January 16, 2024 • 55 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 106: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The obvious headline from Iowa last night: Trump romped, around 50%, with the reminder that if it were Biden only getting 50% in the first primary the Democrats would be considered dead in the water. The real headline from Iowa: Trump mused, in that skillfully ambitious way of his, about being in charge for "four years and beyond" and he can deny he meant refusing to leave office in 2029 but of course all he's TALKED about since 2017 was how he deserved more than two terms or more than eight years or more than the constitution allows. And the NEXT headline out of Iowa is the missing ingredient in the implausibly tight race between a psychotic dictator with dementia and a gifted dedicated president: the report that internal Biden research and polling says three out of four undecided voters really DON'T believe Trump will be the nominee and will have an "oh shit" moment.
Plus: Marjorie Barney Rubble Greene thinks President Biden can communicate with the dead by phone.
B-Block (26:08) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Rep. Barry "Your Tour Guide" Loudermilk makes a huge mistake. He wants to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson. And the Baltimore Sun is sold to a fascist and a one-time columnist who took a quarter of million in bribes from the Bush Administration. (30:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: When the NFL playoff game in Buffalo was postponed by snow, the Outkick The Coverage idiot whined that they didn't postpone D-Day because of bad weather - except of course they did. Plus Billo is back in the list. And Laura Loomer underscores the fundamental stupidity of the right. They don't believe in man-made climate change but they DO believe that Biden has a machine to manipulate the weather.
C-Block (37:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A silly story about ESPN fudging nomination lists for the Emmy Awards (Erin Andrews became "Erik Andrews," etc., to allow ineligible talent to get trophies) ignores the real problem: the hosts of Emmy winning shows were ineligible to GET Emmys because the producers who ran the Emmys thought the talent had enough good stuff as it was. It flashed me back to a memorable conversation with Gil Stratton, an actor and sportscaster who insisted that every producer and executive he ever met was a bigger prima donna than an old colleague of his named Judy Garland.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
won handily in Iowa last night looks like around fifty percent,
(00:26):
Hailey around twenty percent, But the real headline is he
also used Iowa to remind us that, if returned to power,
he has no intention of giving it up when his
term would expire in twenty twenty nine. First, the win
as metaphor. He celebrated and boasted in Clive, Iowa, while
(00:47):
the future cried in pain. And we did a job late. Frankly,
nobody has done a long long We didn't have terrorists,
we didn't have people polling into it. That baby is
us all now about Trump's implication that he would stay
four years and beyond, which barely earned a PostScript in
(01:08):
the media's interminable self congratulatory surface skim from the Caucuses
last night and Sunday, because first, the horror of the
thing is more than your average political reporter can accept,
because that person still lives in the world of He's
not going to eat my face. And secondly, because of
what is either Trump's mental deficiency or his greatest skill,
(01:32):
he phrased this thing so vaguely that his remarks at
Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa were plausibly deniable except for
one small detail. I made the commitment. Then we kept
you first in the nation as long as I have
anything to say about it, and that we have a
good chance of saying for four years, we'll have a
(01:53):
lot to say about it. Four years and beyond four
years and beyond in power, four years and beyond in
influencing whether Iowa goes first in the GOP primary, Mary
something else. It is that sleight of hand of ambiguity,
the Trump loophole, and we know exactly where on Trump
(02:13):
the loophole is. Trump is an artist in ambiguity. But
here at least the ambiguity is irrelevant. Whatever he said
in Indianola, he means four years and beyond in power.
Because remember, after Bill Barr whitewashed the Muller Report for him,
he floated the idea that two years should be added
(02:34):
to his term and the twenty twenty election be postponed
because he had been thwarted, And when that did not fly,
he said that the election could go ahead as scheduled
in twenty twenty, but his first term should not count
against the two term limit because he'd been hoaxed. Since
he lost in twenty twenty, he has repeatedly said the
(02:54):
twenty twenty four election should be held earlier because the
last one was so unfair to him, and we aren't
even two weeks out from one. One of his lawyers
bluntly stated that so what if he'd been disqualified under
the insurrection clause of the fourteenth Amendment? He should still
be president because the people said so. It should be
(03:17):
the entire nation who determines who they want for president,
whether they're guilty of insurrection or not. It's up to
the people. That was Christina Bob on the third of
this month. And if you put all of it together,
it is Trump saying not just the fourteenth Amendment does
not apply to him, but the twenty second Amendment limiting
a president to two terms also doesn't apply to him.
(03:39):
And Article two of the Constitution scheduling a presidential election
every four years, also doesn't apply to him. And he's
not just declaring himself above those laws, but he's signaling
all of it clearly to his cult and yet fuzzing
it up just enough that he doesn't get arrested. Moreover,
(04:00):
it is clearer now than it has ever been, even
when he talked about terminating the entire Constitution, that if
returned to power, Trump will not again make what he
now clearly views as the biggest mistake of his presidency,
which was leaving office. He will be what he thinks
is a dictator for only one day. He will be
(04:23):
what the rest of the world thinks is a dictator
until he dies. To get him out of there, we
will have to go in and get him. This cannot
be hammered home too often. This cannot be campaigned on
too often. This cannot be the entirety of a Biden
ad or speech too often. This has to be thrown
(04:47):
out there every day with simmering rage, so often and
so obviously and so angrily that even the New York
Times notices it. Trump's strategy is to manipulate the laws,
and manipulate the Constitution, and manipulate the courts, and regain
office and stay there, and then eliminate all the legal
(05:11):
means of removing him, and to enforce his will with
violence dressed up as law and order and democracies. Strategy
in return, is, to paraphrase the ex Republican Congressman Peter Meyer,
to wait for Trump to die. Sure that outcome is satisfying.
(05:31):
Sure some of his supporter's whistling past graveyards is satisfying,
like the Maga idiot who boasted yesterday about how manly
and strong Trump looked carrying eight pizza boxes all by himself.
And sure it's satisfying that the answer to the question
you know how old he looks is he looks two
(05:53):
hundred and six. And sure, some of his blunders and
some of his physical movements, and of course the inevitability
of the actuarial tables all suggest there might be some
real change in the odds here. Waiting for him to die, nevertheless,
ain't a strategy. He has visions of firing every federal
(06:15):
official who is not personally loyal to him. He wants
to immunize all cops everywhere from consequences for killing Americans.
He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, maybe on day one,
and he wants to use the military to slaughter his opponents.
We have visions of really big protests and a strongly
(06:39):
worded letter to the editor that Jeff Bezos doesn't publish. Oh,
and he is still stochastically terrorizing the justices of the
Supreme Court about the cases about his eligibility that is
coming before them Simpson College, Sunday. We're going to make
those decisions very soon, and I hope they do the
(07:02):
right thing for the country. And if the threat against
them and with what can Trump actually threaten a Supreme
Court justice who he appointed for life, well, obviously the
Trump threat is to end that life if the threat
against him is not disturbing enough. Trump long ago entered
the pre messianic phase of all this, in which the
idea that others should willingly die so he can live
(07:26):
becomes something he can say aloud. Again, his actual skill
is ambiguity. This demand that Iowa caucus goers go despite
blizzards and hypothermia and death could be dismissed as hyperbole,
as humor, accept listen to it carefully. Trump seems to
(07:46):
have stopped trying to sell the ambiguous option that this
is quote humor. You must go caucus tomorrow for in
the first step. We're at a first step. We're gonna
do it. We're going to do a big and gun
the young You can't sit home if he's sick as
a dog is a even if didn't pass away, it's
(08:08):
worth it ha ha, he means it. One of the
political science fiction outcomes long since postulated by those of
us wondering what the surprise twist ending to this nightmare
timeline could be involves Trump finally going too far, even
(08:31):
for the Republicans, even for the fascists, even for the
white supremacists, even for the most deranged of his cultists.
Is there such a thing as Trump going too far?
If he went full Jim Jones, if he did to
them literally what he did to that idiot vivek Ramaswami figuratively. Here,
let's both drink the kool aid you first, Oh, sorry,
(08:55):
I spilled mine. If he did that, would that stop them?
Would the full Colligula stop him? You know where he
appoints a horse to a key political position and then
declares himself a living God. Would that turn the cult
off of him? Probably not now if he were to
(09:18):
declare himself bigger than God, and if he said something
like I will instruct God, or I will pray for God.
We will pray for God, and we will be with
God as we are one movement, one people, one family,
and one glorious nation under God. Again, Trump in Iowa
(09:44):
and by the way Trump uses the word God, the
way that one character in The Mean Girl's Movie use
the word fetch. He has no idea what God is
or is supposed to me. It's like dogs. He has
no idea what dogs are, or his insistence that you
have to produce id to buy groceries. If you do
(10:08):
not view the other beings around you as actual humans,
if you see the world as entirely as the type
of furniture that talks and the other type of furniture
that doesn't talk, sooner or later you will say something
so remarkably offensive to your base that your base will
destroy you. Of course, sadly, he might not do that
(10:31):
until twenty thirty one, in year three of his seventeenth
different invoking of the Insurrection Act, under which he canceled
the twenty twenty eight election and ringed the White House
with the US military, or ringed by people supplied by
the guy who just gave Trump his latest celebrity endorsement,
the confessed mob hitman Sammy the Boll Gravano, who, when
(10:54):
he flipped against the Genovese crime family, testified that the
Genovizes controlled several New York building unions and a company
called HRH Construction, And when anti mob prosecutors finally brought
HRH Construction down, it was because of corruption involving Hrh's
building of Trump Tower and Trump's Wollman Rink in Central Park.
(11:19):
And HRH was one of Donald Trump's favorite builders and
one of Fred Trump's favorite builders. And golly gosh, if
this hadn't dawned on you, and if it wasn't already
bad enough, to some degree great or small, Trump is
also mobbed up. The other news out of Iowa last
(11:41):
night is that the Nicky Haley surge is not about
the Republican nomination. It is about a third party bid.
Haley has now been endorsed by Larry Hogan, the ex
Maryland governor x head of the No Labels Trump stalking
Horse outfit, and while he has positioned his support relative
to the Republican nomination, it is obvious she will not
(12:04):
get it on less Trump is literally removed by the
Fourteenth Amendment or other circumstances. And in endorsing her, Hogan
said that though he had just left that group, quote,
my position on no Labels has not changed, And now
suddenly we are looking at two Trump allied stalking horses
running in order to dirty up President Biden and the
(12:25):
supposedly Saine Republicans being co opted to destroy democracy, because
if you haven't noticed, the term sane Republicans is an
oxymoron today, as it was an oxymoron in two thousand
and nineteen eighty and nineteen sixty four, if you had
any remaining doubts about that or hopes about that. Yesterday,
(12:45):
Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who endorsed DeSantis and whom
Trump then viciously attacked, said of course she would support
Trump as the nominee. Ramaswami, who promised to pardon Trump,
who Trump then attacked anyway, said of course he'd support Trump.
Governor Sanou Knew of New Hampshire, who in yourst Haley,
who hasn't even lost next week's primary in New Hampshire yet,
(13:09):
whom Trump attacked yesterday, stead of course heats support Trump
as the nominee, and Haley, as she still is trying
not to lose to Trump in New Hampshire next Tuesday.
Haley was careful not to endorse Trump yesterday, careful not
to say she wouldn't run against Trump, But yesterday she did,
of course, say she would support Trump over Biden. It's
(13:32):
a cult, and the reward in the cult for selling
your soul is power of some kind. How do they
sleep at night? The one question I get more than
any other is how do they sleep at night? The
answer is very, very easily. The demographics of this nation
were inevitable for their party, and they meant extinction. Instead,
(13:54):
Trump has given them what he gives their cult voters
as well, power and more importantly, power to be rewarded
for being terrible people. Then, speaking of terrible people, Dean Phillips,
who is putting him in the most positive light possible?
Who is the dog in the bowler hat? In the
(14:15):
this is Fine fire meme? Dean Phillips held a Twitter
x Space's conversation with Elon Musk and the Harvard ignored me,
So I'm going to burn it down, guy Bill Ackman.
And in this Phillips mused about giving the two of
them spots in his cabinet. I'm Elon Musk Secretary of Drugs.
(14:41):
He thought this because apparently it's important to mister Phillips
to increase the chance that he will actually get literally
zero votes in the Democratic piremeries, permit me to depress
you just a little bit more before I offer the
one glimmer of good news, and then a little comic relief,
provided as usual by the remarkably stupid pornographer Marjorie Taylor Green.
(15:06):
Here's the depressing part from a new CBS News you
gov poll. Do you agree with Trump's statement that immigrants
illegally entering this country are quote poisoning the blood of
the nation. Republican primary voters eighty one percent agree, All
voters forty seven percent degree, which means the number of
(15:27):
Independents and Democrats who go along with baby Hitler here
is somewhere around seven percent. It's hard to pin the
number down extrapolating from just the final score, but whatever is,
it's seven percent too many. And here is another nightmare
from the same pole, which is a bigger concern over
(15:48):
the next few years, the US having a functioning democracy
or the US having a strong economy. Republicans are happy
to screw democracy for the sake of cash, by sixty
five percent to thirty five percent. Democrats still on team
Democrats see by sixty four percent to thirty six percent.
And no, it's not either or the question was not phrased.
(16:11):
You can have either a functioning democracy or a strong economy,
which do you pick. Maybe it should be phrased like
that next time, But that thirty six percent number among
Democrats who prioritize the economy over the functioning democracy is
still mortifying. The glimmer of good news from two other polls,
(16:36):
there is the possibility that if and when Trump nails
down the Republican nomination, the Biden Trump race will suddenly
tilt strongly towards Joe Biden. CNN had a story, the
importance of which flew right over the head of every
TV political pundit and over the head of CNN's own reporters,
quoting sources with access to Biden internal polling and research
(17:00):
that may explain what a lot of us have seen
as well. Just visualize that dog in the blazing room.
This is fine meme again. Biden campaign data indicates that
among undecided voters, three out of four of them do
not seem to believe that the Republican nominee will be Trump.
(17:23):
CNN quotes one senior Biden official as saying, you can't
conceive of how tuned out these folks are. Try me anyway.
Another quote, apparently from a different Biden campaign official, the
realization will soon come quote, oh shit, it is an
election between that guy and that guy. Unquote. Three out
(17:49):
of four undecideds are politically illiterate and or in Trump denial. Impossible, impossible.
The Morris Berman book The Twilight of American Culture includes this.
I'm quoting a survey taken in October nineteen ninety six
revealed that one in ten voters did not know who
(18:11):
the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. That was
nineteen ninety six, less than one month before the nineteen
ninety six election, by which point the Democratic nominee, if
you've forgotten, had been president for three years and nine months. Now.
This is a guess. I'm going way out on a
limb here, no empirical evidence, but even with the invention
(18:33):
of social media, I'm gonna guess that voter imbecility has
not improved since nineteen ninety six. So when a UGOV
poll from a week ago today had it Biden forty three,
Trump forty three, that's fourteen percent undecided or other, and
maybe one or two out of every ten of them
(18:56):
couldn't really place the names Biden and Trump, plus per
the Biden research, seven or eight out of every ten
of them still really didn't believe Trump will be on
the ballot. The other good news is a poll about
that exact issue on the ballot, Trump Nah. It is
(19:23):
the IPSOS ABC poll. It is specific. It is about
how the Supreme Court should handle Trump and the fourteenth
Amendment and the disqualifications in Colorado and Maine. And I
have to admit I am pleasantly surprised by this one.
While the option with the highest percentage supports the Court
keeping him on the ballot everywhere, thirty nine percent, the
(19:44):
other two options combined swamp that thirty percent think the
Supreme Court should throw him off the ballot everywhere. Throw
him off the ballot, not just in Colorado and Maine,
but in the other forty eight as well. Twenty six
percent more think the Court should let each state decide
for itself. That is fifty six to thirty nine in
(20:04):
in favor of at least state by state disqualification doesn't
mean much. If Trump's stochastic calls for his mob to
threaten to get the justices killed prevails with them, it
does mean something. I think if the Court bends to
those threats, and the fifty six percent could be mobilized
to say, okay, Supreme Court, and how do you plan
(20:27):
to enforce your ruling which a clear majority of Americans oppose?
I mean, if Trump's lawyer implies that a Supreme Court
ruling that he has disqualified could be overruled by a
tide of popular pro Trump opinion, if we're planned by
those rules, now, why can't we say that the Court
has been fatally compromised by corrupt Republican politicians and its
(20:49):
rulings on elections involving Republicans are therefore invalid and must
be ignored. By the way, the last time I suggested
something like this, in June twenty twenty two, Marco Rubio
sent me a strongly worded tweet saying, quote, and is
a federal offense to incite rebellion or insurrection against the
(21:10):
authority of the United States or the laws thereof, which
was and is hilarious given Rubio's membership in the party
that incited rebellion and insurrection against the authority of the
United States and the laws thereof. On January sixth, twenty
twenty one, also Rubio said he'd never support Trump, and
(21:32):
Sunday at three twenty six pm Eastern, Rubio announced he
was supporting Trump. Rubio is as ever hilariously, tone deafly, dishonest,
and immoral. But he is not the comic relief I
promised you. This is Listen carefully, it's Barney Rubbles body double.
(21:52):
The fact that Joe Biden would call his dad on
the phone and his business meetings and deals shows that
he was selling. Marge says, Joe Biden is in phone
contact with his father, Joe Biden. Joe Biden's father died
in two thousand and two. Joe Biden is in phone
contact with him. Congresswoman huge if true. Also, Marge, if
(22:19):
President Biden can talk to the dead by phone, you'd
better be nicer to him. Also of interest here, the
Baltimore Sun newspaper has just been sold to a fascist
and a former columnist, a former columnist who took bribes
(22:40):
from the Bush administration for favorable coverage of the Bush administration.
And there's another ESPN scandal about what one reporter actually
called ill gotten Emmy Awards. It's actually more hilarious than scandalous,
and we'll talk about it. That's next. This is an
(23:02):
all new edition of Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Olberman host. Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions, dateline Smyrna Georgia. Barry Loudermilk, who
(23:29):
represents the White Flight suburbs of Atlanta, is back in
the news. He's what do they call it, weaponizing the
oversight subcommittee he chairs in the House. Here comes Trump
cult revenge. Louder Milk, your friendly pre January sixth tour
Guide says that because whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson fired her, Trump
(23:50):
supplied stooge lawyer Stephan Pasentino, she had waived attorney client privilege,
so he can subpoena her and subpoena him, and certainly
he the attorney, has to testify about what he was
told by her in confidence. Representative louder Milk is one
of the dumber fascists. Of course, Pasentino barely avoided getting disbarred.
(24:14):
Were trying to convince Hutchinson to lie to the January
sixth committee and not tell them all she knew, So
he might even have to invoke the Fifth Amendment if
he does testify to protect himself. And of course, if
louder Milk actually pursues the camera, somebody, somebody may finally
dig into why he gave a tour of the Capitol,
including of the Congressional escape tunnels, on January fifth, even
(24:36):
though the Capitol was closed due to COVID, and why
when the House Committee asked him to testify about the tour,
he replied by denying he ever gave reconnaissance tours, even
though nobody on the committee had mentioned the word reconnaissance.
(25:05):
Thank you, Nancy Faust, Dateline Baltimore. I want to know
why the fascists are winning things like this. The chairman
of the far right propagandist chain of TV stations, Sinclair
David Smith, last night announced he had bought the legendary
newspaper of The Baltimore Sun from the greedy but largely
(25:26):
a politically greedy Alden Capital. Smith's first statement upon becoming
owner of the Baltimore Sun was to criticize the quote
mainstream media. The Sun reported through gritted teeth that Sinclair
didn't buy the paper. Smith did personally, Well, that's okay. Then,
of course, one of his minority investors is Armstrong Williams,
(25:48):
a one time conservative commentator who, if you have forgotten
this story, took two hundred and forty one thousand dollars
in payments from the presidential administration of George W. Bush
for favorable coverage of the presidential administration of George W.
Bush in our strong Williams's columns, A fascist and a
whore have bought the Baltimore Sun and the number of
(26:12):
liberal billionaires willing to underwrite newspapers or other news outlets
not to make money, but to make public opinion. That
list consists of Jeff Bezos, remember when he was a liberal?
Anybody else? No democracy dies in cheapness. Still ahead on
(26:59):
this all new edition of Countdown. Did you see the
latest on the ESPN scandal? That ESPN scandal with the
quarterback defaming Jimmy Kimmel and the other guy defaming the executives.
The other one about ESPN creating fake names to get
Emmy Award trophies for on air people who were denied
(27:20):
eligibility for them. And it was impossible to unscramble the
pseudonyms they used, like they used Eric Andrews for Aaron Andrews.
Who could ever have figured that out. It's a silly story,
but it underscore is a serious point. Nobody should feel
sorry for the stars, but the producers and executives, and
especially the Emmy Committee members like to tell you what
(27:43):
prima donnas the talent are in order to cover up
the fact that their own egos are just as big
or bigger. This isn't about the real Emmys from last night,
but it's still a story I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the
Miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world, the Bronze Worse
(28:07):
Billo is back. Ah. I thought he was dead Bill O'Reilly,
And for you youngsters, he was the guy who discovered
Jesse Waters for Fox. Now that it's years since he
was on TV, it's hard to remember his infinite capacity
to know everything, have his claims proved wrong, and then
to insist he never made those claims, that he'd made
(28:29):
the exact opposite ones. If it helps to understand Bill O'Reilly,
he and Trump used to sit together at the Yankee Games,
and the seats were free for them anyway. When Ron
DeSantis began the book banning in Florida in twenty two.
Billow was, of course an enthusiastic supporter, but now is
mentioned here. Last week, the Escambia County School District in
(28:49):
the Florida Panhandle has taken the new book banning law
literally and removed all books quote alleged to contain pornography
or obscene depictions of sexual conduct, like you know news
accounts of the chairman of the Florida Republic parties Love
Life any Who. Scambia County banned more than a thousand books,
(29:10):
including Killing Jesus A History by Bill O'Reilly and Killing
Reagan by Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'relly's response, this will not stand.
The show is gone, the pomposity is undamaged, the hypocrisy
is intact. Bravo, sir, bravo. Honestly, what do I care?
(29:33):
I'm out of Fox to give runner up worse. David
Hookstead of the Truly Vile website outkicked the coverage when
Saturday's NFL playoff game at Buffalo was postponed for two
days until yesterday because of a blizzard. Hookstead, like many
sports guys who have become untethered from the real world
lashed out in anger that he would have to wait
(29:54):
for the game. On social media, he wrote, quote did
we cancel D Day because of a little rough weather?
No play the damn game? This nitwit Hookstead was immediately
community noted with simple eloquence quote D Day was delayed
by a day because of the weather, but the winner
the worst speaking of the weather. Laura Lumer the trumpest lunatic.
(30:19):
It's hard to say which adjective applies more to her.
She's also upset about the weather. Quote. Is the Deep
State activating HARP to disrupt the Iowa Caucus? We all
know Nicki Haley has a lot of friends in the
defense industry military industrial complex. Is the Deep State using
HARP to rig the Iowa Caucus looks like weather manipulation
to me. HARP is a program HAARP at the University
(30:46):
of Alaska. It was formerly at the Department of Defense.
It studies the upper part of the atmosphere, the ionosphere,
and naturally. Because it's fairly complicated and you probably have
to not be a moron like Laura Lumer to understand
the premise of it, she and the other paranoids think
it is used to con control the weather. Two things
(31:08):
about people like her always strike me. First, this is
akin to what I said earlier about Marge Green. If
they do believe that Joe Biden has the controls in
his hands to manipulate the weather, why do they think
he would keep this quiet rather than just say you
will do what I say, or you will get eight
feet of snow tomorrow? Or more positively, why wouldn't he
(31:31):
send rainstorms to put out wildfires and then take all
the credit. But secondly, and more importantly, I'm seeing a
slight inconsistency here. Laura Lumer and the other clowns don't
believe in climate change or that humans can impact the climate,
even with centuries of pollution. But they do believe that
the US government can control the weather and manipulate it
(31:54):
on a city by city basis on a few hours notice.
In other words, they're morons. Laura, Climate change is real,
Climate manipulation is real. Lumer. Two days, worst person in
the world, Mine and men and rain frog to the
(32:37):
number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell. The website
The Athletic has reported that my old friends at ESPN
had for years been gaming the system at the Sports
Emmy Awards, bribing voters, now trying to push the voting
(32:58):
by nominating stories about the judges or about the places
they were from. Now otherwise tampering with the process of
who got nominated or who won, or anything like that. No,
their crime was adding to the list of nominees fictional names,
so that if their shows won, they would be able
(33:19):
to get extra trophies that could be re engraved and
given to people who were not eligible to win those
Emmy Awards. Those people were the hosts and reporters of
the show. Rather incredibly, until the last few years, if
a network submitted one of its shows for Best Studio
Sportscast or one of several other categories, virtually everybody who
(33:42):
worked on the show was eligible. NBC won the Emmy
for the Outstanding Live Sports Special in twenty twenty two,
and NBC in its submission listed all the executives, the producers,
the directors, the associate producers, everybody down to the stage managers,
literally three hundred and sixty five different sportspeople, and if
(34:07):
they shelled out the money or if the network did
it for them, they all got an actual Emmy award,
not one anchor or reporter among them. Now, obviously this
concerns me far more than it does you. And don't
get me wrong, I do not begrudge any of those
three hundred and sixty five winners their Emmys, including the
(34:28):
nine stage managers. And it looks like I worked with
like three of them and they were great. Counting them up,
I saw literally dozens of names of friends and former colleagues,
and they were all great. But the National Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences did not permit adding even just
the lead anchors and reporters from the twenty twenty two
(34:49):
Olympics or any other nominated Best Show if they were
on the air. The official explanation for this curiosity was
they didn't want anybody quote double dipping getting an award
for Best Anchor, Best Reporter and getting another Emmy if
the show they were anchoring one best show. There are
(35:12):
just five different categories for people on the air in
the Sports Emmys. That's it. Three hundred and sixty five
Emmys were given out to the producers and stage managers
from the Olympics, and five were given out to all
the people on the air at the Olympics on the
NBA broadcasts, football play by play, sportscenters, postgame shows, pardon
(35:33):
the interruptions, baseball, curling, darts, whatever. Now, practically speaking, that
is not literally true because of the ESPN dodge, which
I will grant is hilarious and which I'll get to
in a moment. But there was also the dodge used
by MLB Network and other operations over the years. In
twenty twenty, when it show MLB Tonight won the Emmy
(35:55):
for Best Daily Live Sports Series, MLB Network submitted the
name of sixty three different producers. Among them were Great
Big Am Singer, and that's a coincidence. There's also a
Greg Amsinger who was the primary anchor of MLB Tonight.
And then there's a producer named Bob Costas huh, and
(36:16):
another producer named Peter Gavins. And my friends Ron Darling
producer and ex Yankees manager, Joe Girardi producer and Harold
Reynolds producer who I've known for thirty three years, and
Baseball Hall of famers Maedro Martinez producer and Jim Tomy producer.
Why once nearly ran over with a golf cart in Arizona,
(36:36):
But I'll tell that story some other time. Heydro Martinez,
who I got started in television at Turner in twenty thirteen,
won an Emmy in twenty twenty as a producer of
MLB Tonight, not as an analyst, because you couldn't give
an Emmy to an analyst, even if he was the
best thing on MLB Tonight, if he was. No Emmy's
(36:59):
for those lousy talent. Didn't they get enough honors as
it is, We're given out five of them and money.
Don't they get all of money? And you know what,
that's fine too. From my first day in television August third,
nineteen eighty one, somewhere around one two pm, the fourth
or fifth hour of my television career, I thought, and
I think I said it aloud to the producer, that
(37:20):
I did not understand why anybody would work in television
if they were not on the air. If the job
fills the yawning maw of your insatiable ego, you know,
like it does mine, that's great, makes sense. Being on
TV has given purpose to the lives of lots of
us who would otherwise have spent our entire lives just
(37:42):
standing in front of a mirror, talking to ourselves, maybe
holding a microphone as we did so, a microphone that
was not plugged into anything. But there are only two
things that ever bring any attention to these Sports Emmy
Awards and the News Emmys and the Entertainment Emmys. How
many awards go to each network? And who won those
(38:05):
five little awards for best Sports Personalities. Maybe once in
a while, an unlikely show will win for Best Studio Show,
and it will get a little attention on Twitter for
like three hours, But otherwise nobody writes up those three
hundred and sixty five different trophies given out to NBC's
twenty twenty two Olympic non on air staff. And I
(38:28):
think there is a little hypocrisy here because the on
air people are used for publicity such as it is,
while there was this horrible fear that they might win
too many awards for just one show, or that adding
them to the list of the real nominees would make
the lists too long. I mean, three hundred and sixty
five Olympic Emmy Award winners is just right, but three
(38:50):
hundred and eighty five would have been a nightmarish embarrassment. Anyway. Finally,
to the Athletic report on how ESPN gained the system
until the rule about quote talent unquote was changed for
leave twenty twenty three. I'll quote a part of the
Athletic story. The Emmy administrators quote uncovered a scheme that
(39:12):
the network used to acquire more than thirty of the
coveted statuettes for on air talent ineligible to receive them
since at least twenty ten. ESPN inserted fake names in
Emmy entries, then took the awards won by some of
these imaginary individuals, had them re engraved, and gave them
to on air personalities. Oohoo. Describing this as fraud and
(39:39):
as ill gotten Emmys, Katie Strang of the Athletics somehow
managed to sleuth out this clever, almost indecipherable series of
immoral substitutions. Quoting her again, names similar to the names
of on air personalities and with identical initials were listed,
all under the title of associate producers. Miss Strang gave
(40:02):
the fake names and then helpfully followed the fake names
with parentheses which contained the real names of those evil
talent who by fraud and deception and trickery and another
disregard for the sacred sanctity of the Emmy Awards took
possession of young, unsuspecting and vulnerable trophies that they did
(40:23):
not deserve. Quote Kirk Henry parenthesis, Kirk Herbstreet, Lee Clark parenthesis,
Lee Corso, Dirk Howard parenthesis, Desmond Howard and Tim Richard parentheses,
(40:43):
Tom Ronaldi, Stephen Ponder parentheses, Sam Ponder and Gene Wilson,
Gene Wojatowski, Chris Fulton, Chris Fowler, Tell Fowler, I can
hear him? And Shelley Saunders Shelley Smith. How did anyone
ever figure out these aliases reflective of evil masterminds at ESPN?
(41:07):
My god, did the athletic hire the World War Two
codebreakers from Bletchley Park? Who would have ever believed the
Dirk Howard and Desmond Howard were the same person? I
bet some of those crack MLB Tonight MLB Network producers
could have done that detective work. Producer Pedro Martinez perhaps,
(41:28):
or producer Jim Tomay or producer Bill Ripkin Cow's brother. Seriously,
don't those names seem a little too obvious? I mean,
if you're trying to trick somebody into thinking the award
is not for Sam Ponder? Why do you write, Steven Ponder?
(41:50):
Somebody observed on social media that these names sound like
the names in a sports video game when you can't
get the rights to the real players' names. Why is
the Kansas City quarterback named Patrick your Holmes. The Emmys
did not crack down on MLB network, as near as
I know anyway, It certainly wasn't mentioned in the athletic piece.
(42:12):
It did not crack down on MLB network listing all
of its on air guys as producers so they could
get trophies. Doesn't it seem plausible that the use of
the phony names and phony is doing a lot of
work in this sentence, the use of the barely phony
names was the Emmy committee looking the other way as
ESPN tried to get a couple of trophies for its
(42:33):
reporters and anchors. I mean thirty over thirteen years, that's
not a lot. The problem here is somebody at the
Emme's found out called ESPN on it. ESPN made those
on air people give the trophies back. And there is,
at least in the Athletics article, the implication that maybe
(42:53):
a couple of producers were fired by ESPN for doing this.
It's madness. And there are two other serious components to this,
and obviously one of them is going to be about me.
I have been nominated for like fifteen Emmys over the years,
twenty twenty five, local Sports Network, Sports Network News, I
(43:16):
have never won. I am the Susan Lucci of Sports
and News Emmys. Actually that is a bad comp Susan
Lucci finally won an Emmy in nineteen ninety nine. Me
I am oh since nineteen eighty one. Now, there are
a lot of reasons for this, none of which really matters,
(43:37):
but the primary of which is roll of the dice.
I got nominated against Bob Costas twice in three years
in the nineties, and who's going to win that battle?
He would he did. Then he came over sheepishly and
he apologized why the guys who are only on once
a week like me are pitted against the guys who
are on every night like you. I can't understand if
(43:59):
Bob had not been a great friend of mine before that.
He sealed it with that remark. On the other hand,
there was a lot of corruption in the Local Emmys.
They are judged by panels in other cities, or at
least they were when I was in local news, and
in early nineteen eighty eight, apparently the news director of
the NBC affiliated station in Toledo, Ohio found out that
(44:22):
any voters in Toledo would be voting on that year's
awards for Los Angeles. So somebody thought, let's game this system.
The award submitted by KNBC in Los Angeles for Best
Sports Reporting for nineteen eighty eight was about Morgana, the
Kissing Bandit, the buxom dancer who used to run onto
(44:44):
the field during baseball games and kiss the players, and
she lived in Toledo, Ohio. So sure enough, that year,
the guy at CANBC in Los Angeles beat me out
for Best Local TV Sports Reporting in Los Angeles because
he had submitted a report consisting entire of Benny Hill's
(45:06):
style sight gags in which Morgana, the Kissing Bandit of Toledo,
Ohio chased him around. All I had in my lousy
submission was the day I exclusively broke the story that
the Los Angeles Kings were trading five players and fifteen
million dollars to Edmonton for Wayne Gretzky. Great report, loser,
(45:29):
I know, what kind of reporting is that compared to
MORGANA The Kissing Bandit So anyway, when they gave him
that award, my girlfriend and my agent and I stood
up and left. But I'm not a bad loser, just
a vengeful one one year I was really pissed about
(45:50):
not getting an Emmy. In nineteen ninety nine and two thousand,
in addition to five nights a week on the Fox
Cable version of Sports Center, I also hosted the pregame
and postgame shows wrapping around the Fox Network Baseball game
of the week. These were, to say, the least arduous
days six am to six pm on a Saturday, invariably
(46:12):
a beautiful day in southern California, And it was made
doubly arduous by my analyst, Steve Lyons, as sleazy and
as disagreeable man as anybody with whom I have ever worked.
Steve Lyons made homophobic jokes on the air. He criticized
a Jewish player for not playing on Yam Kipper. He
(46:35):
implied a Latino manager had stolen his wallet. Later, his
career ended after a domestic battery charge. And when he
wasn't doing all that, Lions Mastered and Specialized in one
other thing complaining. I mean, the makeup artist on our
show once thanked me for never complaining, and I said,
(46:58):
but I complain all the time, and she said, not
even close anyway. Two years of this. The first year,
nineteen ninety nine, the winner for the Emmy for Best
Live Studio Sports Show was not SportsCenter, was not the
NFL Today on CBS. It was Fox MLB pregame me
(47:19):
and Lions. He did not get an Emmy. I did
not get an Emmy. The producers got emmys. To their credit.
The people at Fox said they were going to try
to get me one, and they did not succeed. It
was against the rules, and we had not thought of
the little bit of a dec here and putting me
in as an associate producer under the name Teeth Alderman.
(47:42):
The next year, two thousand, the winner for the Emmy
for the Best Studio Analyst was Steve Lyons. He got
an Emmy. My boss on the show said, not only
should I have gotten his Emmy, but quote, you should
have gotten a second one for carrying that buffoon on
your back every week. But personal whining aside. I mean, honestly,
(48:05):
what would happen if I won an Emmy now for
some reason. I mean, you think anybody would ever remember that.
If I am remembered, it'll be for not ever winning
an Emmy. I keep coming back to this idea, finally
corrected in twenty twenty two, that the awards are for
the producers and not those whiny free madonnas the talent.
(48:26):
When I was twenty nine, I moved from one LA
TV station to another. In fact, it was just a
couple of weeks after that Gretzky story that lost out
to MORGANA the Kissing Bandit. The news station was KCBS,
and I already knew everybody there because for three years
I had been popping by their station every day to
do afternoon drive sportscasts on their all news radio station,
(48:47):
and I had gotten to know and delight in knowing
the company of one of my fellow K and X
and soon to be KCBS sportscasters, Gil Stratton. Gil had
been the first sports guy on the local news in
LA in nineteen fifty four, and he did the by
play for the Rams games on the CBS network, and
(49:07):
they wanted him to move to New York to be
the face of CBS Sports are you kidding? Gil told them,
I'm from New York. Why would I leave LA to
move back to New York? In LA, Gil was the
star until he retired to Hawaii to run his own
radio station about nineteen seventy six. It didn't go well,
(49:29):
And now again we're in nineteen eighty eight. He was
back in LA, but at the bottom of the LA
Sports totem pole Saturday mornings on radio. He was the backups,
backup on television. And Gil did not care. Beats a
real job, he used to tell me with a smile. Plus,
I make more now in this building than I did
fifteen years ago, even adjusted for inflation. Anyway, if the
(49:55):
name Gil Stratton seems vaguely familiar to you, or maybe
more than vaguely, it was because he was also an actor.
I hope you have seen the movie Stalog seventeen, one
of the all time classics about prisoners in a World
War Two military prison camp in Germany. If you haven't
seen it, turn off the podcast, go watch the movie,
then come back to me. Stalag seventeen William Holden is
(50:17):
the star. His right hand man is Gil Stratton. Gil
was also in the Wild One with Marlon Brando and
in Girl Crazy with Judy Garland, in about two dozen
TV series, and he spent a year as a lead
in a Broadway musical. The day before I was to
join Channel two as sports director and nominally as Gill's boss,
(50:38):
Gil sat me down in the lunch room and said
he wanted to warn me about something you need to know.
He said that the executives here are the biggest bunch
of prima donnas I have ever seen. The general manager
sent me on an assignment for the station, and they
had gotten everything wrong. Wrong city, wrong building, wrong day,
(51:00):
wrong person to interview. When I got back and told
him I had managed to get him a spite all
the screw ups, but that was going to be it,
he burst into tears. Gil laughed, and while I'm at it,
you're young enough. Maybe you still believe that we are
the prima donnas. Take it from me. I've been doing
(51:22):
this and Hollywood and Broadway for forty seven years. The
producers and the studio executives and the TV executives have
created this fiction that we are all impossibly difficult to
work with, and we are all ego, and it's them.
They are the prima donnas. Listen, I rode motorcycles, Gil said,
(51:43):
with Brando, I chased girls with Holden. I kissed Judy
Garland flush on the lips. And they were all supposed
to be prima donnas. And none of them, not even
Judy Garland on her worst day, was as much of
a prima donna as the blasted general manager of this
television station. So needless to say, there is an existential
(52:05):
dispute here. We get the money and the fame, or
what's left of the money and the fame now that
television is dying in exchange for which we get all
the potshots. And the athletic piece about the fake names,
and I left out Eric Andrews, which apparently was code
for Aaron Andrews. They changed one letter genius. I mean,
(52:27):
as unsolvable as the sphinx. Who would ever know that
Eric Andrews was supposed to be Aaron Andrews. The athletic
piece about the fake name contained one anonymous pot shot
that really underscored the everlasting lie that Gil Stratton told
me about so many years ago. Quote. When asked why
(52:48):
people at the network would scheme to secure trophies for
on air talent, one person involved in the ESPN Emmy
submission process in recent years said quote, you have to
remember that those personalities are so important and they have egos.
(53:09):
Tell me again, who submitted a list of three hundred
and sixty five NBC producers and directors and stage managers
for an Emmy for one Olympics. Was it Judy Garland
on her worst day? Or was it an off air
television executive. Spoiler alert, It wasn't Judy Garland. I've done
(53:43):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip s Chanelle arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
based and drums, and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Ulderman
(54:05):
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today is my friend Larry David, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this, the
two hundred and ninety fifth day until the twenty twenty
four US presidential election, and the one thousandth one and
(54:29):
six days since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of this nation. Use the Fourteenth Amendment,
the Insurrection Act, and the justice system to stop him
from doing it again while we still can. The next
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants and
the voice permits. And it was pretty good today till
(54:50):
whenever I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(55:11):
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. Trump
won handily in Iowa last night looks like around fifty percent,
(00:26):
Hailey around twenty percent, But the real headline is he
also used Iowa to remind us that, if returned to power,
he has no intention of giving it up when his
term would expire in twenty twenty nine. First, the win
as metaphor. He celebrated and boasted in Clive, Iowa, while
(00:47):
the future cried in pain. And we did a job late. Frankly,
nobody has done a long long We didn't have terrorists,
we didn't have people polling into it. That baby is
us all now about Trump's implication that he would stay
four years and beyond, which barely earned a PostScript in
(01:08):
the media's interminable self congratulatory surface skim from the Caucuses
last night and Sunday, because first, the horror of the
thing is more than your average political reporter can accept,
because that person still lives in the world of He's
not going to eat my face. And secondly, because of
what is either Trump's mental deficiency or his greatest skill,
(01:32):
he phrased this thing so vaguely that his remarks at
Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa were plausibly deniable except for
one small detail. I made the commitment. Then we kept
you first in the nation as long as I have
anything to say about it, and that we have a
good chance of saying for four years, we'll have a
(01:53):
lot to say about it. Four years and beyond four
years and beyond in power, four years and beyond in
influencing whether Iowa goes first in the GOP primary, Mary
something else. It is that sleight of hand of ambiguity,
the Trump loophole, and we know exactly where on Trump
(02:13):
the loophole is. Trump is an artist in ambiguity. But
here at least the ambiguity is irrelevant. Whatever he said
in Indianola, he means four years and beyond in power.
Because remember, after Bill Barr whitewashed the Muller Report for him,
he floated the idea that two years should be added
(02:34):
to his term and the twenty twenty election be postponed
because he had been thwarted, And when that did not fly,
he said that the election could go ahead as scheduled
in twenty twenty, but his first term should not count
against the two term limit because he'd been hoaxed. Since
he lost in twenty twenty, he has repeatedly said the
(02:54):
twenty twenty four election should be held earlier because the
last one was so unfair to him, and we aren't
even two weeks out from one. One of his lawyers
bluntly stated that so what if he'd been disqualified under
the insurrection clause of the fourteenth Amendment? He should still
be president because the people said so. It should be
(03:17):
the entire nation who determines who they want for president,
whether they're guilty of insurrection or not. It's up to
the people. That was Christina Bob on the third of
this month. And if you put all of it together,
it is Trump saying not just the fourteenth Amendment does
not apply to him, but the twenty second Amendment limiting
a president to two terms also doesn't apply to him.
(03:39):
And Article two of the Constitution scheduling a presidential election
every four years, also doesn't apply to him. And he's
not just declaring himself above those laws, but he's signaling
all of it clearly to his cult and yet fuzzing
it up just enough that he doesn't get arrested. Moreover,
(04:00):
it is clearer now than it has ever been, even
when he talked about terminating the entire Constitution, that if
returned to power, Trump will not again make what he
now clearly views as the biggest mistake of his presidency,
which was leaving office. He will be what he thinks
is a dictator for only one day. He will be
(04:23):
what the rest of the world thinks is a dictator
until he dies. To get him out of there, we
will have to go in and get him. This cannot
be hammered home too often. This cannot be campaigned on
too often. This cannot be the entirety of a Biden
ad or speech too often. This has to be thrown
(04:47):
out there every day with simmering rage, so often and
so obviously and so angrily that even the New York
Times notices it. Trump's strategy is to manipulate the laws,
and manipulate the Constitution, and manipulate the courts, and regain
office and stay there, and then eliminate all the legal
(05:11):
means of removing him, and to enforce his will with
violence dressed up as law and order and democracies. Strategy
in return, is, to paraphrase the ex Republican Congressman Peter Meyer,
to wait for Trump to die. Sure that outcome is satisfying.
(05:31):
Sure some of his supporter's whistling past graveyards is satisfying,
like the Maga idiot who boasted yesterday about how manly
and strong Trump looked carrying eight pizza boxes all by himself.
And sure it's satisfying that the answer to the question
you know how old he looks is he looks two
(05:53):
hundred and six. And sure, some of his blunders and
some of his physical movements, and of course the inevitability
of the actuarial tables all suggest there might be some
real change in the odds here. Waiting for him to die, nevertheless,
ain't a strategy. He has visions of firing every federal
(06:15):
official who is not personally loyal to him. He wants
to immunize all cops everywhere from consequences for killing Americans.
He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, maybe on day one,
and he wants to use the military to slaughter his opponents.
We have visions of really big protests and a strongly
(06:39):
worded letter to the editor that Jeff Bezos doesn't publish. Oh,
and he is still stochastically terrorizing the justices of the
Supreme Court about the cases about his eligibility that is
coming before them Simpson College, Sunday. We're going to make
those decisions very soon, and I hope they do the
(07:02):
right thing for the country. And if the threat against
them and with what can Trump actually threaten a Supreme
Court justice who he appointed for life, well, obviously the
Trump threat is to end that life if the threat
against him is not disturbing enough. Trump long ago entered
the pre messianic phase of all this, in which the
idea that others should willingly die so he can live
(07:26):
becomes something he can say aloud. Again, his actual skill
is ambiguity. This demand that Iowa caucus goers go despite
blizzards and hypothermia and death could be dismissed as hyperbole,
as humor, accept listen to it carefully. Trump seems to
(07:46):
have stopped trying to sell the ambiguous option that this
is quote humor. You must go caucus tomorrow for in
the first step. We're at a first step. We're gonna
do it. We're going to do a big and gun
the young You can't sit home if he's sick as
a dog is a even if didn't pass away, it's
(08:08):
worth it ha ha, he means it. One of the
political science fiction outcomes long since postulated by those of
us wondering what the surprise twist ending to this nightmare
timeline could be involves Trump finally going too far, even
(08:31):
for the Republicans, even for the fascists, even for the
white supremacists, even for the most deranged of his cultists.
Is there such a thing as Trump going too far?
If he went full Jim Jones, if he did to
them literally what he did to that idiot vivek Ramaswami figuratively. Here,
let's both drink the kool aid you first, Oh, sorry,
(08:55):
I spilled mine. If he did that, would that stop them?
Would the full Colligula stop him? You know where he
appoints a horse to a key political position and then
declares himself a living God. Would that turn the cult
off of him? Probably not now if he were to
(09:18):
declare himself bigger than God, and if he said something
like I will instruct God, or I will pray for God.
We will pray for God, and we will be with
God as we are one movement, one people, one family,
and one glorious nation under God. Again, Trump in Iowa
(09:44):
and by the way Trump uses the word God, the
way that one character in The Mean Girl's Movie use
the word fetch. He has no idea what God is
or is supposed to me. It's like dogs. He has
no idea what dogs are, or his insistence that you
have to produce id to buy groceries. If you do
(10:08):
not view the other beings around you as actual humans,
if you see the world as entirely as the type
of furniture that talks and the other type of furniture
that doesn't talk, sooner or later you will say something
so remarkably offensive to your base that your base will
destroy you. Of course, sadly, he might not do that
(10:31):
until twenty thirty one, in year three of his seventeenth
different invoking of the Insurrection Act, under which he canceled
the twenty twenty eight election and ringed the White House
with the US military, or ringed by people supplied by
the guy who just gave Trump his latest celebrity endorsement,
the confessed mob hitman Sammy the Boll Gravano, who, when
(10:54):
he flipped against the Genovese crime family, testified that the
Genovizes controlled several New York building unions and a company
called HRH Construction, And when anti mob prosecutors finally brought
HRH Construction down, it was because of corruption involving Hrh's
building of Trump Tower and Trump's Wollman Rink in Central Park.
(11:19):
And HRH was one of Donald Trump's favorite builders and
one of Fred Trump's favorite builders. And golly gosh, if
this hadn't dawned on you, and if it wasn't already
bad enough, to some degree great or small, Trump is
also mobbed up. The other news out of Iowa last
(11:41):
night is that the Nicky Haley surge is not about
the Republican nomination. It is about a third party bid.
Haley has now been endorsed by Larry Hogan, the ex
Maryland governor x head of the No Labels Trump stalking
Horse outfit, and while he has positioned his support relative
to the Republican nomination, it is obvious she will not
(12:04):
get it on less Trump is literally removed by the
Fourteenth Amendment or other circumstances. And in endorsing her, Hogan
said that though he had just left that group, quote,
my position on no Labels has not changed, And now
suddenly we are looking at two Trump allied stalking horses
running in order to dirty up President Biden and the
(12:25):
supposedly Saine Republicans being co opted to destroy democracy, because
if you haven't noticed, the term sane Republicans is an
oxymoron today, as it was an oxymoron in two thousand
and nineteen eighty and nineteen sixty four, if you had
any remaining doubts about that or hopes about that. Yesterday,
(12:45):
Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who endorsed DeSantis and whom
Trump then viciously attacked, said of course she would support
Trump as the nominee. Ramaswami, who promised to pardon Trump,
who Trump then attacked anyway, said of course he'd support Trump.
Governor Sanou Knew of New Hampshire, who in yourst Haley,
who hasn't even lost next week's primary in New Hampshire yet,
(13:09):
whom Trump attacked yesterday, stead of course heats support Trump
as the nominee, and Haley, as she still is trying
not to lose to Trump in New Hampshire next Tuesday.
Haley was careful not to endorse Trump yesterday, careful not
to say she wouldn't run against Trump, But yesterday she did,
of course, say she would support Trump over Biden. It's
(13:32):
a cult, and the reward in the cult for selling
your soul is power of some kind. How do they
sleep at night? The one question I get more than
any other is how do they sleep at night? The
answer is very, very easily. The demographics of this nation
were inevitable for their party, and they meant extinction. Instead,
(13:54):
Trump has given them what he gives their cult voters
as well, power and more importantly, power to be rewarded
for being terrible people. Then, speaking of terrible people, Dean Phillips,
who is putting him in the most positive light possible?
Who is the dog in the bowler hat? In the
(14:15):
this is Fine fire meme? Dean Phillips held a Twitter
x Space's conversation with Elon Musk and the Harvard ignored me,
So I'm going to burn it down, guy Bill Ackman.
And in this Phillips mused about giving the two of
them spots in his cabinet. I'm Elon Musk Secretary of Drugs.
(14:41):
He thought this because apparently it's important to mister Phillips
to increase the chance that he will actually get literally
zero votes in the Democratic piremeries, permit me to depress
you just a little bit more before I offer the
one glimmer of good news, and then a little comic relief,
provided as usual by the remarkably stupid pornographer Marjorie Taylor Green.
(15:06):
Here's the depressing part from a new CBS News you
gov poll. Do you agree with Trump's statement that immigrants
illegally entering this country are quote poisoning the blood of
the nation. Republican primary voters eighty one percent agree, All
voters forty seven percent degree, which means the number of
(15:27):
Independents and Democrats who go along with baby Hitler here
is somewhere around seven percent. It's hard to pin the
number down extrapolating from just the final score, but whatever is,
it's seven percent too many. And here is another nightmare
from the same pole, which is a bigger concern over
(15:48):
the next few years, the US having a functioning democracy
or the US having a strong economy. Republicans are happy
to screw democracy for the sake of cash, by sixty
five percent to thirty five percent. Democrats still on team
Democrats see by sixty four percent to thirty six percent.
And no, it's not either or the question was not phrased.
(16:11):
You can have either a functioning democracy or a strong economy,
which do you pick. Maybe it should be phrased like
that next time, But that thirty six percent number among
Democrats who prioritize the economy over the functioning democracy is
still mortifying. The glimmer of good news from two other polls,
(16:36):
there is the possibility that if and when Trump nails
down the Republican nomination, the Biden Trump race will suddenly
tilt strongly towards Joe Biden. CNN had a story, the
importance of which flew right over the head of every
TV political pundit and over the head of CNN's own reporters,
quoting sources with access to Biden internal polling and research
(17:00):
that may explain what a lot of us have seen
as well. Just visualize that dog in the blazing room.
This is fine meme again. Biden campaign data indicates that
among undecided voters, three out of four of them do
not seem to believe that the Republican nominee will be Trump.
(17:23):
CNN quotes one senior Biden official as saying, you can't
conceive of how tuned out these folks are. Try me anyway.
Another quote, apparently from a different Biden campaign official, the
realization will soon come quote, oh shit, it is an
election between that guy and that guy. Unquote. Three out
(17:49):
of four undecideds are politically illiterate and or in Trump denial. Impossible, impossible.
The Morris Berman book The Twilight of American Culture includes this.
I'm quoting a survey taken in October nineteen ninety six
revealed that one in ten voters did not know who
(18:11):
the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. That was
nineteen ninety six, less than one month before the nineteen
ninety six election, by which point the Democratic nominee, if
you've forgotten, had been president for three years and nine months. Now.
This is a guess. I'm going way out on a
limb here, no empirical evidence, but even with the invention
(18:33):
of social media, I'm gonna guess that voter imbecility has
not improved since nineteen ninety six. So when a UGOV
poll from a week ago today had it Biden forty three,
Trump forty three, that's fourteen percent undecided or other, and
maybe one or two out of every ten of them
(18:56):
couldn't really place the names Biden and Trump, plus per
the Biden research, seven or eight out of every ten
of them still really didn't believe Trump will be on
the ballot. The other good news is a poll about
that exact issue on the ballot, Trump Nah. It is
(19:23):
the IPSOS ABC poll. It is specific. It is about
how the Supreme Court should handle Trump and the fourteenth
Amendment and the disqualifications in Colorado and Maine. And I
have to admit I am pleasantly surprised by this one.
While the option with the highest percentage supports the Court
keeping him on the ballot everywhere, thirty nine percent, the
(19:44):
other two options combined swamp that thirty percent think the
Supreme Court should throw him off the ballot everywhere. Throw
him off the ballot, not just in Colorado and Maine,
but in the other forty eight as well. Twenty six
percent more think the Court should let each state decide
for itself. That is fifty six to thirty nine in
(20:04):
in favor of at least state by state disqualification doesn't
mean much. If Trump's stochastic calls for his mob to
threaten to get the justices killed prevails with them, it
does mean something. I think if the Court bends to
those threats, and the fifty six percent could be mobilized
to say, okay, Supreme Court, and how do you plan
(20:27):
to enforce your ruling which a clear majority of Americans oppose?
I mean, if Trump's lawyer implies that a Supreme Court
ruling that he has disqualified could be overruled by a
tide of popular pro Trump opinion, if we're planned by
those rules, now, why can't we say that the Court
has been fatally compromised by corrupt Republican politicians and its
(20:49):
rulings on elections involving Republicans are therefore invalid and must
be ignored. By the way, the last time I suggested
something like this, in June twenty twenty two, Marco Rubio
sent me a strongly worded tweet saying, quote, and is
a federal offense to incite rebellion or insurrection against the
(21:10):
authority of the United States or the laws thereof, which
was and is hilarious given Rubio's membership in the party
that incited rebellion and insurrection against the authority of the
United States and the laws thereof. On January sixth, twenty
twenty one, also Rubio said he'd never support Trump, and
(21:32):
Sunday at three twenty six pm Eastern, Rubio announced he
was supporting Trump. Rubio is as ever hilariously, tone deafly, dishonest,
and immoral. But he is not the comic relief I
promised you. This is Listen carefully, it's Barney Rubbles body double.
(21:52):
The fact that Joe Biden would call his dad on
the phone and his business meetings and deals shows that
he was selling. Marge says, Joe Biden is in phone
contact with his father, Joe Biden. Joe Biden's father died
in two thousand and two. Joe Biden is in phone
contact with him. Congresswoman huge if true. Also, Marge, if
(22:19):
President Biden can talk to the dead by phone, you'd
better be nicer to him. Also of interest here, the
Baltimore Sun newspaper has just been sold to a fascist
and a former columnist, a former columnist who took bribes
(22:40):
from the Bush administration for favorable coverage of the Bush administration.
And there's another ESPN scandal about what one reporter actually
called ill gotten Emmy Awards. It's actually more hilarious than scandalous,
and we'll talk about it. That's next. This is an
(23:02):
all new edition of Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Olberman host. Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions, dateline Smyrna Georgia. Barry Loudermilk, who
(23:29):
represents the White Flight suburbs of Atlanta, is back in
the news. He's what do they call it, weaponizing the
oversight subcommittee he chairs in the House. Here comes Trump
cult revenge. Louder Milk, your friendly pre January sixth tour
Guide says that because whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson fired her, Trump
(23:50):
supplied stooge lawyer Stephan Pasentino, she had waived attorney client privilege,
so he can subpoena her and subpoena him, and certainly
he the attorney, has to testify about what he was
told by her in confidence. Representative louder Milk is one
of the dumber fascists. Of course, Pasentino barely avoided getting disbarred.
(24:14):
Were trying to convince Hutchinson to lie to the January
sixth committee and not tell them all she knew, So
he might even have to invoke the Fifth Amendment if
he does testify to protect himself. And of course, if
louder Milk actually pursues the camera, somebody, somebody may finally
dig into why he gave a tour of the Capitol,
including of the Congressional escape tunnels, on January fifth, even
(24:36):
though the Capitol was closed due to COVID, and why
when the House Committee asked him to testify about the tour,
he replied by denying he ever gave reconnaissance tours, even
though nobody on the committee had mentioned the word reconnaissance.
(25:05):
Thank you, Nancy Faust, Dateline Baltimore. I want to know
why the fascists are winning things like this. The chairman
of the far right propagandist chain of TV stations, Sinclair
David Smith, last night announced he had bought the legendary
newspaper of The Baltimore Sun from the greedy but largely
(25:26):
a politically greedy Alden Capital. Smith's first statement upon becoming
owner of the Baltimore Sun was to criticize the quote
mainstream media. The Sun reported through gritted teeth that Sinclair
didn't buy the paper. Smith did personally, Well, that's okay. Then,
of course, one of his minority investors is Armstrong Williams,
(25:48):
a one time conservative commentator who, if you have forgotten
this story, took two hundred and forty one thousand dollars
in payments from the presidential administration of George W. Bush
for favorable coverage of the presidential administration of George W.
Bush in our strong Williams's columns, A fascist and a
whore have bought the Baltimore Sun and the number of
(26:12):
liberal billionaires willing to underwrite newspapers or other news outlets
not to make money, but to make public opinion. That
list consists of Jeff Bezos, remember when he was a liberal?
Anybody else? No democracy dies in cheapness. Still ahead on
(26:59):
this all new edition of Countdown. Did you see the
latest on the ESPN scandal? That ESPN scandal with the
quarterback defaming Jimmy Kimmel and the other guy defaming the executives.
The other one about ESPN creating fake names to get
Emmy Award trophies for on air people who were denied
(27:20):
eligibility for them. And it was impossible to unscramble the
pseudonyms they used, like they used Eric Andrews for Aaron Andrews.
Who could ever have figured that out. It's a silly story,
but it underscore is a serious point. Nobody should feel
sorry for the stars, but the producers and executives, and
especially the Emmy Committee members like to tell you what
(27:43):
prima donnas the talent are in order to cover up
the fact that their own egos are just as big
or bigger. This isn't about the real Emmys from last night,
but it's still a story I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the
Miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world, the Bronze Worse
(28:07):
Billo is back. Ah. I thought he was dead Bill O'Reilly,
And for you youngsters, he was the guy who discovered
Jesse Waters for Fox. Now that it's years since he
was on TV, it's hard to remember his infinite capacity
to know everything, have his claims proved wrong, and then
to insist he never made those claims, that he'd made
(28:29):
the exact opposite ones. If it helps to understand Bill O'Reilly,
he and Trump used to sit together at the Yankee Games,
and the seats were free for them anyway. When Ron
DeSantis began the book banning in Florida in twenty two.
Billow was, of course an enthusiastic supporter, but now is
mentioned here. Last week, the Escambia County School District in
(28:49):
the Florida Panhandle has taken the new book banning law
literally and removed all books quote alleged to contain pornography
or obscene depictions of sexual conduct, like you know news
accounts of the chairman of the Florida Republic parties Love
Life any Who. Scambia County banned more than a thousand books,
(29:10):
including Killing Jesus A History by Bill O'Reilly and Killing
Reagan by Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'relly's response, this will not stand.
The show is gone, the pomposity is undamaged, the hypocrisy
is intact. Bravo, sir, bravo. Honestly, what do I care?
(29:33):
I'm out of Fox to give runner up worse. David
Hookstead of the Truly Vile website outkicked the coverage when
Saturday's NFL playoff game at Buffalo was postponed for two
days until yesterday because of a blizzard. Hookstead, like many
sports guys who have become untethered from the real world
lashed out in anger that he would have to wait
(29:54):
for the game. On social media, he wrote, quote did
we cancel D Day because of a little rough weather?
No play the damn game? This nitwit Hookstead was immediately
community noted with simple eloquence quote D Day was delayed
by a day because of the weather, but the winner
the worst speaking of the weather. Laura Lumer the trumpest lunatic.
(30:19):
It's hard to say which adjective applies more to her.
She's also upset about the weather. Quote. Is the Deep
State activating HARP to disrupt the Iowa Caucus? We all
know Nicki Haley has a lot of friends in the
defense industry military industrial complex. Is the Deep State using
HARP to rig the Iowa Caucus looks like weather manipulation
to me. HARP is a program HAARP at the University
(30:46):
of Alaska. It was formerly at the Department of Defense.
It studies the upper part of the atmosphere, the ionosphere,
and naturally. Because it's fairly complicated and you probably have
to not be a moron like Laura Lumer to understand
the premise of it, she and the other paranoids think
it is used to con control the weather. Two things
(31:08):
about people like her always strike me. First, this is
akin to what I said earlier about Marge Green. If
they do believe that Joe Biden has the controls in
his hands to manipulate the weather, why do they think
he would keep this quiet rather than just say you
will do what I say, or you will get eight
feet of snow tomorrow? Or more positively, why wouldn't he
(31:31):
send rainstorms to put out wildfires and then take all
the credit. But secondly, and more importantly, I'm seeing a
slight inconsistency here. Laura Lumer and the other clowns don't
believe in climate change or that humans can impact the climate,
even with centuries of pollution. But they do believe that
the US government can control the weather and manipulate it
(31:54):
on a city by city basis on a few hours notice.
In other words, they're morons. Laura, Climate change is real,
Climate manipulation is real. Lumer. Two days, worst person in
the world, Mine and men and rain frog to the
(32:37):
number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell. The website
The Athletic has reported that my old friends at ESPN
had for years been gaming the system at the Sports
Emmy Awards, bribing voters, now trying to push the voting
(32:58):
by nominating stories about the judges or about the places
they were from. Now otherwise tampering with the process of
who got nominated or who won, or anything like that. No,
their crime was adding to the list of nominees fictional names,
so that if their shows won, they would be able
(33:19):
to get extra trophies that could be re engraved and
given to people who were not eligible to win those
Emmy Awards. Those people were the hosts and reporters of
the show. Rather incredibly, until the last few years, if
a network submitted one of its shows for Best Studio
Sportscast or one of several other categories, virtually everybody who
(33:42):
worked on the show was eligible. NBC won the Emmy
for the Outstanding Live Sports Special in twenty twenty two,
and NBC in its submission listed all the executives, the producers,
the directors, the associate producers, everybody down to the stage managers,
literally three hundred and sixty five different sportspeople, and if
(34:07):
they shelled out the money or if the network did
it for them, they all got an actual Emmy award,
not one anchor or reporter among them. Now, obviously this
concerns me far more than it does you. And don't
get me wrong, I do not begrudge any of those
three hundred and sixty five winners their Emmys, including the
(34:28):
nine stage managers. And it looks like I worked with
like three of them and they were great. Counting them up,
I saw literally dozens of names of friends and former colleagues,
and they were all great. But the National Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences did not permit adding even just
the lead anchors and reporters from the twenty twenty two
(34:49):
Olympics or any other nominated Best Show if they were
on the air. The official explanation for this curiosity was
they didn't want anybody quote double dipping getting an award
for Best Anchor, Best Reporter and getting another Emmy if
the show they were anchoring one best show. There are
(35:12):
just five different categories for people on the air in
the Sports Emmys. That's it. Three hundred and sixty five
Emmys were given out to the producers and stage managers
from the Olympics, and five were given out to all
the people on the air at the Olympics on the
NBA broadcasts, football play by play, sportscenters, postgame shows, pardon
(35:33):
the interruptions, baseball, curling, darts, whatever. Now, practically speaking, that
is not literally true because of the ESPN dodge, which
I will grant is hilarious and which I'll get to
in a moment. But there was also the dodge used
by MLB Network and other operations over the years. In
twenty twenty, when it show MLB Tonight won the Emmy
(35:55):
for Best Daily Live Sports Series, MLB Network submitted the
name of sixty three different producers. Among them were Great
Big Am Singer, and that's a coincidence. There's also a
Greg Amsinger who was the primary anchor of MLB Tonight.
And then there's a producer named Bob Costas huh, and
(36:16):
another producer named Peter Gavins. And my friends Ron Darling
producer and ex Yankees manager, Joe Girardi producer and Harold
Reynolds producer who I've known for thirty three years, and
Baseball Hall of famers Maedro Martinez producer and Jim Tomy producer.
Why once nearly ran over with a golf cart in Arizona,
(36:36):
But I'll tell that story some other time. Heydro Martinez,
who I got started in television at Turner in twenty thirteen,
won an Emmy in twenty twenty as a producer of
MLB Tonight, not as an analyst, because you couldn't give
an Emmy to an analyst, even if he was the
best thing on MLB Tonight, if he was. No Emmy's
(36:59):
for those lousy talent. Didn't they get enough honors as
it is, We're given out five of them and money.
Don't they get all of money? And you know what,
that's fine too. From my first day in television August third,
nineteen eighty one, somewhere around one two pm, the fourth
or fifth hour of my television career, I thought, and
I think I said it aloud to the producer, that
(37:20):
I did not understand why anybody would work in television
if they were not on the air. If the job
fills the yawning maw of your insatiable ego, you know,
like it does mine, that's great, makes sense. Being on
TV has given purpose to the lives of lots of
us who would otherwise have spent our entire lives just
(37:42):
standing in front of a mirror, talking to ourselves, maybe
holding a microphone as we did so, a microphone that
was not plugged into anything. But there are only two
things that ever bring any attention to these Sports Emmy
Awards and the News Emmys and the Entertainment Emmys. How
many awards go to each network? And who won those
(38:05):
five little awards for best Sports Personalities. Maybe once in
a while, an unlikely show will win for Best Studio Show,
and it will get a little attention on Twitter for
like three hours, But otherwise nobody writes up those three
hundred and sixty five different trophies given out to NBC's
twenty twenty two Olympic non on air staff. And I
(38:28):
think there is a little hypocrisy here because the on
air people are used for publicity such as it is,
while there was this horrible fear that they might win
too many awards for just one show, or that adding
them to the list of the real nominees would make
the lists too long. I mean, three hundred and sixty
five Olympic Emmy Award winners is just right, but three
(38:50):
hundred and eighty five would have been a nightmarish embarrassment. Anyway. Finally,
to the Athletic report on how ESPN gained the system
until the rule about quote talent unquote was changed for
leave twenty twenty three. I'll quote a part of the
Athletic story. The Emmy administrators quote uncovered a scheme that
(39:12):
the network used to acquire more than thirty of the
coveted statuettes for on air talent ineligible to receive them
since at least twenty ten. ESPN inserted fake names in
Emmy entries, then took the awards won by some of
these imaginary individuals, had them re engraved, and gave them
to on air personalities. Oohoo. Describing this as fraud and
(39:39):
as ill gotten Emmys, Katie Strang of the Athletics somehow
managed to sleuth out this clever, almost indecipherable series of
immoral substitutions. Quoting her again, names similar to the names
of on air personalities and with identical initials were listed,
all under the title of associate producers. Miss Strang gave
(40:02):
the fake names and then helpfully followed the fake names
with parentheses which contained the real names of those evil
talent who by fraud and deception and trickery and another
disregard for the sacred sanctity of the Emmy Awards took
possession of young, unsuspecting and vulnerable trophies that they did
(40:23):
not deserve. Quote Kirk Henry parenthesis, Kirk Herbstreet, Lee Clark parenthesis,
Lee Corso, Dirk Howard parenthesis, Desmond Howard and Tim Richard parentheses,
(40:43):
Tom Ronaldi, Stephen Ponder parentheses, Sam Ponder and Gene Wilson,
Gene Wojatowski, Chris Fulton, Chris Fowler, Tell Fowler, I can
hear him? And Shelley Saunders Shelley Smith. How did anyone
ever figure out these aliases reflective of evil masterminds at ESPN?
(41:07):
My god, did the athletic hire the World War Two
codebreakers from Bletchley Park? Who would have ever believed the
Dirk Howard and Desmond Howard were the same person? I
bet some of those crack MLB Tonight MLB Network producers
could have done that detective work. Producer Pedro Martinez perhaps,
(41:28):
or producer Jim Tomay or producer Bill Ripkin Cow's brother. Seriously,
don't those names seem a little too obvious? I mean,
if you're trying to trick somebody into thinking the award
is not for Sam Ponder? Why do you write, Steven Ponder?
(41:50):
Somebody observed on social media that these names sound like
the names in a sports video game when you can't
get the rights to the real players' names. Why is
the Kansas City quarterback named Patrick your Holmes. The Emmys
did not crack down on MLB network, as near as
I know anyway, It certainly wasn't mentioned in the athletic piece.
(42:12):
It did not crack down on MLB network listing all
of its on air guys as producers so they could
get trophies. Doesn't it seem plausible that the use of
the phony names and phony is doing a lot of
work in this sentence, the use of the barely phony
names was the Emmy committee looking the other way as
ESPN tried to get a couple of trophies for its
(42:33):
reporters and anchors. I mean thirty over thirteen years, that's
not a lot. The problem here is somebody at the
Emme's found out called ESPN on it. ESPN made those
on air people give the trophies back. And there is,
at least in the Athletics article, the implication that maybe
(42:53):
a couple of producers were fired by ESPN for doing this.
It's madness. And there are two other serious components to this,
and obviously one of them is going to be about me.
I have been nominated for like fifteen Emmys over the years,
twenty twenty five, local Sports Network, Sports Network News, I
(43:16):
have never won. I am the Susan Lucci of Sports
and News Emmys. Actually that is a bad comp Susan
Lucci finally won an Emmy in nineteen ninety nine. Me
I am oh since nineteen eighty one. Now, there are
a lot of reasons for this, none of which really matters,
(43:37):
but the primary of which is roll of the dice.
I got nominated against Bob Costas twice in three years
in the nineties, and who's going to win that battle?
He would he did. Then he came over sheepishly and
he apologized why the guys who are only on once
a week like me are pitted against the guys who
are on every night like you. I can't understand if
(43:59):
Bob had not been a great friend of mine before that.
He sealed it with that remark. On the other hand,
there was a lot of corruption in the Local Emmys.
They are judged by panels in other cities, or at
least they were when I was in local news, and
in early nineteen eighty eight, apparently the news director of
the NBC affiliated station in Toledo, Ohio found out that
(44:22):
any voters in Toledo would be voting on that year's
awards for Los Angeles. So somebody thought, let's game this system.
The award submitted by KNBC in Los Angeles for Best
Sports Reporting for nineteen eighty eight was about Morgana, the
Kissing Bandit, the buxom dancer who used to run onto
(44:44):
the field during baseball games and kiss the players, and
she lived in Toledo, Ohio. So sure enough, that year,
the guy at CANBC in Los Angeles beat me out
for Best Local TV Sports Reporting in Los Angeles because
he had submitted a report consisting entire of Benny Hill's
(45:06):
style sight gags in which Morgana, the Kissing Bandit of Toledo,
Ohio chased him around. All I had in my lousy
submission was the day I exclusively broke the story that
the Los Angeles Kings were trading five players and fifteen
million dollars to Edmonton for Wayne Gretzky. Great report, loser,
(45:29):
I know, what kind of reporting is that compared to
MORGANA The Kissing Bandit So anyway, when they gave him
that award, my girlfriend and my agent and I stood
up and left. But I'm not a bad loser, just
a vengeful one one year I was really pissed about
(45:50):
not getting an Emmy. In nineteen ninety nine and two thousand,
in addition to five nights a week on the Fox
Cable version of Sports Center, I also hosted the pregame
and postgame shows wrapping around the Fox Network Baseball game
of the week. These were, to say, the least arduous
days six am to six pm on a Saturday, invariably
(46:12):
a beautiful day in southern California, And it was made
doubly arduous by my analyst, Steve Lyons, as sleazy and
as disagreeable man as anybody with whom I have ever worked.
Steve Lyons made homophobic jokes on the air. He criticized
a Jewish player for not playing on Yam Kipper. He
(46:35):
implied a Latino manager had stolen his wallet. Later, his
career ended after a domestic battery charge. And when he
wasn't doing all that, Lions Mastered and Specialized in one
other thing complaining. I mean, the makeup artist on our
show once thanked me for never complaining, and I said,
(46:58):
but I complain all the time, and she said, not
even close anyway. Two years of this. The first year,
nineteen ninety nine, the winner for the Emmy for Best
Live Studio Sports Show was not SportsCenter, was not the
NFL Today on CBS. It was Fox MLB pregame me
(47:19):
and Lions. He did not get an Emmy. I did
not get an Emmy. The producers got emmys. To their credit.
The people at Fox said they were going to try
to get me one, and they did not succeed. It
was against the rules, and we had not thought of
the little bit of a dec here and putting me
in as an associate producer under the name Teeth Alderman.
(47:42):
The next year, two thousand, the winner for the Emmy
for the Best Studio Analyst was Steve Lyons. He got
an Emmy. My boss on the show said, not only
should I have gotten his Emmy, but quote, you should
have gotten a second one for carrying that buffoon on
your back every week. But personal whining aside. I mean, honestly,
(48:05):
what would happen if I won an Emmy now for
some reason. I mean, you think anybody would ever remember that.
If I am remembered, it'll be for not ever winning
an Emmy. I keep coming back to this idea, finally
corrected in twenty twenty two, that the awards are for
the producers and not those whiny free madonnas the talent.
(48:26):
When I was twenty nine, I moved from one LA
TV station to another. In fact, it was just a
couple of weeks after that Gretzky story that lost out
to MORGANA the Kissing Bandit. The news station was KCBS,
and I already knew everybody there because for three years
I had been popping by their station every day to
do afternoon drive sportscasts on their all news radio station,
(48:47):
and I had gotten to know and delight in knowing
the company of one of my fellow K and X
and soon to be KCBS sportscasters, Gil Stratton. Gil had
been the first sports guy on the local news in
LA in nineteen fifty four, and he did the by
play for the Rams games on the CBS network, and
(49:07):
they wanted him to move to New York to be
the face of CBS Sports are you kidding? Gil told them,
I'm from New York. Why would I leave LA to
move back to New York? In LA, Gil was the
star until he retired to Hawaii to run his own
radio station about nineteen seventy six. It didn't go well,
(49:29):
And now again we're in nineteen eighty eight. He was
back in LA, but at the bottom of the LA
Sports totem pole Saturday mornings on radio. He was the backups,
backup on television. And Gil did not care. Beats a
real job, he used to tell me with a smile. Plus,
I make more now in this building than I did
fifteen years ago, even adjusted for inflation. Anyway, if the
(49:55):
name Gil Stratton seems vaguely familiar to you, or maybe
more than vaguely, it was because he was also an actor.
I hope you have seen the movie Stalog seventeen, one
of the all time classics about prisoners in a World
War Two military prison camp in Germany. If you haven't
seen it, turn off the podcast, go watch the movie,
then come back to me. Stalag seventeen William Holden is
(50:17):
the star. His right hand man is Gil Stratton. Gil
was also in the Wild One with Marlon Brando and
in Girl Crazy with Judy Garland, in about two dozen
TV series, and he spent a year as a lead
in a Broadway musical. The day before I was to
join Channel two as sports director and nominally as Gill's boss,
(50:38):
Gil sat me down in the lunch room and said
he wanted to warn me about something you need to know.
He said that the executives here are the biggest bunch
of prima donnas I have ever seen. The general manager
sent me on an assignment for the station, and they
had gotten everything wrong. Wrong city, wrong building, wrong day,
(51:00):
wrong person to interview. When I got back and told
him I had managed to get him a spite all
the screw ups, but that was going to be it,
he burst into tears. Gil laughed, and while I'm at it,
you're young enough. Maybe you still believe that we are
the prima donnas. Take it from me. I've been doing
(51:22):
this and Hollywood and Broadway for forty seven years. The
producers and the studio executives and the TV executives have
created this fiction that we are all impossibly difficult to
work with, and we are all ego, and it's them.
They are the prima donnas. Listen, I rode motorcycles, Gil said,
(51:43):
with Brando, I chased girls with Holden. I kissed Judy
Garland flush on the lips. And they were all supposed
to be prima donnas. And none of them, not even
Judy Garland on her worst day, was as much of
a prima donna as the blasted general manager of this
television station. So needless to say, there is an existential
(52:05):
dispute here. We get the money and the fame, or
what's left of the money and the fame now that
television is dying in exchange for which we get all
the potshots. And the athletic piece about the fake names,
and I left out Eric Andrews, which apparently was code
for Aaron Andrews. They changed one letter genius. I mean,
(52:27):
as unsolvable as the sphinx. Who would ever know that
Eric Andrews was supposed to be Aaron Andrews. The athletic
piece about the fake name contained one anonymous pot shot
that really underscored the everlasting lie that Gil Stratton told
me about so many years ago. Quote. When asked why
(52:48):
people at the network would scheme to secure trophies for
on air talent, one person involved in the ESPN Emmy
submission process in recent years said quote, you have to
remember that those personalities are so important and they have egos.
(53:09):
Tell me again, who submitted a list of three hundred
and sixty five NBC producers and directors and stage managers
for an Emmy for one Olympics. Was it Judy Garland
on her worst day? Or was it an off air
television executive. Spoiler alert, It wasn't Judy Garland. I've done
(53:43):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip s Chanelle arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
based and drums, and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Ulderman
(54:05):
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today is my friend Larry David, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this, the
two hundred and ninety fifth day until the twenty twenty
four US presidential election, and the one thousandth one and
(54:29):
six days since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of this nation. Use the Fourteenth Amendment,
the Insurrection Act, and the justice system to stop him
from doing it again while we still can. The next
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants and
the voice permits. And it was pretty good today till
(54:50):
whenever I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(55:11):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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