October 4, 2023 • 43 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 48: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Kevin McCarthy is out and the ensuing chaos mainlines directly back to an episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." House Republican Radicals caught that proverbial car they’ve been chasing and they had no idea what to do next and they look like idiots.
The offing of Kevin McCarthy is actually notable only because a) it underscores the reality that the Republicans have bluster and the novelty of having opened the pandora’s box of fascism and political violence, but they don’t have any leaders, as evidenced by b) Kevin McCarthy saying on Face The Nation, two days before they garroted him, that he’d survive and they should bring it on and now THAT’S probably the worst political TV interview of our time leading to c) his epic news conference last night in which he compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler in the ‘30s and concluding with d) McCarthy’s only actual accomplishment – he lasted 270 days in the job, 12 more than the record holder for shortest speakership.
But the REAL lead story did not happen in Washington yesterday. WHICH idiot Republican becomes the NEW Future Former Speaker of the House doesn’t much matter. Because the real lead story is summarized by the phrase AND NOW WE WAIT. Turns out that not only did Judge Arthur Engoron issue a gag order against Trump hours after Trump attacked the clerk of Engoron’s court room yesterday, but he issued a gag order against Trump less than a day after he WARNED Trump’s lawyers informally that their client needed to shut the eff up. Engoron – of whom they should be installing a statue outside his courtroom – provided a template for Judge Tonya Chutkan for a week from next Monday.
Judge Engoron not only gagged Trump but HOW he gagged him ALSO gags Junior Trump and Eric Trump: “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I won’t tolerate it. Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff.” But this trial is ultimately MOST valuable because what we just saw was the if-then scenario play out. Engoron didn’t just issue a gag order because Trump attacked the clerk. He had WARNED HIM, via his lawyers, informally but clearly. And twelve hours later Trump did it anyway.
Memo to Judge Chutkan: Get ready to issue a gag order, on penalty of revoking his bail, after that hearing October 16. And get ready to have to enforce it.
B-Block (24:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Campbell Brown is out as news chief at Meta/Facebook so I have to tell you the story of how CNN's president was forced to hire her instead of me at 8 PM there (and they then all got fired), which in turn means I have to tell the story of how Brown's Meta colleague Anne Kornblut wound up being interviewed by the MSNBC anchor (Savannah Guthrie) her husband left her for. And then there's Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who apologized for referencing Nazis in the Republican Party. Why? There ARE Nazis in the Republican Party. We call them...Nazis.
C-Block (33:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's baseball playoff time again, so it's time for me to tell you about the year I was in the middle of a riot in Fenway Park, and I overheard a Yankee swearing at his manager in the clubhouse, and I bought - and chose not to air - videotape of Roger Clemens nearly getting into a fistfight with a Yankee fan before Game 3 of the World Series.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Kevin
McCarthy is out, and the ensuing chaos mainlines directly back
(00:25):
to an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I'll
get to that in a moment. But the real lead
story did not happen in Washington yesterday. Which idiot Republican
becomes the new future former Speaker of the House does
not much matter. The real lead story is in Trump's phone,
(00:47):
because the real lead story is summarized by the phrase
and now we wait. Turns out that not only did
Judge Arthur anger On issue a gag order against Trump,
the second gag order, he has a partial gag order
in the classified documents case two hours after Trump attacked
the clerk of Angeron's courtroom yesterday, but angerng issued a
(01:09):
gag order against Trump less than a day after he
had warned Trump's lawyers informally that their client needed to
shut the f up engern of whom they should be
installing a statue outside his courthouse soon provided a template
for Judge Tanya Chutkin for a week from next Monday.
Judge Ngaron not only gagged Trump, but how he gagged
(01:31):
him also gags Junior Trump and Eric the Idiot Trump too.
Quote personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate,
and I won't tolerate it. Consider this statement a gag
order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing, or speaking publicly
about any of my staff. As the New York fraud
(01:53):
trial closed for the day, a free scheduled Trump fundraising
email went out and probably just missed, violating the brand
new gag order. I just finished the second day of
my my sham trial in New York. For the past
two days, I sat in a courtroom and I listened
to the Democrats fervently try to destroy everything my family
(02:13):
and I have built. Unquote. Trump attacks the trial's process,
claims it is a political event, but he does not
mention anybody by name. At nightfall, Trump then posted on
social media what was for him a limp and tepid
criticism of the law under which he is being tried,
which he tagged with a generic and not at all
(02:35):
spicy criticism quote. This was done by radical left Marxist design,
but you can see him edging closer back to his
usual bile, and I suspect this is just a matter
of time. As I posited yesterday, Trump's entire worldview is
predicated on the idea that there are no rules he
(02:57):
cannot get around. He certainly will test the judge. The
only question is how much, and how soon, and how
the judge responds. There were reports last night, apparently drawn
from an interpretation of New York statutes, that anybody violating
any New York judge's gag order might be liable for fines,
(03:18):
or for a stricter gag order, or even for thirty
days behind bars. This quickly morphed into reports in places
like the Hollywood publication Deadline that Engern had threatened to
put Trump in jail for thirty days. Well, here's hoping
he does that, or three hundred and thirty days. But
he has not done that yet. He threatened only quote
(03:39):
serious sanctions, and he left that up to Trump's imagination.
What is fascinating here is the subtext, because rarely do
we see Trump's imagination in action. Rarely do we see
so concisely and so clearly how bad the cracks in
Trump's brain really are. A week ago, this morning, a
(04:00):
crass Twitter account with all of two hundred and thirty
nine followers attacked Judge's clerk because she had run for
a seat on Civil Court in New York and was
endorsed by the organization Manhattan Democrats. An hour later, this
same account grabbed a photo from the clerk's Instagram page
showing her in what was an apparent fan photo, standing
(04:23):
next to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. She was the fan,
and the senator apparently did not even know who she was.
Even now with all the subsequent publicity, two separate tweets
asking why is Judge Ngeran's principal law clerk paling around
with Chuck Schumer? They have gotten fewer than five hundred retweets. Somehow,
(04:47):
that tweet got in front of Trump's twitching eyeballs, and
he jumped from the reality, which is a photo of
a random cog in the Manhattan judicial system, asking Chuck
Schumer to pose with her, to this fevered production of
Trump's own malignant brain quote, Schumer's girlfriend is running this
(05:10):
case against me. How disgraceful. This case should be dismissed immediately.
He then provided a link to the woman's Instagram page,
which she then had to make private. It's Trump's insanity
in real time. A random photo of a random court
clerk is blown up by a troll account, and not
(05:31):
very well blown up an account that previously had accused
the judge of being a quote hobo who was drinking
gin during the trial. It's been blown up from that
into paling around with Chuck Schumer, and Trump then blew
that up, turned that into the clerk being Schumer's quote girlfriend,
and the deranged assertion that she was running this case,
(05:53):
and the hyperbole on top of hyperbole on top of hyperbole,
that the case should be dismissed immediately immediately. Of course,
Trump's people do not need anything but his word to
believe anything, or to pretend to believe anything. As long
as he can invent evidence of his perpetual martyrdom and victimhood,
(06:17):
he can take anything he finds and turn it into
a weapon, even if the judge then makes him delete
that weapon. The larger meanings, though, are pretty obvious. On
the opening day of this fraud trial, Judge Angern said
he expected it to continue into December. Trump himself is
not expected to testify for several weeks yet. Whether he
(06:39):
continues to milk the trial for pity and cash, every
day by showing up to the New York courtroom. Remains
to be seen. Whether the attorneys or his idiot adult
kids can convince him to control himself online and in
front of microphones remains to be seen. But December is
eight long weeks from now, and Trump has the restraint
(07:02):
of a four year old or of a cat, or
of a four year old cat. And then, of course
there is October sixteenth, and what that means for October sixteenth,
the date is already marked historically by the birth of
Angela Lansbury and the death of Marie Antoinette. Now it
(07:26):
will feature the hearing in Judge Tanya Chutkin's courtroom about
what kind of restraint, what gag order or alternate for
a gag order she will impose on Trump, because since
Jack Smith first filed asking for one, Trump has said
that someone whom Smith now identifies as a witness in
that case, General Mark Milly, was guilty of a crime
(07:47):
that previously would have been punishable by death. Trump has
told his hordes that they should quote go after Attorney
General Letitia James of New York. And now he has
thrown into chaos the life of a woman whose greatest
transgression was thinking that a photo of herself standing next
to Chuck Schumer was worth the effort involved to post
(08:07):
it online. I'll go through what I'm expecting here. Yet again,
I apologize for that. But I can't emphasize enough that
this federal case, that gag order hearing could be an
extraordinary turning point, an extraordinary crisis in fact in American history.
(08:28):
The New York case and that gag order could conceivably
end up with Trump being found in contemptive court and
ordered incarcerated for some days. But the federal case, it's
a federal case. Trump is not out on bail in
New York. He is out on bail in Washington. A
violation of that bail, which is what Jacksmith's filings are
(08:50):
all about, can and often is met by a judge
revoking the bail, especially if it involves threatening the witnesses
to say nothing of buying a gun or even just
pretending to buy a gun. Inspect Judge Chutkin two at
the hearing on the sixteenth, or after taking some time
to consider what happens during the hearing on the sixteenth,
(09:12):
I would expect her to walk right up to the
line of jailing Trump but not doing it if there
is a way for her to create a mechanism by
which she establishes draconian restrictions on his social media and
personal commentary on the case and the witnesses and the
prosecutors and herself and their motives and everything else. If
(09:33):
she can do that and then show it leading to
automatic pre announced punishments for him if he breaks those rules,
like maybe a huge fine for the first defense, then
revocation of bail and being put in prison for the
second or the seventieth. Who knows. I think she'll do that.
She will be explicit, and she will also make sure
(09:56):
the onus is not on herself to later rule that
he must be imprisoned. She will put the onus on
him to imprison in himself. If you do this, you
are going to jail. Then when it happens, she had
nothing to do with it, and not to exhaust you
by repetition. But the question then becomes what happens when
(10:19):
he does it? Anyway, The New York trial before Judge
Andngaran is ultimately most valuable because what we just saw
was the if then scenario playing out in real time
and Goron did not just issue a gag order because
Trump attacked the clerk yesterday. He had warned him via
his lawyers, informally but clearly, and twelve hours later Trump
(10:42):
did it anyway. With whatever Tanya Chutkin tells Trump not
to do, he will soon or late do it anyway.
That is his madness. And then what happens. The marshals
go to get him and they shoot it out with
(11:04):
the Secret Service. The Secret Service is withdrawn beforehand, so
Trump gets private armed security. There's almost an infinite number
of different endgame scenarios, and there is only one we
can be certain will not happen, which would be Trump's
surrendering himself to be jailed without confrontation. His broken brain
(11:26):
does not work that way. That a lot of us
have always feared that this would be the only way
all of it could possibly end up does not change
the fact that it still is a nightmare scenario. Well,
we will get enough hints in the next week and
a half, courtesy of Judge anger On and the gag
order and whichever conspiracy theory Trump thinks he can get
(11:49):
away with launching to distract from the reality that he
is guilty of fraud. We will get more hints, and
we will get maybe a conclusion on Monday to sixteenth,
and then, as they say, that's when it gets interesting.
(12:10):
There is, in fact another Trump story that is also
more important than how many speakers of the House the
Republicans will burn through before the end of the calendar
year or maybe the month. Trump's default setting is irrational stupidity.
We know that he speaks to that quality in millions
of our brethren, who in olden times would have been
(12:31):
left back in school for decades. But again, when it
comes to the subject of money, he gets even more
irrational and more stupid. This is what he said before
the post about the clerk, before the gag order, before
day two of the fraud trial. See if you can
spot the stupid. In fact, so trumpy Mary A. Lago
(13:03):
is worth one and a half billion dollars, not three
years after the tax assessors of Palm Beach County, Florida
decided it was worth twenty six million, and Trump protested
that was too high, and he appealed, and then he
withdrew the appeal in he grade nine, you're right, it's
worth twenty six million. So he owes back taxes on
(13:24):
the difference, which is one billion, four hundred and seventy
four million dollars. I mean, even in terms of what
Trump claimed to banks that marri Lago was worth, he
was still skinning the taxman, the prosecution in the fraud cases.
Trump told them the banks four hundred and ninety million.
(13:47):
If that's true, he was still shorting the tax assessment
in Florida by one billion, ten million dollars. I mean,
if I'm in the government of Palm Beach County, I'm
definitely looking into this now. Thanks for saying it on camera, Moron.
And one more Trump legal note that is not about
(14:08):
Jack Smith or Arthur Engern or Trump's social media accounts.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution matter of factly reported that quote,
Fulton County prosecutors are floating plea deals to a number
of defendants in the election interference case involving Trump, according
to people with knowledge of the proposals. Unquote, The AJC
reminds us Scott Hall already got one of these plea deals.
(14:31):
He was involved in the voting records breach out in
the Styx. The paper also mentions Trump Election day chieftain
Michael Roman, whose lawyer says he said, no, thanks, He's innocent,
And it says Fannie Willis's office has also approached quote
people who were indicted for their alleged roles in the
appointment of a slate of Trump electors, election data breach
(14:52):
in Coffee County, and harassment of Fulton Pole worker Ruby Freeman.
That's a lot of people. And if you think the
Atlantic case is moving quickly, you better sit down. Jury
selection for round one the trials of Kenneth cheesebro and
Sydney Powell. Jury selection starts in sixteen days. Okay, So now,
(15:19):
Kevin McCarthy, you've been waiting patiently for your obituary. Here
goes fifty years ago next Friday. On episode five of
season four of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on CBS,
(15:41):
Lou Grant said it to Mary Richards, it seemed like
a throwaway line from an exceptional sitcom. I've always remembered it.
I had no idea that half century anniversary was coming up.
And it's not a throwaway line from an exceptional sitcom.
It is, in fact the first rule of usurpation and insurrection.
(16:04):
And as Lou Grant said, good broadcasting quote. You never
fire your old sportscaster, he told her, until you've hired
your new sportscaster. House Republican radicals caught the proverbial car
they have been chasing, and they have no idea what
(16:25):
to do next, and they look like idiots. Three decades
of being nearly unbeaten in pure political street fighting skills
out the window because these morons did not remember the
lou Grant sportscasting rule. The actual half century anniversary October thirteenth,
at nine pm Eastern, the episode called Hi there, sports
(16:47):
fans may in fact come and go without these clowns
naming anybody is the new speaker or worse yet, and
in many constructions, maybe more likely they will already have
elected somebody speaker and managed to fire him too, and
maybe they can just rotate it once a week, like
they do prime ministers of IT'LL or managers of the
New York Mets. The offing of Kevin McCarthy is actually
(17:11):
notable only because a it underscores the reality that the
Republicans have bluster and the novelty of having opened, you know,
the Pandora's box of American fascism and American political violence.
But they don't have any leaders, as evidenced by b
Kevin McCarthy saying on Face the Nation two days before
(17:32):
his friends garrotted him that he would survive and they
should bring it on. And now that's probably the worst
political TV interview of our time, unless you include Prince
Andrew's twenty nineteen sit down with Emily Maitliss of the BBC,
which could have only gone worse if he had been
arrested in the middle of it, leading to C McCarthy's
(17:53):
epic news conference last night in which he compared Vladimir
Putin to Hitler in the thirties. Yeah, I guess that's impressive.
I think the comparison actually is Hitler in the thirties
and Trump. Right now, let's see him say that. And
then McCarthy turned things over to Patrick McHenry, the little
scumbag in the bow tie who promptly ordered Nancy Pelosi
(18:15):
to vacate her special hideaway office by today because it
will be reassigned. She's in California for the funeral of
Dianne Feinstein, and he McHenry is a little weasel, and
all of it concluding with d McCarthy's only actual accomplishment
he lasted two hundred and seventy days on the job,
(18:38):
twelve days more than the record holder for shortest speakership ever,
poor Michael C. Kerb of the Indiana Third, who was
taken by consumption on August nineteenth, eighteen seventy six, having
presided over exactly one session of the forty fourth Congress. Actually,
it occurs to me that I'm still assuming an awful
(18:59):
lot about the Republicans and McCarthy here in saying that
this ouster is in the conclusion of his career or
anything else. House Republicans are incompetent enough, and McCarthy is
vengeful and vain enough that though he said last night
he will not run again for speaker, and he salted
the earth and he burned the bridges hell I've done that,
(19:22):
he might still get the job back, trust me, especially
if they actually give a lease Stefanic or this clown
McHenry or another one of these goobers a shot at it,
And especially if McCarthy really would turn around and make
a deal with the Democrats, this time predicated on aid
for Ukraine and some palatable fix for the actual problems
(19:42):
on the border, and most importantly, giving McCarthy the chance
to metaphorically attack Matt Gates's privates with pruning shears every
day through the next election and in the process turn
him into some kind of ooh congressional sissiphus, only making
it hurt more. Also of interest here, Campbell Brown is
(20:07):
out at Meta, and there's a story about her and
CNN and how they hired her when they couldn't hire me,
and her colleague at Meta. Her name is in the
news to Anne Cornblued, and that story is even better
because her name invokes Savannah Guthrie, because Anne's husband left
her to marry Savannah Guthrie. And then somebody at MSNBC
had Savannah interview and ooh, that's next. This is gout down.
(20:35):
This is Countdown with Keith Overman stell ahead on Countdown.
(21:00):
The baseball playoffs are underway, and there are a lot
of things I could predict, but I'm going to stick
to one of them. One prediction alone. There will not
be a riot during any of these games, because there
was a riot in nineteen ninety nine, and I was
not only covering it, I was in the middle of
it on the field until security threatned to have me
arrested things I promised not to tell. Coming up first
(21:22):
time for the daily round Up with the Miss Grant's
morons and dounn In Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's
worst persons than urged the bronze. Campbell Brown, former NBC
News correspondent and one of the many many former eight
PM hosts at CNN. I was reminded, I mean literally,
I had forgotten that she was head of news for
(21:45):
Facebook and then Meta. She got nothing done, They abandoned
producing and promulgating real news, and now it is reported
she's leaving the company. Campbell Brown's first gig at NBC
was as one of the regular White House correspondents during
my first MSNBC show there, The White House in Crisis
in nineteen ninety eight. As a correspondent, she had great hair.
(22:09):
In two thousand and six, CNN president John Klein offered
me CNN's eight PM show and the chance to bring
my staff with me over there, and then he got
overruled by his boss, a man named Jim Walton. And
Jim Walton, twenty five years earlier, had been the backup
graphics guy on My Little four Minute Afternoon sportscast on CNN,
(22:30):
not the graphics guy. He was the backup graphics guy.
Became head of CNN worldwide. They have trouble with filling
that job. Klein told Walton that he was making an
existential mistake, that they had a chance to put MSNBC
out of business by hiring me away from them and
then using me to take on Fox News and instead.
(22:52):
Kleine told him it would now end up with him
hiring somebody lesser at eight pm, and then client said
Walton would fire him Kline, and then Klein said somebody
would in turn fire Walton, of which happened, and the
person they hired instead of me was Campbell Brown. I
kicked her hair in the ratings. Campbell Brown and I
(23:14):
co anchored the Weekend Today show one Sunday about two
thousand and five, and she never stopped smoking cigarettes during it.
I was a cigar smoker at the time, and even
I was overcome by this smell. We were on I
think for two hours. I think she must have had
sixty cigarettes. She didn't finish all of them, but sixty
(23:36):
cigarettes is sixty cigarettes. Every time she was not on camera,
Campbell Brown lit up a cigarette they opened a door
to the street for her. She went outside. During the commercials,
they surrounded her with fans. Never seen anything like it.
A year later, I ran into her at Gabriel's restaurant
here and the guy she was with was president of
ABC News. I didn't know him. He introduced himself. He
(23:58):
was lovely to me. And Campbell, who I had worked
with for ten years by this point, co anchored a show.
He said, hello, you the runner up and Cornblute. Now,
An didn't do anything wrong here. It's just easiest for
me if I put her in in this part of
the show. If anything, she is the victim here turns
(24:21):
out and Cornblute, formerly of The Washington Post, was Campbell
Brown's colleague and remains Meta's vice president of Global Product
Content Operations. I mean, I'm impressed. Twenty years ago, she
was a regular guest on shows like Mine on MSNBC.
She was also married to a BBC producer named Mark Orchard,
(24:42):
which will become relevant in a moment. I think I've
mentioned before that another person who got into NBC via
me was Savannah Guthrie. Savannah Guthrie, who was working at
Court TV, assigned to cover the Michael Jackson trial, and
we were looking for somebody who would also cover it
for us, just my show as well, and who would,
as we said, then play not just report the news,
(25:04):
but have fun with me and my stupid questions. Plus
one of my producers was trying to set her up
with me. Though her entrey to NBC by a countdown
clearly went really well and hats off to Savannah for that,
the setup part went nowhere because at the Michael Jackson
trial she began a relationship with a BBC producer named
(25:25):
Mark Orchard. Yep, the guy was married to Anne Kornblute.
Soon Mark Orchard divorced Ann Kornblute to marry Savannah Guthrie.
At NBC, Savannah Guthrie was quickly and rightly targeted for stardom.
They decided to get her as much anchoring experience as possible,
and they threw her in with no experience to anchor
an hour of day Side, which is where they put
(25:48):
the people they don't really care about. And sure enough,
one day, I'm looking at the rundown of the Savannah
Guthrie Hour of Day Side at MSNBC and it's one
of those moments where you think your eyes are going
to fall out of your head. Whatever. The first story
was that they were having Savannah do it. They had
booked as the expert guest to talk about it to
(26:08):
give it some context, a reporter from the Washington Post
and Cornblute. That's right. They had scheduled Savannah Guthrie to
interview her husband's preceding wife who he left for her.
Savannah evidently did not notice this until she was seated
(26:31):
at the desk and about to go on the air.
And if you ever want to see an interview in
which eight or ten questions are asked and answered in
one minute and there is no superfluous smiling or banter
by the anchor or the guest, find that interview. Oh god,
was that funny? Not for them, especially not for Savannah,
because soon she too was the former missus Mark Orchard.
(26:54):
I forget the details, but I think he moved on
to the the next wife came around the corner. Okay,
enough of that. The Winner and Worst Persons Congressman Jamal Bowman,
Democrat of my hometown. You already know about the whole
fire alarm thing which Republicans, when they're not killing off
their own speakers of the House are trying to turn
into the worst thing since the Crucifixion. Bowman's office responded
(27:18):
to that by distributing talking points to fellow Democrats and
other perceived friends. One of the points read quote, Republicans
need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members
of their party before anything else. Republicans howled, howled, after
which Bowman tweeted an apology quote, I just became aware
that in our messaging guidance there was inappropriate use of
(27:39):
the term Nazi without my consent. Huh. Congressman Paul Gozar
traveled to the border with a blogger who has praised
Nazi Germany. Congress and Rosendale. He posed with neo Nazis,
the Republican nominee in the Illinois third in twenty eighteen,
as a Holocaust denier who claimed to be the head
of the American Nazi Party. Trump had dinner with Nick
(28:02):
Fuentes and Kanye West. And he keeps posting globalists and
Israeli loyalty stuff and warnings to American Jews. And he
used to read from a book of Hitler's speeches that
he kept in his bedroom. Should go on, so Congressman
Congressman Bowman, your office said there were Nazis in the
Republican Party. There are Nazis in the Republican Party. Why
(28:28):
did you apologize, Congressman Jamal. They're Nazis, sir. You called
them Nazis. That's what Nazis are called, Nazis. Bowman. Two days,
worst person and all. Finally to the number one story
(28:57):
on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and every
time the baseball playoffs roll around, I am flashback to
one of the sixteen posts I have covered. I'm old
five of them is part of the actual game broadcasts,
and they will not hang the nineteen ninety nine American
League Championship Series in any kind of sports art museum.
(29:17):
There was bad pitching, bad defense, bad hitting, and especially
bad sportsmanship by players and fans alike. But for me,
covering the New York Yankees through all five games from
the unique vantage point of a corner of their dugout,
it was perfection. The good stuff started in Game three
on Saturday, October sixteenth, nineteen ninety nine, and it featured
(29:39):
the return of the former Red Sox hero Roger Clemens
in the uniform of the hated Yanks to Fenway Park, Boston.
I don't have much time for Roger Clemens, but I
was a witness to two occasions, possibly the only two
occasions of his life. When he received the raw deal
rather than dishing it out, the fans at Boston's Fenway
(30:00):
Park blamed Clemens for leaving the old town team two
years previously, when it was a decision actually made by
Red Sox management. So they serenaded and booed him out
of that game after just fifteen batters and just over
two innings, and our Fox TV cameras caught them tearing
down Roger Clemens banners which hung outside the park. Poor
(30:22):
Roger completely rattled, fell apart like a twelve dollars fake rolex,
and from where I sat between the third base camera
and the Yankee dugout, you could see he was ashen.
The game got out of hand quickly, a theme for
the series. Boston led thirteen to nothing in the seventh inning.
One of the oddities of my seat was that between
me and the Yankee bench was a low railing and
(30:43):
very ancient chicken wire fence that had been painted over
annually for something like since the First World War. But
next to the fence on the player's side was the
dugout bathroom. It was really just a door and a urinal.
So at some point every Yankee player came down to
that end of the dugout, and almost all they said hi,
(31:06):
and then excuse me. A minute late in the game,
as it got dark, the Yankee superb Cuban Emmigray pitcher
Orlando El Duque Hernandez made that trek and said hi,
but did not go into the tiny bathroom in the
dugout at Fenway Park. Instead, he sat down on the
steps right next to the little chicken wire fence, and
he said, Kate, can I ask you a question? I
(31:30):
was startled. The official line was El Duque Hernandez did
not speak any English. I pointed this out to him.
He laughed, you'll keep my secret. You know how much
time I save not doing interviews in English. He got
an occasional conjugation wrong, Otherwise his English was perfect. He
got to his question, Keith, why do you leave SportsCenter?
(31:51):
You and Dan were so good way downtown. Bang. They're
not gonna get him. I suspect anybody sitting in the
stands in the ten rows nearest me could hear my laughter. Orlando,
I left Sports Center before you left Cuba. How did
you see? He said, we have nothing in Cuba, but
we have baseball fields and we have satellites. It's deep,
and I don't think it's playable. I was stunned. I
(32:14):
had already discovered that nearly every American born Major League
player of nineteen ninety nine knew me by voice, let
alone by sight. But this Cuba thing and el Duque
reciting my old Sports Center catchphrases was a genuine surprise. Oh, yes,
you and Dan, you teach me a lot of my English.
What's the one for the hockey? Can't believe I shrunk
that guy's freaking hand. I love that. Why'd you leave?
(32:38):
I tried to explain it was mostly geography, that if
when he had pitched briefly in the International League, he
ever faced the team in Patucket, Rhode Island, that that
was kind of where ESPN was, only it was more remote,
much smaller town. Oh, el Duque said, like Cuba, but
with snow. And I said, yeah, that was it exactly.
(32:58):
And now I was living in Los Angeles and I
owned a big house on the beach. Okay, I get it. Listen,
you see me in the park, you say Hi, there's
nobody around, we talk, okay, If I say nothing, don't
be offended. I'm just making sure everybody still knows I
don't speak English. Orlando Hernandez did not get here till
he was thirty two years old. He pitched until he
(33:18):
was forty one. If he got in here when he
was twenty two, he'd be in the Hall of Fame,
and then he would have been the color man on
the Game of the Week. He pitched three years for
the Yankees and two for the Mets while I lived
in New York, and it was always a pleasure to
see him. Case, you're still collecting baseballs, you want this one.
I walked by Ray Bonds with this one. So that
was Game three on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I
(33:40):
awoke to see my picture in the Boston Globe. In
those days, the newspapers all used to have columnists who
wrote about nothing but TV and radio sports casts. No, seriously,
I had been a sportscaster on local TV in Boston
fifteen years earlier, in nineteen eighty four. Then I'd been
to Fenway Park as long before as nineteen sixty six,
(34:02):
and yet I had grown up a Yankee fan in
New York. I explained that even then I was also
a fan of the long suffering Red Sox fans. Now
this was too complicated for some people at the Boston Globe,
which quoted me correctly as saying I always felt an
affinity with the fans. But then under my picture in
the article used the caption Ulberman, Red Sox fan. Still
(34:27):
wondering how they got that wrong, I did my pregame
TV stuff for Fox, then climbed over the little chicken
wire fence back into my spot for our in game
dugout reporting, And as the top of the first inning
began of the fourth game, the Yankees leadoff Banchuck Knoblock
moved towards the plate, and as he did, it was
the cleanup hitter, Bernie Williams, walking towards me, presumably to
use that little urinal in a closet. Wrong again. It's
(34:51):
meet Keith Weekend. Hey Keith, he said, in his lyrical voice,
extending a hand to shake Bernie Williams, like I didn't
know who it was. Say, listen, I was reading the paper.
Are you a Red Sox fan? For a moment I
put aside the fact that the game, the playoff game,
had now started and the guy up three batters from
now was asking me about a typo in the Boston Globe.
(35:15):
Bernie Williams was never accused of burning himself out with
too much competitive focus. That's just who he was. I
explained the mistake as quickly as I could. Oh, I thought, so, okay, good.
I'm glad because you can be a fan of anybody
you want, But I don't think it would be right
to have a Red Sox fan in our dugout. I
agreed with him. Just as Chuck Knoblock singled, and the
(35:35):
number two hitter, Derek Jeter advanced to the plate, and
the third hitter, Paul O'Neil went out to the on
neck circle. And that's when Bernie Williams surprised me more
than Orlando Hernandez had. Plus, Bernie went on, doesn't your
mom still have those seats like ten rows back of
our dugout at Yankee Stadium. This was before my mother
became famous for getting hit by a very badly thrown ball.
(35:59):
The next year, I asked Bernie Williams how the hell
he knew where my mother sat? You've had seats there
since the seventies, haven't you. I just stared at him. Oh, Keith,
it's my job to know that. I said, no, it isn't.
It's your job to play center field for the Yankees.
This was just about the time Derek Jeter grounded out
(36:21):
and Paul O'Neill left the on deck circle and Bernie
Williams was supposed to be in the on deck circle.
I know your mom, I see her, nice lady, So anyway,
I interrupted him. Bernie Jeter just grounded out, and now
block went to second and O'Neill is up with one out.
Shouldn't you get out there? He looked back at the
field of play. Oh yeah, you're right. He stuck out
(36:43):
his hand again. Nice visiting with you. Let's talk more later,
and just double checking you're not a Red Sox fan, right.
Bernie Williams got three hits in that game. Another New
York sports reporter once said that if he concentrated on baseball,
really concentrated, Bernie Williams would either be so good that
he would hit four hundred, or he would be so
(37:04):
stressed out that he would become a serial killer. In
this game, the Yankee scored six runs in the ninth,
and there was a play so controversial that when the
Red Sox manager got himself ejected over it, the home
fans littered the field with debris. Almost all of it
was just plastic soda bottles, but still there was a
couple of flasks thrown too. Yankees manager Joe Torre ordered
(37:27):
his team off the field and play was suspended. As
the plastic bottles continued to fly and via my earpiece,
which I listened to even if Chris Matthews never listened
to his, my producer ordered me on to the field,
and I did as I was told, and I set
up in front of the camera, right in front of
the dugout full of Yankee players. A plastic bottle whizzed
past my head and I half wondered if Bernie Williams
(37:49):
had thrown it, just in case I was a Red
Sox fan. Almost immediately, a Fenway Park security guy started
swearing at me in Boston and told me if I
didn't get off the field and into the seats immediately,
he'd have me arrested. This time, I could actually hear
some of the Yankee he's laughing. Get over that fence
right now. Sit your backside down in that seat and
do not move. My producer heard all this through my
(38:11):
microphone and told me to comply. I didn't even look around.
I just went over the fence and I sat down
in the front row where I'd been ordered to. And
that's when the guy sitting next to me said hi,
and I realized the guy sitting next to me was
George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees. I said, Hi,
you want to say something about this on TV? And George,
(38:33):
who loved me as I loved him, said sure. And
my producer heard all this through to the microphone as well.
The announcers immediately threw it to me, and I said
seven words, George Steinbrenner, your thoughts on all this. He
proceeded to very pleasantly blame the Red Sox fans for
being drunk, blame Fenway security for letting a riot start,
(38:53):
blame baseball officials for not immediately forfeiting the game to
his club, and blame the Boston manager for inciting the crowd.
I had said to George, I would ask a follow up,
but you seem to have covered every thing, and so
I threw it back to the play by play booth.
Steinbrenner's remarks made every newspaper in the country, and in
many accounts I was noted as the interview and frankly,
(39:14):
I didn't really do anything. The next night, the Yankees
won the series in five games, and the fifth game
was devoid of Cuban pitchers confiding they were fans, or
Bernie Williams quizzing me about my fan dumb, or me
being ordered onto the field during a riot, only to
be thrown off of it and directly into the seat
next to the owner of the Yankees. All I had
(39:35):
to do on this night was get into the Yankee
clubhouse two innings before the game ended, so I could
cover the celebrating players and the award presentation. The excitement
of the weekend clearly was over. I would just say
hi to these guys. They'd throw champagne in my direction,
and then I'd throw it back to Joe Buck. I
was on a platform bleached in a camera light as
(39:56):
the technicians checked their stuff. The game was still going
on when the clubhouse door slammed open and in strutted
the Yankee second baseman, Chuck Nablock. He was swearing profusely
profoundly and proficiently. He had been having trouble throwing ground
balls away, and as the eighth inning started, the Yankee
manager Tory had removed him, denying him a chance to
(40:18):
be in the on field celebration of the pennant. Nablock
was enraged, so enraged that he never saw me, or
the platform or the camera lights. He used all the
known expletives and directed all of them all at his
own manager. The Yankees pr guy, a childhood friend of mine,
(40:40):
rushed over to insist that I could not report what
I had just heard. He was a little shocked when
I agreed with him. I'm here as a lighting prop.
I told him. Now, Block has a perfect right to
expect there'd be no reporters in the clubhouse during the game.
If he says it again afterwards, I'll say I heard
it just now. Otherwise I'm not saying anything. There is
(41:01):
a course, a punchline even to this and this extraordinary week.
The next summer, Chuck Knoblock's career as a second baseman
ended because he completely lost the ability to throw an ordinary,
uncomplicated baseball to first base. Since similar cases of the
yips seemed to afflict players whose baseball centric fathers had
gotten sick or jailed or something, and Knoblock's dad had
(41:24):
just entered the final stages of Alzheimer's. It was probably
that the last disastrous throw he made the next year,
on June seventeenth, two thousand, bounced off the Yankee dugout
and spun weirdly and hit a woman in the box seats.
The woman was my mother, the one where Bernie Williams
(41:44):
knew where she sat. All the things that followed. Since
I was in the studio that day doing the highlights
for the Fox Game of the Week, they require their
own segment of this. But the one thing that has
always mystified me was how Chuck Nabloch did not know
not to throw the ball where he did, because at
some point burnt Any Williams must have warned him, Hey, hey, Chuck,
(42:07):
don't do it there. That's where Keith Olberman's mother sits.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
(42:28):
Vin Scully studio at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York.
The music you've heard was, for the most part Arrange
produced and performed by the Countdown musical directors Brian Ray
and John Phillip Chanel. Brian Ray handled guitars, bass and drums.
John Phillip Shaneil did orchestration and keyboards, and it was
produced by TKO Bros. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes,
(42:50):
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports
music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And was written by
Mitch Warren Davis. Recall it the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Howard Feinneman. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(43:11):
That's countdown for this, the one thousand and second day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Convict him now, while he's gagged,
and while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins,
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(43:39):
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. Kevin
McCarthy is out, and the ensuing chaos mainlines directly back
(00:25):
to an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I'll
get to that in a moment. But the real lead
story did not happen in Washington yesterday. Which idiot Republican
becomes the new future former Speaker of the House does
not much matter. The real lead story is in Trump's phone,
(00:47):
because the real lead story is summarized by the phrase
and now we wait. Turns out that not only did
Judge Arthur anger On issue a gag order against Trump,
the second gag order, he has a partial gag order
in the classified documents case two hours after Trump attacked
the clerk of Angeron's courtroom yesterday, but angerng issued a
(01:09):
gag order against Trump less than a day after he
had warned Trump's lawyers informally that their client needed to
shut the f up engern of whom they should be
installing a statue outside his courthouse soon provided a template
for Judge Tanya Chutkin for a week from next Monday.
Judge Ngaron not only gagged Trump, but how he gagged
(01:31):
him also gags Junior Trump and Eric the Idiot Trump too.
Quote personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate,
and I won't tolerate it. Consider this statement a gag
order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing, or speaking publicly
about any of my staff. As the New York fraud
(01:53):
trial closed for the day, a free scheduled Trump fundraising
email went out and probably just missed, violating the brand
new gag order. I just finished the second day of
my my sham trial in New York. For the past
two days, I sat in a courtroom and I listened
to the Democrats fervently try to destroy everything my family
(02:13):
and I have built. Unquote. Trump attacks the trial's process,
claims it is a political event, but he does not
mention anybody by name. At nightfall, Trump then posted on
social media what was for him a limp and tepid
criticism of the law under which he is being tried,
which he tagged with a generic and not at all
(02:35):
spicy criticism quote. This was done by radical left Marxist design,
but you can see him edging closer back to his
usual bile, and I suspect this is just a matter
of time. As I posited yesterday, Trump's entire worldview is
predicated on the idea that there are no rules he
(02:57):
cannot get around. He certainly will test the judge. The
only question is how much, and how soon, and how
the judge responds. There were reports last night, apparently drawn
from an interpretation of New York statutes, that anybody violating
any New York judge's gag order might be liable for fines,
(03:18):
or for a stricter gag order, or even for thirty
days behind bars. This quickly morphed into reports in places
like the Hollywood publication Deadline that Engern had threatened to
put Trump in jail for thirty days. Well, here's hoping
he does that, or three hundred and thirty days. But
he has not done that yet. He threatened only quote
(03:39):
serious sanctions, and he left that up to Trump's imagination.
What is fascinating here is the subtext, because rarely do
we see Trump's imagination in action. Rarely do we see
so concisely and so clearly how bad the cracks in
Trump's brain really are. A week ago, this morning, a
(04:00):
crass Twitter account with all of two hundred and thirty
nine followers attacked Judge's clerk because she had run for
a seat on Civil Court in New York and was
endorsed by the organization Manhattan Democrats. An hour later, this
same account grabbed a photo from the clerk's Instagram page
showing her in what was an apparent fan photo, standing
(04:23):
next to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. She was the fan,
and the senator apparently did not even know who she was.
Even now with all the subsequent publicity, two separate tweets
asking why is Judge Ngeran's principal law clerk paling around
with Chuck Schumer? They have gotten fewer than five hundred retweets. Somehow,
(04:47):
that tweet got in front of Trump's twitching eyeballs, and
he jumped from the reality, which is a photo of
a random cog in the Manhattan judicial system, asking Chuck
Schumer to pose with her, to this fevered production of
Trump's own malignant brain quote, Schumer's girlfriend is running this
(05:10):
case against me. How disgraceful. This case should be dismissed immediately.
He then provided a link to the woman's Instagram page,
which she then had to make private. It's Trump's insanity
in real time. A random photo of a random court
clerk is blown up by a troll account, and not
(05:31):
very well blown up an account that previously had accused
the judge of being a quote hobo who was drinking
gin during the trial. It's been blown up from that
into paling around with Chuck Schumer, and Trump then blew
that up, turned that into the clerk being Schumer's quote girlfriend,
and the deranged assertion that she was running this case,
(05:53):
and the hyperbole on top of hyperbole on top of hyperbole,
that the case should be dismissed immediately immediately. Of course,
Trump's people do not need anything but his word to
believe anything, or to pretend to believe anything. As long
as he can invent evidence of his perpetual martyrdom and victimhood,
(06:17):
he can take anything he finds and turn it into
a weapon, even if the judge then makes him delete
that weapon. The larger meanings, though, are pretty obvious. On
the opening day of this fraud trial, Judge Angern said
he expected it to continue into December. Trump himself is
not expected to testify for several weeks yet. Whether he
(06:39):
continues to milk the trial for pity and cash, every
day by showing up to the New York courtroom. Remains
to be seen. Whether the attorneys or his idiot adult
kids can convince him to control himself online and in
front of microphones remains to be seen. But December is
eight long weeks from now, and Trump has the restraint
(07:02):
of a four year old or of a cat, or
of a four year old cat. And then, of course
there is October sixteenth, and what that means for October sixteenth,
the date is already marked historically by the birth of
Angela Lansbury and the death of Marie Antoinette. Now it
(07:26):
will feature the hearing in Judge Tanya Chutkin's courtroom about
what kind of restraint, what gag order or alternate for
a gag order she will impose on Trump, because since
Jack Smith first filed asking for one, Trump has said
that someone whom Smith now identifies as a witness in
that case, General Mark Milly, was guilty of a crime
(07:47):
that previously would have been punishable by death. Trump has
told his hordes that they should quote go after Attorney
General Letitia James of New York. And now he has
thrown into chaos the life of a woman whose greatest
transgression was thinking that a photo of herself standing next
to Chuck Schumer was worth the effort involved to post
(08:07):
it online. I'll go through what I'm expecting here. Yet again,
I apologize for that. But I can't emphasize enough that
this federal case, that gag order hearing could be an
extraordinary turning point, an extraordinary crisis in fact in American history.
(08:28):
The New York case and that gag order could conceivably
end up with Trump being found in contemptive court and
ordered incarcerated for some days. But the federal case, it's
a federal case. Trump is not out on bail in
New York. He is out on bail in Washington. A
violation of that bail, which is what Jacksmith's filings are
(08:50):
all about, can and often is met by a judge
revoking the bail, especially if it involves threatening the witnesses
to say nothing of buying a gun or even just
pretending to buy a gun. Inspect Judge Chutkin two at
the hearing on the sixteenth, or after taking some time
to consider what happens during the hearing on the sixteenth,
(09:12):
I would expect her to walk right up to the
line of jailing Trump but not doing it if there
is a way for her to create a mechanism by
which she establishes draconian restrictions on his social media and
personal commentary on the case and the witnesses and the
prosecutors and herself and their motives and everything else. If
(09:33):
she can do that and then show it leading to
automatic pre announced punishments for him if he breaks those rules,
like maybe a huge fine for the first defense, then
revocation of bail and being put in prison for the
second or the seventieth. Who knows. I think she'll do that.
She will be explicit, and she will also make sure
(09:56):
the onus is not on herself to later rule that
he must be imprisoned. She will put the onus on
him to imprison in himself. If you do this, you
are going to jail. Then when it happens, she had
nothing to do with it, and not to exhaust you
by repetition. But the question then becomes what happens when
(10:19):
he does it? Anyway, The New York trial before Judge
Andngaran is ultimately most valuable because what we just saw
was the if then scenario playing out in real time
and Goron did not just issue a gag order because
Trump attacked the clerk yesterday. He had warned him via
his lawyers, informally but clearly, and twelve hours later Trump
(10:42):
did it anyway. With whatever Tanya Chutkin tells Trump not
to do, he will soon or late do it anyway.
That is his madness. And then what happens. The marshals
go to get him and they shoot it out with
(11:04):
the Secret Service. The Secret Service is withdrawn beforehand, so
Trump gets private armed security. There's almost an infinite number
of different endgame scenarios, and there is only one we
can be certain will not happen, which would be Trump's
surrendering himself to be jailed without confrontation. His broken brain
(11:26):
does not work that way. That a lot of us
have always feared that this would be the only way
all of it could possibly end up does not change
the fact that it still is a nightmare scenario. Well,
we will get enough hints in the next week and
a half, courtesy of Judge anger On and the gag
order and whichever conspiracy theory Trump thinks he can get
(11:49):
away with launching to distract from the reality that he
is guilty of fraud. We will get more hints, and
we will get maybe a conclusion on Monday to sixteenth,
and then, as they say, that's when it gets interesting.
(12:10):
There is, in fact another Trump story that is also
more important than how many speakers of the House the
Republicans will burn through before the end of the calendar
year or maybe the month. Trump's default setting is irrational stupidity.
We know that he speaks to that quality in millions
of our brethren, who in olden times would have been
(12:31):
left back in school for decades. But again, when it
comes to the subject of money, he gets even more
irrational and more stupid. This is what he said before
the post about the clerk, before the gag order, before
day two of the fraud trial. See if you can
spot the stupid. In fact, so trumpy Mary A. Lago
(13:03):
is worth one and a half billion dollars, not three
years after the tax assessors of Palm Beach County, Florida
decided it was worth twenty six million, and Trump protested
that was too high, and he appealed, and then he
withdrew the appeal in he grade nine, you're right, it's
worth twenty six million. So he owes back taxes on
(13:24):
the difference, which is one billion, four hundred and seventy
four million dollars. I mean, even in terms of what
Trump claimed to banks that marri Lago was worth, he
was still skinning the taxman, the prosecution in the fraud cases.
Trump told them the banks four hundred and ninety million.
(13:47):
If that's true, he was still shorting the tax assessment
in Florida by one billion, ten million dollars. I mean,
if I'm in the government of Palm Beach County, I'm
definitely looking into this now. Thanks for saying it on camera, Moron.
And one more Trump legal note that is not about
(14:08):
Jack Smith or Arthur Engern or Trump's social media accounts.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution matter of factly reported that quote,
Fulton County prosecutors are floating plea deals to a number
of defendants in the election interference case involving Trump, according
to people with knowledge of the proposals. Unquote, The AJC
reminds us Scott Hall already got one of these plea deals.
(14:31):
He was involved in the voting records breach out in
the Styx. The paper also mentions Trump Election day chieftain
Michael Roman, whose lawyer says he said, no, thanks, He's innocent,
And it says Fannie Willis's office has also approached quote
people who were indicted for their alleged roles in the
appointment of a slate of Trump electors, election data breach
(14:52):
in Coffee County, and harassment of Fulton Pole worker Ruby Freeman.
That's a lot of people. And if you think the
Atlantic case is moving quickly, you better sit down. Jury
selection for round one the trials of Kenneth cheesebro and
Sydney Powell. Jury selection starts in sixteen days. Okay, So now,
(15:19):
Kevin McCarthy, you've been waiting patiently for your obituary. Here
goes fifty years ago next Friday. On episode five of
season four of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on CBS,
(15:41):
Lou Grant said it to Mary Richards, it seemed like
a throwaway line from an exceptional sitcom. I've always remembered it.
I had no idea that half century anniversary was coming up.
And it's not a throwaway line from an exceptional sitcom.
It is, in fact the first rule of usurpation and insurrection.
(16:04):
And as Lou Grant said, good broadcasting quote. You never
fire your old sportscaster, he told her, until you've hired
your new sportscaster. House Republican radicals caught the proverbial car
they have been chasing, and they have no idea what
(16:25):
to do next, and they look like idiots. Three decades
of being nearly unbeaten in pure political street fighting skills
out the window because these morons did not remember the
lou Grant sportscasting rule. The actual half century anniversary October thirteenth,
at nine pm Eastern, the episode called Hi there, sports
(16:47):
fans may in fact come and go without these clowns
naming anybody is the new speaker or worse yet, and
in many constructions, maybe more likely they will already have
elected somebody speaker and managed to fire him too, and
maybe they can just rotate it once a week, like
they do prime ministers of IT'LL or managers of the
New York Mets. The offing of Kevin McCarthy is actually
(17:11):
notable only because a it underscores the reality that the
Republicans have bluster and the novelty of having opened, you know,
the Pandora's box of American fascism and American political violence.
But they don't have any leaders, as evidenced by b
Kevin McCarthy saying on Face the Nation two days before
(17:32):
his friends garrotted him that he would survive and they
should bring it on. And now that's probably the worst
political TV interview of our time, unless you include Prince
Andrew's twenty nineteen sit down with Emily Maitliss of the BBC,
which could have only gone worse if he had been
arrested in the middle of it, leading to C McCarthy's
(17:53):
epic news conference last night in which he compared Vladimir
Putin to Hitler in the thirties. Yeah, I guess that's impressive.
I think the comparison actually is Hitler in the thirties
and Trump. Right now, let's see him say that. And
then McCarthy turned things over to Patrick McHenry, the little
scumbag in the bow tie who promptly ordered Nancy Pelosi
(18:15):
to vacate her special hideaway office by today because it
will be reassigned. She's in California for the funeral of
Dianne Feinstein, and he McHenry is a little weasel, and
all of it concluding with d McCarthy's only actual accomplishment
he lasted two hundred and seventy days on the job,
(18:38):
twelve days more than the record holder for shortest speakership ever,
poor Michael C. Kerb of the Indiana Third, who was
taken by consumption on August nineteenth, eighteen seventy six, having
presided over exactly one session of the forty fourth Congress. Actually,
it occurs to me that I'm still assuming an awful
(18:59):
lot about the Republicans and McCarthy here in saying that
this ouster is in the conclusion of his career or
anything else. House Republicans are incompetent enough, and McCarthy is
vengeful and vain enough that though he said last night
he will not run again for speaker, and he salted
the earth and he burned the bridges hell I've done that,
(19:22):
he might still get the job back, trust me, especially
if they actually give a lease Stefanic or this clown
McHenry or another one of these goobers a shot at it,
And especially if McCarthy really would turn around and make
a deal with the Democrats, this time predicated on aid
for Ukraine and some palatable fix for the actual problems
(19:42):
on the border, and most importantly, giving McCarthy the chance
to metaphorically attack Matt Gates's privates with pruning shears every
day through the next election and in the process turn
him into some kind of ooh congressional sissiphus, only making
it hurt more. Also of interest here, Campbell Brown is
(20:07):
out at Meta, and there's a story about her and
CNN and how they hired her when they couldn't hire me,
and her colleague at Meta. Her name is in the
news to Anne Cornblued, and that story is even better
because her name invokes Savannah Guthrie, because Anne's husband left
her to marry Savannah Guthrie. And then somebody at MSNBC
had Savannah interview and ooh, that's next. This is gout down.
(20:35):
This is Countdown with Keith Overman stell ahead on Countdown.
(21:00):
The baseball playoffs are underway, and there are a lot
of things I could predict, but I'm going to stick
to one of them. One prediction alone. There will not
be a riot during any of these games, because there
was a riot in nineteen ninety nine, and I was
not only covering it, I was in the middle of
it on the field until security threatned to have me
arrested things I promised not to tell. Coming up first
(21:22):
time for the daily round Up with the Miss Grant's
morons and dounn In Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's
worst persons than urged the bronze. Campbell Brown, former NBC
News correspondent and one of the many many former eight
PM hosts at CNN. I was reminded, I mean literally,
I had forgotten that she was head of news for
(21:45):
Facebook and then Meta. She got nothing done, They abandoned
producing and promulgating real news, and now it is reported
she's leaving the company. Campbell Brown's first gig at NBC
was as one of the regular White House correspondents during
my first MSNBC show there, The White House in Crisis
in nineteen ninety eight. As a correspondent, she had great hair.
(22:09):
In two thousand and six, CNN president John Klein offered
me CNN's eight PM show and the chance to bring
my staff with me over there, and then he got
overruled by his boss, a man named Jim Walton. And
Jim Walton, twenty five years earlier, had been the backup
graphics guy on My Little four Minute Afternoon sportscast on CNN,
(22:30):
not the graphics guy. He was the backup graphics guy.
Became head of CNN worldwide. They have trouble with filling
that job. Klein told Walton that he was making an
existential mistake, that they had a chance to put MSNBC
out of business by hiring me away from them and
then using me to take on Fox News and instead.
(22:52):
Kleine told him it would now end up with him
hiring somebody lesser at eight pm, and then client said
Walton would fire him Kline, and then Klein said somebody
would in turn fire Walton, of which happened, and the
person they hired instead of me was Campbell Brown. I
kicked her hair in the ratings. Campbell Brown and I
(23:14):
co anchored the Weekend Today show one Sunday about two
thousand and five, and she never stopped smoking cigarettes during it.
I was a cigar smoker at the time, and even
I was overcome by this smell. We were on I
think for two hours. I think she must have had
sixty cigarettes. She didn't finish all of them, but sixty
(23:36):
cigarettes is sixty cigarettes. Every time she was not on camera,
Campbell Brown lit up a cigarette they opened a door
to the street for her. She went outside. During the commercials,
they surrounded her with fans. Never seen anything like it.
A year later, I ran into her at Gabriel's restaurant
here and the guy she was with was president of
ABC News. I didn't know him. He introduced himself. He
(23:58):
was lovely to me. And Campbell, who I had worked
with for ten years by this point, co anchored a show.
He said, hello, you the runner up and Cornblute. Now,
An didn't do anything wrong here. It's just easiest for
me if I put her in in this part of
the show. If anything, she is the victim here turns
(24:21):
out and Cornblute, formerly of The Washington Post, was Campbell
Brown's colleague and remains Meta's vice president of Global Product
Content Operations. I mean, I'm impressed. Twenty years ago, she
was a regular guest on shows like Mine on MSNBC.
She was also married to a BBC producer named Mark Orchard,
(24:42):
which will become relevant in a moment. I think I've
mentioned before that another person who got into NBC via
me was Savannah Guthrie. Savannah Guthrie, who was working at
Court TV, assigned to cover the Michael Jackson trial, and
we were looking for somebody who would also cover it
for us, just my show as well, and who would,
as we said, then play not just report the news,
(25:04):
but have fun with me and my stupid questions. Plus
one of my producers was trying to set her up
with me. Though her entrey to NBC by a countdown
clearly went really well and hats off to Savannah for that,
the setup part went nowhere because at the Michael Jackson
trial she began a relationship with a BBC producer named
(25:25):
Mark Orchard. Yep, the guy was married to Anne Kornblute.
Soon Mark Orchard divorced Ann Kornblute to marry Savannah Guthrie.
At NBC, Savannah Guthrie was quickly and rightly targeted for stardom.
They decided to get her as much anchoring experience as possible,
and they threw her in with no experience to anchor
an hour of day Side, which is where they put
(25:48):
the people they don't really care about. And sure enough,
one day, I'm looking at the rundown of the Savannah
Guthrie Hour of Day Side at MSNBC and it's one
of those moments where you think your eyes are going
to fall out of your head. Whatever. The first story
was that they were having Savannah do it. They had
booked as the expert guest to talk about it to
(26:08):
give it some context, a reporter from the Washington Post
and Cornblute. That's right. They had scheduled Savannah Guthrie to
interview her husband's preceding wife who he left for her.
Savannah evidently did not notice this until she was seated
(26:31):
at the desk and about to go on the air.
And if you ever want to see an interview in
which eight or ten questions are asked and answered in
one minute and there is no superfluous smiling or banter
by the anchor or the guest, find that interview. Oh god,
was that funny? Not for them, especially not for Savannah,
because soon she too was the former missus Mark Orchard.
(26:54):
I forget the details, but I think he moved on
to the the next wife came around the corner. Okay,
enough of that. The Winner and Worst Persons Congressman Jamal Bowman,
Democrat of my hometown. You already know about the whole
fire alarm thing which Republicans, when they're not killing off
their own speakers of the House are trying to turn
into the worst thing since the Crucifixion. Bowman's office responded
(27:18):
to that by distributing talking points to fellow Democrats and
other perceived friends. One of the points read quote, Republicans
need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members
of their party before anything else. Republicans howled, howled, after
which Bowman tweeted an apology quote, I just became aware
that in our messaging guidance there was inappropriate use of
(27:39):
the term Nazi without my consent. Huh. Congressman Paul Gozar
traveled to the border with a blogger who has praised
Nazi Germany. Congress and Rosendale. He posed with neo Nazis,
the Republican nominee in the Illinois third in twenty eighteen,
as a Holocaust denier who claimed to be the head
of the American Nazi Party. Trump had dinner with Nick
(28:02):
Fuentes and Kanye West. And he keeps posting globalists and
Israeli loyalty stuff and warnings to American Jews. And he
used to read from a book of Hitler's speeches that
he kept in his bedroom. Should go on, so Congressman
Congressman Bowman, your office said there were Nazis in the
Republican Party. There are Nazis in the Republican Party. Why
(28:28):
did you apologize, Congressman Jamal. They're Nazis, sir. You called
them Nazis. That's what Nazis are called, Nazis. Bowman. Two days,
worst person and all. Finally to the number one story
(28:57):
on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and every
time the baseball playoffs roll around, I am flashback to
one of the sixteen posts I have covered. I'm old
five of them is part of the actual game broadcasts,
and they will not hang the nineteen ninety nine American
League Championship Series in any kind of sports art museum.
(29:17):
There was bad pitching, bad defense, bad hitting, and especially
bad sportsmanship by players and fans alike. But for me,
covering the New York Yankees through all five games from
the unique vantage point of a corner of their dugout,
it was perfection. The good stuff started in Game three
on Saturday, October sixteenth, nineteen ninety nine, and it featured
(29:39):
the return of the former Red Sox hero Roger Clemens
in the uniform of the hated Yanks to Fenway Park, Boston.
I don't have much time for Roger Clemens, but I
was a witness to two occasions, possibly the only two
occasions of his life. When he received the raw deal
rather than dishing it out, the fans at Boston's Fenway
(30:00):
Park blamed Clemens for leaving the old town team two
years previously, when it was a decision actually made by
Red Sox management. So they serenaded and booed him out
of that game after just fifteen batters and just over
two innings, and our Fox TV cameras caught them tearing
down Roger Clemens banners which hung outside the park. Poor
(30:22):
Roger completely rattled, fell apart like a twelve dollars fake rolex,
and from where I sat between the third base camera
and the Yankee dugout, you could see he was ashen.
The game got out of hand quickly, a theme for
the series. Boston led thirteen to nothing in the seventh inning.
One of the oddities of my seat was that between
me and the Yankee bench was a low railing and
(30:43):
very ancient chicken wire fence that had been painted over
annually for something like since the First World War. But
next to the fence on the player's side was the
dugout bathroom. It was really just a door and a urinal.
So at some point every Yankee player came down to
that end of the dugout, and almost all they said hi,
(31:06):
and then excuse me. A minute late in the game,
as it got dark, the Yankee superb Cuban Emmigray pitcher
Orlando El Duque Hernandez made that trek and said hi,
but did not go into the tiny bathroom in the
dugout at Fenway Park. Instead, he sat down on the
steps right next to the little chicken wire fence, and
he said, Kate, can I ask you a question? I
(31:30):
was startled. The official line was El Duque Hernandez did
not speak any English. I pointed this out to him.
He laughed, you'll keep my secret. You know how much
time I save not doing interviews in English. He got
an occasional conjugation wrong, Otherwise his English was perfect. He
got to his question, Keith, why do you leave SportsCenter?
(31:51):
You and Dan were so good way downtown. Bang. They're
not gonna get him. I suspect anybody sitting in the
stands in the ten rows nearest me could hear my laughter. Orlando,
I left Sports Center before you left Cuba. How did
you see? He said, we have nothing in Cuba, but
we have baseball fields and we have satellites. It's deep,
and I don't think it's playable. I was stunned. I
(32:14):
had already discovered that nearly every American born Major League
player of nineteen ninety nine knew me by voice, let
alone by sight. But this Cuba thing and el Duque
reciting my old Sports Center catchphrases was a genuine surprise. Oh, yes,
you and Dan, you teach me a lot of my English.
What's the one for the hockey? Can't believe I shrunk
that guy's freaking hand. I love that. Why'd you leave?
(32:38):
I tried to explain it was mostly geography, that if
when he had pitched briefly in the International League, he
ever faced the team in Patucket, Rhode Island, that that
was kind of where ESPN was, only it was more remote,
much smaller town. Oh, el Duque said, like Cuba, but
with snow. And I said, yeah, that was it exactly.
(32:58):
And now I was living in Los Angeles and I
owned a big house on the beach. Okay, I get it. Listen,
you see me in the park, you say Hi, there's
nobody around, we talk, okay, If I say nothing, don't
be offended. I'm just making sure everybody still knows I
don't speak English. Orlando Hernandez did not get here till
he was thirty two years old. He pitched until he
(33:18):
was forty one. If he got in here when he
was twenty two, he'd be in the Hall of Fame,
and then he would have been the color man on
the Game of the Week. He pitched three years for
the Yankees and two for the Mets while I lived
in New York, and it was always a pleasure to
see him. Case, you're still collecting baseballs, you want this one.
I walked by Ray Bonds with this one. So that
was Game three on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I
(33:40):
awoke to see my picture in the Boston Globe. In
those days, the newspapers all used to have columnists who
wrote about nothing but TV and radio sports casts. No, seriously,
I had been a sportscaster on local TV in Boston
fifteen years earlier, in nineteen eighty four. Then I'd been
to Fenway Park as long before as nineteen sixty six,
(34:02):
and yet I had grown up a Yankee fan in
New York. I explained that even then I was also
a fan of the long suffering Red Sox fans. Now
this was too complicated for some people at the Boston Globe,
which quoted me correctly as saying I always felt an
affinity with the fans. But then under my picture in
the article used the caption Ulberman, Red Sox fan. Still
(34:27):
wondering how they got that wrong, I did my pregame
TV stuff for Fox, then climbed over the little chicken
wire fence back into my spot for our in game
dugout reporting, And as the top of the first inning
began of the fourth game, the Yankees leadoff Banchuck Knoblock
moved towards the plate, and as he did, it was
the cleanup hitter, Bernie Williams, walking towards me, presumably to
use that little urinal in a closet. Wrong again. It's
(34:51):
meet Keith Weekend. Hey Keith, he said, in his lyrical voice,
extending a hand to shake Bernie Williams, like I didn't
know who it was. Say, listen, I was reading the paper.
Are you a Red Sox fan? For a moment I
put aside the fact that the game, the playoff game,
had now started and the guy up three batters from
now was asking me about a typo in the Boston Globe.
(35:15):
Bernie Williams was never accused of burning himself out with
too much competitive focus. That's just who he was. I
explained the mistake as quickly as I could. Oh, I thought, so, okay, good.
I'm glad because you can be a fan of anybody
you want, But I don't think it would be right
to have a Red Sox fan in our dugout. I
agreed with him. Just as Chuck Knoblock singled, and the
(35:35):
number two hitter, Derek Jeter advanced to the plate, and
the third hitter, Paul O'Neil went out to the on
neck circle. And that's when Bernie Williams surprised me more
than Orlando Hernandez had. Plus, Bernie went on, doesn't your
mom still have those seats like ten rows back of
our dugout at Yankee Stadium. This was before my mother
became famous for getting hit by a very badly thrown ball.
(35:59):
The next year, I asked Bernie Williams how the hell
he knew where my mother sat? You've had seats there
since the seventies, haven't you. I just stared at him. Oh, Keith,
it's my job to know that. I said, no, it isn't.
It's your job to play center field for the Yankees.
This was just about the time Derek Jeter grounded out
(36:21):
and Paul O'Neill left the on deck circle and Bernie
Williams was supposed to be in the on deck circle.
I know your mom, I see her, nice lady, So anyway,
I interrupted him. Bernie Jeter just grounded out, and now
block went to second and O'Neill is up with one out.
Shouldn't you get out there? He looked back at the
field of play. Oh yeah, you're right. He stuck out
(36:43):
his hand again. Nice visiting with you. Let's talk more later,
and just double checking you're not a Red Sox fan, right.
Bernie Williams got three hits in that game. Another New
York sports reporter once said that if he concentrated on baseball,
really concentrated, Bernie Williams would either be so good that
he would hit four hundred, or he would be so
(37:04):
stressed out that he would become a serial killer. In
this game, the Yankee scored six runs in the ninth,
and there was a play so controversial that when the
Red Sox manager got himself ejected over it, the home
fans littered the field with debris. Almost all of it
was just plastic soda bottles, but still there was a
couple of flasks thrown too. Yankees manager Joe Torre ordered
(37:27):
his team off the field and play was suspended. As
the plastic bottles continued to fly and via my earpiece,
which I listened to even if Chris Matthews never listened
to his, my producer ordered me on to the field,
and I did as I was told, and I set
up in front of the camera, right in front of
the dugout full of Yankee players. A plastic bottle whizzed
past my head and I half wondered if Bernie Williams
(37:49):
had thrown it, just in case I was a Red
Sox fan. Almost immediately, a Fenway Park security guy started
swearing at me in Boston and told me if I
didn't get off the field and into the seats immediately,
he'd have me arrested. This time, I could actually hear
some of the Yankee he's laughing. Get over that fence
right now. Sit your backside down in that seat and
do not move. My producer heard all this through my
(38:11):
microphone and told me to comply. I didn't even look around.
I just went over the fence and I sat down
in the front row where I'd been ordered to. And
that's when the guy sitting next to me said hi,
and I realized the guy sitting next to me was
George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees. I said, Hi,
you want to say something about this on TV? And George,
(38:33):
who loved me as I loved him, said sure. And
my producer heard all this through to the microphone as well.
The announcers immediately threw it to me, and I said
seven words, George Steinbrenner, your thoughts on all this. He
proceeded to very pleasantly blame the Red Sox fans for
being drunk, blame Fenway security for letting a riot start,
(38:53):
blame baseball officials for not immediately forfeiting the game to
his club, and blame the Boston manager for inciting the crowd.
I had said to George, I would ask a follow up,
but you seem to have covered every thing, and so
I threw it back to the play by play booth.
Steinbrenner's remarks made every newspaper in the country, and in
many accounts I was noted as the interview and frankly,
(39:14):
I didn't really do anything. The next night, the Yankees
won the series in five games, and the fifth game
was devoid of Cuban pitchers confiding they were fans, or
Bernie Williams quizzing me about my fan dumb, or me
being ordered onto the field during a riot, only to
be thrown off of it and directly into the seat
next to the owner of the Yankees. All I had
(39:35):
to do on this night was get into the Yankee
clubhouse two innings before the game ended, so I could
cover the celebrating players and the award presentation. The excitement
of the weekend clearly was over. I would just say
hi to these guys. They'd throw champagne in my direction,
and then I'd throw it back to Joe Buck. I
was on a platform bleached in a camera light as
(39:56):
the technicians checked their stuff. The game was still going
on when the clubhouse door slammed open and in strutted
the Yankee second baseman, Chuck Nablock. He was swearing profusely
profoundly and proficiently. He had been having trouble throwing ground
balls away, and as the eighth inning started, the Yankee
manager Tory had removed him, denying him a chance to
(40:18):
be in the on field celebration of the pennant. Nablock
was enraged, so enraged that he never saw me, or
the platform or the camera lights. He used all the
known expletives and directed all of them all at his
own manager. The Yankees pr guy, a childhood friend of mine,
(40:40):
rushed over to insist that I could not report what
I had just heard. He was a little shocked when
I agreed with him. I'm here as a lighting prop.
I told him. Now, Block has a perfect right to
expect there'd be no reporters in the clubhouse during the game.
If he says it again afterwards, I'll say I heard
it just now. Otherwise I'm not saying anything. There is
(41:01):
a course, a punchline even to this and this extraordinary week.
The next summer, Chuck Knoblock's career as a second baseman
ended because he completely lost the ability to throw an ordinary,
uncomplicated baseball to first base. Since similar cases of the
yips seemed to afflict players whose baseball centric fathers had
gotten sick or jailed or something, and Knoblock's dad had
(41:24):
just entered the final stages of Alzheimer's. It was probably
that the last disastrous throw he made the next year,
on June seventeenth, two thousand, bounced off the Yankee dugout
and spun weirdly and hit a woman in the box seats.
The woman was my mother, the one where Bernie Williams
(41:44):
knew where she sat. All the things that followed. Since
I was in the studio that day doing the highlights
for the Fox Game of the Week, they require their
own segment of this. But the one thing that has
always mystified me was how Chuck Nabloch did not know
not to throw the ball where he did, because at
some point burnt Any Williams must have warned him, Hey, hey, Chuck,
(42:07):
don't do it there. That's where Keith Olberman's mother sits.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
(42:28):
Vin Scully studio at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York.
The music you've heard was, for the most part Arrange
produced and performed by the Countdown musical directors Brian Ray
and John Phillip Chanel. Brian Ray handled guitars, bass and drums.
John Phillip Shaneil did orchestration and keyboards, and it was
produced by TKO Bros. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes,
(42:50):
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports
music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And was written by
Mitch Warren Davis. Recall it the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Howard Feinneman. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(43:11):
That's countdown for this, the one thousand and second day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Convict him now, while he's gagged,
and while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins,
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(43:39):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio.
Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
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