April 19, 2024 • 61 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 161: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Juan Merchan MUST put Trump's ass in jail for violating the gag order - even if it's only one hour at Rikers Island.
Trump is determined to break Merchan, break the New York Court, break the Criminal Justice System. He is a cornered and wounded animal and this is life-or-death for him. Think of a cockroach - only with thumbs. So it's him or us that gets broken, and Merchan has to make sure it isn't us.
Trump tried to finesse the gag order by quoting somebody else – this worm Watters from Fox – denigrating the jurors and the judge and adding to the pile of stochastic inducements to violence against anyone who thwarts Trump. And by morning one of the jurors – the silhouette of their name and the vague depiction of their home – was quitting out of fear. Because what Trump sought by denigrating the jury WORKS. Because Trump’s intimidation WORKS. Because Trump’s terrorism WORKS.
Prosecutors began Day 3 of the trial yesterday noting he had violated the gag order SEVEN times just since jury selection started and they actually UNDER-SOLD the most egregious of the violations, with Joshua Steinglass saying “the defendant reposted about liberals lying to try to get on the jury, a post by Jesse Watters.” That was NOT a re-post. Trump does dozens of re-posts a day. You hit a re-post icon, a couple of rounded arrows. Maybe you add a comment. Trump KNOWS what a re-post IS.
That is NOT what Trump – or someone in control of the social media account bearing his name – DID. What Trump did was to make a NEW post, QUOTING Watters. It redd – and still reads:“They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury - Jesse Watters.” It is in Trump’s own electronic hand. It is not a re-post. It is not ‘technically ok within the gag order’ because Trump ISN’T lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all, he’s just QUOTING Jesse Watters lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all.
RUNNING THE HEADLINES: Derrick Van Orden, a walking PTSD demonstration, calls Matt Gaetz "tubby" and Marjorie Taylor Greene demands anybody who votes for Ukraine aid be conscripting into its military as the House Republican caucus comes apart at the seems. Happily Jared Moskowitz is there with the big yucks and a Rick Perry protege has the best idea yet: four Republicans should resign from the House to own the liberals. FOUR? How about FIVE? FIFTY? Think big be big my friend!
And why on earth did Kari Lake devote a disturbingly large part of a campaign speech to repeatedly saying "strap-on?"
B-Block (31:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Clay Travis goes from being the knight in shining armor defending the sanctity of women's sports from destruction by trans athletes, to insisting that Caitlin Clark isn't actually popular and nobody CARES about women's sports. The Charlotte GOP still hasn't realized it insulted Trump online and he'll see it eventually. And Twain was wrong: history DOES sometimes repeat itself. In 2005 I watched on in astonishment as Bo Dietl began his new MSNBC show by calling a gay reporter a "fudge-packer" and get fired within two weeks. Now, he's been fired for ANOTHER homophobic rant directed at ANOTHER reporter. Did you know Dietl's specialty in the NYPD was to serve as the mugging decoy? So he was mugged 500 times? Does it show?
C-Block (48:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Snowie is fine - now - but her family could use a little help plowing through the bills for the medical wizardry that saved her life. (49:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Appropriately enough, Thurber takes a dog who was alive when Teddy Roosevelt was president and makes him seem as new as the youngest pup. "The Dog That Bit People."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Justice
Juan Mershon has to send Trump to Rikers Island for
(00:25):
violating the gag order or he is going to lose
control of this trial after what happened yesterday. Mershon has
to jail Trump. He has to. Trump tried to finesse
the gag order by quoting somebody else that worm waters
from Fox, quoting somebody else, denigrating the jurors and the judge,
(00:46):
and adding to the pile of stochastic inducements to violence
against anyone who thwarts Trump here or anywhere else. And
by morning, one of the jurors, the silhouette of their
name and the vague depiction of their home revealed, was
quitting out of fear. Because what Trump sought by denigrating
(01:07):
the jury works, because Trump's intimidation works, because Trump's terrorism works.
He has to see the inside of a jail cell.
I don't care if it's for life, I don't care
if it's for one hour. Trump's conviction that he will
(01:27):
break Mayor Sean, and break the New York State Supreme Court,
and break the American justice system must itself be broken now,
or it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. It is
Trump who must be broken. Prosecutors began day three of
the trial yesterday by noting he had violated the gag
(01:49):
order seven different times just since jury selection began Monday,
and they actually undersold the most egregious of Trump's crimes,
with Joshua Steinlass saying quote the defendant reposts about liberals
lying to try to get on the jury. A post
by Jesse Waters that was not a repost. Trump does
(02:13):
dozens of reposts a day. You hit a repost icon,
a couple of rounded arrows, maybe you add a comment.
Trump knows what a repost is. That is not what
Trump or someone in control of the social media account
bearing his name did. What Trump did was to make
(02:34):
a new post quoting Waters. It read, it still reads,
It's still live, quotation marks. They are catching undercover liberal
activists lying to the judge in order to get on
the Trump jury, and quotation marks Jesse Waters. It is
(02:55):
in Trump's own electronic hand. It is not a repost.
It is not technically okay within the gag order, because
Trump is an lying about the judge and the jurors
and endangering them all he's just quoting Jesse Waters, lying
about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all.
Trump wrote that it is Trump himself violating the gag
(03:16):
order in that way, and the prosecution believes the other examples,
posting articles about Michael Cohen on his social media feed
at his campaign website are also violations. And the longer
we wait to break Trump, the less our ability to
contain him will be. At this rate, it is just
(03:38):
a matter of time until Trump has somebody on his
team leak the name of a juror in this case
and provoke another delay, more fear of retribution for the
jurors who do not ask out, or maybe even a mistrial.
Trump's team is working full time scouring the histories and
(04:00):
the social media histories of those already on the jury.
What do you think that is? For Trump is a wounded,
cornered animal in a case of life or death. Think
of him always as a cockroach with thumbs and for
(04:21):
good insulting measure. Trump also used his phone in court
and took a call, also a violation of court rules everywhere,
and he didn't stand when the jurors and prospective jurors
came in even though everybody else officially in court did so.
And he muttered and gestured at the jurors on Tuesday,
and he brought Jason Miller and his ex wrestler thug
(04:44):
Stephen Chung into court to lend a further air of intimidation.
And he not only tried to intimidate the jurors and
the potential jurors and the witnesses, he did intimidate them.
One of them quit. And if you or I, or
anybody who is not Trump did any one of those things,
(05:05):
and repeatedly lied by promising we would stop, we would
see the inside of a jail cell. And Trump must
just for one hour, Justice meyr Sean, just long enough
for Trump to soil his pants. The other part of
(05:26):
the standard Trump court practice did not go so well.
The Trump post in which he quoted Waters also served
it seemed to delay the court process, because nothing slows
down a trial more than when instead of filling up
the jury pool, you start draining it. Before lunch, they
were down from seven seated jurors to five, and by
(05:49):
late afternoon I heard an expert on CNN explained he'd
always known the judge's statement on Tuesday that opening statements
in the actual trial would be next Monday at nine
thirty was impossible. And then an hour later the judge
announced they had seated the twelve jurors and one al
t and we're just five alternates shy of the complete set,
(06:10):
so we likely will start on Monday morning. And then
Tuesday comes the hearing on Trump violating the gag order
again and again and again. Slightly wide range of possible
outcomes at that hearing. For him might be as little
as one thousand dollars fine per offense. For you, it
(06:30):
would be jail. The rest of it yesterday was mere detail,
though some of it was funny or entertaining or stupid
or all. There seemed to be consensus that for once,
Trump did not fall asleep. But one NBC analyst wrote
that while Justice Mershawn was giving instructions to the new
crowd of ninety six would be jurors, quote, Trump rests
(06:52):
his eyes. There was a reminder that, like finding a
bunch of people in a large crowded room who share
your birthday, is way easier than the math would at
first suggest, there are coins. One of Trump's lawyers asked
for a prospective juror to be dismissed for cause why
she and her husband had stayed at the lawyer's house
(07:17):
fifteen years ago. Oh and the husband reviewed Maggie Haberman's book.
Another would be juror was born in Italy and immediately
noted that there they compare Trump to the corrupt prime
minister and media baron Silvio Bert Lasconi, an excellent comp
One of the jurors, also dismissed from the pool, gave
(07:38):
Trump the most backhanded compliment imaginable quote, he looked less
orange than I imagined. We had one post courtroom unintentional revelation
from Trump that he is as has been speculated, panicking
both over this case and the sudden reversal of the
polling winds. The first thing Trump did after leaving one
(08:00):
hundred Center Street yesterday was to post a graphic on
his social media reading Trump dominates Biden in new national poll,
along with the numbers and the bar graphs. What were
the numbers? Trump forty six Biden forty three. Lead is
three points, margin of error is two point seven points.
(08:23):
When the word Trump uses for an outlier poll with
an effective lead of zero point three percent is dominates.
He's panicking. And after the day ended, we had two
more reminders that occasionally it is impossible to believe that
Trump is actually smart enough, actually ever made enough money
(08:45):
despite his stupidity, to ensure that he did not starve
to death, let alone lasts long enough to take over
the government. To prove his innocence, he marched out of
court and held in his hands a stack of right
wing media bleatings, insisting on his martyrdom. It looked like
(09:08):
a small telephone book printed out computer stories. At one
point he read off the names of the authors, Greg Jarrett,
Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, as if these names do not
provoke laughter from at least as many Americans as they
would impress Jonathan Turley, I mean Trump, why not Kanye West.
(09:28):
He also said the stories were just from the last
few days, while at least one print out was done
in such a large font that reporters could tell the
story was in fact from twenty twenty three. And lastly,
the World's toughest man, the symbol of masculinity for Maga millions,
(09:50):
the man who is going through all this for America
and for you, a greater martyr than Abraham Lincoln, that superman.
It's really cold. I'm sitting here for days now, from
morning till ninety and then freezing from freezing. Everybody was
(10:15):
freezing in there. Okay, I got two for this one.
One Trump, it's that cold, so you won't freaking fall
asleep again, moron. And two don't worry defendant Jay Trump.
It'll be much warmer in hell. All right, let's run
(10:44):
some of the other headlines. This is what Congress is
like at the moment. In case you didn't know for
a time yesterday, the controversy was not about whether or
not a Republican congressman had called another Republican congressman Quote
Tubby in an argument. It was about which congressman the
first congressman had called Tubby. NBC News quoted two sources
(11:10):
saying that during a heated argument in the House about
the upcoming foreign aid bills, Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin,
the whirling dervish of the House, had called the Speaker
of the House Mike Johnson. I mean he's still the speaker.
We'll see about next week. Van Orden had called Speaker
(11:32):
Mike Johnson Tubby. Van Orden has all kinds of problems.
But one thing Johnson is not is tubby. And Van
Orden was outraged by this report because he didn't call
Johnson tubby. He called Matt Gates tubby that he said
was directed directly at Matt Gates, directed directly anything further. Father,
(11:56):
he felt like he should call me a squish, And
I wanted to remind anybody who has not been in
combat and held his friend's hand as the died being
shot by the enemy, really doesn't have any business calling
someone else a squish. And so in fact I did
call him tubby, and I stand by that. As difficult
(12:18):
as it is to criticize anybody who would call Matt
Gates anything, particularly tubby, Van Orden is nuts. He was
seen at the January sixth coup attempt. He was heard
telling Robert Reisch, who spells his name r eic h
(12:39):
but pronounces it Reisch, telling Robert Reisch that he should
change his first name to third, leaving millions confused, what
the hell's the third Reisch. He was seen swearing at
and threatening a bunch of teenage senate pages because they
were lying on the floor taking pictures on their last
day defiling his house. He reportedly was swearing her. We'd
(13:04):
swearing at a bunch of briefers from the White House
who were updating a large group of congressmen about Israel.
The last time I had him on this show, he
was heard claiming that Senator Warren makes seven hundred thousand
dollars a month. Those Senate pay raises have gotten out
of hand. When the Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota,
(13:27):
who is Jewish and we remember him from his ill
fated career ending attempt to unseat President Biden. When Phillips
heard about this remark about the briefers from the White
House about Israel, he replied, shame on you to Van Orden,
and Van Orden promptly dropped an F bomb on him.
(13:49):
And then there is this thing again, this automatic reverting
to I served in the military, therefore I am a god.
I mean, listen to this again. I wanted to remind
anybody who has not been in combat and held his
friend's hand as they died being shot by the enemy
really doesn't have any business calling someone else as squish.
My god, what did we start doing this for electing
(14:13):
people who were in the military at a time when
it appears that merely holding one of our weapons and
firing it can cause brain damage. Why are we electing
these people to Congress because they're louder than everybody else.
I served in the military, therefore I am a human deity.
Mister van Orton, it looks like all you got in
the military was PTSD. I mean, I know the House
(14:37):
has this great multi century tradition having sent one of
its members physically into the Senate to try to beat
a senator to death, Senator Charles Sumner, and the congressman
was pressed in Brooks and he used his cane, and
it was several minutes, and Sumner was already seriously brain
damaged by the time anybody pulled him off. Sumner and
(15:00):
the response from his home constituents when they found out
that he broke his cane on Senator's there was to
send him more canes. But the stupidity of this Congress
of twenty twenty four burns Marjorie Taylor Green, who has
responded to almost everything in some really stupid way that
suggests maybe she was in the service to and got
(15:22):
PTSD and has forgotten her entire service because she doesn't
make a point of it. Marjorie Taylor Green responded to
the Ukraine Funding Bill to be voted on tomorrow Saturday,
with an amendment that would make anybody who votes for
Ukraine aid conscripted into the Ukrainian Army. Somehow, I don't
(15:43):
think that was going to be adopted or is possibly legal.
Then Congressman Norman and Congressman Perry and Congressman Biggs, they
offered a Ukraine amendment. It would delete line one of
the Ukraine Funding Bill and all that follows quote all
that follows. In other words, the amendment would eliminate everything
(16:05):
in the Ukraine Funding Bill. Now, on the other hand,
there is a slight ray of hope we already know
about what Jamie Raskin can do to Congressman Comer, which
is almost worth the price of this NonStop performative act
in which they pretend to impeach people. It's almost worth it.
But maybe the bright light of this House, maybe the
(16:28):
bright light of this Congress, is Jared Moskowitz of Florida,
because he responded to Marge Green's amendment about conscription in
the Ukraine Army like she could spell army. Moskowitz offered
amendment to this renaming Cannon House Office building, Room four
to three, the Neville Chamberlain Room. Who occupies room four
(16:55):
oh three in the Canon House of Oh, it's Congresswoman
Green of Georgia. That's a coincidence. Wait a minute, Moscowitz
was busy yesterday another amendment urging that Congresswoman Green quote
should be appointed Vladimir Putin's special envoy to the United
States Congress. We need an official Democratic House troll. I
(17:25):
nominate Jared Moskowitz, to paraphrase Groucho Marks. Okay, mister Moskowitz,
And there is hope coming in a bipartisan fashion in
the House coming from the other side from Sean Davis,
CEO of the Federalist, former executive at the Daily Caller,
(17:47):
economic policy advisor to the dumbest man ever to serve
Rick Perry, and somebody who blocked me on Twitter. I
don't know how long ago. He has the greatest idea ever,
the greatest idea ever, the most effective burn against the Liberals,
(18:07):
the most damaging thing to the Democratic Party. And I
think we need to tell mister Davis. I think we
all need to go on Twitter. Those of you who
have not been blocked by him need to go on
to Twitter and say, Sean Davis. I believe he Seawan M. Dave,
Shawn M. Dave because he ran out of planning. I
don't know what I just didn't write Sean Davis or
S M. Davis. He wrote, Shawn M. Dev you need
(18:31):
to tell him not to do this because it would
be so damaging to the Democratic Party. It would destroy
Joe Biden's chances of reelection. This is what he wrote,
Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist one of the great
intellects on the right. The four smarter people on the
(18:52):
right are all seven years old. If four Republicans, write
Sean Davis, were to resign from Congress in protests of
Mike Johnson's indefensible betrayal of the country and her borders,
it would deadlock the House two hundred and thirteen to
two hundred and thirteen, lead to Mike Johnson's ouster, prevent
(19:13):
the election of a new speaker, prevent new members from
being sworn in following special elections, and also prevent any
more Biden priorities from being enacted this Congress, including Ukraine.
It would be the ultimate nuclear option. In response to
Johnson's threats to punish Republicans refuse to bless his border betrayal. Yes,
(19:42):
do this. I can't tell you how much damage it
would do to me. I am so impressed by this idea,
mister Davis. This is you must push for this, you must.
You heard it. This far right fascist maga Republican wants
enough Republican congressman to resign to own the Libs by
(20:03):
giving up the republ book and majority. You know, Sean Davis,
there's an even better plan. And truly this would hurt
us on the left, those of us who consider ourselves
democrats or liberals or communists. By the way, years ago,
(20:26):
at a high school reunion, I had a friend of
mine who I'd known since nineteen sixty seven come up
to me and go, I'm offended that they call you
a communist. I said, why, he goes, I'm an actual communist.
I'm a labor organizer in San Francisco. You're not a communist,
Sean Davis, This would destroy all of us on the left.
Many of us would actually vaporize, self vaporized. Just we'd
(20:47):
turn into a pile of salt like Locke's wife. Yes,
I made a biblical reference. Now you can turn into
a pile of salt, Sean Davis. But here's the better plan.
You're not thinking big enough for resignations to deadlock the
House at two hundred and thirteen. All that's not big
enough to own the Libs giving up the majority. Well,
(21:09):
that's not enough. This other idea I have would hurt
us so much. I am probably going to be thrown
out of the communist, socialist liberal plot to destroy America.
I will have my membership card withdrawn and they will
not even refund my twelve hours dollar annual dues. I
(21:33):
will be destroyed for saying this. But say it. I
must four resignations from Congress. No. Five Republican congressmen must resign,
Sean Davis. Five. Think big, be big, my friend, give
(22:00):
up their majority to own the Libs again. Sometime, you wonder.
But I'll go back to my cliche of cliches. The
democracy is not preserved by the efforts of those of
us who are hoping to preserve it. It is preserved
by the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Sure,
give up the leader, Jess, Yeah, resign. Absolutely. A couple
(22:22):
of more headlines, and they are, of course about political violence.
You probably heard about the Kennedy family on Moss endorsing
Joe Biden yesterday rather than Robert F. Junior, who is nuts. Well,
it was quite a press conference because fifty four thousand
members of the Kennedy family, as you know, practicing Catholics,
(22:42):
and boy do they practice a lot. Fifty four thousand
members of the Kennedy family endorsed Biden yesterday and said, yeah,
Bob Junior's out of his mind. But this was more interesting.
Nicole Shanahan, who is the vice president on the RFK
Junior Crazy Train ticket. The day before her appointment, RK
(23:04):
campaign got a two million dollar donation from Nicole Shanahan.
Nicole Shanahan, Why that's Nicole Shanahan's name, But an amazing coincidence.
There is a reason to believe that, apart from the
two million dollars, Kennedy chose her because she is the
(23:27):
only rich person in America crazier than he is, quoting
the Midas Network. Since becoming RFK Junior's running mate, Nicole
Shanahan has liked a tweet depicting herself and her running
mate unleashing violence on their political opponents in the Matrix
(23:47):
style video Shanahan can be seen striking President Joe Biden
while RFK Junior fires an automatic weapon, shooting Democratic Senator
Elizabeth Warren before kicking Trump in the head. Yes, I know,
I know it's political violence and we should not publicize
(24:07):
nor glorify it. But on the other hand, to be optimistic,
and I'm, as you know, a glass half full guy,
I'll just point out that at least this political violence
is bipartisan. Kicker Punchline who posted the video that Nicole
Shanahan liked, in which Shanahan strikes Biden and RFK Jr.
(24:29):
Kicks Trump in the head and shoots Liz Warren who
posted this video. The Midas Group did some digging and
says it's a guy who claims to be a national
security advisor to ORFK Junior. Once again, it's the campaign
for the people who are too crazy even for Trump.
And speaking of which, there's Carrie Lake. And we close
(24:53):
our jaunty breezy review of the other headlines today with
this from Carrie Lake campaign speech in Arizona. I have
been debate reading the whole time since I first read
this early in this week, how to present this and
whether or not to do the joke, and I've decided yes,
(25:15):
I have to do the joke. She said. Trump is
willing to sacrifice everything I am. That's why they're coming
after us with law fair. This is the fired weather
woman from a station in Phoenix. That's why they're coming
after us with law fair. They're going to come after
us with everything. She's never won an election, never came close.
(25:40):
Running for Senate makes Kirsten Cinema look good as a candidate.
That's why the next six months is going to be intense.
And we need to strap on our Let's see, she said,
what do we want to strap on? We're going to
strap on our our seat belt. We're going to put
(26:06):
on our helmet or your Carrie Lake ball cap. We're
going to put on the armor of God, and maybe
strap on a glock on the side of us just
in case. I hate to say this, but my God,
(26:31):
even for somebody running as a Republican for the US Senate,
this person is spending an extraordinary and an inordinate amount
of time saying the words strap on. Also of interest, here,
(26:52):
history does not repeat itself carry Lake, but it does rhyme.
Twain said, Now, what did Twain? No? Sometimes it does
repeat itself. The ex MSNBC host fired for homophobic comments
about a reporter that he made live on his two
thousand and five show that only lasted two episodes, is
(27:14):
now fired by an arm of the campaign of New
York Mayor Eric Adams. Four homophobic comments about a reporter. Yes,
it's happened. Worst persons in the world has gone into reruns.
That's next. This is countdown. This is Countdown. With Keith
(27:36):
Oberman still ahead of us. On this edition of Countdown,
(28:00):
we will close out the week with a dog you
can help and the story of another dog who was
alive when Teddy Roosevelt was president, yet who you will
recognize immediately. Mugs is one dog from one hundred and
fifty dog generations ago, and yet he's all dogs. His
humans defended him to the last, even though Mugs was
(28:23):
James Thurber's the Dog that bit people. Coming up first,
Still more new idiots to talk about and at length.
These are some special contenders in the daily roundup of
the miss grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens, including
the NYPD mugging decoy and the guy on the all
(28:44):
pudding diet. Among those who constitute two days worst persons
in the world, the bronze worse Clay Travis, ex lawyer,
ex sportswriter, now branching out and soon to be ex
political commentator. And guess what he sucks at all of it.
(29:04):
I can tell you from personal experience the conversion from
sports to politics is tougher than it looks. But it
ain't this tough. He co hosts a podcast with an
ex cop with one of those Stephen King hair problems
where his hair grows like a werewolf. I think the
name is bunk sex Bump Buck Sex sex Bunk Bump. Anyway,
(29:28):
his hair keeps growing further and further down his forehead
every new picture of him. The hairline is a little lower.
He must have to shave it twice an hour or
it's going to grow off his body and take over
the world. Anyway, So it's the Clay Travis and Bunk
Sex Bump Show, and on it, surprise, surprise, Clay Travis,
a little fascist attacked women's basketball and the WNBA. And
(29:52):
the attention being paid to the college star turning pro
Caitlin Clark, and the shock that her salary will be
seventy five thousand dollars, although she's got an eight figure
endorsement deal, so she's not going to be you know,
in need of shoes figuratively or literally. This is what
he said. The revenue produced by the NBA is ten
(30:13):
billion dollars a year. The revenue produced by the WNBA
is around sixty million. And if you actually do the
math as a percentage of revenue, WNBA players actually make
more than NBA players, just nobody cares about their profession unquote.
So this goes on for a while, and it's, you know,
(30:35):
textbook for the right attack on women's sports, particularly as
it grows, and the rights attack on women in general.
Of Course, women should not be paid as much as
men in sports their women. Of course, women should not
be paid as much as men not in sports their women.
Of Course, women should not have the vote or rights
their women. Of course, they should wear handmade tail costumes
(30:57):
their women. On the other hand, in December twenty twenty one,
when a mediocre college swimmer named Gains began to complain
that a transgender woman named Leah Thomas was winning college
swimming races, Clay Travis went on Fox quote news unquote
and announced that Thomas quote threatens to destroy all of
women's sports. That's the very sanctity of the sporting universe.
(31:22):
Travis self righteously continued, where we believe in a meritocracy,
the best man or woman wins. So in one case,
this Travis idiot cares about the sanctity of women's sports,
and in this case he says, nobody cares about the
sanctity of women's sports or anything about women's sports. Even
though the NCAA Women's championship game had more TV viewers
(31:45):
this year than did the men's championship game. It must
be nice for Travis to be so simple minded that
he can turn his ethics on and off like that
to defend women's sports and then to utterly dismiss women's sports.
But wait, there's more. Travis was not done bickling. I
(32:06):
asked this question, and I bet the answer is no.
Can you think of any business that has existed for
twenty five years? By the way, I've left out his
more on southern accent, can you think of any business
that has existed for twenty five years and never made
a profit and still exists. The fact that the WNBA
exists at all is a testament in many ways too well.
(32:30):
The government, I guess you could say, unquote Klay Travis
never explains how the government made the WNBA happen, probably
because there's no explanation. It's nonsense. But his rhetorical question
has a real answer about any business that has existed
for twenty five years and never made a profit, and
(32:50):
he clearly does not know it. There was a sports
league founded in nineteen forty six, and at one point
it had grown to twenty four teams, but it was
so unsuccessful over its first two decades, first twenty years,
not twenty five, but close enough that in that time
literally seventeen of its franchises went bankrupt. Two of them
(33:12):
went bankrupt in the middle of the season. How's Baltimore doing?
They went out of business? Oh? It had three different
teams in Chicago, each of them failed, three in Indianapolis.
And by nineteen sixty six this league was now to
just nine teams, and the league had never made any money,
and had even stopped bleeding cash in the late sixties
(33:33):
to expand a little, but its championship games were still
only shown on television on tape delay at eleven thirty
at night. In its twenty fifth year. And that league
that was a complete failure for its first twenty five
years was the National Basketball Association, the NBA, the men's
(33:54):
National Basketball Association. Oh what would this guy Travis know
about the history of American sports leagues? His idea of
sports is twenty years ago, when he couldn't see NFL
game on his TV in the Virgin Islands, he went
on a hunger strike, demanding that they may make them
available to him. There no, no, no, not a hunger strike,
a pudding strike. For fifty days, Clay Travis ate nothing
(34:19):
but pudding, something from which he has clearly yet to recover.
The runner up worser, the Republican Party of Charlotte, North
Carolina could be run by Clay Travis. I'm not sure.
Somebody claiming to be a first time history teacher hosted
what they mockingly pretended was a paper about the Battle
(34:39):
of Gettysburg. Teaching my first history course. This semester has
been rewarding, but I don't know what to do with
this student. They wrote, and the paper, a photograph was
provided of it, began quote how our union was saved
by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg What an unbelievable
battle that was the Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable
(35:00):
I mean, it was so much and so interesting and
so vicious, and it's so beautiful in so many different ways. Gettysburg. Wow.
The paper is of course littered with red marks and
notes from the teacher. I count twelve and it's only
one paragraph. Of course, it's not an actual school paper
about Gettysburg. It was a transcript of Trump trying to
(35:22):
speak normally and trying to express whatever little he remembered
from studying Gettysburg in like nineteen sixty one. This is
where the idiots from the Charlotte Republican Party come in.
They replied to that tweet with quote that's probably from
a student in Charlotte Mecklenburg schools led by your Mecklenburg Democrats.
That totally tracks. We can't read, or spell, or add
(35:46):
or locate countries on grade level, but we can make
sure your feelings aren't hurt during social and emotional learning. Well, yes,
somebody here didn't learn how to read. The photo of
the paper literally has Trump's name typed in the upper
left hand corner next to the big red fo The
Publican Party whoever handles their Twitter account didn't notice, hasn't noticed.
(36:09):
The reply is still live. Maybe Trump won't find out
how the Charlotte Republican Party has dissed him. But our
winner the worst, Bo Dietel Bo Dietel di Etl is
(36:30):
the former World Trade Center ironworker, New York City cop,
New York City detective, failed congressional candidate, failed mayoralty candidate,
failed radio host, failed TV host, security consultant, and frequent
guest on The Don I'm a Show. The Years of Deterioration.
Bo Didal also has a problem. He's not just a homophobe.
(36:53):
There are lots of homophobes. He's a homophobe who has
to express it by insisting he's not homophobic towards people
who he then calls really unfortunate names. And it's happened
to yea and the Legal Defense Fund for New York
Mayor Eric Adams. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole, whole different story.
(37:13):
I only have infinity here. I don't have time for
the Eric Adams Legal Defense Fund story. Anyway, The Eric
Adams Legal Defense Fund hired Bo Deedle's company to vet donors.
It is now fired. Bo Deetle's company to vet donors
because first, when the New York Daily News reported that
the Eric Adams Defense Fund had paid Bo Deedle and
(37:34):
his company thirteen grand Bo Deedle responded to the paper's
request for comment by saying, quote, I wouldn't effing tell
you any effing tang bad. But again, we're in New York.
Priests talk like that. But then Politico called for comment
about the story, and Diedel told that guy, quote, why
(37:55):
don't you do me a favor, Go suck somebody's blank,
because I don't want to talk to you. Okay, you
like to suck blank? Go suck blank somewhere fired two
hours later. A few of us who are alive still
to remember, who are like Ishmael at the end of
Moby Dick, those of us left alive to tell thee
(38:21):
we saw this story. We laughed, we cried, we shuddered.
On Friday, April eighth, two thousand and five, at four
pm Eastern daylight time, they are premiered on MSNBC at
the best of the new network president Rick Kaplan, a
little show called Dietel and Daniels. It was one of
(38:43):
Kaplan's many show ideas that got launched because he liked
the title of the show. He wanted me to co
host with Tucker Carlson because then he could have called
a show TKO. You get it. That's how he made
his decisions. Here in Dietel and Daniels, he also saw
some of the content he saw a contrasting buddy show.
(39:06):
Lisa Daniels was a Magna cum Laudy graduate of Harvard
Law who preferred television and was very good at anchoring
it smart. Yet, as they say in TV circles, accessible
and Boddel bo Dedel was a go suck somebody's blank guy.
So I can't remember if it was the premiere episode
(39:27):
of Deal and Daniels on MSNBC or the farewell episode
two weeks later. There were only the two episodes, but
one of the guests was a man named James Guckert,
who was at a couple of steps removed, hired by
the Bush administration to portray a character named Jeff Gannon
(39:48):
who would get White House press credentials for a made
up news website called Talon News, and he would go
to Bush's Press Secretary's press conferences and ask tough questions
like is George Bush the greatest president ever or the
greatest American ever? And do liberals like Osama bin Laden
or do they love Osama bin Laden? I'm not exaggerating
(40:11):
by very much here. Well, it soon turned out that
Jeff Gannon was actually James Guckert, former nude model and
male escort, although he had been editor of his high
school newspaper. Must have been some newspaper. So this is
two thousand and five, and he was basically the prototype
(40:32):
for the entirety of today's right wing media and streaming shows.
I mean, think about it. Fake website, fake name, connected
to the people he's covering, and he has a whole
sort of sordid history that he thinks nobody's ever gonna notice,
even though there are pictures of him naked with other Okay, anyway,
any who, Didel and Daniels had mister Gucker's and or
(40:56):
Gannon on. I think it was supposed to be half
the show half an hour, or it was supposed to
be half an hour except Bo Diedle got kind of
excited during the introduction, so he started, I got no
problem with you. And I'm going to quote him here
word for word because the words themselves are not obscenities.
Just the implication here, so brace for impact here. Quoting
(41:19):
Boddle Premiere, I think of Deedel and Daniels quote, I
got no problem with you being a fudge packa. Honestly,
I don't remember what happened after that. They did take
Diedel and Daniels off the air for a week to
retool it, although they left Deedel on as chief tool.
(41:40):
I do remember Lisa Daniels, a truly lovely person in
all aspects of that word, coming into my office either
before or after what turned out to be the farewell
episode of Deedel and Daniels and bursting into tears. And
I said, you've substituted on the early morning news on
the big network. They love you. Here. Go call the
(42:01):
president of NBC News who hired you, and explain to
him this is making you burst into tears into Olberman's office.
So she did, and the next thing you knew, she
had been plucked out of MSNBC and they let her
go work in thirty Rock and they made her an
NBC News correspondent, and then like a year later, still
(42:21):
haunted by Bo Didel, she left the business. She didn't
even go back into lawyering. I can't find anything further
about her more recently than from twenty fourteen, when she
wrote a piece for Huffington Post about quitting television and
going home and having four kids. Four kids good for
her anyway. That's what Lisa Daniels learned in the years
(42:45):
since two thousand and five. What has Boddel learned? Well?
Not to say fudge paka on TV just to ask
about sucking to a reporter. Bo did I mention that
he proudly tells people that when he was a copy
his specialty was to be a decoy for violent crime.
So he was mugged more than five hundred times, and
(43:07):
he had thirty line of duty injuries. And I'm just
thinking maybe this made a bad situation. Mooie Deedle. Two
days weist Pyson find the world just to head on
(43:32):
this editionive Countdown Fridays with Thurber. Since I got good
news about my pups this week, let's finish the week
helping another dog and then hearing Thurber's epic biography of
a pup the dog that bit people. As mentioned first,
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day. This is about Snowy, and Snowy is maybe
a big ish Maltese or a Havinese or a Bijeon
(43:54):
or some kind of mix with that big Maltese like smile.
She was rushed to the er at the end of
last month with pancreatitis and cato acidosis. It was touch
and go. She needed three different ives and twenty four
hour care. Because she's a rescue she's about eight, she
has diabetes. She was in there for a couple of weeks. Well,
(44:15):
she's doing marvelously now she's home, but she'll have to
be tested all the time for a recurrence of the pancreatitis.
And here's the problem. The total bill is thirty four
thousand dollars. Now Snowy's people don't want us to cover
the entirety of the thirty four thousand, but anything will help.
I put in five hundred. If you have five dollars,
(44:35):
I'll tweet out the link, or you can just go
to go fund me and search for Snowe with an
ie Snowie and she'll be the first one to pop
up among the results. If you can't donate, just a
retweet can help. And as I always say, Snowy thanks you,
and I thank you to the number one story on
(45:02):
the Countdown and Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to
me in retrospect how I read all of his wonderful, realistic,
not goopy writing about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly years
before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now reading
his dog stories and anecdotes is like reading about a
(45:25):
bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom
we must continuously make excuses the dog that bit people
by James Thurber. Probably no one man should have as
many dogs in this life as I have had, but
(45:47):
there was more pleasure than distress in them for me,
except in the case of an Airdale named Mugs. He
gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four
or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment
was the time I a Scotch Terrier named Jeanie, who
had just had six puppies in the clothes closet of
(46:09):
a fourth floor apartment in New York, had the unexpected
seventh and last at the corner of Eleventh Street and
Fifth Avenue during a walk she had insisted on taking.
Then two there was the prize winning French poodle, a giant,
big black poodle, none of your little, untroublesome white miniatures,
who got sick riding in the rumble seat of a
(46:30):
car with me on her way to the Greenwich Dog Show.
She had a red rubber bib tucked around her throat,
and since a rain storm came up when we were
halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her
a small green umbrella, really more of a parasol. The
rain beat down fearfully, and suddenly the driver of the
(46:52):
car drove into a big garage filled with mechanics. It
happened so quickly that I forgot to put the umbrella down,
and I will always remember with sickening distress the look
of incredula he mixed with hatred that came over the
face of the particular hardened garage man that came over
to see what we wanted when he took a look
(47:12):
at me and the poodle. All garage men and people
of that intolerant stripe hate poodles with their curious haircuts,
especially the pom poms that you got to leave on
their hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize.
But the Airdale, as I have said, was the worst
(47:34):
of all my dogs. He really wasn't my dog. Matter
of fact, I came home from a vacation one summer
to find that my brother Roy had bought him while
I was away. The big, burly, choleric dog. He always
acted as if he thought I wasn't one of the family.
There was a slight advantage in being one of the family,
for he didn't bite the family as often as a
(47:55):
bit strangers. Still, in the years that we had him,
he bit everybody but Mother, and he made a pass
at her once missed. It was during the month when
we suddenly had mice, and mugs refused to do anything
about them. Nobody ever had mice exactly like the mice
we had that month. They acted like pet mice, almost
(48:18):
like mice somebody had trained. They were so friendly that
one night, when Mother entertained at dinner the Freer Realilras,
a club she and my father had belonged to for
twenty years, she put down a lot of little dishes
with food in them on the pantry floor so that
the mice would be satisfied with that and would not
come into the dining room. Mugs stayed out in the
(48:41):
pantry with the mice lying on the floor, growling to himself,
not at the mice, but about all the people in
the next room that he would have liked to get at.
Mother slipped out into the pantry once to see how
everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her
so mad to see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice.
(49:02):
They came running up to her that she slapped him,
and he slashed at her, but didn't make it. He
was sorry immediately. Mother said. He was always sorry, she
said after he bit someone. But we could not understand
how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother
used to send a box of candy every Christmas to
(49:24):
the people the Airdale bit. The list finally contained forty
or more names. Nobody could understand why we did not
get rid of the dog. I didn't understand it very
well myself, but we didn't get rid of him. I
think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs.
He acted poisoned once in a while, and old Major
(49:45):
Moberly fired at him once with his service revolver near
the Seneca Hotel and He's Broad Street. But Muggs lived
to almost eleven years old, and even when he could
hardly get around, he bit a congressman who had called
to see my father on business. My mother had never
liked the congressman. She said the signs of his horoscope
(50:07):
showed he couldn't be trusted. He was Saturn with the
moon and Virgo. But she sent him a box of
candy that Christmas. Anyway, he sent it right back, probably
because he suspected it was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself
that it was all for the best that the dog
had bitten him, even though father lost an important business
association because of it. I wouldn't be associated with such
(50:29):
a man, Mother said. Mugs could read him lack a book.
We used to take turns feeding Mugs to be on
his good side, but that didn't always work. He was
never in a very good humor even after a meal.
Nobody knew exactly what was the matter with him, but
whatever it was, it made him irascible, especially in the mornings.
(50:52):
Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either,
especially before breakfast, and once when he came downstairs and
found that Mugs had moodily chewed up the morning paper,
he hit him in the face with the grapefruit, and
then jumped up on the dining room table, scattering dishes
and silverware and spilling the coffee. Mugg's first free leap
(51:14):
carried him all the way across the table and into
a brass fire screen in front of the gas grate.
But he was back on his feet in a moment,
and in the end he got roy and gave him
a pretty vicious bite in the leg. Then he was
all over it. He never bid anyone more than once
at a time. Mother always mentioned that as an argument
in his favor. She said he had a quick temper,
(51:37):
but that he didn't hold a grudge. She was forever
defending him. I think she liked him because he wasn't well.
He's not strong, she would say, pityingly, But that was inaccurate.
He may not have been well, but he was terribly strong.
One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to
(51:59):
call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in
Columbus on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to
find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations
into a dog. He's a large, tan colored airdale. Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
(52:22):
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the iceman, but she blamed that slip up on the iceman.
If you didn't think he would bite you, he wouldn't,
Mother told him. He stomped out of the house in
a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning, when Mugs bit
(52:44):
me slightly more or less in passing, I reached down
and grabbed his short, stumpy tail and hoisted him into
the air. It was a foolhardy thing to do, and
the last time I saw my mother, about six months ago,
she said she didn't know what possessed me. I don't either,
except that I was pretty mad. As long as I
held the dog off the floor by his tail, he
(53:07):
couldn't get at me. But he twisted and jerked so
snarling all the time that I realized I couldn't hold
him that way very long, and I carried him into
the kitchen and flung him onto the floor and shut
the door on him just as he crashed against it.
But I forgot about the backstairs. Mugs went up the
backstairs and down the front stairs and had me cornered
(53:30):
in the living room. I managed to get up out
of the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it gave way
and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing a large
marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to the floor.
Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that when I
picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't find him anywhere,
(53:52):
although we whistled and shouted until old Missus Dettweiler called
after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten her once in
the leg, and she came into the living room only
after we assured her that Mugs had run away. She
had just seated herself when with great growling and scratching
of claws, Mugs emerged from under a davenport where he
(54:15):
had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again.
Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and
told Missus Detwiler that it was only a bruise. He
just bumped you, she said. But Missus Dettwiler left our
house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people
(54:36):
reported our Airdale to the police, but my father held
a municipal office at the time and was on friendly
terms with the police. Even so, the cops had been
out a couple of times, once when Mugs bit missus
rufus Sturtevent and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Molloy.
But mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but
the fault of the people who were bitten. When he
(54:58):
starts for them, they scream, she explained, and that excites him.
The suggested that it might be a good idea to
tie the dog up, but Mother said that it mortified
him to be tied up, and that he wouldn't eat
when he was tied up. Mugs at his meals was
an unusual sight because of the fact that if you
reached toward the floor, he would bite you. We usually
(55:23):
put his food plate on top of an old kitchen
table with a bench alongside the table. Mugs would stand
on the bench and eat. I remember that my mother's uncle, Horatio,
who boasted that he was the third man up Missionary Ridge,
was flutteringly indignant when he found out that we fed
the dog on a table because we were afraid to
(55:44):
put his plate on the floor. He said he wasn't
afraid of any dog that ever lived, and that he
would put the dog's plate on the floor if we
would give it to him. Roy said that if Uncle
Horatio had fed mugs on the ground just before the battle,
he would have been the first man up Missionary ridge.
Uncle Horatio was furious. Ray amen, bray amen, now, he shouted,
(56:08):
I'll feed them on the floor. Roy was all forgiving
him a chance. But my father wouldn't hear of it.
He said that mugs had already been fed. I'll feed
them again, bawled Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time
quieting him. In his last year, Muggs used to spend
(56:29):
practically all of his time outdoors. He didn't like to
stay in the house for some reason or other. Perhaps
it held too many unpleasant memories for him. Anyway, it
was hard to get him to come in, and as
a result, the garbage man, the iceman, and the laundryman
would not come near our house. We had to haul
the garbage down to the corner, take the laundry out
(56:49):
and bring it back and meet the iceman a block
from home. After this had gone on for some time.
We hit on an ingenious arrangement for getting the dog
in the house, so that we could lock him up
while the gas meter was red, and so on. Mugs
was afraid of only one thing, an electrical storm. Thunder
(57:13):
and lightning frightened him out of his senses. I think
he thought a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece fell.
He would rush into the house and hide under a
bed or in a clothes closet. So we fixed up
a thunder machine out of a long, narrow piece of
sheet iron with a wooden handle on one end. Mother
(57:33):
would shake this vigorously when she wanted to get Mugs
into the house. It made an excellent imitation of thunder,
but I suppose it was the most roundabout system for
running a household that was ever devised. It took a
lot out of mother. A few months before Mugs died,
he got to seeing things. He would rise slowly from
(57:56):
the floor, growling low and stalk, stiff legged and menacing
toward thing at all. Sometimes the thing would be just
a little to the right or left of a visitor.
Once a fuller brush salesman got hysterics, Muggs came wandering
(58:16):
into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghosts. His
eyes were fixed on a spot just to the left
of the fuller brush man, who stood it until Muggs
was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted,
Mugs wavered on pass him into the hallway, grumbling to himself,
but the fuller man went on shouting. I think Mother
(58:37):
had to throw a pan of cold water on him
before he stopped. That was the way she used to
stop us boys when we got into fights. Mugs died
quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury him in
the family lot under a marble stone with some such
inscription as flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
but we persuaded her it was against the law. In
(59:01):
the end, we just put up a smooth board above
his grave along the way lonely road. On the board
I wrote with an indelible pencil, kave Kanam. Mother was
quite pleased with the simple classic dignity of the old
Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. Mugs.
(59:39):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown Musical Directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(01:00:00):
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Larren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Howard Feinneman, and everything else was pretty much
my fault. That's countdown for this the two hundred and
(01:00:20):
first day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, Yes Saturday,
two hundred days. Also the twelve hundredth day since Defendant
Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and the
not regularly given elector objection option. Use the Insurrection Act.
(01:00:43):
Use the justice system in New York and elsewhere. Use
the mental health system to stop him from doing it
again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday.
Bulletins as the news warrants. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck and
(01:01:12):
then Freezing grow Freezing. Everybody was freezing in the Countdown
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Justice
Juan Mershon has to send Trump to Rikers Island for
(00:25):
violating the gag order or he is going to lose
control of this trial after what happened yesterday. Mershon has
to jail Trump. He has to. Trump tried to finesse
the gag order by quoting somebody else that worm waters
from Fox, quoting somebody else, denigrating the jurors and the judge,
(00:46):
and adding to the pile of stochastic inducements to violence
against anyone who thwarts Trump here or anywhere else. And
by morning, one of the jurors, the silhouette of their
name and the vague depiction of their home revealed, was
quitting out of fear. Because what Trump sought by denigrating
(01:07):
the jury works, because Trump's intimidation works, because Trump's terrorism works.
He has to see the inside of a jail cell.
I don't care if it's for life, I don't care
if it's for one hour. Trump's conviction that he will
(01:27):
break Mayor Sean, and break the New York State Supreme Court,
and break the American justice system must itself be broken now,
or it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. It is
Trump who must be broken. Prosecutors began day three of
the trial yesterday by noting he had violated the gag
(01:49):
order seven different times just since jury selection began Monday,
and they actually undersold the most egregious of Trump's crimes,
with Joshua Steinlass saying quote the defendant reposts about liberals
lying to try to get on the jury. A post
by Jesse Waters that was not a repost. Trump does
(02:13):
dozens of reposts a day. You hit a repost icon,
a couple of rounded arrows, maybe you add a comment.
Trump knows what a repost is. That is not what
Trump or someone in control of the social media account
bearing his name did. What Trump did was to make
(02:34):
a new post quoting Waters. It read, it still reads,
It's still live, quotation marks. They are catching undercover liberal
activists lying to the judge in order to get on
the Trump jury, and quotation marks Jesse Waters. It is
(02:55):
in Trump's own electronic hand. It is not a repost.
It is not technically okay within the gag order, because
Trump is an lying about the judge and the jurors
and endangering them all he's just quoting Jesse Waters, lying
about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all.
Trump wrote that it is Trump himself violating the gag
(03:16):
order in that way, and the prosecution believes the other examples,
posting articles about Michael Cohen on his social media feed
at his campaign website are also violations. And the longer
we wait to break Trump, the less our ability to
contain him will be. At this rate, it is just
(03:38):
a matter of time until Trump has somebody on his
team leak the name of a juror in this case
and provoke another delay, more fear of retribution for the
jurors who do not ask out, or maybe even a mistrial.
Trump's team is working full time scouring the histories and
(04:00):
the social media histories of those already on the jury.
What do you think that is? For Trump is a wounded,
cornered animal in a case of life or death. Think
of him always as a cockroach with thumbs and for
(04:21):
good insulting measure. Trump also used his phone in court
and took a call, also a violation of court rules everywhere,
and he didn't stand when the jurors and prospective jurors
came in even though everybody else officially in court did so.
And he muttered and gestured at the jurors on Tuesday,
and he brought Jason Miller and his ex wrestler thug
(04:44):
Stephen Chung into court to lend a further air of intimidation.
And he not only tried to intimidate the jurors and
the potential jurors and the witnesses, he did intimidate them.
One of them quit. And if you or I, or
anybody who is not Trump did any one of those things,
(05:05):
and repeatedly lied by promising we would stop, we would
see the inside of a jail cell. And Trump must
just for one hour, Justice meyr Sean, just long enough
for Trump to soil his pants. The other part of
(05:26):
the standard Trump court practice did not go so well.
The Trump post in which he quoted Waters also served
it seemed to delay the court process, because nothing slows
down a trial more than when instead of filling up
the jury pool, you start draining it. Before lunch, they
were down from seven seated jurors to five, and by
(05:49):
late afternoon I heard an expert on CNN explained he'd
always known the judge's statement on Tuesday that opening statements
in the actual trial would be next Monday at nine
thirty was impossible. And then an hour later the judge
announced they had seated the twelve jurors and one al
t and we're just five alternates shy of the complete set,
(06:10):
so we likely will start on Monday morning. And then
Tuesday comes the hearing on Trump violating the gag order
again and again and again. Slightly wide range of possible
outcomes at that hearing. For him might be as little
as one thousand dollars fine per offense. For you, it
(06:30):
would be jail. The rest of it yesterday was mere detail,
though some of it was funny or entertaining or stupid
or all. There seemed to be consensus that for once,
Trump did not fall asleep. But one NBC analyst wrote
that while Justice Mershawn was giving instructions to the new
crowd of ninety six would be jurors, quote, Trump rests
(06:52):
his eyes. There was a reminder that, like finding a
bunch of people in a large crowded room who share
your birthday, is way easier than the math would at
first suggest, there are coins. One of Trump's lawyers asked
for a prospective juror to be dismissed for cause why
she and her husband had stayed at the lawyer's house
(07:17):
fifteen years ago. Oh and the husband reviewed Maggie Haberman's book.
Another would be juror was born in Italy and immediately
noted that there they compare Trump to the corrupt prime
minister and media baron Silvio Bert Lasconi, an excellent comp
One of the jurors, also dismissed from the pool, gave
(07:38):
Trump the most backhanded compliment imaginable quote, he looked less
orange than I imagined. We had one post courtroom unintentional revelation
from Trump that he is as has been speculated, panicking
both over this case and the sudden reversal of the
polling winds. The first thing Trump did after leaving one
(08:00):
hundred Center Street yesterday was to post a graphic on
his social media reading Trump dominates Biden in new national poll,
along with the numbers and the bar graphs. What were
the numbers? Trump forty six Biden forty three. Lead is
three points, margin of error is two point seven points.
(08:23):
When the word Trump uses for an outlier poll with
an effective lead of zero point three percent is dominates.
He's panicking. And after the day ended, we had two
more reminders that occasionally it is impossible to believe that
Trump is actually smart enough, actually ever made enough money
(08:45):
despite his stupidity, to ensure that he did not starve
to death, let alone lasts long enough to take over
the government. To prove his innocence, he marched out of
court and held in his hands a stack of right
wing media bleatings, insisting on his martyrdom. It looked like
(09:08):
a small telephone book printed out computer stories. At one
point he read off the names of the authors, Greg Jarrett,
Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, as if these names do not
provoke laughter from at least as many Americans as they
would impress Jonathan Turley, I mean Trump, why not Kanye West.
(09:28):
He also said the stories were just from the last
few days, while at least one print out was done
in such a large font that reporters could tell the
story was in fact from twenty twenty three. And lastly,
the World's toughest man, the symbol of masculinity for Maga millions,
(09:50):
the man who is going through all this for America
and for you, a greater martyr than Abraham Lincoln, that superman.
It's really cold. I'm sitting here for days now, from
morning till ninety and then freezing from freezing. Everybody was
(10:15):
freezing in there. Okay, I got two for this one.
One Trump, it's that cold, so you won't freaking fall
asleep again, moron. And two don't worry defendant Jay Trump.
It'll be much warmer in hell. All right, let's run
(10:44):
some of the other headlines. This is what Congress is
like at the moment. In case you didn't know for
a time yesterday, the controversy was not about whether or
not a Republican congressman had called another Republican congressman Quote
Tubby in an argument. It was about which congressman the
first congressman had called Tubby. NBC News quoted two sources
(11:10):
saying that during a heated argument in the House about
the upcoming foreign aid bills, Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin,
the whirling dervish of the House, had called the Speaker
of the House Mike Johnson. I mean he's still the speaker.
We'll see about next week. Van Orden had called Speaker
(11:32):
Mike Johnson Tubby. Van Orden has all kinds of problems.
But one thing Johnson is not is tubby. And Van
Orden was outraged by this report because he didn't call
Johnson tubby. He called Matt Gates tubby that he said
was directed directly at Matt Gates, directed directly anything further. Father,
(11:56):
he felt like he should call me a squish, And
I wanted to remind anybody who has not been in
combat and held his friend's hand as the died being
shot by the enemy, really doesn't have any business calling
someone else a squish. And so in fact I did
call him tubby, and I stand by that. As difficult
(12:18):
as it is to criticize anybody who would call Matt
Gates anything, particularly tubby, Van Orden is nuts. He was
seen at the January sixth coup attempt. He was heard
telling Robert Reisch, who spells his name r eic h
(12:39):
but pronounces it Reisch, telling Robert Reisch that he should
change his first name to third, leaving millions confused, what
the hell's the third Reisch. He was seen swearing at
and threatening a bunch of teenage senate pages because they
were lying on the floor taking pictures on their last
day defiling his house. He reportedly was swearing her. We'd
(13:04):
swearing at a bunch of briefers from the White House
who were updating a large group of congressmen about Israel.
The last time I had him on this show, he
was heard claiming that Senator Warren makes seven hundred thousand
dollars a month. Those Senate pay raises have gotten out
of hand. When the Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota,
(13:27):
who is Jewish and we remember him from his ill
fated career ending attempt to unseat President Biden. When Phillips
heard about this remark about the briefers from the White
House about Israel, he replied, shame on you to Van Orden,
and Van Orden promptly dropped an F bomb on him.
(13:49):
And then there is this thing again, this automatic reverting
to I served in the military, therefore I am a god.
I mean, listen to this again. I wanted to remind
anybody who has not been in combat and held his
friend's hand as they died being shot by the enemy
really doesn't have any business calling someone else as squish.
My god, what did we start doing this for electing
(14:13):
people who were in the military at a time when
it appears that merely holding one of our weapons and
firing it can cause brain damage. Why are we electing
these people to Congress because they're louder than everybody else.
I served in the military, therefore I am a human deity.
Mister van Orton, it looks like all you got in
the military was PTSD. I mean, I know the House
(14:37):
has this great multi century tradition having sent one of
its members physically into the Senate to try to beat
a senator to death, Senator Charles Sumner, and the congressman
was pressed in Brooks and he used his cane, and
it was several minutes, and Sumner was already seriously brain
damaged by the time anybody pulled him off. Sumner and
(15:00):
the response from his home constituents when they found out
that he broke his cane on Senator's there was to
send him more canes. But the stupidity of this Congress
of twenty twenty four burns Marjorie Taylor Green, who has
responded to almost everything in some really stupid way that
suggests maybe she was in the service to and got
(15:22):
PTSD and has forgotten her entire service because she doesn't
make a point of it. Marjorie Taylor Green responded to
the Ukraine Funding Bill to be voted on tomorrow Saturday,
with an amendment that would make anybody who votes for
Ukraine aid conscripted into the Ukrainian Army. Somehow, I don't
(15:43):
think that was going to be adopted or is possibly legal.
Then Congressman Norman and Congressman Perry and Congressman Biggs, they
offered a Ukraine amendment. It would delete line one of
the Ukraine Funding Bill and all that follows quote all
that follows. In other words, the amendment would eliminate everything
(16:05):
in the Ukraine Funding Bill. Now, on the other hand,
there is a slight ray of hope we already know
about what Jamie Raskin can do to Congressman Comer, which
is almost worth the price of this NonStop performative act
in which they pretend to impeach people. It's almost worth it.
But maybe the bright light of this House, maybe the
(16:28):
bright light of this Congress, is Jared Moskowitz of Florida,
because he responded to Marge Green's amendment about conscription in
the Ukraine Army like she could spell army. Moskowitz offered
amendment to this renaming Cannon House Office building, Room four
to three, the Neville Chamberlain Room. Who occupies room four
(16:55):
oh three in the Canon House of Oh, it's Congresswoman
Green of Georgia. That's a coincidence. Wait a minute, Moscowitz
was busy yesterday another amendment urging that Congresswoman Green quote
should be appointed Vladimir Putin's special envoy to the United
States Congress. We need an official Democratic House troll. I
(17:25):
nominate Jared Moskowitz, to paraphrase Groucho Marks. Okay, mister Moskowitz,
And there is hope coming in a bipartisan fashion in
the House coming from the other side from Sean Davis,
CEO of the Federalist, former executive at the Daily Caller,
(17:47):
economic policy advisor to the dumbest man ever to serve
Rick Perry, and somebody who blocked me on Twitter. I
don't know how long ago. He has the greatest idea ever,
the greatest idea ever, the most effective burn against the Liberals,
(18:07):
the most damaging thing to the Democratic Party. And I
think we need to tell mister Davis. I think we
all need to go on Twitter. Those of you who
have not been blocked by him need to go on
to Twitter and say, Sean Davis. I believe he Seawan M. Dave,
Shawn M. Dave because he ran out of planning. I
don't know what I just didn't write Sean Davis or
S M. Davis. He wrote, Shawn M. Dev you need
(18:31):
to tell him not to do this because it would
be so damaging to the Democratic Party. It would destroy
Joe Biden's chances of reelection. This is what he wrote,
Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist one of the great
intellects on the right. The four smarter people on the
(18:52):
right are all seven years old. If four Republicans, write
Sean Davis, were to resign from Congress in protests of
Mike Johnson's indefensible betrayal of the country and her borders,
it would deadlock the House two hundred and thirteen to
two hundred and thirteen, lead to Mike Johnson's ouster, prevent
(19:13):
the election of a new speaker, prevent new members from
being sworn in following special elections, and also prevent any
more Biden priorities from being enacted this Congress, including Ukraine.
It would be the ultimate nuclear option. In response to
Johnson's threats to punish Republicans refuse to bless his border betrayal. Yes,
(19:42):
do this. I can't tell you how much damage it
would do to me. I am so impressed by this idea,
mister Davis. This is you must push for this, you must.
You heard it. This far right fascist maga Republican wants
enough Republican congressman to resign to own the Libs by
(20:03):
giving up the republ book and majority. You know, Sean Davis,
there's an even better plan. And truly this would hurt
us on the left, those of us who consider ourselves
democrats or liberals or communists. By the way, years ago,
(20:26):
at a high school reunion, I had a friend of
mine who I'd known since nineteen sixty seven come up
to me and go, I'm offended that they call you
a communist. I said, why, he goes, I'm an actual communist.
I'm a labor organizer in San Francisco. You're not a communist,
Sean Davis, This would destroy all of us on the left.
Many of us would actually vaporize, self vaporized. Just we'd
(20:47):
turn into a pile of salt like Locke's wife. Yes,
I made a biblical reference. Now you can turn into
a pile of salt, Sean Davis. But here's the better plan.
You're not thinking big enough for resignations to deadlock the
House at two hundred and thirteen. All that's not big
enough to own the Libs giving up the majority. Well,
(21:09):
that's not enough. This other idea I have would hurt
us so much. I am probably going to be thrown
out of the communist, socialist liberal plot to destroy America.
I will have my membership card withdrawn and they will
not even refund my twelve hours dollar annual dues. I
(21:33):
will be destroyed for saying this. But say it. I
must four resignations from Congress. No. Five Republican congressmen must resign,
Sean Davis. Five. Think big, be big, my friend, give
(22:00):
up their majority to own the Libs again. Sometime, you wonder.
But I'll go back to my cliche of cliches. The
democracy is not preserved by the efforts of those of
us who are hoping to preserve it. It is preserved
by the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Sure,
give up the leader, Jess, Yeah, resign. Absolutely. A couple
(22:22):
of more headlines, and they are, of course about political violence.
You probably heard about the Kennedy family on Moss endorsing
Joe Biden yesterday rather than Robert F. Junior, who is nuts. Well,
it was quite a press conference because fifty four thousand
members of the Kennedy family, as you know, practicing Catholics,
(22:42):
and boy do they practice a lot. Fifty four thousand
members of the Kennedy family endorsed Biden yesterday and said, yeah,
Bob Junior's out of his mind. But this was more interesting.
Nicole Shanahan, who is the vice president on the RFK
Junior Crazy Train ticket. The day before her appointment, RK
(23:04):
campaign got a two million dollar donation from Nicole Shanahan.
Nicole Shanahan, Why that's Nicole Shanahan's name, But an amazing coincidence.
There is a reason to believe that, apart from the
two million dollars, Kennedy chose her because she is the
(23:27):
only rich person in America crazier than he is, quoting
the Midas Network. Since becoming RFK Junior's running mate, Nicole
Shanahan has liked a tweet depicting herself and her running
mate unleashing violence on their political opponents in the Matrix
(23:47):
style video Shanahan can be seen striking President Joe Biden
while RFK Junior fires an automatic weapon, shooting Democratic Senator
Elizabeth Warren before kicking Trump in the head. Yes, I know,
I know it's political violence and we should not publicize
(24:07):
nor glorify it. But on the other hand, to be optimistic,
and I'm, as you know, a glass half full guy,
I'll just point out that at least this political violence
is bipartisan. Kicker Punchline who posted the video that Nicole
Shanahan liked, in which Shanahan strikes Biden and RFK Jr.
(24:29):
Kicks Trump in the head and shoots Liz Warren who
posted this video. The Midas Group did some digging and
says it's a guy who claims to be a national
security advisor to ORFK Junior. Once again, it's the campaign
for the people who are too crazy even for Trump.
And speaking of which, there's Carrie Lake. And we close
(24:53):
our jaunty breezy review of the other headlines today with
this from Carrie Lake campaign speech in Arizona. I have
been debate reading the whole time since I first read
this early in this week, how to present this and
whether or not to do the joke, and I've decided yes,
(25:15):
I have to do the joke. She said. Trump is
willing to sacrifice everything I am. That's why they're coming
after us with law fair. This is the fired weather
woman from a station in Phoenix. That's why they're coming
after us with law fair. They're going to come after
us with everything. She's never won an election, never came close.
(25:40):
Running for Senate makes Kirsten Cinema look good as a candidate.
That's why the next six months is going to be intense.
And we need to strap on our Let's see, she said,
what do we want to strap on? We're going to
strap on our our seat belt. We're going to put
(26:06):
on our helmet or your Carrie Lake ball cap. We're
going to put on the armor of God, and maybe
strap on a glock on the side of us just
in case. I hate to say this, but my God,
(26:31):
even for somebody running as a Republican for the US Senate,
this person is spending an extraordinary and an inordinate amount
of time saying the words strap on. Also of interest, here,
(26:52):
history does not repeat itself carry Lake, but it does rhyme.
Twain said, Now, what did Twain? No? Sometimes it does
repeat itself. The ex MSNBC host fired for homophobic comments
about a reporter that he made live on his two
thousand and five show that only lasted two episodes, is
(27:14):
now fired by an arm of the campaign of New
York Mayor Eric Adams. Four homophobic comments about a reporter. Yes,
it's happened. Worst persons in the world has gone into reruns.
That's next. This is countdown. This is Countdown. With Keith
(27:36):
Oberman still ahead of us. On this edition of Countdown,
(28:00):
we will close out the week with a dog you
can help and the story of another dog who was
alive when Teddy Roosevelt was president, yet who you will
recognize immediately. Mugs is one dog from one hundred and
fifty dog generations ago, and yet he's all dogs. His
humans defended him to the last, even though Mugs was
(28:23):
James Thurber's the Dog that bit people. Coming up first,
Still more new idiots to talk about and at length.
These are some special contenders in the daily roundup of
the miss grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens, including
the NYPD mugging decoy and the guy on the all
(28:44):
pudding diet. Among those who constitute two days worst persons
in the world, the bronze worse Clay Travis, ex lawyer,
ex sportswriter, now branching out and soon to be ex
political commentator. And guess what he sucks at all of it.
(29:04):
I can tell you from personal experience the conversion from
sports to politics is tougher than it looks. But it
ain't this tough. He co hosts a podcast with an
ex cop with one of those Stephen King hair problems
where his hair grows like a werewolf. I think the
name is bunk sex Bump Buck Sex sex Bunk Bump. Anyway,
(29:28):
his hair keeps growing further and further down his forehead
every new picture of him. The hairline is a little lower.
He must have to shave it twice an hour or
it's going to grow off his body and take over
the world. Anyway, So it's the Clay Travis and Bunk
Sex Bump Show, and on it, surprise, surprise, Clay Travis,
a little fascist attacked women's basketball and the WNBA. And
(29:52):
the attention being paid to the college star turning pro
Caitlin Clark, and the shock that her salary will be
seventy five thousand dollars, although she's got an eight figure
endorsement deal, so she's not going to be you know,
in need of shoes figuratively or literally. This is what
he said. The revenue produced by the NBA is ten
(30:13):
billion dollars a year. The revenue produced by the WNBA
is around sixty million. And if you actually do the
math as a percentage of revenue, WNBA players actually make
more than NBA players, just nobody cares about their profession unquote.
So this goes on for a while, and it's, you know,
(30:35):
textbook for the right attack on women's sports, particularly as
it grows, and the rights attack on women in general.
Of Course, women should not be paid as much as
men in sports their women. Of course, women should not
be paid as much as men not in sports their women.
Of Course, women should not have the vote or rights
their women. Of course, they should wear handmade tail costumes
(30:57):
their women. On the other hand, in December twenty twenty one,
when a mediocre college swimmer named Gains began to complain
that a transgender woman named Leah Thomas was winning college
swimming races, Clay Travis went on Fox quote news unquote
and announced that Thomas quote threatens to destroy all of
women's sports. That's the very sanctity of the sporting universe.
(31:22):
Travis self righteously continued, where we believe in a meritocracy,
the best man or woman wins. So in one case,
this Travis idiot cares about the sanctity of women's sports,
and in this case he says, nobody cares about the
sanctity of women's sports or anything about women's sports. Even
though the NCAA Women's championship game had more TV viewers
(31:45):
this year than did the men's championship game. It must
be nice for Travis to be so simple minded that
he can turn his ethics on and off like that
to defend women's sports and then to utterly dismiss women's sports.
But wait, there's more. Travis was not done bickling. I
(32:06):
asked this question, and I bet the answer is no.
Can you think of any business that has existed for
twenty five years? By the way, I've left out his
more on southern accent, can you think of any business
that has existed for twenty five years and never made
a profit and still exists. The fact that the WNBA
exists at all is a testament in many ways too well.
(32:30):
The government, I guess you could say, unquote Klay Travis
never explains how the government made the WNBA happen, probably
because there's no explanation. It's nonsense. But his rhetorical question
has a real answer about any business that has existed
for twenty five years and never made a profit, and
(32:50):
he clearly does not know it. There was a sports
league founded in nineteen forty six, and at one point
it had grown to twenty four teams, but it was
so unsuccessful over its first two decades, first twenty years,
not twenty five, but close enough that in that time
literally seventeen of its franchises went bankrupt. Two of them
(33:12):
went bankrupt in the middle of the season. How's Baltimore doing?
They went out of business? Oh? It had three different
teams in Chicago, each of them failed, three in Indianapolis.
And by nineteen sixty six this league was now to
just nine teams, and the league had never made any money,
and had even stopped bleeding cash in the late sixties
(33:33):
to expand a little, but its championship games were still
only shown on television on tape delay at eleven thirty
at night. In its twenty fifth year. And that league
that was a complete failure for its first twenty five
years was the National Basketball Association, the NBA, the men's
(33:54):
National Basketball Association. Oh what would this guy Travis know
about the history of American sports leagues? His idea of
sports is twenty years ago, when he couldn't see NFL
game on his TV in the Virgin Islands, he went
on a hunger strike, demanding that they may make them
available to him. There no, no, no, not a hunger strike,
a pudding strike. For fifty days, Clay Travis ate nothing
(34:19):
but pudding, something from which he has clearly yet to recover.
The runner up worser, the Republican Party of Charlotte, North
Carolina could be run by Clay Travis. I'm not sure.
Somebody claiming to be a first time history teacher hosted
what they mockingly pretended was a paper about the Battle
(34:39):
of Gettysburg. Teaching my first history course. This semester has
been rewarding, but I don't know what to do with
this student. They wrote, and the paper, a photograph was
provided of it, began quote how our union was saved
by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg What an unbelievable
battle that was the Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable
(35:00):
I mean, it was so much and so interesting and
so vicious, and it's so beautiful in so many different ways. Gettysburg. Wow.
The paper is of course littered with red marks and
notes from the teacher. I count twelve and it's only
one paragraph. Of course, it's not an actual school paper
about Gettysburg. It was a transcript of Trump trying to
(35:22):
speak normally and trying to express whatever little he remembered
from studying Gettysburg in like nineteen sixty one. This is
where the idiots from the Charlotte Republican Party come in.
They replied to that tweet with quote that's probably from
a student in Charlotte Mecklenburg schools led by your Mecklenburg Democrats.
That totally tracks. We can't read, or spell, or add
(35:46):
or locate countries on grade level, but we can make
sure your feelings aren't hurt during social and emotional learning. Well, yes,
somebody here didn't learn how to read. The photo of
the paper literally has Trump's name typed in the upper
left hand corner next to the big red fo The
Publican Party whoever handles their Twitter account didn't notice, hasn't noticed.
(36:09):
The reply is still live. Maybe Trump won't find out
how the Charlotte Republican Party has dissed him. But our
winner the worst, Bo Dietel Bo Dietel di Etl is
(36:30):
the former World Trade Center ironworker, New York City cop,
New York City detective, failed congressional candidate, failed mayoralty candidate,
failed radio host, failed TV host, security consultant, and frequent
guest on The Don I'm a Show. The Years of Deterioration.
Bo Didal also has a problem. He's not just a homophobe.
(36:53):
There are lots of homophobes. He's a homophobe who has
to express it by insisting he's not homophobic towards people
who he then calls really unfortunate names. And it's happened
to yea and the Legal Defense Fund for New York
Mayor Eric Adams. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole, whole different story.
(37:13):
I only have infinity here. I don't have time for
the Eric Adams Legal Defense Fund story. Anyway, The Eric
Adams Legal Defense Fund hired Bo Deedle's company to vet donors.
It is now fired. Bo Deetle's company to vet donors
because first, when the New York Daily News reported that
the Eric Adams Defense Fund had paid Bo Deedle and
(37:34):
his company thirteen grand Bo Deedle responded to the paper's
request for comment by saying, quote, I wouldn't effing tell
you any effing tang bad. But again, we're in New York.
Priests talk like that. But then Politico called for comment
about the story, and Diedel told that guy, quote, why
(37:55):
don't you do me a favor, Go suck somebody's blank,
because I don't want to talk to you. Okay, you
like to suck blank? Go suck blank somewhere fired two
hours later. A few of us who are alive still
to remember, who are like Ishmael at the end of
Moby Dick, those of us left alive to tell thee
(38:21):
we saw this story. We laughed, we cried, we shuddered.
On Friday, April eighth, two thousand and five, at four
pm Eastern daylight time, they are premiered on MSNBC at
the best of the new network president Rick Kaplan, a
little show called Dietel and Daniels. It was one of
(38:43):
Kaplan's many show ideas that got launched because he liked
the title of the show. He wanted me to co
host with Tucker Carlson because then he could have called
a show TKO. You get it. That's how he made
his decisions. Here in Dietel and Daniels, he also saw
some of the content he saw a contrasting buddy show.
(39:06):
Lisa Daniels was a Magna cum Laudy graduate of Harvard
Law who preferred television and was very good at anchoring
it smart. Yet, as they say in TV circles, accessible
and Boddel bo Dedel was a go suck somebody's blank guy.
So I can't remember if it was the premiere episode
(39:27):
of Deal and Daniels on MSNBC or the farewell episode
two weeks later. There were only the two episodes, but
one of the guests was a man named James Guckert,
who was at a couple of steps removed, hired by
the Bush administration to portray a character named Jeff Gannon
(39:48):
who would get White House press credentials for a made
up news website called Talon News, and he would go
to Bush's Press Secretary's press conferences and ask tough questions
like is George Bush the greatest president ever or the
greatest American ever? And do liberals like Osama bin Laden
or do they love Osama bin Laden? I'm not exaggerating
(40:11):
by very much here. Well, it soon turned out that
Jeff Gannon was actually James Guckert, former nude model and
male escort, although he had been editor of his high
school newspaper. Must have been some newspaper. So this is
two thousand and five, and he was basically the prototype
(40:32):
for the entirety of today's right wing media and streaming shows.
I mean, think about it. Fake website, fake name, connected
to the people he's covering, and he has a whole
sort of sordid history that he thinks nobody's ever gonna notice,
even though there are pictures of him naked with other Okay, anyway,
any who, Didel and Daniels had mister Gucker's and or
(40:56):
Gannon on. I think it was supposed to be half
the show half an hour, or it was supposed to
be half an hour except Bo Diedle got kind of
excited during the introduction, so he started, I got no
problem with you. And I'm going to quote him here
word for word because the words themselves are not obscenities.
Just the implication here, so brace for impact here. Quoting
(41:19):
Boddle Premiere, I think of Deedel and Daniels quote, I
got no problem with you being a fudge packa. Honestly,
I don't remember what happened after that. They did take
Diedel and Daniels off the air for a week to
retool it, although they left Deedel on as chief tool.
(41:40):
I do remember Lisa Daniels, a truly lovely person in
all aspects of that word, coming into my office either
before or after what turned out to be the farewell
episode of Deedel and Daniels and bursting into tears. And
I said, you've substituted on the early morning news on
the big network. They love you. Here. Go call the
(42:01):
president of NBC News who hired you, and explain to
him this is making you burst into tears into Olberman's office.
So she did, and the next thing you knew, she
had been plucked out of MSNBC and they let her
go work in thirty Rock and they made her an
NBC News correspondent, and then like a year later, still
(42:21):
haunted by Bo Didel, she left the business. She didn't
even go back into lawyering. I can't find anything further
about her more recently than from twenty fourteen, when she
wrote a piece for Huffington Post about quitting television and
going home and having four kids. Four kids good for
her anyway. That's what Lisa Daniels learned in the years
(42:45):
since two thousand and five. What has Boddel learned? Well?
Not to say fudge paka on TV just to ask
about sucking to a reporter. Bo did I mention that
he proudly tells people that when he was a copy
his specialty was to be a decoy for violent crime.
So he was mugged more than five hundred times, and
(43:07):
he had thirty line of duty injuries. And I'm just
thinking maybe this made a bad situation. Mooie Deedle. Two
days weist Pyson find the world just to head on
(43:32):
this editionive Countdown Fridays with Thurber. Since I got good
news about my pups this week, let's finish the week
helping another dog and then hearing Thurber's epic biography of
a pup the dog that bit people. As mentioned first,
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day. This is about Snowy, and Snowy is maybe
a big ish Maltese or a Havinese or a Bijeon
(43:54):
or some kind of mix with that big Maltese like smile.
She was rushed to the er at the end of
last month with pancreatitis and cato acidosis. It was touch
and go. She needed three different ives and twenty four
hour care. Because she's a rescue she's about eight, she
has diabetes. She was in there for a couple of weeks. Well,
(44:15):
she's doing marvelously now she's home, but she'll have to
be tested all the time for a recurrence of the pancreatitis.
And here's the problem. The total bill is thirty four
thousand dollars. Now Snowy's people don't want us to cover
the entirety of the thirty four thousand, but anything will help.
I put in five hundred. If you have five dollars,
(44:35):
I'll tweet out the link, or you can just go
to go fund me and search for Snowe with an
ie Snowie and she'll be the first one to pop
up among the results. If you can't donate, just a
retweet can help. And as I always say, Snowy thanks you,
and I thank you to the number one story on
(45:02):
the Countdown and Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to
me in retrospect how I read all of his wonderful, realistic,
not goopy writing about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly years
before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now reading
his dog stories and anecdotes is like reading about a
(45:25):
bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom
we must continuously make excuses the dog that bit people
by James Thurber. Probably no one man should have as
many dogs in this life as I have had, but
(45:47):
there was more pleasure than distress in them for me,
except in the case of an Airdale named Mugs. He
gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four
or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment
was the time I a Scotch Terrier named Jeanie, who
had just had six puppies in the clothes closet of
(46:09):
a fourth floor apartment in New York, had the unexpected
seventh and last at the corner of Eleventh Street and
Fifth Avenue during a walk she had insisted on taking.
Then two there was the prize winning French poodle, a giant,
big black poodle, none of your little, untroublesome white miniatures,
who got sick riding in the rumble seat of a
(46:30):
car with me on her way to the Greenwich Dog Show.
She had a red rubber bib tucked around her throat,
and since a rain storm came up when we were
halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her
a small green umbrella, really more of a parasol. The
rain beat down fearfully, and suddenly the driver of the
(46:52):
car drove into a big garage filled with mechanics. It
happened so quickly that I forgot to put the umbrella down,
and I will always remember with sickening distress the look
of incredula he mixed with hatred that came over the
face of the particular hardened garage man that came over
to see what we wanted when he took a look
(47:12):
at me and the poodle. All garage men and people
of that intolerant stripe hate poodles with their curious haircuts,
especially the pom poms that you got to leave on
their hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize.
But the Airdale, as I have said, was the worst
(47:34):
of all my dogs. He really wasn't my dog. Matter
of fact, I came home from a vacation one summer
to find that my brother Roy had bought him while
I was away. The big, burly, choleric dog. He always
acted as if he thought I wasn't one of the family.
There was a slight advantage in being one of the family,
for he didn't bite the family as often as a
(47:55):
bit strangers. Still, in the years that we had him,
he bit everybody but Mother, and he made a pass
at her once missed. It was during the month when
we suddenly had mice, and mugs refused to do anything
about them. Nobody ever had mice exactly like the mice
we had that month. They acted like pet mice, almost
(48:18):
like mice somebody had trained. They were so friendly that
one night, when Mother entertained at dinner the Freer Realilras,
a club she and my father had belonged to for
twenty years, she put down a lot of little dishes
with food in them on the pantry floor so that
the mice would be satisfied with that and would not
come into the dining room. Mugs stayed out in the
(48:41):
pantry with the mice lying on the floor, growling to himself,
not at the mice, but about all the people in
the next room that he would have liked to get at.
Mother slipped out into the pantry once to see how
everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her
so mad to see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice.
(49:02):
They came running up to her that she slapped him,
and he slashed at her, but didn't make it. He
was sorry immediately. Mother said. He was always sorry, she
said after he bit someone. But we could not understand
how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother
used to send a box of candy every Christmas to
(49:24):
the people the Airdale bit. The list finally contained forty
or more names. Nobody could understand why we did not
get rid of the dog. I didn't understand it very
well myself, but we didn't get rid of him. I
think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs.
He acted poisoned once in a while, and old Major
(49:45):
Moberly fired at him once with his service revolver near
the Seneca Hotel and He's Broad Street. But Muggs lived
to almost eleven years old, and even when he could
hardly get around, he bit a congressman who had called
to see my father on business. My mother had never
liked the congressman. She said the signs of his horoscope
(50:07):
showed he couldn't be trusted. He was Saturn with the
moon and Virgo. But she sent him a box of
candy that Christmas. Anyway, he sent it right back, probably
because he suspected it was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself
that it was all for the best that the dog
had bitten him, even though father lost an important business
association because of it. I wouldn't be associated with such
(50:29):
a man, Mother said. Mugs could read him lack a book.
We used to take turns feeding Mugs to be on
his good side, but that didn't always work. He was
never in a very good humor even after a meal.
Nobody knew exactly what was the matter with him, but
whatever it was, it made him irascible, especially in the mornings.
(50:52):
Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either,
especially before breakfast, and once when he came downstairs and
found that Mugs had moodily chewed up the morning paper,
he hit him in the face with the grapefruit, and
then jumped up on the dining room table, scattering dishes
and silverware and spilling the coffee. Mugg's first free leap
(51:14):
carried him all the way across the table and into
a brass fire screen in front of the gas grate.
But he was back on his feet in a moment,
and in the end he got roy and gave him
a pretty vicious bite in the leg. Then he was
all over it. He never bid anyone more than once
at a time. Mother always mentioned that as an argument
in his favor. She said he had a quick temper,
(51:37):
but that he didn't hold a grudge. She was forever
defending him. I think she liked him because he wasn't well.
He's not strong, she would say, pityingly, But that was inaccurate.
He may not have been well, but he was terribly strong.
One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to
(51:59):
call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in
Columbus on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to
find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations
into a dog. He's a large, tan colored airdale. Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
(52:22):
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the iceman, but she blamed that slip up on the iceman.
If you didn't think he would bite you, he wouldn't,
Mother told him. He stomped out of the house in
a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning, when Mugs bit
(52:44):
me slightly more or less in passing, I reached down
and grabbed his short, stumpy tail and hoisted him into
the air. It was a foolhardy thing to do, and
the last time I saw my mother, about six months ago,
she said she didn't know what possessed me. I don't either,
except that I was pretty mad. As long as I
held the dog off the floor by his tail, he
(53:07):
couldn't get at me. But he twisted and jerked so
snarling all the time that I realized I couldn't hold
him that way very long, and I carried him into
the kitchen and flung him onto the floor and shut
the door on him just as he crashed against it.
But I forgot about the backstairs. Mugs went up the
backstairs and down the front stairs and had me cornered
(53:30):
in the living room. I managed to get up out
of the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it gave way
and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing a large
marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to the floor.
Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that when I
picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't find him anywhere,
(53:52):
although we whistled and shouted until old Missus Dettweiler called
after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten her once in
the leg, and she came into the living room only
after we assured her that Mugs had run away. She
had just seated herself when with great growling and scratching
of claws, Mugs emerged from under a davenport where he
(54:15):
had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again.
Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and
told Missus Detwiler that it was only a bruise. He
just bumped you, she said. But Missus Dettwiler left our
house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people
(54:36):
reported our Airdale to the police, but my father held
a municipal office at the time and was on friendly
terms with the police. Even so, the cops had been
out a couple of times, once when Mugs bit missus
rufus Sturtevent and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Molloy.
But mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but
the fault of the people who were bitten. When he
(54:58):
starts for them, they scream, she explained, and that excites him.
The suggested that it might be a good idea to
tie the dog up, but Mother said that it mortified
him to be tied up, and that he wouldn't eat
when he was tied up. Mugs at his meals was
an unusual sight because of the fact that if you
reached toward the floor, he would bite you. We usually
(55:23):
put his food plate on top of an old kitchen
table with a bench alongside the table. Mugs would stand
on the bench and eat. I remember that my mother's uncle, Horatio,
who boasted that he was the third man up Missionary Ridge,
was flutteringly indignant when he found out that we fed
the dog on a table because we were afraid to
(55:44):
put his plate on the floor. He said he wasn't
afraid of any dog that ever lived, and that he
would put the dog's plate on the floor if we
would give it to him. Roy said that if Uncle
Horatio had fed mugs on the ground just before the battle,
he would have been the first man up Missionary ridge.
Uncle Horatio was furious. Ray amen, bray amen, now, he shouted,
(56:08):
I'll feed them on the floor. Roy was all forgiving
him a chance. But my father wouldn't hear of it.
He said that mugs had already been fed. I'll feed
them again, bawled Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time
quieting him. In his last year, Muggs used to spend
(56:29):
practically all of his time outdoors. He didn't like to
stay in the house for some reason or other. Perhaps
it held too many unpleasant memories for him. Anyway, it
was hard to get him to come in, and as
a result, the garbage man, the iceman, and the laundryman
would not come near our house. We had to haul
the garbage down to the corner, take the laundry out
(56:49):
and bring it back and meet the iceman a block
from home. After this had gone on for some time.
We hit on an ingenious arrangement for getting the dog
in the house, so that we could lock him up
while the gas meter was red, and so on. Mugs
was afraid of only one thing, an electrical storm. Thunder
(57:13):
and lightning frightened him out of his senses. I think
he thought a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece fell.
He would rush into the house and hide under a
bed or in a clothes closet. So we fixed up
a thunder machine out of a long, narrow piece of
sheet iron with a wooden handle on one end. Mother
(57:33):
would shake this vigorously when she wanted to get Mugs
into the house. It made an excellent imitation of thunder,
but I suppose it was the most roundabout system for
running a household that was ever devised. It took a
lot out of mother. A few months before Mugs died,
he got to seeing things. He would rise slowly from
(57:56):
the floor, growling low and stalk, stiff legged and menacing
toward thing at all. Sometimes the thing would be just
a little to the right or left of a visitor.
Once a fuller brush salesman got hysterics, Muggs came wandering
(58:16):
into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghosts. His
eyes were fixed on a spot just to the left
of the fuller brush man, who stood it until Muggs
was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted,
Mugs wavered on pass him into the hallway, grumbling to himself,
but the fuller man went on shouting. I think Mother
(58:37):
had to throw a pan of cold water on him
before he stopped. That was the way she used to
stop us boys when we got into fights. Mugs died
quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury him in
the family lot under a marble stone with some such
inscription as flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
but we persuaded her it was against the law. In
(59:01):
the end, we just put up a smooth board above
his grave along the way lonely road. On the board
I wrote with an indelible pencil, kave Kanam. Mother was
quite pleased with the simple classic dignity of the old
Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. Mugs.
(59:39):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown Musical Directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(01:00:00):
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Larren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Howard Feinneman, and everything else was pretty much
my fault. That's countdown for this the two hundred and
(01:00:20):
first day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, Yes Saturday,
two hundred days. Also the twelve hundredth day since Defendant
Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and the
not regularly given elector objection option. Use the Insurrection Act.
(01:00:43):
Use the justice system in New York and elsewhere. Use
the mental health system to stop him from doing it
again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday.
Bulletins as the news warrants. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck and
(01:01:12):
then Freezing grow Freezing. Everybody was freezing in the Countdown
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Host
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