June 6, 2023 • 41 mins
EPISODE 218: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The whiny visit of Trump lawyers to beg Jack Smith not to indict their client so he wouldn't yell at them again turns out to have actually confirmed ONE important fact. We can't be sure Smith has already decided to indict Trump on the stolen documents. But we CAN be sure he has NOT decided NOT to indict him - otherwise there would've been no need for the meeting. Others are thinking that way too: Trump's lawyers, trump, The Times, The Post, The WSJ, and CNN all think we are at the end game.
And - a leak about leaking water? Isn't this where we came in with Trump? From draining the swamp to draining the pool, Jack Smith has been pressing the guy who helped move the classified document boxes about how he drained the Mar-a-Lago club pool and managed to flood the room where all the security video logs were kept. If that isn't a callback to about a dozen other plot points I don't know what is!
B-Block (15:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How can you apologize and make it worse? Ask Chris Licht! By lying during the apology, getting support only from those at other networks, and finally being accused by a tabloid of fudging the only feel-good part of your story. The weight loss wasn't 5 AM workouts: it was Ozempic. (24:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Nebraska lawyer wasted taxpayer money trying to silence a state legislator on an anti-trans bill because the legislator has a trans child. Elon Musk's newest conspiracy theory: the advertisers are out to get him. Can't we take Twitter away from him? And Congressman James Comer's whistleblower and informant and secret FBI document? They are all just a rehash of the Rudy Giuliani crap that didn't even fool Bill Barr in 2019.
C-Block (30:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lilou, in the Bahamas, needs neurological help (31:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The most fun moment in one of those old "SportsCenter" Commercials? The Alexi Lalas one, where I got to pretend I was John Belushi, smashing a guitar in "Animal House."
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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. Trump's
lawyers think we are at the endgame, and Trump thinks
(00:25):
we are at the endgame. And the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN all
think we are at the endgame, and I sure as
hell think we are at the endgame. And the real
headline from where we all sit in Jack Smith's waiting
room kind of implies we are at the endgame. And
it was noted by the former District of Columbia federal
(00:47):
prosecutor and now TV legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. The headline
is this, we actually now know one thing for certain.
There clearly has been no decision by the Special counsel
or the Attorney General to not charge Trump for the
theft of the classified documents. If all of this wrapping
(01:09):
up of testimony and investigations and grand jury recalls had
led to a conclusion not to indict Trump, there would
have been no reason for Smith and an unidentified DOJ
career official to have had that meeting with Trump attorneys
Jim Trusty, John Rowley, and Lindsay Halligan yesterday. And it's
(01:29):
not just proving the negative. It's not a no, and
it's pretty certainly not an undecided, which leaves uh with
me a yes. Kirshner quote. The last thing federal prosecutors
often do before indicting is to meet the target's defense
(01:49):
team and give them an opportunity to present any evidence
or arguments they want to offer. The Washington Post presented
the same thought. It is not uncommon in high profile
cases for defense lawyers to get such a meeting with
Justice Department officials toward the end of an investigation. And
there is a second fact, a new one. Jack Smith
(02:12):
has had another grand jury working on the document's case
in Florida, in the West Palm area, in the jurisdiction
covering Mari Lago itself. I had heard this last week
but couldn't confirm it. The Wall Street Journal confirmed it first.
The New York Times says there is at least one
more witness going to testify to that Florida grand jury
(02:34):
later this week, like everybody else, though the Times writers
confess it is not clear why a second grand jury
is taking testimony in Florida because it isn't, although some
legal analysts suggested it gives Smith the flexibility to try
the case in Washington or West Palm, depending on how
the juries land. We can also infer a third fact
(02:57):
from the least likely and usually least reliable source. Trump himself. Literally,
just minutes after his latest lawyers left the department headquarters
on Pennsylvania Avenue between ninth and tenth Northwest, Trump erupted
on social media and gave away what he was still
hoping for, is still hoping for, must remain hoping for,
(03:18):
because his world of self delusion depends on this that
for some reason they will not indict him just cuz quote,
how can doj possibly charge me who did nothing wrong?
When no other presidents were charged? When blah blah blah
blah blah, And then the usual psychotic meanderings through Biden
(03:41):
this and Hillary's emails that and which hunt, which hunt?
Which hunt? I think we can reconstruct yesterday's meeting. Smith there,
but Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monacote not there.
The Trump team goes in complains, as instructed by their client,
about the rare piercing of attorney client privilege in the
(04:03):
case of Evan Corcoran gets nowhere, stretches it out for
two hours according to most reports, ninety minutes according to
at least one other report, and then leaves, and then,
presumably trust he gets the pleasure of calling Trump and
telling him no, you know what, he wouldn't promise not
to indicte you, or call you innocent publicly, or accept
your offer to become attorney general in twenty twenty five.
(04:26):
And then Trump loses his fragile self control because again,
deep down, he believes he is immortal and untouchable. ABC
News did provide a valuable sidelight on that meeting and
on why it would have taken ninety minutes to two
hours reporting to the meeting. Quote focused mostly on process
and very little on the legal matters central to the
(04:47):
document's probe. Trump's lawyer's got no indication of any potential
charges or timing associated with any possible indictment end quote.
The word process here would be that whole attorney client
thing and the other prosecutorial anomalies real or imagined, the
standard technicalities and loopholes. Trump has spent his life wriggling through, around,
(05:09):
and under like a bulbous but surprisingly nimble limbo dancer.
The bigger picture continues to be Yeah, we're at the endgame,
The Times. The visit came amid indications that prosecutors in
the Special Council's Office were approaching the end of their
documents inquiry. It also came at a time when mister
Trump's advisors have concluded that there might not be much
(05:32):
more time to stave off charges. Trump expects to face charges,
The Times Rights, according to people who have spoken to him,
although that does not mean he has been assured that
charges are pending. From the post. Two Trump advisors briefed
on Monday's meetings said they continue to believe Smith will
finalize a charging decision in coming weeks. The advisers said
(05:56):
they are preparing for a potential indictment of the former president,
and the meeting did not change their expectations. The Journal's
second sentence, the meeting is the latest indication that Smith
has all but wrapped up his investigation. CNN's second sentence,
It appears to be nearing its final stage. There did
(06:18):
not seem to be anything new on the reported reconvening
of the grand jury this week, nor what it would
be reconvening. For nearly every report contained a useful reminder,
though for all of us that whatever happens on this
document's case, and whenever it happens, Jack Smith will then
pivot to focusing particularly on January sixth, And as we've
(06:39):
discussed previously, the easier to prove elements of fraud raising
funds for a stolen election Trump knew wasn't stolen. So
if we are expecting indictments, we are expecting them in stages.
On the twelfth day of Christmas. There is a solid
joke about the damaged marri Lago security video story that
(07:02):
came out yesterday. Jack Smith isn't king, but Trump's pool is.
And so we turn to a leak about leaking, which,
if I remember correctly, was one of the very first
things we all tried to get Trump investigated over in
twenty sixteen. Think about it. We may have an answer
(07:27):
as to what that second grand jury is looking at
in Florida, and we probably have the answer as to
why the Special Council seemed so obsessed with not just
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room
at mar A Lago, and not just security video of
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room,
but vaguely worded hints about glitches on the security video.
(07:49):
And finally, the hilarious report that the marri a Lago
staffer who helped Walt Naouda with the heavy lifting actually
went to the IT guy at marri Lago and asked
him how soon before the CCTV system would delete video
of uh say, just as a hypothetical himself quote. An
(08:13):
employee at Donald Trump's Marri Lago Residents drained the resort's
swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room
where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. What
are the odds against that? The punchline of courses that
(08:33):
CNN identifies the guy who drained the pool as the
same guy who helped Walt Naota move the boxes, coincidence,
no doubt. CNN reports at least one grand jury witness
has been asked about the washout. It is not clear
if it was accidental or deliberate. It seems to be
clear that the IT equipment in that room was not damaged,
(08:56):
but the whole thing is obviously focused on weather. Like
the eighteen and a half minute gap on one of
Nixon's Watergate tapes, somebody had deliberately tried to destroy evidence
by destroying recordings by draining a swimming pool, and there
are all the seeming cosmic callbacks in this idea that
the draining of a country club swimming pool might be
(09:19):
of critical importance in the revelation of the crimes of
a president. The Watergate break in itself was uncovered in
progress because of what first looked like trivial routine building maintenance.
When the burglars use duct tape to keep a stairwell
door from locking behind them. The night watchman Frank Wills
(09:41):
removed the tape, but the next time he passed that
same door, he saw more tape had been applied to
cover the lock. That's when he called the cops. More recently,
we have seen Trump move from drain the swamp to
drain the pool, and of course, draining a swimming pool
at a country club well, that's also a callback for
(10:03):
yes right out the script for the movie Caddyshack, Where's
that Baby Ruth Candy Bar? And of course there is
the ultimate Trump callback. To paraphrase what Frank Lesser writes
on Twitter, how this won't be the first time Trump
denies causing water damage at a hotel. Also of note, today,
(10:33):
I may have been the first person with any kind
of national platform to suggest that Chris licked was going
to destroy CNN. And I must tell you I really
did hope it was just my inability to override my
vivid memories of seeing his worminess up close and personal
when we were at MSNBC. But even I am beginning
(10:53):
to wonder if defenestrating him then going downstairs and bringing
him back upstairs and defenestrating him again, is you know,
really fair to let's go down and get him again.
Lichts apology to his staff yesterday has only made things worse.
(11:13):
It earned him praise not from his own people, but
from only a couple of horrible human beings who work
at MSNBC and the one remaining kind of feel good
part of that whole nightmarish magazine story In The Atlantic,
lickts dedication to working out and getting healthy with a
trainer that was blown up yesterday by one tabloid headline
(11:38):
quote say an ND boss Chris Lickt bragged about taking
ozempic for weight loss. Side effects of OSIMI concluded nausea, diarrhea,
and loss of any remaining credibility as a newsman. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Albern. Postscripts
(12:01):
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline,
CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. I believe the Simpsons
meme applies here. Stop stop, He's already dead. Yesterday began
with CNN's Chris Licked being raked over the coals because
having destroyed most of the network in the live Trump
(12:23):
CNN town Hall moderated by the hopelessly outmatched Caitlin Collins,
he had pretty much finished off the self destruction job
during the live Nikki Haley CNN town Hall on Sunday night,
in which Jake Tapper, apparently too bored or too burned
out to give a damn, never pushed back when Haley,
who is a genuinely stupid person with no principles she
(12:45):
would not sell out for money or power, actually tried
to blame suicides by teenaged girls in this country on
the idea that they might have to deal with transgendered
girls in the bathroom or on the sports field, something
of which the number of reported examples is approximately the
more or less zero that repeat in miniature of the
(13:10):
blowback against Lickt after the Trump Hendenburg disaster was still
in progress when Chris Licht got onto the CNN nine
am internal conference call and tried to apologize to everybody,
and by ten am all the quotes were all over
the place. First, Lickt praised the Haley town hall debacle,
(13:30):
then went off on a monologue that did almost as
much damage to himself and his network as the piece
by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic did. To begin with,
let me quote and translate as we go along, all right,
quoting Lickt. I know these past few days have been
very hard for this group unquote wait days. Since Lickt
(13:52):
took over CNN a year ago, the network has been
a real life version of the legend of Sisiphus, Only
it's the actual journalists there who've had to try to
push the damn rock back up the hill every day
while it's Licked, who has then deliberately rolled it back
down every night days. Try month's pace, boy, quoting Licked again.
(14:14):
I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role
in it, overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we
just had and distracted from the work of every single
journalist in this organization, and for that, I'm sorry. Unquote.
First of all, he's not sorry, he's sorry he's getting criticized.
The reporting he's talking about is CNN's continuing breaking of
(14:38):
Trump's Special Council stories like the flooding of the IT
room I mentioned. And remember Chris Lick was hired by
David Zaslav and John Malone so he would overshadow bad
stories about Trump and Republicans, overshadow them or keep them
off the CNN air quote. As I read that article,
(15:00):
I found myself thinking, CNN is not about me. I
should not be in the news unless it's taking arrows
for you. Your work is what should be written about. Unquote.
Well that's the biggest bullspit in this vast pile of bullspit.
That is Chris Licked. He has always metaphorically jumped in
(15:22):
front of somebody else's camera shot Joe Scarborough publicity. Licked
made sure he was in it too, Gail King, publicity,
Gail King and lickt. Stephen Colbert saved by Chris lickt
the new, old, old new whatever it is CNN. Remember
you can't spell CNN without Chris Licked. I mean, the
(15:47):
publicity generation of Chris Lickt is so institutionalized now that
maybe before the CNN nine am call yesterday was even
over Joe Scarborough the most despicable scumbag I have ever
worked with, and I've worked with Chris Myers. Joe Scarborough
was already reading those quotes from another network's internal phone
(16:10):
call and defending his former producer live on MSNBC and
one of Scarborough's on air sickophants on MSNBC, the ridiculous
Donnie Deutsch, said I would never bet against Chris Licht,
even though it was reportedly Chris Lickt who told Deutsch
when he was filling in as an MSNBC anchor years ago,
(16:31):
that a good idea for a show would be to
criticize me on the air. I mean, I never even
heard about it until after management came in and apologized
and told me Deutsch had been suspended and would not
be anchoring again. And if anything defines the seriousness of
Licht's series of disasters better than that, I don't know
what it could be. Daintily vilified by CNN's Christiana I'm
(16:55):
onpour flacidly badly defended by Anderson Cooper of CNN shot
fall holes by dozens of off the record CNN people.
Chris licks only on the record defense in the entire
television industry has now come from two guys on one
of the networks he is supposed to be destroying. One
(17:20):
more quote from the apology tour to those whose trust
I've lost, I will fight like hell to win it back,
because you deserve a leader who will be in the
trenches unquote. He'll be in the trenches, all right, and
then metaphorically they will bury him in the trenches because
Warner Bros. Discovery may not actually fire Chris Lickt, but
(17:42):
he will not be running CNN by autumn at the latest.
And the second half of that last quote in the
trenches fighting to ensure CNN remains the world's most trusted
name in news unquote, most trusted, least watched. So let's
see how Lickts pretend humility played out there in the
(18:05):
real world, shall we off the record quotes to the
first guy licked fired for liberaling while broadcasting Brian Stelter quote,
he's over quote there's no coming back from that profile. Quote.
If he's so concerned with the CNN brand, what is
the point of saying any of this stuff publicly, and
somebody else said Lickt told him the fight like hell quote,
(18:28):
but added I've got nothing to lose now, which just
shows Lickt is still delusional. He's got a lot to
lose now. To the Washington Post, a CNN anchor added,
this just seems unsustainable unquote. Also, the Post article had
one more quote from that Lickt apology on the conference call,
(18:48):
which doesn't need much amplification or explanation. They say, he said, quote,
this experience has been tremendously humbling. I bet it has. So.
That seemed to be it for day twenty seven of
Chris Licked in crisis, and then came the moment when
it was obvious that everybody Chris Licked ever tried to
(19:12):
damage or hurt or interfere with, they were going to
get in one last shot while he was still breathing.
The saddest truth about the piece in the Atlantic, the
one moment when some of us had a moment of pity, empathy,
felt bad about feeling so good reading it. That saddest
(19:36):
truth was that, basically the only person who would go
on the record to the Atlantic writer praising Chris Licked
was his personal trainer, though the fact that Licked looked
so desperate that he would magazine writer watch his five
am workouts and when he finished a bunch of squats
while he was humping a rope or whatever it was,
(19:58):
he shouted, Jeff Zucker couldn't do this spit. He had
at least managed to lose fifty pounds and get in shape.
This was a guy who had a brain problem. Stay
in shape, Stay in shape while destroying your television network.
And then it comes from the London tabloid rag, The
(20:19):
Daily Mail and The Daily Beast had this story too,
They just didn't get it published fast enough. Headline exclusive
CNN boss Chris Lickt bragged about taking ozempic for weight loss.
Oh oh oh quote. Multiple sources tell dailymail dot com
(20:42):
that the self proclaimed meal skipping machine actually bragged about
using the diabetes drug turned weight loss miracle ozempic before
it became popular among a listers earlier this year. I
heard about ozempic from Chris, a close friend of Lickt
told dailymail dot Com when he was at Colbert. He
explained that he was a huge fan of it and
(21:03):
he'd been using it to get his weight under control.
This was back in twenty twenty one, so I was
shocked when I read the Atlantic story and he was
claiming it was due to a trainer and cutting meals.
Paul Lees. He told me point blank he uses it unquote.
Oh god, ozempic Jeff Zucker couldn't do that spit either,
(21:41):
Still ahead on countdown. All I had to do in
the commercial was stride over into the newsroom, grab the
guy's guitar and smash it against a room divider. The
trick was, we didn't tell anybody in the newsroom first,
and a mighty roar went up from the crowd coming
up first. The day he wrote up with the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger Effets specimens who constitute today's worst
(22:02):
persons in the world. The Bronze Day Begley, an attorney
in Omaha who did not like the fact that Nebraska
State Senator Meghan Hunt voted against the creeping meatballism in
his state, in this case, Legislative Bill five seventy four,
which would have further restricted gender affirming care in Nebraska.
So he filed a conflict of interest complaint against Senator Hunt.
(22:27):
Why because Senator Hunt has a transgender son, and even
though Medicaid doesn't pay for transgender care, David Begley said
her family might get money someday from Medicaid because of it,
and she should have had to disclose this before the vote,
even though her side lost and her chances of getting
Medicaid for this are about as big as this worm.
Begley now growing a soul. The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure
(22:51):
Commission began an investigation into this Begley guy's attempt to
stop legislators from voting unless they agree with him. They've
now dismissed his complaint. They spent taxpayer money on this. Frankly,
they should charge because this was intimidation and transphobia and
it was funded by the taxpayers of Nebraska, and he
(23:11):
had Begley's office is in the phone book. The runner
up Spacecaren again Elmo muskrat joined in a space's conversation
by the decaying remains of Robert F. Kennedy Junior. The
good news is the thing did not crash this time
like I did with DeSantis. The bad news, Elmo yesterday
pushed he had another conspiracy theory in this one. The
(23:33):
conspiracy is against him. Musk said half of advertising disappeared
from Twitter overnight because we're insisting on free speech and
they're literally trying to drive Twitter bankrupt. And when he
says they, of course, he means I'm driving Twitter bankrupt
because I have no idea how life works when somebody
take this goddamn thing away from me, And he might
(23:55):
as well say, go anti woke, go broke. By the way,
is there a way we could do that? Is there
some legal construction in which twin being online and using
public bandwidth than such is declared a public communications medium,
and you could take it away from this idiot Musk
the way the FCC could take a local TV station
(24:15):
away from inappropriate owners. Just a thought, but our winner,
good old Congressman Jamie Comer of Kentucky, Chairman of the
House Committee for Wasting Time. I think that's the title
of it, the one pursuing the Biden whistleblower complaint that
turns out to actually have originated with Rudy Giuliani. Rudy
(24:36):
Giuliani is the guy at the heart of this whole
whistleblower crap. This is the memo Republicans say is more
important than whether or not anything alleged in the memo
is true. Well, yesterday the FBI briefed Jamie and Jamie
Comer and the ranking Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin, and the
two emerged from the briefing, and Comer had the gall
to say the allegation quote has not been disproven, and
(24:59):
Raskin just looked at him and said, yad had quote.
The FBI, the Department of Justice team under William Barr
and Brady terminated the investigation. They said there were no
grounds for further investigative steps. Can we please just start
calling this what it is? This partner abuse allegation, skating yokel.
Comber is making this crap up as he goes along,
(25:22):
and he should be treated as the semi sentient fire
hydrant that he is representative. Jamie, you know what else
has not been disproven? Your college girlfriend's allegation that you
hit her and took her to her abortion and threatened
to kill her. Comber two days worst person in the
world still ahead of here on countdown. Somebody asked me
(25:55):
about the old This is Sports Center commercials the other
day and if I had a favorite, and I had
three and they all have great stories, but the Alexi
Lallas guitar story is probably the best of them. Things
I promise not to tell next. First, in each tradition
of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you can help.
Every dog has its day. This is about Lee Lou
(26:15):
and Powty Cake Rescue, which saves dogs in the Bahamas.
Powty Cake Rescue had to close recently because it has
to change buildings, but try explaining that to dogs in trouble.
The woman in charge of Pottycake saw Leelu and knew
she really needed help. She was hiding in a schools
the white mutt with ears as big as her face
(26:35):
and clearly some kind of neurological problem. She was having
trouble standing and keeping standing, so if she fell while
trying to cross the road, she would never make it
to the other side. So they rescue her and they're
trying to raise funds to get her treated and placed
in a foster home. They've set up a grid giving
grid page and you can find her on there. Leelu
Llou and you can find her on my Twitter feeds.
(26:58):
If you can donate, please do and your retweet will
also help. I thank you and Leelu, thanks you. The
nineteen ninety four World Cup did not really do that
much for American soccer, which as you know, is the
(27:21):
sport of the future in this country and always will be.
It did make a lot of Americans into fans, but
fans of European clubs, especially the British clubs. But for
a while, alexey Lalis, with his shoulder length reddish blonde
hair and his billy goat beard and his anti establishment vibe,
he was on the front burners of American sports. So
(27:43):
naturally ESPN wanted him for the surrealist fake documentary commercials
called this his Sports Center, and sure enough he came
to Bristol and they devised a bit in which Gary
Miller John Luca Palyucca's Gary Miller would be sitting at
a desk in the sports Center newsroom. As atop the
adjoining desk, Lalas sat crosslegged, philosophy on relaxation and vibes,
(28:06):
and finally playing Michael Row the boat Ashore on his guitar.
At that point the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's Animal House film. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom pull the guitar out
of Lalas's hands and then smash it against a cubicle
wall with the greatest grunt he could achieve, and then
(28:29):
hand Lalis back whatever was left of the guitar, and
like Belushi, say sorry, Well, they asked me to be
the other sportscaster who smashes the guitar. So picture that
in your mind as I play what it sounded like
for twenty seconds or so. And then I have what
(28:50):
I think is a really good backstory about the filming
of this one.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And I'm talking to you all afternoon about the tension,
about the darkness. We gotta do something about that, Michael,
(29:18):
for time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So the backstory, and it's out of chronological order. The
guitar that Alexei Lawis was playing was not the one
I smashed. There was an exact duplicate that had been bought.
It had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and
basically it was put back together with scotch tape. It
would hold together long enough for him to strum a
few sour notes on it, and then for me to
(29:43):
grab it and smash it. They were confident it would
not fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
But they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar and Alexey holding the
rest of it. This was especially problematic because we only
had the one prop guitar. That's right, we made the
(30:07):
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign not only freakly achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two.
We often shot three of these commercials in one day,
(30:29):
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the Sports Center anchors who started in one, or two
or three even get credit for a day off. In
one of them, Charlie Steiner is trying to get his
tape of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are
passing it around like a basketball, and he says, can
he have a little help? And I'm typing away at
my computer and I say sure, Charlie, and I don't
(30:51):
even look at him, let alone stop typing let alone
give him any help. And that's done because the commercial
was shot in the area right behind my desk, because
nobody was working there that day except me. It was
around five PM, and I was in fact sitting at
my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script. And
the original commercial script did not call for me to
(31:14):
even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the
writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. And by the way, Charlie did
the commercial around five o'clock or so and then went
and anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot
we did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up
(31:37):
while I am trying to read through a script also
shot at my desk, also on a day I was
anchoring the show, and that was my real script. Anyway,
back to alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we
only had the one prop guitar, and so we only
had the one take, and we were shooting it in
the actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they
(31:57):
were remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of
the new ESPN News Network. So this was the temporary
even more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and
the producer and the writer and I walked through how
they thought it would work best, since I would have
to weave past people who were really doing their jobs
and going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
(32:20):
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here. The producer said that would make a great shot.
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
(32:41):
to do that since we couldn't even practice the smash,
and he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe
that was the other salient part of the backstory, since
we only had the one take and we wouldn't even
be doing a dry run because they didn't want the
guitar to fall apart in my hands. I would say
less than half the people crowded into the temporary newsroom
(33:03):
had any idea that when I came in, I was
in the commercial let alone that I was going to
actually and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it against
a low cubicle wall. Even if the guitar has been
pre broken and taped back together, as that one was,
it is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait,
(33:24):
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, your little devil? Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
(33:45):
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then about no, no, no,
fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and Gary were still sitting.
My target for exactly where I should hit the guitar
was clearly marked on the cubicle wall, and they even
put marks on the carpet of where a couple of
practice walks had shown would give me the best chance
at a solid stamp. That's when I swung the guitar
(34:07):
and sent it el kabonging to its doom, and nobody
ever said quiet or roll or here we go. They
told people in the room that they were just shooting
some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people could
say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to, just
so long they didn't get away of the cameras. Then
(34:28):
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Belushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
(34:49):
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was strumming on the
nearly neutered prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I
took my strides, I hit the marks, I grabbed the
guitar by the neck, with my right hand and simultaneously
(35:10):
Alexey let go, and then with both hands, I swung
the guitar back over my head and smashed it right
on the mark as you heard Michael.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Show.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
The SportsCenter newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The
reaction was identical to what it would have been had
there been no commercial being made and no cameras present.
And I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar,
which I guess a lot of people expect that I
might do someday, because even a lot of the people
(35:52):
who were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the
skinny research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial,
which is on YouTube, for a second far left, just
staring at me like, yeah, well, we always knew Keith
would do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar,
and I have to say, I did it really well.
(36:13):
I kept moving for the plan until I walked back
through the swinging doors and out of shot. The director
shouted cut. I walked back in, and the crew gave
me a round of applause, and a couple of them
were cheering out of all proportion, even if I had
done is good of a job as I thought, Come here,
Come here. The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra
(36:34):
camera on the floor. They backed the videotape up from it,
and they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
the fretboard, the actual wood and metal piece on the
neck flew off and not only landed near the third
camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and it
stuck there. They were as happy as if they were
(36:55):
engineers imploding a building for the first time and it
had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus they showed
me the playback from the first camera was an assignment
desk editor with her back to the action on the phone,
completely unaware of what was happening or even that they
were rolling film and videotape, and she literally jumped several
inches out of her seat of her chair. But to me,
(37:20):
the best part of this thing is Gary Miller. Even
if you know a loud noise is coming, it is
quite the effort to not flinch a little when it
happens basically right over your shoulder. I mean, ask the
little kid in the movie North By Northwest, where Iva,
Marie Saint shoots Carrie Grant and he sticks his fingers
(37:42):
in his ears because it's take thirty seven and he
knows the noise is coming. I mean, you're aware of
it just for the possibility that somebody will screw it
up like me and debris will fly into the back
of your head. But if you watch Gary Miller in
this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink, just a
little dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What also amazes
(38:06):
me is that we got all this done in twenty
four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on about negativity.
I have to do something about it. He plays enough
of the song that you recognize it. You get a
shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of the background.
I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar
while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of
the thing. The only thing missing is that shot from
(38:27):
the fretbar flying into camera three. They explained they didn't
have the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying doing
this so much that I asked them for the front
of the body of the guitar, and I had Alexi
sign it to me on the spot. It hung framed
in my various offices for about fifteen years. In twenty fourteen,
(38:50):
I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's final episode
for Comedy Central. I was one of one hundred guests,
and I went out onto the street to find a
cab home and I got one, and in getting into it,
I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas, who was one of
the other one hundred guests. I laughed, He laughed, and
he said, and I don't even have my guitar with me.
And one last note, I doubt this will be of
(39:12):
any practical use to you, but I must say as
somebody who was accorded this rare privilege, not only of
doing this, but of doing this with impunity, and doing
this to applause. If you are trying to HEALTHI event
any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing a guitar
(39:33):
against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as satisfying as
you would expect it would be. I've done all the
(39:54):
damage I can do here. Countdown has come to you
from the Vin Scully Studio at the world headquarters of
the Old Women Broadcasting Empire. Sports Capsule Building, New York.
Here the credit. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhanel. The
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Chanel, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, and it was produced
(40:17):
by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
(40:38):
the eight hundred and eighty second day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(41:04):
iHeart 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. Trump's
lawyers think we are at the endgame, and Trump thinks
(00:25):
we are at the endgame. And the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN all
think we are at the endgame, and I sure as
hell think we are at the endgame. And the real
headline from where we all sit in Jack Smith's waiting
room kind of implies we are at the endgame. And
it was noted by the former District of Columbia federal
(00:47):
prosecutor and now TV legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. The headline
is this, we actually now know one thing for certain.
There clearly has been no decision by the Special counsel
or the Attorney General to not charge Trump for the
theft of the classified documents. If all of this wrapping
(01:09):
up of testimony and investigations and grand jury recalls had
led to a conclusion not to indict Trump, there would
have been no reason for Smith and an unidentified DOJ
career official to have had that meeting with Trump attorneys
Jim Trusty, John Rowley, and Lindsay Halligan yesterday. And it's
(01:29):
not just proving the negative. It's not a no, and
it's pretty certainly not an undecided, which leaves uh with
me a yes. Kirshner quote. The last thing federal prosecutors
often do before indicting is to meet the target's defense
(01:49):
team and give them an opportunity to present any evidence
or arguments they want to offer. The Washington Post presented
the same thought. It is not uncommon in high profile
cases for defense lawyers to get such a meeting with
Justice Department officials toward the end of an investigation. And
there is a second fact, a new one. Jack Smith
(02:12):
has had another grand jury working on the document's case
in Florida, in the West Palm area, in the jurisdiction
covering Mari Lago itself. I had heard this last week
but couldn't confirm it. The Wall Street Journal confirmed it first.
The New York Times says there is at least one
more witness going to testify to that Florida grand jury
(02:34):
later this week, like everybody else, though the Times writers
confess it is not clear why a second grand jury
is taking testimony in Florida because it isn't, although some
legal analysts suggested it gives Smith the flexibility to try
the case in Washington or West Palm, depending on how
the juries land. We can also infer a third fact
(02:57):
from the least likely and usually least reliable source. Trump himself. Literally,
just minutes after his latest lawyers left the department headquarters
on Pennsylvania Avenue between ninth and tenth Northwest, Trump erupted
on social media and gave away what he was still
hoping for, is still hoping for, must remain hoping for,
(03:18):
because his world of self delusion depends on this that
for some reason they will not indict him just cuz quote,
how can doj possibly charge me who did nothing wrong?
When no other presidents were charged? When blah blah blah
blah blah, And then the usual psychotic meanderings through Biden
(03:41):
this and Hillary's emails that and which hunt, which hunt?
Which hunt? I think we can reconstruct yesterday's meeting. Smith there,
but Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monacote not there.
The Trump team goes in complains, as instructed by their client,
about the rare piercing of attorney client privilege in the
(04:03):
case of Evan Corcoran gets nowhere, stretches it out for
two hours according to most reports, ninety minutes according to
at least one other report, and then leaves, and then,
presumably trust he gets the pleasure of calling Trump and
telling him no, you know what, he wouldn't promise not
to indicte you, or call you innocent publicly, or accept
your offer to become attorney general in twenty twenty five.
(04:26):
And then Trump loses his fragile self control because again,
deep down, he believes he is immortal and untouchable. ABC
News did provide a valuable sidelight on that meeting and
on why it would have taken ninety minutes to two
hours reporting to the meeting. Quote focused mostly on process
and very little on the legal matters central to the
(04:47):
document's probe. Trump's lawyer's got no indication of any potential
charges or timing associated with any possible indictment end quote.
The word process here would be that whole attorney client
thing and the other prosecutorial anomalies real or imagined, the
standard technicalities and loopholes. Trump has spent his life wriggling through, around,
(05:09):
and under like a bulbous but surprisingly nimble limbo dancer.
The bigger picture continues to be Yeah, we're at the endgame,
The Times. The visit came amid indications that prosecutors in
the Special Council's Office were approaching the end of their
documents inquiry. It also came at a time when mister
Trump's advisors have concluded that there might not be much
(05:32):
more time to stave off charges. Trump expects to face charges,
The Times Rights, according to people who have spoken to him,
although that does not mean he has been assured that
charges are pending. From the post. Two Trump advisors briefed
on Monday's meetings said they continue to believe Smith will
finalize a charging decision in coming weeks. The advisers said
(05:56):
they are preparing for a potential indictment of the former president,
and the meeting did not change their expectations. The Journal's
second sentence, the meeting is the latest indication that Smith
has all but wrapped up his investigation. CNN's second sentence,
It appears to be nearing its final stage. There did
(06:18):
not seem to be anything new on the reported reconvening
of the grand jury this week, nor what it would
be reconvening. For nearly every report contained a useful reminder,
though for all of us that whatever happens on this
document's case, and whenever it happens, Jack Smith will then
pivot to focusing particularly on January sixth, And as we've
(06:39):
discussed previously, the easier to prove elements of fraud raising
funds for a stolen election Trump knew wasn't stolen. So
if we are expecting indictments, we are expecting them in stages.
On the twelfth day of Christmas. There is a solid
joke about the damaged marri Lago security video story that
(07:02):
came out yesterday. Jack Smith isn't king, but Trump's pool is.
And so we turn to a leak about leaking, which,
if I remember correctly, was one of the very first
things we all tried to get Trump investigated over in
twenty sixteen. Think about it. We may have an answer
(07:27):
as to what that second grand jury is looking at
in Florida, and we probably have the answer as to
why the Special Council seemed so obsessed with not just
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room
at mar A Lago, and not just security video of
staffers moving boxes in and out of the storage room,
but vaguely worded hints about glitches on the security video.
(07:49):
And finally, the hilarious report that the marri a Lago
staffer who helped Walt Naouda with the heavy lifting actually
went to the IT guy at marri Lago and asked
him how soon before the CCTV system would delete video
of uh say, just as a hypothetical himself quote. An
(08:13):
employee at Donald Trump's Marri Lago Residents drained the resort's
swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room
where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. What
are the odds against that? The punchline of courses that
(08:33):
CNN identifies the guy who drained the pool as the
same guy who helped Walt Naota move the boxes, coincidence,
no doubt. CNN reports at least one grand jury witness
has been asked about the washout. It is not clear
if it was accidental or deliberate. It seems to be
clear that the IT equipment in that room was not damaged,
(08:56):
but the whole thing is obviously focused on weather. Like
the eighteen and a half minute gap on one of
Nixon's Watergate tapes, somebody had deliberately tried to destroy evidence
by destroying recordings by draining a swimming pool, and there
are all the seeming cosmic callbacks in this idea that
the draining of a country club swimming pool might be
(09:19):
of critical importance in the revelation of the crimes of
a president. The Watergate break in itself was uncovered in
progress because of what first looked like trivial routine building maintenance.
When the burglars use duct tape to keep a stairwell
door from locking behind them. The night watchman Frank Wills
(09:41):
removed the tape, but the next time he passed that
same door, he saw more tape had been applied to
cover the lock. That's when he called the cops. More recently,
we have seen Trump move from drain the swamp to
drain the pool, and of course, draining a swimming pool
at a country club well, that's also a callback for
(10:03):
yes right out the script for the movie Caddyshack, Where's
that Baby Ruth Candy Bar? And of course there is
the ultimate Trump callback. To paraphrase what Frank Lesser writes
on Twitter, how this won't be the first time Trump
denies causing water damage at a hotel. Also of note, today,
(10:33):
I may have been the first person with any kind
of national platform to suggest that Chris licked was going
to destroy CNN. And I must tell you I really
did hope it was just my inability to override my
vivid memories of seeing his worminess up close and personal
when we were at MSNBC. But even I am beginning
(10:53):
to wonder if defenestrating him then going downstairs and bringing
him back upstairs and defenestrating him again, is you know,
really fair to let's go down and get him again.
Lichts apology to his staff yesterday has only made things worse.
(11:13):
It earned him praise not from his own people, but
from only a couple of horrible human beings who work
at MSNBC and the one remaining kind of feel good
part of that whole nightmarish magazine story In The Atlantic,
lickts dedication to working out and getting healthy with a
trainer that was blown up yesterday by one tabloid headline
(11:38):
quote say an ND boss Chris Lickt bragged about taking
ozempic for weight loss. Side effects of OSIMI concluded nausea, diarrhea,
and loss of any remaining credibility as a newsman. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Albern. Postscripts
(12:01):
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline,
CNN Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. I believe the Simpsons
meme applies here. Stop stop, He's already dead. Yesterday began
with CNN's Chris Licked being raked over the coals because
having destroyed most of the network in the live Trump
(12:23):
CNN town Hall moderated by the hopelessly outmatched Caitlin Collins,
he had pretty much finished off the self destruction job
during the live Nikki Haley CNN town Hall on Sunday night,
in which Jake Tapper, apparently too bored or too burned
out to give a damn, never pushed back when Haley,
who is a genuinely stupid person with no principles she
(12:45):
would not sell out for money or power, actually tried
to blame suicides by teenaged girls in this country on
the idea that they might have to deal with transgendered
girls in the bathroom or on the sports field, something
of which the number of reported examples is approximately the
more or less zero that repeat in miniature of the
(13:10):
blowback against Lickt after the Trump Hendenburg disaster was still
in progress when Chris Licht got onto the CNN nine
am internal conference call and tried to apologize to everybody,
and by ten am all the quotes were all over
the place. First, Lickt praised the Haley town hall debacle,
(13:30):
then went off on a monologue that did almost as
much damage to himself and his network as the piece
by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic did. To begin with,
let me quote and translate as we go along, all right,
quoting Lickt. I know these past few days have been
very hard for this group unquote wait days. Since Lickt
(13:52):
took over CNN a year ago, the network has been
a real life version of the legend of Sisiphus, Only
it's the actual journalists there who've had to try to
push the damn rock back up the hill every day
while it's Licked, who has then deliberately rolled it back
down every night days. Try month's pace, boy, quoting Licked again.
(14:14):
I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role
in it, overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we
just had and distracted from the work of every single
journalist in this organization, and for that, I'm sorry. Unquote.
First of all, he's not sorry, he's sorry he's getting criticized.
The reporting he's talking about is CNN's continuing breaking of
(14:38):
Trump's Special Council stories like the flooding of the IT
room I mentioned. And remember Chris Lick was hired by
David Zaslav and John Malone so he would overshadow bad
stories about Trump and Republicans, overshadow them or keep them
off the CNN air quote. As I read that article,
(15:00):
I found myself thinking, CNN is not about me. I
should not be in the news unless it's taking arrows
for you. Your work is what should be written about. Unquote.
Well that's the biggest bullspit in this vast pile of bullspit.
That is Chris Licked. He has always metaphorically jumped in
(15:22):
front of somebody else's camera shot Joe Scarborough publicity. Licked
made sure he was in it too, Gail King, publicity,
Gail King and lickt. Stephen Colbert saved by Chris lickt
the new, old, old new whatever it is CNN. Remember
you can't spell CNN without Chris Licked. I mean, the
(15:47):
publicity generation of Chris Lickt is so institutionalized now that
maybe before the CNN nine am call yesterday was even
over Joe Scarborough the most despicable scumbag I have ever
worked with, and I've worked with Chris Myers. Joe Scarborough
was already reading those quotes from another network's internal phone
(16:10):
call and defending his former producer live on MSNBC and
one of Scarborough's on air sickophants on MSNBC, the ridiculous
Donnie Deutsch, said I would never bet against Chris Licht,
even though it was reportedly Chris Lickt who told Deutsch
when he was filling in as an MSNBC anchor years ago,
(16:31):
that a good idea for a show would be to
criticize me on the air. I mean, I never even
heard about it until after management came in and apologized
and told me Deutsch had been suspended and would not
be anchoring again. And if anything defines the seriousness of
Licht's series of disasters better than that, I don't know
what it could be. Daintily vilified by CNN's Christiana I'm
(16:55):
onpour flacidly badly defended by Anderson Cooper of CNN shot
fall holes by dozens of off the record CNN people.
Chris licks only on the record defense in the entire
television industry has now come from two guys on one
of the networks he is supposed to be destroying. One
(17:20):
more quote from the apology tour to those whose trust
I've lost, I will fight like hell to win it back,
because you deserve a leader who will be in the
trenches unquote. He'll be in the trenches, all right, and
then metaphorically they will bury him in the trenches because
Warner Bros. Discovery may not actually fire Chris Lickt, but
(17:42):
he will not be running CNN by autumn at the latest.
And the second half of that last quote in the
trenches fighting to ensure CNN remains the world's most trusted
name in news unquote, most trusted, least watched. So let's
see how Lickts pretend humility played out there in the
(18:05):
real world, shall we off the record quotes to the
first guy licked fired for liberaling while broadcasting Brian Stelter quote,
he's over quote there's no coming back from that profile. Quote.
If he's so concerned with the CNN brand, what is
the point of saying any of this stuff publicly, and
somebody else said Lickt told him the fight like hell quote,
(18:28):
but added I've got nothing to lose now, which just
shows Lickt is still delusional. He's got a lot to
lose now. To the Washington Post, a CNN anchor added,
this just seems unsustainable unquote. Also, the Post article had
one more quote from that Lickt apology on the conference call,
(18:48):
which doesn't need much amplification or explanation. They say, he said, quote,
this experience has been tremendously humbling. I bet it has. So.
That seemed to be it for day twenty seven of
Chris Licked in crisis, and then came the moment when
it was obvious that everybody Chris Licked ever tried to
(19:12):
damage or hurt or interfere with, they were going to
get in one last shot while he was still breathing.
The saddest truth about the piece in the Atlantic, the
one moment when some of us had a moment of pity, empathy,
felt bad about feeling so good reading it. That saddest
(19:36):
truth was that, basically the only person who would go
on the record to the Atlantic writer praising Chris Licked
was his personal trainer, though the fact that Licked looked
so desperate that he would magazine writer watch his five
am workouts and when he finished a bunch of squats
while he was humping a rope or whatever it was,
(19:58):
he shouted, Jeff Zucker couldn't do this spit. He had
at least managed to lose fifty pounds and get in shape.
This was a guy who had a brain problem. Stay
in shape, Stay in shape while destroying your television network.
And then it comes from the London tabloid rag, The
(20:19):
Daily Mail and The Daily Beast had this story too,
They just didn't get it published fast enough. Headline exclusive
CNN boss Chris Lickt bragged about taking ozempic for weight loss.
Oh oh oh quote. Multiple sources tell dailymail dot com
(20:42):
that the self proclaimed meal skipping machine actually bragged about
using the diabetes drug turned weight loss miracle ozempic before
it became popular among a listers earlier this year. I
heard about ozempic from Chris, a close friend of Lickt
told dailymail dot Com when he was at Colbert. He
explained that he was a huge fan of it and
(21:03):
he'd been using it to get his weight under control.
This was back in twenty twenty one, so I was
shocked when I read the Atlantic story and he was
claiming it was due to a trainer and cutting meals.
Paul Lees. He told me point blank he uses it unquote.
Oh god, ozempic Jeff Zucker couldn't do that spit either,
(21:41):
Still ahead on countdown. All I had to do in
the commercial was stride over into the newsroom, grab the
guy's guitar and smash it against a room divider. The
trick was, we didn't tell anybody in the newsroom first,
and a mighty roar went up from the crowd coming
up first. The day he wrote up with the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger Effets specimens who constitute today's worst
(22:02):
persons in the world. The Bronze Day Begley, an attorney
in Omaha who did not like the fact that Nebraska
State Senator Meghan Hunt voted against the creeping meatballism in
his state, in this case, Legislative Bill five seventy four,
which would have further restricted gender affirming care in Nebraska.
So he filed a conflict of interest complaint against Senator Hunt.
(22:27):
Why because Senator Hunt has a transgender son, and even
though Medicaid doesn't pay for transgender care, David Begley said
her family might get money someday from Medicaid because of it,
and she should have had to disclose this before the vote,
even though her side lost and her chances of getting
Medicaid for this are about as big as this worm.
Begley now growing a soul. The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure
(22:51):
Commission began an investigation into this Begley guy's attempt to
stop legislators from voting unless they agree with him. They've
now dismissed his complaint. They spent taxpayer money on this. Frankly,
they should charge because this was intimidation and transphobia and
it was funded by the taxpayers of Nebraska, and he
(23:11):
had Begley's office is in the phone book. The runner
up Spacecaren again Elmo muskrat joined in a space's conversation
by the decaying remains of Robert F. Kennedy Junior. The
good news is the thing did not crash this time
like I did with DeSantis. The bad news, Elmo yesterday
pushed he had another conspiracy theory in this one. The
(23:33):
conspiracy is against him. Musk said half of advertising disappeared
from Twitter overnight because we're insisting on free speech and
they're literally trying to drive Twitter bankrupt. And when he
says they, of course, he means I'm driving Twitter bankrupt
because I have no idea how life works when somebody
take this goddamn thing away from me, And he might
(23:55):
as well say, go anti woke, go broke. By the way,
is there a way we could do that? Is there
some legal construction in which twin being online and using
public bandwidth than such is declared a public communications medium,
and you could take it away from this idiot Musk
the way the FCC could take a local TV station
(24:15):
away from inappropriate owners. Just a thought, but our winner,
good old Congressman Jamie Comer of Kentucky, Chairman of the
House Committee for Wasting Time. I think that's the title
of it, the one pursuing the Biden whistleblower complaint that
turns out to actually have originated with Rudy Giuliani. Rudy
(24:36):
Giuliani is the guy at the heart of this whole
whistleblower crap. This is the memo Republicans say is more
important than whether or not anything alleged in the memo
is true. Well, yesterday the FBI briefed Jamie and Jamie
Comer and the ranking Committee Democrat Jamie Raskin, and the
two emerged from the briefing, and Comer had the gall
to say the allegation quote has not been disproven, and
(24:59):
Raskin just looked at him and said, yad had quote.
The FBI, the Department of Justice team under William Barr
and Brady terminated the investigation. They said there were no
grounds for further investigative steps. Can we please just start
calling this what it is? This partner abuse allegation, skating yokel.
Comber is making this crap up as he goes along,
(25:22):
and he should be treated as the semi sentient fire
hydrant that he is representative. Jamie, you know what else
has not been disproven? Your college girlfriend's allegation that you
hit her and took her to her abortion and threatened
to kill her. Comber two days worst person in the
world still ahead of here on countdown. Somebody asked me
(25:55):
about the old This is Sports Center commercials the other
day and if I had a favorite, and I had
three and they all have great stories, but the Alexi
Lallas guitar story is probably the best of them. Things
I promise not to tell next. First, in each tradition
of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you can help.
Every dog has its day. This is about Lee Lou
(26:15):
and Powty Cake Rescue, which saves dogs in the Bahamas.
Powty Cake Rescue had to close recently because it has
to change buildings, but try explaining that to dogs in trouble.
The woman in charge of Pottycake saw Leelu and knew
she really needed help. She was hiding in a schools
the white mutt with ears as big as her face
(26:35):
and clearly some kind of neurological problem. She was having
trouble standing and keeping standing, so if she fell while
trying to cross the road, she would never make it
to the other side. So they rescue her and they're
trying to raise funds to get her treated and placed
in a foster home. They've set up a grid giving
grid page and you can find her on there. Leelu
Llou and you can find her on my Twitter feeds.
(26:58):
If you can donate, please do and your retweet will
also help. I thank you and Leelu, thanks you. The
nineteen ninety four World Cup did not really do that
much for American soccer, which as you know, is the
(27:21):
sport of the future in this country and always will be.
It did make a lot of Americans into fans, but
fans of European clubs, especially the British clubs. But for
a while, alexey Lalis, with his shoulder length reddish blonde
hair and his billy goat beard and his anti establishment vibe,
he was on the front burners of American sports. So
(27:43):
naturally ESPN wanted him for the surrealist fake documentary commercials
called this his Sports Center, and sure enough he came
to Bristol and they devised a bit in which Gary
Miller John Luca Palyucca's Gary Miller would be sitting at
a desk in the sports Center newsroom. As atop the
adjoining desk, Lalas sat crosslegged, philosophy on relaxation and vibes,
(28:06):
and finally playing Michael Row the boat Ashore on his guitar.
At that point the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's Animal House film. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom pull the guitar out
of Lalas's hands and then smash it against a cubicle
wall with the greatest grunt he could achieve, and then
(28:29):
hand Lalis back whatever was left of the guitar, and
like Belushi, say sorry, Well, they asked me to be
the other sportscaster who smashes the guitar. So picture that
in your mind as I play what it sounded like
for twenty seconds or so. And then I have what
(28:50):
I think is a really good backstory about the filming
of this one.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And I'm talking to you all afternoon about the tension,
about the darkness. We gotta do something about that, Michael,
(29:18):
for time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So the backstory, and it's out of chronological order. The
guitar that Alexei Lawis was playing was not the one
I smashed. There was an exact duplicate that had been bought.
It had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and
basically it was put back together with scotch tape. It
would hold together long enough for him to strum a
few sour notes on it, and then for me to
(29:43):
grab it and smash it. They were confident it would
not fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
But they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar and Alexey holding the
rest of it. This was especially problematic because we only
had the one prop guitar. That's right, we made the
(30:07):
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign not only freakly achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two.
We often shot three of these commercials in one day,
(30:29):
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the Sports Center anchors who started in one, or two
or three even get credit for a day off. In
one of them, Charlie Steiner is trying to get his
tape of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are
passing it around like a basketball, and he says, can
he have a little help? And I'm typing away at
my computer and I say sure, Charlie, and I don't
(30:51):
even look at him, let alone stop typing let alone
give him any help. And that's done because the commercial
was shot in the area right behind my desk, because
nobody was working there that day except me. It was
around five PM, and I was in fact sitting at
my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script. And
the original commercial script did not call for me to
(31:14):
even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the
writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. And by the way, Charlie did
the commercial around five o'clock or so and then went
and anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot
we did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up
(31:37):
while I am trying to read through a script also
shot at my desk, also on a day I was
anchoring the show, and that was my real script. Anyway,
back to alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we
only had the one prop guitar, and so we only
had the one take, and we were shooting it in
the actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they
(31:57):
were remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of
the new ESPN News Network. So this was the temporary
even more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and
the producer and the writer and I walked through how
they thought it would work best, since I would have
to weave past people who were really doing their jobs
and going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
(32:20):
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here. The producer said that would make a great shot.
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
(32:41):
to do that since we couldn't even practice the smash,
and he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe
that was the other salient part of the backstory, since
we only had the one take and we wouldn't even
be doing a dry run because they didn't want the
guitar to fall apart in my hands. I would say
less than half the people crowded into the temporary newsroom
(33:03):
had any idea that when I came in, I was
in the commercial let alone that I was going to
actually and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it against
a low cubicle wall. Even if the guitar has been
pre broken and taped back together, as that one was,
it is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait,
(33:24):
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, your little devil? Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
(33:45):
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then about no, no, no,
fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and Gary were still sitting.
My target for exactly where I should hit the guitar
was clearly marked on the cubicle wall, and they even
put marks on the carpet of where a couple of
practice walks had shown would give me the best chance
at a solid stamp. That's when I swung the guitar
(34:07):
and sent it el kabonging to its doom, and nobody
ever said quiet or roll or here we go. They
told people in the room that they were just shooting
some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people could
say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to, just
so long they didn't get away of the cameras. Then
(34:28):
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Belushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
(34:49):
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was strumming on the
nearly neutered prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I
took my strides, I hit the marks, I grabbed the
guitar by the neck, with my right hand and simultaneously
(35:10):
Alexey let go, and then with both hands, I swung
the guitar back over my head and smashed it right
on the mark as you heard Michael.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Show.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
The SportsCenter newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The
reaction was identical to what it would have been had
there been no commercial being made and no cameras present.
And I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar,
which I guess a lot of people expect that I
might do someday, because even a lot of the people
(35:52):
who were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the
skinny research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial,
which is on YouTube, for a second far left, just
staring at me like, yeah, well, we always knew Keith
would do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar,
and I have to say, I did it really well.
(36:13):
I kept moving for the plan until I walked back
through the swinging doors and out of shot. The director
shouted cut. I walked back in, and the crew gave
me a round of applause, and a couple of them
were cheering out of all proportion, even if I had
done is good of a job as I thought, Come here,
Come here. The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra
(36:34):
camera on the floor. They backed the videotape up from it,
and they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
the fretboard, the actual wood and metal piece on the
neck flew off and not only landed near the third
camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and it
stuck there. They were as happy as if they were
(36:55):
engineers imploding a building for the first time and it
had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus they showed
me the playback from the first camera was an assignment
desk editor with her back to the action on the phone,
completely unaware of what was happening or even that they
were rolling film and videotape, and she literally jumped several
inches out of her seat of her chair. But to me,
(37:20):
the best part of this thing is Gary Miller. Even
if you know a loud noise is coming, it is
quite the effort to not flinch a little when it
happens basically right over your shoulder. I mean, ask the
little kid in the movie North By Northwest, where Iva,
Marie Saint shoots Carrie Grant and he sticks his fingers
(37:42):
in his ears because it's take thirty seven and he
knows the noise is coming. I mean, you're aware of
it just for the possibility that somebody will screw it
up like me and debris will fly into the back
of your head. But if you watch Gary Miller in
this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink, just a
little dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What also amazes
(38:06):
me is that we got all this done in twenty
four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on about negativity.
I have to do something about it. He plays enough
of the song that you recognize it. You get a
shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of the background.
I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar
while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of
the thing. The only thing missing is that shot from
(38:27):
the fretbar flying into camera three. They explained they didn't
have the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying doing
this so much that I asked them for the front
of the body of the guitar, and I had Alexi
sign it to me on the spot. It hung framed
in my various offices for about fifteen years. In twenty fourteen,
(38:50):
I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's final episode
for Comedy Central. I was one of one hundred guests,
and I went out onto the street to find a
cab home and I got one, and in getting into it,
I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas, who was one of
the other one hundred guests. I laughed, He laughed, and
he said, and I don't even have my guitar with me.
And one last note, I doubt this will be of
(39:12):
any practical use to you, but I must say as
somebody who was accorded this rare privilege, not only of
doing this, but of doing this with impunity, and doing
this to applause. If you are trying to HEALTHI event
any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing a guitar
(39:33):
against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as satisfying as
you would expect it would be. I've done all the
(39:54):
damage I can do here. Countdown has come to you
from the Vin Scully Studio at the world headquarters of
the Old Women Broadcasting Empire. Sports Capsule Building, New York.
Here the credit. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhanel. The
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Chanel, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, and it was produced
(40:17):
by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
(40:38):
the eight hundred and eighty second day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(41:04):
iHeart for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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