Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
is losing his mind, and even more new polling suggests
(00:26):
now because of the convictions, he is losing the election
his mental unwellness first to the degree he still had it.
There is now no question that Trump is losing his mind.
Tell me where we would be to day if the
following sequence of events had occurred in just the last
five days. One if Joe Biden had met with dozens
(00:49):
of business leaders who had been supporting him, and the
business leaders walked out of the meeting shocked by his
inability to complete a thought or stay on one topic,
and the attendees reported they were shaken and now doubting
he could do the job, and now no longer supporting him.
Two if the next day Biden had celebrated a high
(01:10):
numbered birthday. Three if the day after that, Biden had
gone to a quote black church in Detroit, unquote, and
his surrogates claimed there were eight thousand African American supporters there,
when in fact, there were about one hundred people and
they were nearly all white guys. Four if Biden had
then joined a panel discussion in which he said that
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Trump was such a weak opponent that he Biden was
considering losing next week's debate on purpose. Five if Biden
had again said he might not accept the outcome of
the election, only this time he had added that if
he lost, he would start an investigation of some kind.
Six if Biden's campaign had then doctored, altered, falsified video
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of Trump doing ordinary things successfully to make him look
like he was hallucinating or lost. And then seven if
Biden had then given a speech in which he claimed
everybody agreed he was in full robust mental health because
he had passed a test administered by doctor Anthony Hopkins,
(02:21):
or doctor Anthony Bourdain or Anthony Michael Hall, any Anthony
except the doctor who had given him the theoretical test,
doctor Anthony Fauci. If that had happened to Joe Biden
in five days, if half of that had happened to
Joe Biden in five days, there would be nothing else
on television or on the internet. The snowball effect in progress.
(02:48):
Trump is losing his mind, and losing it fast. And
part of the problem is Trump is so crazy already,
so loudly, so often, that it all runs together and perversely,
each trump mental disaster stops seeming like it's part of
a sequence or part of the fabric of his being.
(03:09):
Each Trump mental disaster simply replaces the one before it.
I have a thought experiment about that I want to
do in real time in a few minutes to underscore
how that's even more true than you or I might realize.
But first, Trump is out of control, going downhill and
so fast that when he dropped the name of the
(03:30):
doctor who gave him the cognitive test, he mistakenly thinks
he he aced. He not only got the name wrong,
but he got it so wrong that even the Associated
Press noticed it and wrote a big story about it.
It's doctor Ronnie Jackson Jackson as in Jackson, I took
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a cognitive test, and I ASTI doc Ronnie, Doctor Ronnie Johnson.
Does everyone know Ronnie Johnson, congressman from Texas. That was
a huge story Sunday. It dropped off the map because
nobody will connect the dots to every other piece of
Trump insanity, like the author of the new book on
the Apprentice TV series saying yesterday that Trump granted him
(04:16):
a one hour long interview in May twenty twenty one,
when nobody wanted to talk to Trump and then gave
him another interview a few months later, and Trump had
no memory of him or the interview or the topic.
And these pieces, this chain, this collapse, it goes back
not just weeks, not just months, not just years, but decades.
(04:38):
Given my analogy of Jackson and Johnson to Fauci and
anybody else named Anthony, there is this irony, more evidence
of the madness of Trump, and it is from Fauci,
and it is coming in his new memoir, which is
coming out next week. In it, Fauci details Trump's COVID
behavior and put it on the pile of things we've forgotten.
(04:59):
Trump knew how bad, how easily transmitted my air COVID
was in February twenty Remember he's on tape telling Bob
Woodward all that, and they lied about it for the
rest of his term, killing thousands of Americans who should
still be alive now. Fauci says, on June third, twenty twenty,
he had reminded a journalist that a vaccine, then still
(05:21):
in the developmental stages, would need boosters. That evening, he writes,
my cell phone rang and the caller, the President started
screaming at me. The President was irate, saying I could
not keep doing this to him. According to Fauci, Trump
told Fauci he had cost the US economy quote one
(05:42):
trillion fing dollars. Trump is losing his mind. This must
be the drum beat of the rest of the campaign.
Now there is good news, and at the risk of
sounding like Eric Blair, George orwell, it's triple plus good news.
(06:04):
The mainstream political media has just discovered something it evidently
did not know. A that elderly first offender Trump is
getting killed in the polls now because of the stormy
Daniel's election interference conviction, and b that this is actually
a headline story that they should write about and not
(06:25):
some PostScript and see that the Biden campaign yesterday took
the big leap forward and actually called Trump a quote
convicted criminal. New Ipsos poll for Politico yesterday, one third
of all voters one third say they are now less
(06:46):
likely to support Trump because of the convictions. Moreover, the
idea of a Trump persecution bounce is so obviously untrue.
Politico wrote this up as if it always knowed that
that was the case, rather than acknowledging that it and
the rest of the mainstrea in political media had served
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as vessels for this nonsense that he was going to
improve his position by being convicted, a vessel for the
rest of that malarkey to use a term. Thirty three
percent less likely to vote for Trump because of convictions. Meanwhile,
seventeen percent said more likely those are Republicans who are
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going to vote for him anyway. Among independents, the same
number a third less likely to vote for him, but
only twelve percent of independents more likely. IPSOS also dug
a little deeper, are the convictions important in your decision
whether or not to vote for Trump? And twenty two
percent say the convictions are important and make them less
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likely to vote for him. That is a loss of
one in five Trump voters. YPSOS did a separate poll
for ABC looking for and grilling double haters voters who
do not like Trump and do not like Biden, well
beers don't like and theirs don't like. Two thirds of
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those who will vote while holding their nose, two thirds
think that after the convictions, Trump should drop out of
the presidential race. Not just they don't support him that
much anymore or they're less likely blah, blah blah. Two
thirds of double haters want Trump off the ballot. More
new polling. Actually it's old polling. Bet somebody at the
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Wall Street Journal gets fired for reporting this in twenty sixteen.
In twenty twenty, Trump won the vote of sixty five
and up. He got fifty one percent of it. In
twenty twenty, the Journal cites its own polling nationally and
in the swing states showing Trump has lost about a
tenth of that support. He is down to forty six percent. Biden,
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who had forty eight percent of US old timey voters
four years ago, Biden still has forty eight percent of US.
That is now the winning score. And one last set
of polls, wider content, narrower geography, Vote Hub has found
enough swing state polls to come up with a swing
state pole average, and after the conviction, they continued to crawl.
(09:20):
Swing would honestly be too strong a term, but they
continue to crawl towards President Biden. On average, he is
up by a point in Michigan, by two tenths of
a point in Wisconsin. He has closed within two and
a half in Pennsylvania, three in Arizona, six in North Carolina,
and he's inside seven in Nevada and Georgia. Is it optimal? No?
(09:41):
Is it improvement. It's about twice as good as it
was before. And finally, finally, the Biden campaign has gone
gloves off on the central issue. If you didn't hear it,
here is the money shot. And I do mean money,
in part of a fifty million dollars Biden ad buy
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just for the rest of this This election is between
a convicted criminal who's only out for himself and a
president who's fighting for your family. I'm Joe Biden, and
I have proved this message a convicted criminal. Amen, hallelujah.
Now I need to hear the president say that himself.
(10:27):
This is a hunch. There is no source for this,
just a hunch. I expect Joe Biden will call Trump
a criminal, but on the theory that you might as
well save that metaphorical shot for point blank range, and
also that Biden still has something almost extinct in politics
called standards and the knowledge that he would prefer to
(10:49):
say something like that to the man's face. I suspect,
I guess I hope President Biden will call Trump a criminal,
and he will do it at the debate A week
from Thursday, that, of course, if Trump shows up. Of course,
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one of the main problems with the latest Trump story
is that by this time tomorrow we may not remember
the latest Trump story. If the man actually has one skill,
it is indefatigability. He has an infinite capacity to find
something new to send the rest of us to hell
with every day. And the reality is the rest of
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us have lives that do not focus solely on ourselves
and are not as obsessive and neurotic and not quite
as human as his is. And therefore we cannot process
everything he does, and we certainly can't retain it. To
prove this, I want to do a real time thought experiment.
I have fished out of the closet the scripts for
(11:59):
the last two months of this podcast, So going back
to the middle of a and I'm going to read
just some of the headlines, just some of the cover
sheets from the last two months. And I want to
know you don't have to actually tell me, but I
want you to answer for yourself. How many of these
stories do you even remember, let alone remember how mad
(12:21):
they made you feel? And to address this issue of
why we cannot carry over our anger from one story
to the next. I guess each story is so appalling
and would have in previous incarnations of this country. Each
one of these stories would have been disqualifying for life.
And whoever did this, we would have never heard from
(12:42):
them again. And we will start at the top of
the pile. Last Thursday. So this was in Friday's episode,
but this is from last Thursday. Do you even remember this?
The headline on the cover sheet is the Trump plot.
He was supposed to talk to Capitol Hill Republicans about
(13:02):
overturning his convictions in ste dead he insulted Milwaukee. Remember this,
Trump to House Republicans. Milwaukee, where we are having our convention,
is a horrible city. Where did this go? Where did
the truth behind that that he had intended to talk
to all of them about what he said in his
May thirty first phone call to the Speaker of the House,
(13:22):
Mike Johnson, which was about his convictions on the Stormy
Daniel's election interference case here in New York we have
to overturn this. Where did that story go that he
wants the House of Representatives to somehow overturn his convictions
in a New York State criminal case retroactively. I might add,
that's last Thursday. Where did that story go? What memory hold?
(13:45):
Did it drop into the Wednesday story the day before
how Congress was holding Garland in contempt for refusing to
turn over the tapes of his conversations Robert Hurri's conversations
with Biden, which of course they would have leaked and
used in campaign ads. Where did that story go? It
was last time Tuesday, and was my headline on Wednesday.
(14:07):
Trump floats planned to reinstate military draft. The entire lengthy
story in the Washington Post about this idea of mandatory
national service, including exams for every high school student male
or female aged seventeen eighteen, nineteen twenty and to be
assessed for which service they should go into and what
(14:30):
their military aptitudes would be. And if you didn't take
the exam, you wouldn't graduate, and if the school wouldn't
administer the exam, it wouldn't get federal funds. That story
happened a week ago today, and it's already disappeared. It
didn't even get any pickup just because Trump denied this
was his idea, as if he didn't use other people's
(14:50):
ideas at any point in his life, like every five minutes,
the story was denied and it was dropped, including by
the Washington Post. On the other hand, a Washington Post
does remain in the middle of a five alarm fire
inside its own building, But where are the other stories
about it? Last Monday polling, more polling on the convictions.
(15:13):
You remember the convictions? You remember the political impact of
the convictions? Twenty eight percent said the convictions would be
a major factor in their votes, and another seventeen percent
said it would be a minor factor. The Morning Consule
weekly tracking poll a week ago yesterday, let me quote
what I said then New York trial hurt Trump's image.
(15:36):
This is how Morning consult had phrased it. This is
the sixth successive week in which Biden's net favorability rating
has bettered Trump's, a trend that began as legal proceedings
in New York ramped up. The latest data shows Trump's
worst net favorability rating since late January. Where did that
polling go this one? Oh well, this is not about Trump,
(16:00):
so perhaps it registered a little bit longer. June sixth
timing is perfect in order to jail on d Day. Yes,
that was from last Thursday. Convictions cost Trump seven percent
in the polls, and the more important question, did he
do a quid pro quo with the Wall Street Journal?
Remember that extraordinary Wall Street Journal piece about how everybody's
(16:22):
worried again about Biden's age, except only Republicans were quoted
in it, and several Democrats by name Senators came out
and said, we were interviewed by the Wall Street Journal
and we said Biden's been fine, and our quotes were
not included in the article. The Wall Street Journal deliberately
skewed an article in Biden's detriment to Biden's detriment in
(16:44):
Trump's favor. At the same time, but Trump was saying
that he would free the reporter from the Wall Street Journal,
Evan Gershkovich, after he was elected, a clear indication that
there had been some contact between Trump and Putin to
prevent the release of an American hostage. This is from
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the fifth of this month, and this story, with the
exception of a couple of tweets and occasional references by
the impeccable Brian Boutler, who I always cite here, this
story has disappeared. On the fourth Biden did call him convicted,
fellon Donald Trump and a story about from Pro Publica
(17:28):
that day about nine witnesses who spoke in favor of
Trump in some context who then got new jobs, more money,
stake in truth, social Boris Epstein, campaign manager, Susie Wiles,
various lawyers and spokespeople. That story's vanished. From the morning
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of Saturday, June first, the new first polls after the convictions,
ten percent of GOP voters, eight percent of ardent Trump
supporters want him to drop out of the campaign. Where
did that story go? That's from the first of this month.
We figured out on May thirty first that if Trump,
(18:12):
as my headline wrote, Trump incredibly guilty, if verdicts cost
him two percent, he just lost the election. The flag story, well,
the flag story has lasted because you can only have
so many sam Alito stories at the same time. That
was May twenty ninth, And then moving on to the
point about ethnic cleansing, the story about Trump posting reposting
(18:36):
a video a fig Leaf deniable video. He didn't make
the video, he just posted the video. It was the
guy encountering Joe Scarborough at the New York Airport, rolling
his camera phone, swearing at Scarborough for twenty three seconds
and as I said, we've all done that, Joe Scarborough.
But the point was the quote was healed, get rid
(18:58):
of all you fing liberals. You liberals are gone. When
he efing wins, you efing blowjob liberals are done. Uncle
Donnie's going to take this election. Landslide, landslide, You fing
half a blowjob, landslide. Get the f out of here, scumbag.
And then Trump posted it so that people want to
know who are supporting him, that he is serious about
(19:21):
deporting people, and that well, we will start with immigrants,
but we will also move on, as he has said previously,
to those he wants retribution against and to terrorists and
potential terrorists. And if you are a one man government
and you run on a platform that you are going
to deport everybody who is a threat to this country,
(19:42):
all you have to do is point at somebody, could
be me, could be you could be Joe Scarborough, and
say you are a threat to this country. I am
having you arrested, especially if on their first day in office,
on January twentieth of next year, you have invoked the
Insurrection Act, which would legally give you the right to
do that. Trump moves towards f cleansing. May twenty eight,
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twenty twenty four, already off the radar. There is nothing
much particularly on May twenty seventh, but the week before
the sam Alito flag stories emphasized throughout the day. There
is a story from May twenty first about blowback against
Trump's third term talk. The Rematch wrote Bloomberg between Joe
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Biden and Donald Trump draws near and political professionals are
detecting an unusual concern among some undecided voters that if
Trump returns to the White House, he'll refuse to step
down when his term is up. Sag Carpenter, vice president
at David Bender Research, noticed this fear in early April
while conducting focus groups of people who had voted for
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Biden in twenty twenty but became disillusioned and we're considering
switching sides. We were talking to Latino men and Asian
American Pacific Islander women in battleground states, and they went
straight to the issue of what if Trump won't give
up power. It's not something we'd been testing for, but
we've been singing it so far, indicating a real concern there.
(21:18):
This is somebody who's done focus groups for Democrats for
ten years, and they were unprepared for the subject of
whether or not Trump would be willing to relinquish power
if he has given it again. That's May twenty first,
those quotes that story's vanished. Trump violated the gag order twice.
(21:39):
The Trump witness in the waning days of the case
in New York enrages the judge. We had more on
the Alido flag story May seventeenth, were the Michael Cohen
quotes the testimony at the trial May sixteenth, and now
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we are a week and two days away from the
first of the two scheduled debates debates, and as I
said on the May sixteenth podcast, Trump lays groundwork to
back out of the debates he just agreed to. There
is always the chance I might be misreading this, I
said on the podcast episode one seven six from May sixteen,
(22:24):
But if you go through what happened yesterday, I don't
think I am. They agree to ABC and CNN as venues,
and Biden makes his video taunting Trump. CNN reports Trump
is irked that Biden has taken control of the debate narrative.
Trump then posts, please let this truth, meaning his post
serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Biden on
(22:47):
Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October second. The
host will be Brett Baar and Martha McCallum. Thank you
the use of the word hereby. I noted indicated to
the Rubes that this was some sort of legal document
when it was not. There is no Fox debate. There
was not one scheduled, even when they announced the debates
originally in the middle of May. Not even Fox claimed
(23:09):
there was one. And then Biden's campaign statement came out
from Jen O'Malley Dylan. Trump has a long history of
playing games with debates, complaining about the rules, breaking those rules,
pulling out at the last minute. He said he would
debate President Biden anytime, anywhere, any place. In fact, he
said and posted it dozens of times, with varying degrees
of comprehension and basic grammar. President Biden made his terms
(23:32):
clear for two one on one debates, and Donald Trump
accepted those terms. No more games, no more chaos, no
more debate about debates. We'll see Donald Trump on June
twenty seventh in Atlanta. If he shows up so as
I said, then between now and June twenty seventh, my
prediction was he demands Biden reconfirm his commitment to this
(23:54):
apocryphal October second debate on Fox, Biden says, I never
agreed to that, and I never said anything up close
to agreeing to that, whereupon Trump says he has violated
the agreement. That is, Biden has violated the agreement. So
there won't be any debates. We'll see what happens. But
I just want to point out that was Wednesday, May fifteenth,
(24:20):
from the day before that Senator Tommy Tuberville confirmed the
Trump plot to evade the gag order. You remember those
senators and congressmen and other Republican derelicts showing up at
the courthouse in New York and being interviewed outside of it.
Anybody remember that story Going to the preceding week. Here's
(24:42):
something of a lighter note from the ninth of May.
Never hire a lawyer with a rating of three and
a half stars. This is a reference to Susan Necklace,
who managed to lose the Stormy Daniels during the second
day of cross examination in trump On trial. I did see,
and this is the first story. We have to go
back to May ninth to have seen an actual follow
(25:03):
up to this story, there's something about Susan necklace. Has
not had any connection nor made any comment about Trump,
has not been referred to by anybody in Trump's circles,
and has not appeared on any Trump documents relating to
the New York case since the trial ended. So that
was the only following up of anything that we've seen
(25:24):
in here on any serious basis. And it's about one
of his lawyers. From May eighth, This was the day
of the RFK junior brainworm story, and yet people are
still taking him seriously. Stormy Daniels testifies May seventh, Gnome
Trump and the MAGA belief they have the right to kill.
(25:46):
May sixth, the Christy Gnome murder of her daughter's puppy?
Where did that story go in one month and one week?
Wasn't she on one of the major Sunday shows a
week ago? Did anybody ask her about that? She said
over the weekend that she was being prosecuted and persecuted
(26:08):
by Democrats and liberals because they were afraid of her. Well,
perhaps what they were afraid of was that she would
shoot their dog. And yet where's the Christy Nomes story?
She is now being taken seriously to some degree. The
rehabilitation tour has continued sufficiently so that she's not going
to have to resign as governor in whichever Dakota she's
(26:31):
the governor of. Trump lies claims gag order prevents him
from testifying. May second, That got a little bit more, Carrie,
But again, is it front of mind? Trump violates d
C bail and DC gag order by attacking witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
That was the first of May the gag order and
bail violation. Then Trump confessed to the meaningful part of
(26:53):
her testimony that as his scum organized to attack the
capital and begin his coup attempt, he wanted to join
them and watch. He said, if you remember, in a SoundBite,
that he wanted to go to the capital on January sixth,
twenty twenty one. Tried to talk the Secret Service into it,
but that Cassidy Hutchinson was a liar because he never
(27:13):
tried to strangle one of the members of the Secret Service.
From the May first edition of this podcast, Trump all
but promises twenty twenty four election violence. Mershn threatens to
say and send him to jail. Trump does not dismiss
the possibility of political violence around the election, the interview
with Time magazine, the cover story with Time Magazine, Where
(27:36):
did that go? That's six weeks ago? Quoting Trump? If
we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends
on the fairness of the election. The author asks him
about his social media posts in which Trump claimed a
stolen election allows for the termination of all rules, regulations,
and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Trump then denies,
(27:56):
he said that I never said that at all. I
never said that at all. Within moments of this lie,
it turned out he merely wrote it on truth social
on December third, twenty twenty two. Within moments Time Magazine,
he declares that the current government has quote broken the constitution.
They have gotten very far astray from our constitution. I'm
(28:19):
talking about the fascists and the people in our government
right now because I consider them the enemy within. I
think the enemy within in many cases, is much more
dangerous for our country than the outside enemies, et cetera.
About the twentieth time he had said something like that,
and he said that twice since then, and nobody flashed
back to the Time magazine cover from the end of April,
(28:40):
An Extraordinary Document, a revelation and the beginning of the
indication that Trump is in fact losing his mind at
a faster pace than ever before. We need a special
council to investigate the Supreme Court. I suggested on April thirtieth.
I suggested on April twenty six that Alito should wake
up and get mo all right, that's my pet project
that has nothing to do with Trump, really, and April
(29:03):
twenty fifth. From April twenty fourth, so this is the
end of April. Trump has already won the Supreme Court
presidential immunity case beginning today. I don't mean I said
at the time. They're actually going to make up an unconstitutional,
nonsensical political science fiction thing called presidential immunity know to
(29:23):
do its part in Trump's cover up of his January
sixth treason. The Supreme Court only has to do what
it has done, pretend, just like Trump is, pretending that
the concept of presidential immunity is just plausible enough that
it has to be debated and adjudicated. They've already done that.
The Samuel Alito conspiracy to delay justice to save Trump
(29:47):
is well underway. If only I had said he had
signaled it or raised a flag and then April twenty fourth,
the last one of these scripts in this stack, Trump
could face a month in jail for contempt of court
what the judge had said in the New York case,
and we never heard anything else about the gag order
or the violations of the gag order, or whether or
(30:10):
not he's going to spend time in jail, or well,
we'll hear more about that one. That is one of
the few cases, one of the few stories about Trump
that has to be revisited again because there is a
sentencing date. But all the other ones, which are just
as important, die on the vine because they don't have
sentencing dates or other official contexts to them. And this
(30:32):
is the real danger. We don't appreciate how much we
appreciate how bad Trump is, but we don't appreciate the
volume and the linkages between stories, and the repetitiveness of
these stories again and again, talking about the enemy within,
preparing his people for violence at the election one way
(30:55):
or the other, before the election, after the election, if
he loses, if he wins. All of this has been
laid out, and yet we have forgotten it because there's
just so much to process. That's the last two months.
Shall I get the last two years worth of scripts
out and do this. Have you got a day and
(31:15):
a half to listen? I will flash back now to
the old GQ series. First it was called The Closer
before the twenty sixteen election, and then when it didn't
turn out to be much of a closer, it was
called The Resistance. The first piece that I proposed to
do for GQ when I met with them in August
of twenty sixteen was a simple list of all of
(31:38):
the disqualifying things Donald Trump had done in his life
and in his campaign only to August that year, any
one of which I thought should have been enough to
make you not vote for him. The piece and the
GQ people were appalled at This was seventeen minutes long,
(31:59):
and no story was covered as fully in depth as
I just covered everything from the last two months. They
were all between five and fifteen seconds. It was a
list that was the point when possible, I dropped unnecessary verbs.
I wrote that thing as tightly as I could, and
(32:19):
the producers were well, could you make it three minutes?
And I went no. The point is that it takes
seventeen minutes of me talking as fast as I can
to get this entire list out. We put it out
at seventeen minutes and it got something like seventeen million
views the first week. This is the problem. Each atrocity
(32:39):
in Trump's life crowds out the previous one for those
who believe in him, for those who are taken in
by him, there is this sense of excitement and continual
change and something new, which they need because we are
living in a world of short attention spans, and his,
of all people in this country, have the shortest attention spans.
(33:03):
And the saddest part is that this election will be
decided by people who know almost none of this, none
of the negatives. Certainly they see the constant activity, They
see the vitality, and some degree this idea that Trump
is vital and energetic and young or younger anyway, and
(33:24):
Biden is the opposite. That's not a physical thing. That's
as simple. How much stuff are you doing? How much
are your arms flailing in the air? How much meaninglessness
is seen by the public. President of the United States.
Joe Biden has a job to do. It's a job
I could never do for one hour, and he does
(33:46):
it every day at an older age. But most of
it requires meetings and trips and conversations and debate and
thought internally in private, dealing with the most secure and
sensitive issues. Trump can just get in front of a
podium and ad lib and say anything he wants, no
matter how much it contradicts what he previously said, and
(34:08):
it can be as vile and virulent as he wants.
And what many people who will design this election see is, oh,
he's giving another speech. He flies around a lot, He
must have great stamina. So what do we do about this?
Are we doing enough? Am I doing enough to stop
(34:29):
this from happening? Are you? I do not want to
reduce my point here to a self promotional effort, but
I will say that there is something low effort that
you might be able to do. I have taken certain
steps in the last couple of days in which I
have swallowed my pride and asked for help from people
who I have not been in contact with for years,
(34:52):
who are perhaps avenues of publicity and distribution for this podcast.
When I asked a couple of weeks ago for everybody
who listens to this to take the episode they were
listening to and forward to somebody who did not listen
to it, I thought we might see some sort of response.
The download total increased by ten percent that day. At
(35:14):
it has maintained that we gained I'm not sure how
many thousand new subscribers to this podcast based on my
asking you to hit forward on the link to this
podcast to somebody you know who doesn't listen to it
and should not necessarily some Trump supporter. I'm not asking
you to start with a duel tomorrow morning in which
(35:36):
you can take ten paces and then say I support
Keith Alderman's podcast and the other one says I don't,
and then you see what happens, and maybe we get
Aaron Burr all over again. I'm not asking you to
do anything like that. I'm not saying send it to
somebody who supports Trump. If you can do that, so
much the better. But I'm just saying send it to
somebody who supports democracy in the United States, because I
(35:58):
think the point of this entire podcast is not so
much supportive Joe Biden, but support of, you know, representative
government here. So, as I said last time I asked you,
we went up ten percent. That's all we can do
right now, longest damn promo I've ever done, and Honestly,
(36:23):
that's not the point of it. The point of it is,
for the first time in my life, I actually think
a week in review, the cheapest form of journalism, A
week in review, might be of some value to remind
everybody as we continue to weigh waste high in the
oak meal that is Trump's mind, just to remind us
(36:47):
that it's snowing, and it's not just snowing. These aren't
just flurries. It's not just a couple of inches. Trump
is an ongoing avalanche. Anyway. Also have interest here the
daily example that the democracy survives not by our efforts,
but by the stupidity of those who would destroy it.
A Republican Senate candidate puts out a map on social
(37:10):
media purporting to show violent crime out of control in
his state. The map supposedly graphically shows where all the
shots have been fired, except it doesn't. Somehow, some way,
this idiot did not use the where all the shots
were fired map? He used the where are all the
(37:31):
water fountains map? Water fountains are out of control in
our state. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown,
with Keith Olberman still ahead of us. On this edition
(38:08):
of countdown. After thirty five years, the national sports behemoth,
started by my old boss, Ted Turner, is about to
lose its rights to carry the games of the National
Basketball Association. Charles Barkley gone, although he can go to
another network if he wants. But this got me thinking
about the time Ted Turner not only nearly got the
National Football League games for Turner Sports, he nearly got
(38:33):
the entire National Football League, like he would have owned
the whole thing. It was a little quick sonic. It
was a long shot, but it could have happened instead
of getting the NFL. Though all Ted actually wound up
in sports that year was one hundred CNN Sports baseball caps.
That story coming up in Things I promised not to tell.
(38:55):
But first there are still more new idiots to talk about.
The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who constitute two days rife person's in the
world's but Ted Turner impression dishonorable mention to start Nut
Gingrich back again, Nut demanded that whoever flew the Palestinian
(39:16):
flag over the US Treasury Building on Sunday should be
summarily fired. What is it with these idiot Republicans and flags,
just to shut up about the flags. You failed about flags,
you are flagging about flags. It was the Pride flag
(39:36):
on Pride Day. It took new twenty four hours to
kill the post because he's not good at social media either. Again,
this is the same Nut Gingrich who said the New
York City subway is used only by quote elites, The
same one in nineteen ninety eight who planned to impeach
Bill Clinton, and then the new president Al Gore would
pardon Bill Clinton, so he would impeach al Gore and
(39:57):
that would make Speaker of the House Nut Gingrich president.
And who was the only guy who lost his job
after all that. The same Newt Gingrich who last week
called the Vice President Kamala Harris quote really shallow, uneducated
and uneducatable person, Newt and a mirror wildly untrue. But
(40:18):
at minimum, Newt, we know this. The vice president can
tell the difference between a four color Palestinian flag and
a ten color rainbow Pride flag. The brons worse Anthony Hudson.
You may remember him from such failed bids for office
as running for president as a Republican this year. Now
(40:41):
he's trying to get the Republican nomination for Congress from
the Michigan eighth el Sir Anthony has a problem. The
primary is August sixth, and his biggest supporter, at least
the guy he thinks is his biggest supporter, will not
be there. The guy Anthony thinks is his biggest supporter,
he says, his biggest supporter is Martin Luther King Junior.
(41:06):
I have another dream. Yes, it is me, Martin Luther King.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
I came back from the dead to say something.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
As I was saying, I have another dream that Anthony
Hudson will be Michigan's eighth District's next congressman. Yes, I
have a dream again. Okay, Now I am going back
to where I came from, Dubai. My name is Anthony
Hudson and I approved this message. Anthony, who wears a
trucker's cap all the time because his head almost literally
(41:34):
comes to a point, looks kind of like a cartoon.
Anthony first responded to the backlash by writing a volunteer
gave my social media credentials to one of his friends,
who then posted an AI video without my knowledge. It
appears they not only used AI for MLK Junior's voice,
but also with my voice to make it appear more authentic.
(41:56):
He also says he fired that staffer. Well, then he
changed his mind. If MLK were alive today, he said
the next day, I do believe he would endorse me
and my vision for a better Michigan. Hodson says he's
given that staff for a raise. I'm gonna go out
on a limb here and say there is no staffer.
(42:16):
It was only Anthony himself or his staffer is Tim
Scott's fiance. Where the staffer goes to a different school,
you wouldn't know them. The runner up worser the Associated Press, Yes,
they noted the Jackson for Johnson for Jackson Trump gaff
and treated it like the big story it was. This
(42:37):
is only after they did it again. They've been doing
this a lot, as so many imperiled news organizations have
been doing, you know, preparing for fascism just in case.
By sucking up to Trump after he met with Senate
and House Republicans, you know, the Milwaukee is horrible meeting there.
I followed up on a story the AP tweeted Donald
(42:58):
Trump made a triumphant return to Capitol Hill on Thursday,
his first with lawmakers since the January sixth, twenty twenty
one attacks, embraced by energized House and Senate Republicans who
find themselves reinvigorated by his bid to retake the White House. Unquote.
(43:22):
The AP fortunately did not add quote. Let me tell
you this, and you're getting it straight from the horse.
Trump was better looking than Churchill. He was a better
dresser than Churchill. He had more hair than Churchill. He
told fun of your jokes, and he could dance the
pants off of Churchill. But our winner the worst, everybody's
(43:42):
favorite Republican candidate for Senator from Minnesota, Royce White, the
former pro basketball player whose career lasted exactly eight minutes
and fifty nine seconds. The publication The Minnesota Reformer reports
that White tweeted out a map showing that quote crime
in Minneapolis out of control. Turned out it was a
(44:03):
map of minneapspless, all right. It was a map of
all the drinking fountains in Minneapolis. When this was pointed
out to him that very few crimes in Minneapolis have
been committed by those drinking fountains, mister White deleted the
tweet and called everybody who had mocked him a quote
cuck unquote. He then tweeted out an actual map of
(44:27):
shots fired in Minneapolis, still insisting that crime here is
out of control, even though those shots showed the map
itself showed that shots are down seventeen percent year over
year and down one third from the three year average.
What a shot though, A guy who played in the
(44:48):
NBA but only for eight minutes and fifty nine seconds
wouldn't know anything about shots and shot averages. And remember
the real perpetrators there. Do not turn your back on
those Minnesota water fountains. Man Republican Minnesota Senate hopeful Royce White,
whose career in politics may not last as long as
(45:11):
his career in the NBA two days, worst person.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
In the world, Get a man, fellow.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I have one more story to tell you about covering
the nineteen eighty two National Football League players strike, and
this is less about the strike itself and more about
the man for whom I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted
Turner had put CNN on the air just two years earlier,
and his sports guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for
a job as their New York sports reporter. Even earlier
(45:54):
than that May of nineteen eighty and when I did
not get it, I was genuinely relieved, because I was
convinced there was no way they would ever get CNN
on the air, no chance. Ever. Obviously I did not
account for Ted Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going
their freelance in nineteen eighty one, as I have related
in some detail here, when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend,
(46:17):
the New York Sports reporter, had to get out of
town fast at the existence of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight
months later, as the nineteen eighty two NFL strike loomed,
they had made me staff and given me a contract, first,
offering me one thousand dollars less a year than they
were paying me freelance. Even CNN of nineteen eighty two
acknowledged the absurdity of that mathematical proposition. So I was
(46:38):
a vested already whining about Ted Turner, employee of CNN
when the football players walked out in strike in September
nineteen eighty two, and that strike was my beat every
day from March to November. A day or so after
the strike began, we set up an interview with the
president of CBS Sports Neil Pilson about the effect that
the strike would have on TV Sports in general and
(47:01):
CBS Sports in particular, And as the camera crew and
I filed into his office, Pilson wearily said, nothing against
you guys, but I've done so many interviews already about
this strike that if you actually come up with a
question I haven't been asked already, I'll give you. Well.
We all leaned in towards him. Give us what the job?
A job interview at least fifty dollars, I'll give you
(47:25):
CBS Sports caps man. Not exactly a job, but better
than nothing. So we rolled tape and I said, so,
mister Pilson, in light of the strike, do you wish
CBS Sports did not have the Super Bowl this year?
As it does? And he laughed, and he took off
his mic, and he went over to his office phone.
He buzzed his assistant, bring in three caps, will you?
(47:46):
And he sat back down. He said, you guys, did it?
Nobody asked me that yet, and it's like the only
question that really interests me. You're still rolling. Neil Pilsen
then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful answer about
how as long as the season was not canceled. It
was probably better to have the next Super Bowl because
people would be so grateful that after the strike they
(48:06):
wound up playing in any way. So now a week
goes by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions between
the players and the owners are taking place in a
Manhattan hotel, the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump with
a nice lobby. All that matters to me is the
Lows with the dump and the nice lobby is literally
three blocks from my apartment. The players and the owners
(48:29):
just march through a long hallway into private rooms. That's
all we see of them. It is not heavy lifting.
There are nice seats at least in that lobby, but
it is enlivened one day by news that our boss,
Ted Turner has asked the union if he can come
in and meet with their twenty odd player negotiating team
because he wants to pitch them on something. He was
(48:51):
in fact due there yesterday but was unavoidably detained. The
rumor the players told me never confirmed, was that while
changing planes in Chicago, Turner and an air hostess had
ensconced themselves in a dumpster or the other version was
in a janitor's closet for twelve hours of whoopee, and
(49:12):
that's why he was a day late. Anyway, I walk
into the Lows that morning and if somehow I had
not been able to recognize my camera crew, sure enough
it is the same two guys who had been with
me at Neil Pilson's office at CBS when I asked
him the question he had not been asked before, earning
us free CBS sports caps, and the cameraman and the
(49:32):
deck operator are of course wearing their CBS sports caps
and understand. In nineteen eighty two, CNN was not an upstart.
It was not the feisty outsider, It was not the
future of news. We were called pretend TV. It was
said that CNN stood for Chicken Noodle News. One day,
(49:53):
I called somebody up and asked for press credentials for
Cable News Network and the guy said, Cable News Network
either people own the news stands downtown. I had no
idea what he was talking about, so I went to
one of the newstands and I asked the guy who
owns this place? And he pointed to a plaque and
it said owned by Cabbell News Company. The Cabell News Company,
(50:14):
owner of downtown newstands, was better known than Cable News Network.
We got scoffed at in some arenas and venues like
Madison Square Garden in New York. Our crews were not
admitted because they were not in the Union, So the
CBS sports caps were an important, albeit borrowed touch of
legitimacy and dignity, especially for my cameraman and my deck guy.
(50:38):
So the three of us position ourselves in that long
haul in the lobby waiting for my boss, Ted Turner,
me holding the mic with the big red CNN logo
on the mic flag, and the crew wearing their gaudy
CBS sports caps, and in Ted walks emerging from the
brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering in from behind him from
the street like this was a perfectly lit movie scene.
(51:01):
And he sees me and recognized me and smile and
comes over and beams hot, damn, it's my CNN crew,
And he shakes my hand and we roll tape and
I start to asking my first question, and suddenly the
joy drains from his face and he stops me. Old
it what they wearing on their heads? He gestures at
the cameraman and the deck guy, and I explained the baxter,
(51:23):
I don't give a damn who gave him them. This
is a CNN crew. They wearing CBS sports caps. Get
them off they damn heads, and he pushes me, I
mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now, even then,
I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner and twenty
five pounds heavier at least, and maybe I can live
(51:43):
with my employer embarrassing me in public, but I do
not have to let him shove me in front of
all the other reporters. So for a second, I think, Ah,
I'm just gonna run down the hall and catch him
and horse collar the bastard from behind. About a year
into my TV career, I have already accepted that there
are positives to television, but I've also already learned nearly
(52:04):
all all the negatives. And not three months earlier, I
had gone over to ABC to interview with them about
going back to do radio sports. Seems to me, given
what I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to the
ground and then quitting TV forever would be a pretty
appropriate farewell. And then one word popped in my head.
(52:24):
Rent ah right, right, Rent, So quickly I go to
Plan B to be fair in thought, if not an action,
Ted Turner was right. Look pretty silly to have the
CNN camera crew wearing CBS sports caps while interviewing the
founder and owner of CNN, who, by the way, was
(52:45):
in the newspaper constantly because he kept saying he was
going to buy CBS. Plus, I still had a story
to do that day, and that crew is going to
have to go back into the room where Turner would
be meeting with the players about an hour later for
the proverbial spray shot that would give us some video
to use of their meeting, and simply having my guy
take their caps off was not going to suffice. So
(53:08):
I ran the three blocks back to my apartment to
grab the only bit of merch or swag produced in
the first two years of CNN, something they had and
apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers. I must have
had a hundred of them in my place alone, and
there were boxes and cartons and boxes and cartons of
them in the New York Bureau, which was funny enough
(53:31):
as it was, since I don't think all the people
who worked at CNN in New York in nineteen eighty
two owned six cars among them. Anyway, I trimmed a
couple of the stickers down to just the CNN logos
and raced back to the Crappy Low's hotel, and just
as they were calling for the crews to come in
to get the spray shots of Ted meeting with the players,
(53:51):
I put those CNN logo stickers over the CBS logos
on my guys caps, and to my delight, they stuck
in place a little large, but it worked. Minutes later,
the boys came out of the meeting room and the
cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video back and
had me watch it through the viewfinder of the camera.
As soon as they had walked in, Turner started to
(54:13):
give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one of the
NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew. There's your
CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing, and
now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew,
all right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
players broke up an hour later, I got a message
from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
(54:36):
from the main lobby so he could give me give
CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
so the striking players could make a little money on
the side that he could televise, and there would be
a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
(54:57):
which would have meant the players would have all become
free agents. Ted wanted them, all of them, every player
in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
He would create a twenty four team league. He would
give the Union half ownership of every team, he would
find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
(55:20):
a breathtaking scheme. Anyway. Turner was all smiles when he
came out of the meeting to tell me before he
met with the rest of the press, and he said,
great with the hat, good work, but I have to
get you guys some real sea in ed sports has
for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
any dumpsters in the hotel and then he left by
(55:42):
the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
if there was anything he hadn't told me, And as
he went out the doors to his car, he said,
see overman, and I said, don't forget the hats, and
Ted Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I
have ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, couple of
(56:05):
days before Christmas, I get a call from my boss
in Atlanta. I mean, just got a box of one
hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office. I
don't know what the hell this is all about, but
his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we should
call you. I was very proud of making the correct
choice between correcting mistake and getting us all hats and
(56:26):
dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the players
into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
on assignment. Seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
(56:47):
RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
on the PA system and asked all the fans to
go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
The other game was in the Los Angeles Coliseum. They
drew even less, maybe a thousand, probably more like five hundred,
(57:07):
five hundred fans in the LA Coliseum. Five hundred fans
looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But it was
the name of his ad hoc league with these games
in Washington and LA that still sticks with me. Forty
years later. Ted named it himself. I'm pretty sure he
did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed it until
(57:29):
I made a big deal about it. Ted Turner called
his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football League the
quote all Star Season, and I said, perfect. The acronym
you have built for it is a s S. Years later,
(58:01):
they gave Ted Turner a Lifetime Sports Emmy and I
a tribute to him on the ESPN two Show. And
a few days after that, a fan letter showed up
in my home mailbox. And I never used my home mailbox,
didn't want to give out my home address, and it
was a fan letter about the Turner Report and about
Ted Turner, and it ended keep up the good work,
(58:23):
signed Donald Trump, I swear I've done all the damage
I can do here. Thank you for listening. As the
first sign he was losing his mind, thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
He was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some
(58:46):
of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of
ESPN Inc. Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by
Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my friend Stevie Bands. Everything else was pretty
(59:06):
much my fault. And that's countdown for this. The one
hundred and forty second day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election. The two hundred and fifty ninth day since
convicted fellon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States, use the July eleventh
sentencing hearing, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity
(59:28):
if it happens. Use the Biden campaign budget to stop
him from doing it again while we still can. Thanks
for your inquiries about the dogs and their dental work.
Everything went aok. Stevie lost two teeth, Ted didn't lose
any They're fine, just a little sore. The next scheduled
(59:50):
countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrants till then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(01:00:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.