump endorsed, I
mean the second guy. He endorsed, McDowell. He has not
even officially announced his campaign or filed the paperwork, as
the Capitol Hill corresponded for the News and Observer of
Charlotte wrote it plainly but accurately. In a surprising move, Wednesday,
(02:50):
Trump announced his support in a North Carolina congressional race
for a candidate who hadn't publicly announced a campaign. This
should stop being a surprise and should stop being something
you only hear about on this podcast. The man is
(03:11):
mentally impaired, declining fast. He doesn't know which number World
war the next World war would be. He continually confuses
Obama for Biden. He doesn't know what city he's in.
He thinks Hungary's victor orbon is the dictator of Turkey.
And this is actor He started with anyone or more
(03:31):
of a dozen different psychological and maybe physiological problems that
could be summarized under the heading his brain don't work
right with your vote.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
By Christmas, and we're going to have it by Christmas
twenty twenty four, that's just shortly after the election. Because
of the momentum of our victory, we will have a
unis economy roaring back.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
It is not just a question of what Trump would
do that he wanted to do but thought he couldn't
get away with the first time. It is also a
question of what Trump would do that he would know
he was doing out of sheer mental incapacitation, like endorsing
(04:12):
two candidates in the same race within eighty nine hours
on the legal front, and I'm sad to say this
is yet to include somebody moving against Trump under Florida's
Baker Act, which says that anyone can be forced to
undergo involuntary examination if three things are true. One quote,
(04:34):
they are mentally or emotionally impaired to the extent they
cannot control their own actions or understand reality. Well, yeah,
since nineteen forty six. Two quote, they have refused voluntary examination,
or because of a mental illness, they cannot understand that
an examination is necessary. Uh, person, woman, man, camera TV.
(04:55):
I aced it. And three quote Without treatment, they may
suffer personal neglect or may cause harm to themselves or others. Wow,
three for three, one hundred percent, mister Trump, you aste it.
On the legal front, it may be time for Jacksmith
(05:16):
to drop one of the charges against Trump in the
election stealing case eighteen US Code fifteen oh five obstruction
of an official proceeding, because I'm beginning to suspect that
even this corrupt and compromised Supreme Court will not have
the blindness to send the country into virtual revolution by
agreeing with Trump that he and all presidents are cloaked
(05:37):
by something that he and his lawyers and maybe his
doctors dreamed up called presidential immunity, but they have now
announced the Supreme Court that is that they will hear
an appeal of a case in which Joseph Fisher was
convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding for pushing up
(05:57):
against Capitol police on January sixth and encouraging others to
enter the capitol, and Fisher appealed and his mouth Jesus
argued that the statute has only ever been applied to
the destruction of documents, and that he was convicted on
the charge even though the DOJ did not even contend
he hoped to destroy any actual electoral votes. One Trump
(06:20):
appointed judge has agreed with him. Literally dozens of other
judges hearing Fisher's case and the three hundred and twenty
six other January sixth insurrectionists convicted of obstruction of an
official proceeding, including the three court panel to which DOJ
appealed the verdict for Fisher and against obstruction of an
(06:40):
official preceding. All of those judges, dozens of them ruled
against this claim, insisting it is a distinction without a difference,
and if the law applies to trying to obstruct an
official proceeding by tearing up paper. It sure as hell
also applies to trying to obstruct an official proceeding by
tearing up limbs, and especially by the way Trump did it.
(07:03):
And Jack Smith still should drop the charge because the
point isn't about what exactly eighteen US Code fifteen oh
five applies to and what it does not apply to.
It is that the Supreme Court is going to weigh
in and it can find for the DOJ and against Trump.
And that's still a win for Trump because it runs
(07:24):
out more of the clock January, February March April. When
will it rule? Jack Smith already showed he is aware
of this. He asked the Supreme Court to bypass appeals
rulings and decide immediately right now. Get it over with
about the presidential immunity nonsense. He should do the same here.
Drop obstruction of official proceeding, pursue conspiracy to defraud the
(07:46):
United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against
the right to vote and have one votes counted. Because
as it is, Judge Chutkin just paused all procedural deadlines
in the election stealing case because the DC Circuit Court
of Appeals and or the Supreme Court have not definitively
put a stake through the heart of this presidential immunity bullshit.
(08:10):
Just yesterday, Trump's lawyers John Lauro, Todd Blanche, John Sour
how many others? No men can count that high. His
lawyers resorted to complaining that the proposed trial schedule would
disrupt their family holiday and travel plans for Christmas and
(08:31):
New Years, like they wouldn't build Trump more for those hours,
and like they or any families they might might once
or might yet have, would care about Christmas if it
meant instead more billable hours at higher rates. Quote, it
is as if the Special Council growled with his grinch
(08:52):
fingers nervously drumming, I must find some way to keep
Christmas from coming. But how boys, your client just endorsed
two guys in the same race, and he's low by
his cult members because he's a sadist. Maybe you want
to drop any future references to the Grinch, though, Who
(09:13):
am I to tell you how to run up your bill? Seriously,
mister Special Counsel. The March fourth trial start d day,
the launch the launch of dementia j Trump into the
sun is already in jeopardy. The nation is on fire.
What matters is how much you can pull out of
(09:34):
the burning building in time, not that you try to
pull all of it out. Also, hey, Jim Jordan, who
defied a congressional subpoena as part of the crowd of
cowards threatening to prosecute Hunter Biden for defying a congressional subpoena.
Nancy Mace was just there and hope she'd get to
(09:56):
see more pictures of hunters.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Junk James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and their co
leagues have distorted the facts by cherry picking lines from
a bank statement, manipulating texts I sent, editing the testimony
of my friends and former business partners, and misstating personal
(10:19):
information that was stolen from me. There is no fairness
or decency in what these Republicans are doing. They have
lied over and over about every aspect of my personal
and professional life, so much so that their lies have
(10:40):
become the false facts believed by too many people. No
matter how many times it is debunked, they continue to
insist that my father's support of Ukraine against Russia is
the result of a non existent bribe they displayed naked
photos of me during an oversight hearing, And they have
(11:03):
taken the light of my dad's life love, the light
of my dad's love for me, and presented it as darkness.
They have no shame.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I like Hunter Biden. I like that aggressiveness. I like
that anger. I like that righteous indignation. I like the
naming of the coward's names. As with his father, I'd
like him to swear more. And the gist of his
argument is demonstrably true. Not only should you never go
(11:37):
into a closed hearing with a Republican, especially a proven
liar like James Comber, a man accused by his own
college girlfriend of beating her and calling her mother up
and saying he was going to kill her. Not only
should you never give a creature like that the chance
to manipulate you the way Joseph McCarthy used to manipulate
them innocent, but you should never let comer hell Joseph
(12:00):
macomber move more than a foot in either direction without
reminding everybody. He offered Hunter Biden his choice of a
private deposition or the public hearing hunter Biden showed up
for yesterday.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Hunter Biden's more than welcome to come in front of
the committeier he's invited today.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We will drop her.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
We're in the downhill phase of this investigation now because
we have so many documents, and we can bring these
people in for depositions, for committee arrings, whichever they choose.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I stole that mashup off Congress and Moskowitz's feed as
two Hunter's father all Trump's House Republican slaves made their
squeaks of protests and let loose the tiny slivers of
their souls that Trump still doesn't own. And yet every
goddamned one of them, even ken Buck, righteous lame duck,
(12:48):
morelike milkshake duck, every one of them has now voted
to further the Republicans show trial. Hours after the Dow Jones,
which Republicans consider the only barometer of the nation's health,
hit an all time high. The phony impeachment has now
moved from committee examination, which isn't a thing, to a
(13:08):
formal inquiry, which also isn't a thing. Biden's transgressions are
so urgent, so pressing, so threatening to the life of
the nation that the Republicans voted on this inquiry and
then immediately went on vacation for the rest of the year. Well,
to be fair, they have to get back to their
home districts because you never know when Lord and Master
(13:31):
Trump will endorse them and their primary challengers, worms useless,
self debasing worms in a bottomless pit of Trump's manure. Well, frankly,
there is one bit of imagery I immediately regret, but
this impeachment KABOOKI theater. There is more evidence against James
(13:53):
Comer about his college girlfriend than there is about Joe
Biden about anything, So why not open an inquiry about
James Comer too? This crap is so obviously and nauseatingly
purely pulled a that you know who wrote a piece
bemoaning the perversion of the impeachment process. You know who
even noticed this, Chuck Todd. And that's ironic because long
(14:16):
before Chuck Todd was at NBC News, but not before
I was. You know which network let itself be played
like the proverbial two dollars banjo by a corrupt Speaker
of the House and an even more corrupt special prosecutor
to impeach Bill Clinton solely to dirty him up. You
know which network let themselves be used like that, be
(14:37):
prostituted like that NBC News impeachments used to feel like
the ultimate political punishment, writes Chuck Todd, But somewhere along
the way, impeachment became just another political campaign tactic. Somewhere
along the way. Gee, thanks, Chuck. Nobody had noticed that
(15:02):
earlier this year, or you know, in nineteen ninety eight
when it first happened. But good on you for writing
one nine hundred and forty eight words in your column
on nbcnews dot com, which is apparently a regular thing
now to which you have devoted yourself since they fired
you from Meet the Press. Good insight, like both siding
the impeachment of Trump for blackmailing another head of state
(15:23):
for dirt on his own rival for his own presidency,
and then the other impeachment of Trump for trying to
you know, end democracy, both siding that with the impeachment
of Bill Clinton for as Chuck slipped and wrote, an
affair with an intern. Chuck also graced us with two
uses of the cliche the political death penalty and such
(15:43):
watered down I can't offend Trump. He might be fewer
in thirteen months insights. As quote, much of the impeachment
fever on the right is driven by Trump and his
grievance campaign. No crap, Chuck, really much. There's the obligatory,
as I've said numerous times to any elected Republican I've
(16:04):
interview about Hunter Biden, and then the moral appeal to
how Republicans concerned about politicians making money off of government
should also be outraged by the Trump family and cronies.
And you wonder if Chuck really thinks there are still
human beings inside any elected Republican he's interviewed, who has
already let Trump pull his bone marrow out of him
(16:27):
with a sippy straw. I mean now that Chris Solizza,
like Skynet, has become self aware and actually made an
online joke asking which face was more punishable, Vivi gramaswamis
or Chris Silizza's. We need a new source of this
kind of old dribble that Chris used to do for us,
(16:50):
and now Chuck has taken over the reins. But honestly,
I'd rather have read about NBC's role in the perversion
of impeachment into this undisguised political character assassination, because even
before I read Chuck, and I'll give him this, he
reads just as smarmy as he sounds, I was thinking
(17:10):
about Monday, September twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, which might
someday be agreed upon as the official end date of
the original American form of government. That morning, just after
nine am, a feed began in a television control room
being controlled by the House Judiciary Committee, then as now
(17:32):
run by a bunch of scumbag Republicans who could defect
to the Russian Duma tomorrow and fit in seamlessly, maybe
not even needing translators. One of them finally figured out
how to press play on one of the videotape machines
with their Satanist hoofs, and in the master controls at
NBC News and ABC News and CBS News and CNN
(17:55):
and c SPAN and Fox News and CNBC and MSNBC
and countless other networks and outlets around the nation, somebody
in each one of them said, here it comes, and
there started playing on all American networks exactly at the
same time it was being fed out by the Republican
Judiciary Committee. There came the videotaped grand jury testimony of
(18:17):
William Jefferson Clinton, forty second President of the United States,
in the Special Council's investigation into what that old dead
pervert ken Starr liked to pretend was not sex with
an intern, broadcast immediately by the Republicans in the Judiciary
Committee at their command, via every network in this country
(18:38):
into every home using television at nine am September twenty one,
nineteen ninety eight. Grand jury testimony secret sacro sanct not
even to be quoted outside the courtroom without the consent
of the witness. On August seventeenth of that year, President
(18:58):
Clinton had testified to four hours of pornographic questions from
the staff of this dead psycho Star, and within days
that untouchable videotape of his untouchable testimony had been illegally
given to the House Judiciary Committee by the dead's Special
(19:18):
Councils scumbag Star, and literally thirty six days later, the
House Judiciary Committee illegally gave it to the broadcast networks
and the cable networks for public dissemination, and every one
of them, every goddamned last one of them. NBC included
an MSNBC where I was the principal anchor, and CBS
at ABC and all the others, every goddamn last one
(19:40):
of them transmitted it live and without interruption for four
goddamned hours, just as it was received from the Republicans
in the House. Not one network, not one even dared
to say, we're going to delay this like ten minutes
so we can provide some context to what you're seeing.
(20:00):
Not one let alone dared to say, Hey, is this journalism?
Is this? Uh? Is this right? Is this? Isn't this
grand jury testimony? Is this America? Not one of the
supposed great television newsmen of the day, Not Peter Jennings,
not Jim Lair, not Bernard Shaw, not Sam Donaldson, not
(20:22):
that great flaming fraud Brokaw, not even Dan Rather, nor
my late friend Tim Russert. Not one of them succeeded,
nor to my knowledge, even tried to even slow down
the total hijacking of American TV news by one political
party intent on removing the president from the other political party,
who had been elected not two years before by a
(20:44):
margin of two hundred and twenty electoral votes. Not one
goddamned journalist in television stood up and said no. None
of them tried to intervene on behalf of the secrecy
of the grand jury. None of them tried to intervene
on behalf of the dignity of the presidency, even when
the president has not been dignified. None of them even
(21:07):
tried to intervene to make the world safe for impeachment.
We may have begun to lose our political souls when
Ronald Reagan's people got the Iranians to delay releasing the
hostages to help him win the nineteen eighty election over
Jimmy Carter. We may have begun to lose that soul
(21:28):
the day Richard Nixon green lighted the Watergate cover up. Hell,
we may have begun to lose it during the months
after the crooked and contested eighteen seventy six presidential campaign.
Blamed Tilden. But whatever we had left went out that
window on September twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, when the
last line of defense, ably manned by slobs like Andy
(21:55):
Lack and Andrew Hayward and David Weston, the last line
of defense protecting our form of government, said what are
you talking about? We can't do what's right. Fox News
is running this live. We'll get killed in the ratings.
We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs. Gentlemen, that
(22:17):
was it. Everything since that date has been in one
fashion or other reruns. I didn't get a harump out
of that guy. You watch your ass. Also of interest,
here a liar who got caught lying while running for
(22:39):
Congress is running again, and he needed to get Elon
Musk to pull a few springs so people would not
know he's lying again. And given that the guys I
just mentioned there, Andrew Lack, Andrew Hayward, David Weston, they
were the presidents of NBC News and CBS News and
ABC News, and they were two dollars banjos upon which Newton,
(23:00):
Gingrich and ken Starr played. Given that they were the
presidents of the new work news divisions, what do you
think Elon frickin' Musk did when faced with a choice
of right or expediency? Do you think he stood up
for what was right? That's next, This is countdown. This
(23:27):
is countdown with Keith Olberman still a come on, countdown.
(23:52):
It is happening today to broadcasters and podcasters and streamers
who were born in the year two thousand. That unexpected
moment universal to life, but particularly annoying when you're a broadcaster,
when you're thirty years old, or twenty five, or in
my case, you're twenty and some other broadcaster you're working
(24:13):
with comes up to you and says, you know, I
used to listen to you when I was a kid.
It is literally the day your own youth dies. I've
been on both ends of this conversation. I've been the
sayer and the sae. Details next in things I promise
not to tell first time for the daily roundup of
the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
(24:34):
todays worst persons in the world. And first an update, Well,
even a climate change conference run by an oil sultan
can't get away with not mentioning the fatality of fossil fuels.
It turns out, hours after I recorded yesterday's COP twenty
eight did put out a closing statement encouraging quote transitioning
(24:55):
away from fossil fuels and energy systems by around twenty fifty,
which of course will be too late, and of course
it's non binding, and of course the Republicans will repudiate
it if they seize power, in which half of these
grotesquely and deliberately ignorant people in that party think is
woke because it has the word transition in it. Now
(25:16):
to today's medalists the bronze worse. Elon Musk is a
little crapshack social media site x formerly Twitter, the sports
illustrated of social media. It broke yesterday, at least the
links to other news sites and other real media locations
broke for several hours in the middle of the business day,
and sis Musk has denuded the place of all its
(25:38):
actual value except a disseminating white supremacism and other hatred,
b fundraising for dogs on death row, and c links
to news sites and other real news media locations. We
got our first look at what Twitter would be without
news organizations and others tweeting links of their own work.
Turns out we can live without it. Even the dogs
(26:00):
can live without it. We're developing an app for the dogs.
Nice work, oh, runner up worser Elon Musk. His little crapshag.
Car company, Tesla, the sports illustrated of the automotive industry,
has a small problem. There are about two million Teslas
on America roads today and the company is now recalling
about roughly two million. Out of the roughly two million,
(26:25):
the autopilot feature does not work correctly, and it turns out, yes,
it did contribute to many of the thousands of crashes
during which autopilot was engaged. Happily, there's no indication Elmo
has to recall the cyber truck what it's because they've
made so few cyber trucks that Musk can evade safety
(26:45):
testing on them. So far. To borrow a line from
my old friend David Letterman, you got here in a Tesla. Congratulations,
you've cheated death. But the gold medal winner the worst
Elon Musk, right wing nut job, his party, the Republicans,
the sports illustrated to political parties can depend on Musk
(27:07):
to do its bidding for them. The Ohio senator who
hopes to someday challenge Mitch McConnell for the Senate leadership,
the leadership in chins am I right. Jd Vance posted
at two thirty four pm Monday, that quote. In twenty
twenty two, National Democrats lied about JR. Madjuski and his
service record. Too many Republicans ran from these dishonest smears
(27:31):
instead of fighting them. Jr. Is running for Congress in
twenty twenty four, and I'm proud to support him. Unquote.
Then there's a picture of Vance's Lord and Master Dementia J.
Trump with Majuski, who claimed still claims he was in
combat and he's never in combat. Hours later, community notes
the Underground the French Resistance of Twitter correct Advances lie
(27:54):
quote Jr. Madjuski did, in fact misrepresent his service record
during his twenty twenty two congressional campaign, According to United
States military documents obtained by the Associated Press through a
public records request, one quote and underneath that are links
to the Air Force Times. But at seven forty five
pm Monday, Majuski tweeted, quote, hey elon Musk, the disinformation
(28:18):
Dems are adding false community notes to Senator Vance's post,
and he provided his own link to the fascist propaganda
site Breitbart. By ten fifty pm Tuesday, a little over
twenty seven hours later, Madjuskei tweets again false community notes removed.
So Majuskie or Advance or somebody got Musk or somebody
(28:40):
else at Twitter X how many people still work there
besides Musk? That Nancy woman from NBC did she do this?
Somebody silenced the last lonely burp of honest free speech
on Twitter, free speech being the other thing Musk sells
besides self crashing cars. Did so to defend a Republican
muck who padded his military resume because Elon has decided
(29:04):
fashion will allow him to sell even more self crashing cars. Elon,
free speech is meaningless unless you let people that you
don't like say things you don't like, unless the truth
hurts a fascist, which case you have to urinate on
free speech. Musk two days worst person in the world,
(29:42):
see the number one story on the Countdown, and my
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
I believe it was this time of year, early winter,
thirty nine years ago that the CBS television station here
in New York, Channel two dismissed a news reporter named
Charles Crawford. I was reminded of him the other day
because he bridges two stages of my life that from
(30:03):
this advanced age, I feel like two separate lives. Until
I was about fifteen and went out on my first date,
I spent all of my time doing about four things
and four things only, going to school, going to baseball games,
collecting sports memorabilia, and trying to figure out how I
was going to be a sportscaster or sportswriter when I
(30:25):
grew up. Incidentally, i think I'm now up to doing
about six things and six things only anyway. In nineteen
seventy one, the fact that there were adults who collected
baseball cards and spent literally hundreds of dollars on some
of them was sprung on an unsuspecting America. The first
big card convention, a gussied up flea market in a
(30:49):
Detroit area hotel over a three day weekend to which
some people traveled from other states, was so completely unbelievable
that CBS News sent a crew and a reporter to
cover it. The story closed out in an addition to
the CBS Evening News one night, and I think it's
so shocked Anchorman Walter Cronkite that he said gush or
(31:13):
something before recovering to sign off. That's why it was Monday,
August twenty third, nineteen seventy one. Swalder Cronkite, CBS. The
couple a thousand of us who constituted the entirety of
the known baseball card hobby all led out a squeal
of delight in front of our black and white TVs
(31:34):
and the mainstreaming of baseball cards began. The most amazing
part of it was it was almost all adults. There
was a kid my age in Indianapolis named Elliott Dock
who had a fabulous collection. There was another one near
Philly named Robert Liftson, and he and I have been
friends fifty years now, and he was over at the
apartment in December talking cards. There were some other older
(31:57):
teenagers seventeen eighteen nineteen, but other than that it was
all adults, adults who had either secretly never stopped acting
baseball cards or had resumed collecting them, and who could
enjoy everything from a newly issued Reggie Jackson card to
a newly discovered example from the set issued by Kalamazoo
Bats Cigarettes in eighteen eighty eight. In nineteen seventy two,
(32:21):
the first such card show in the metropolitan New York
area was held, and at the age of thirteen, I
went with my parents and sister in tow and I had,
for me anyway, a transcendent experience, and they did not,
unless you consider a summer weekend in a hotel in
Lake Groundkunkam and New York transcendent. At least there was
a pool and it didn't rain anyway. The next year,
(32:45):
in partnership with some others, one of the really good
people in the hobby, an adult named Mike Ehrenstein, also
still a friend of mine fifty years later, the man
who basically invented everything from plastic sheets to keep your
cards in to reprints of old cards to cards of
minor league players. He staged the first show in New
York City in the Union Hall, all the way downtown,
(33:07):
Bang on ast your place, over the Memorial Day weekend.
He was told he was going to lose his shirt
on this. In fact, by early Friday evening, like two
hours after the thing opened, the crowd was so large
and dense I could not see from my chair behind
the table I had bought from which I was selling
my duplicates, to the table directly across the aisle from me,
(33:29):
which was no more than twenty feet away. It was
such a success Mike hurriedly booked the hall for a
second show for Thanksgiving. Well, by now nineteen seventy three,
if you put a bunch of these crazy adults paying
good money to buy old baseball cards, twenty five dollars
for a nineteen fifty two tops Mickey Mantle. Are these
(33:51):
people escape bees from a psychiatric facility? Well, if you
did that, some reporter was going to show up and
cover the lunacy. This was especially true of local television news,
especially on a weekend where a story it was not
exactly like every other story that you could shoot before noon,
develop the film and get it on the air at
six pm. That was a gift from the gods, Which
(34:15):
is how I came to see a little commotion at
the front door of that nineteen seventy three Memorial Day
weekend card show and see emerging from the commotion a
man carrying a small TV camera, followed by another man
carrying a big TV boom microphone, followed by another man
who was Charles Crawford, the reporter from Channel two News.
I knew it was him because I knew everybody on
(34:37):
TV in New York in nineteen seventy three by sight,
because I watched as much TV news as I could,
because bluntly I was studying it. My dad was at
my table with me, and while I hoped that mister
Crawford would come over and interview me among the hundreds
of collectors and dealers there, my dad was a little
less reliant on happenstance an accident, and was more bands on.
(35:01):
Be right back, he said. And the next thing I
knew he was button holding Charles Crawford and gesturing back
towards me. And the next thing I knew after that,
Charles Crawford was standing in front of my table, asking
me a few questions, but mostly asking me to show
his cameraman how I was able to use my quote
filing system so sophisticated it allows him to find any
card a collector might want in seconds. That was it
(35:25):
my television debut, No sound bite, not even my name,
just my hands pulling out a drawer from a small
filing cabinet and definitely locating a nineteen sixty eight Rico
Petrocelli card or whatever it was. There was also about
three seconds of me looking straight towards the camera, just
as Charles Crawford told me to my eyes, a mixture
(35:46):
of abject fear and an inscrutable scheming quality, which quite
bluntly at its essence, amounted to my internal dialogue about
how I could get Charles Crawford to surrender his camera
crew in his job so I could go leave the
card show and work for Channel two News that night.
I have gone into cruciating detail about my career timeline,
(36:07):
and for purposes of the Charles Crawford story, I will
only hit the bullet points. This is the year nineteen
seventy three. By nineteen seventy five, I was on the
air at the professional commercial radio station owned by Cornell Students.
In nineteen seventy eight, I was an intern at the
news assignment desk and for the sportscaster at another New
York TV station, Channel five. In nineteen seventy nine, I
(36:29):
got my first full time job at UPI's radio network.
In nineteen eighty one, I got my first TV gig
as a substitute sports reporter for CNN in New York.
In nineteen eighty two, I got that job full time.
And now back to nineteen eighty three, when they started
letting me anchor for the first time a daily four
minute sportscast every night at five point forty five in
(36:50):
the middle of the newscast that was co anchored by
CNN's Vice president and New York Bureau chief, Mary Alice Williams.
One day now, at the age of nearly twenty five,
a cynical veteran of twenty eight months in television. I
came down from our offices on the twenty fifth floor
to our studio in the lobby of one World Trade
Center to do my sportscast. But apparently Mary Alice Williams
(37:14):
was off that day because when I got to the
anchor desk at five forty two or so, the anchor
at the desk in her place was Charles Crawford, the
same Charles Crawford, the Charles Crawford who had put me
on TV a decade before from the nineteen seventy three
card show at the District sixty five Union Hall on
(37:34):
Astor Place. A co anchor in Atlanta teased my sportscast,
and when when we went to the commercial break, Charles
Crawford introduced himself to me and I said we've met,
and he said, oh, how when? And I said, well,
I'll tell you now so you can recover during the sportscast.
And as I quickly recounted it and quoted his narration
(37:54):
word for word, this fourteen year old has a filing
system so sophisticated it allows him to find any car
to collector might want in seconds. I told him that,
and his face got whiter and whiter and whiter. And
he told me not to worry if he got up
and left while I was doing the sports cast, because
he needed to walk around for a bit and get
some air. To his credit, when we came back from
(38:17):
my report, he introduced me as his old friend when
he came back and said, don't misunderstand me. I'm not
offended or anything. I'm glad you made it, but just
remember this will happen to you someday too. I mean,
I'm only forty seven. And I laughed, and I told
him it already had happened to me. That I had
gone back to my college radio station a year after
(38:38):
I had graduated, and a kid walked up to me
and said he was just starting to train as a
sportscaster there and he had been listening to me since
he was eleven years old. And I went whiter than
Charles Crawford did on that set, and I said, the
hell does that work. I'm only twenty one. I only
started here five years ago. And he explained he was
(39:01):
still attending Ithaca High School at the moment he was
only sixteen. And I told Charles Crawford that my response
was not like his to go for a walk. I said,
I went out and went for a drink, and Charles said,
that's also my plan. As soon as the newscast is over,
I'll buy you one. It couldn't have been nicer. And
just as I was leaving CNN the next spring, they
(39:21):
were hiring him full time, and he eventually became CNN's
chief science correspondent. He was still with them in the
late nineties, and he passed away in twenty sixteen at
the age of eighty one. I remember him for the
nineteen seventy three Card Show, of course, but also for
that drink at the bar that was literally one hundred
yards from CNN New York front door. He had all
kinds of advice about dealing with TV executives. These people
(39:44):
are as dangerous as anything in this world. And I
was a pilot instructor in the Air Force for eight years.
(40:05):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Do me a solid. Tell somebody who
does not listen to listen. Tell them they can call
me up and say they used to listen to me
when they were a kid. Get them to listen. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at
the Old Women Broadcasting Empire in New York. Countdown musical
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle arranged, produced, and
(40:27):
performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is
courtesy ESPN, Inc. Was written by Mitch Warren Davis. It's
called the Old Woman Theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
(40:49):
and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my friend
John Dean, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this the one thousand and seventy
third day since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the Democrats elected government of the United States. Use the
Insurrection Act against him and them while we still can,
(41:11):
and before he endorses somebody else. In the North Carolina
sixth the next scheduled Countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the
news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Because of the momentum of our victory, we will have
a Unis economy.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Roaring Back Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
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