TRUMP SUING MURDOCH MEANS THE TRUMPSTEIN STORY WILL NEVER END - 7.21.25 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. We
have been burying the Epstein lead, or should I say

(00:28):
we have been burying the trump Stein lead. Trump has
sued Rupert Murdoch over the Jeffrey Epstein body letter story,
a comparatively trivial story. He has now sued him, officially
for twenty billion dollars. Rupert Murdoch. He has sued Rupert Murdoch,

(00:50):
the one man who has done more than anyone else
to enable Trump, to clear the path for Trump's dictatorship,
to destroy American democracy after destroying British democracy and Australian democracy,
and to ultimately presumably save Trump from being institutionalized by

(01:12):
his own family as his mind had grown softer and
softer and his business touch had grown worse and worse.
He's suing that guy, and he's suing him amid rumors
throughout the television and print news industries that Murdoch, especially
the Wall Street Journal, has more on Trump and Epstein

(01:37):
and trump Stein, and is vetting that more and shaping
it as we speak. He's suing what we used to
call the guy who owns all the ink genius. Genius
it tells you. He's putting Rupert Murdoch in a position
in which soon or late to survive, for Murdoch's News

(02:00):
Corp empire to survive, for his children to survive, Murdoch
or his heirs will have to destroy Trump. He is
making the Epstein story, the trump Stein story existential for
Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, who still programs Fox News,

(02:22):
who could take Fox News off the air tomorrow or
turn it against Trump tomorrow, or even if his own
family or board members tried to stop him, Rupert could
still throw all of Fox News and News Corp. And
the Wall Street Journal and The New York Post into chaos.

(02:44):
It could cost him seven hundred and eighty seven million
dollars just to settle this the way the Dominion Voting
System's lawsuit settlement did, and more importantly, a lot of
his remaining limited time on this Earth could cost Murdoch,
at minimum a money making franchise like the Tucker Carlson
Crazytown Hour. This is how Murdoch sees it. Trump suing Murdoch,

(03:12):
It's like Jesus suing John the Baptist. I like the
good publicity, and it guarantees that the Epstein story is
never ever going away. Jesus suing John the Baptist, Epstein's

(03:33):
story never going away, Epstein's story becoming the trump Stein story.
There's only one word for that, Thank you, Nancy Faust.
Trump's mental problems are really cresting at a truly unfortunate
time for him, because it is apparent he has forgotten

(03:57):
what happens in a lawsuit when you sue somebody. Quote.
I look forward to getting Grupert Murdoch to test it
find my lawsuit against him at his pile of garbage newspaper,
the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience. Exclamation point,
exclamation point, exclamation point. Trump seems to have forgotten that

(04:18):
in such a lawsuit he would also have to testify,
or at least give a deposition for days. There is
reason to suspect this lawsuit will go away at some point,
but not until after it has destroyed Trump. Also, his

(04:38):
lawyers apparently do not understand the English language from the
lawsuit Item sixteen. The article was published in the Wall
Street Journal as an exclusive. However, since publication, defendants have
widely disseminated it to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
It appears one of Trump's lawyers thinks the word exclusive

(05:00):
means it's a secret, or it's some kind of news
story that nobody is allowed to read or quote or mention.
Or just when you thought Amil Bovi and Alina Haba
were the bottom of the barrel, Oh, look another barrel

(05:23):
underneath that barrel. By the way, there is an Epstein
client list that also factors into this from the Hill,
written by Chris Truax, who used to be a campaign
official with John McCain. Oops, some people remember things. He writes. Quote,

(05:45):
there is a list of clients related to the billionaire
sex offenders underage trafficking charges, and its existence is a
matter of public record. We know that Pam Bondi's carefully
crafted memo claiming that there is no Epstein client list
the quotation marks are in the memo is also nonsense.
As an aside, that's Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General

(06:07):
who didn't prosecute Epstein. Back to Chris Truax in The Hill,
there might not have been a quote client list in
the FBI's Epstein files, but the FBI certainly has compiled
a list of clients when the FBI rated Epstein's New
York mansion. They seized a vast amount of material, and

(06:27):
a court memo filed on July eight, twenty nineteen, two
days after his arrest, the Department of Justice, outlined some
of the evidence they had seized. This includes stacks of
compact discs labeled young name plus name. In short, Epstein
kept a carefully curated library of videos showing various people

(06:50):
having sex with underage women. Contradiction in terms there, They're
not underage women, they're girls. Even if Epstein was not
actively blackmailing anyone, he sure seems to have had plenty
of insurance at the Bondy admits that Epstein harmed over
one thousand victims, but we also know that once a

(07:11):
part of Epstein's system, his victims were trafficked several times.
Virginia Jeffray, for example, described being sexually trafficked multiple times
over two years in New York, Palm Beach, the US,
Virgin Islands, and London. Let's say that each victim was involved,
on average in five incidents. Mister Truax writes, that's over
five thousand encounters. It's safe to assume this wasn't all
Epstein and with over one thousand victims to interview and

(07:34):
files of DVDs labeled with perpetrators' names. The FBI and
Pam Bondy know exactly who was involved. So there is
an Epstein client list, and Pam Bondy has it, and
her defense appears to be that it does not have
the words client list written on it in crayon by Epstein.

(07:57):
To add to this, ABC News reported quote, the only
newly released document in that phase one that was the
libs of TikTok DC DRAINO stupid loose leaf notebook folders.
Thing which received little public attention was a three page
catalog of evidence that appears to be an accounting of

(08:18):
evidence seized during the searches of Epstein's properties. The three
page index is a report generated by the FBI. According
to it, the remaining materials include forty computers and electronic devices,
twenty six storage drives, more than seventy CDs, and six
recording devices. The devices hold more than three hundred gigabytes
of data. According to the Department of Justice. The evidence

(08:43):
also includes approximately sixty pieces of physical evidence, including photographs,
travel logs, employee lists, more than seventeen thousand dollars in cash,
five massage tables, four busts of female body parts, a
pair of women's cowboy boots, and one stuffed dog. There

(09:05):
is an Epstein client list, and it's three hundred gigabytes
of data and seventy CDs and six recording devices and
forty computers. And in short, I have kept a record
of almost every broadcast I have done since the year
nineteen seventy five, and I'm often mocked for it. And

(09:27):
my record compiled over fifty years is about one to
one thousandth the size of the records that Jeffrey Epstein
kept of his own crimes. There's an Epstein client list.
Not only that, but there's an Epstein client list library.
The polling on this is extraordinary. The public does not

(09:51):
believe Donald Trump about Epstein. On Thursday, a Reuter's IPSOS
poll showed that his handling of this received approval by
seventeen percent of all Americans and only thirty five percent
of Republicans. The conclusion, and again this is last Thursday,

(10:13):
that the government is hiding information on Epstein's death was
up to sixty percent among all adults, fifty five percent
of Republicans the government is hiding Epstein's alleged client list.
Sixty nine percent said yes. Sixty two percent of Republicans
said yes. That was last week. CBSU Gov came out

(10:37):
with a new poll yesterday finding that seventy five percent
of Americans are now in disapproval of how the administration
is handling matters related to Epstein, and the percentage that
wants the Justice Department to release all the information it
has on the case, not just some grand jury testimony,
all of it eighty nine percent. So not only are

(11:00):
the polls terrible for Trump, but they have gotten exponentially
worse since last Thursday. And don't be distracted by the
tut tutting here from the Washington Post about how this
hasn't really showed up among MAGA. There's no indication so
far that this is the scandal that will sink Trump
any more than the Access Hollywood tape of twenty sixteen

(11:23):
or being found guilty in a criminal trial last year
over hush money payments to a porn star. What is
forgotten there is the context when the Access Hollywood tape dropped,
Trump was not president. When the Stormy Daniels trial played out,
Trump was not President, and neither Access Hollywood nor Stormy
Daniels was the wet dream conspiracy theory that keeps Trump's

(11:48):
space together. This story is never going away, and the
person doing the most to make sure it never goes
away is Trump. And he is now assured that the
second person on that list of who's making sure it

(12:08):
never goes away is Murdoch. He's doing everything he can
to keep it from going away, and not just by
suing Murdoch. Senator Dick Durbin, who woke up from his
one hundred years slumber, says BONDI was told to flag
Trump references in the files, in other words, find them

(12:29):
and get rid of them. You then pressured the FBI
to put approximately one thousand personnel in its Information Management
Division under the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act
on twenty four hour shifts to review approximately one hundred
thousand Epstein related records in order to produce more documents

(12:51):
than could be arbitrarily released on a short deadline. This effort,
which reportedly took place from March fourteenth through the end
of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New
York Field Office personnel. They literally pulled FBI agents off
the street, according to Durban's letter to Pam Bondy, to
get all the information that she now says doesn't exist.

(13:16):
And again, we're looking at something the size of the
New York Public Library that is all pertaining to Epstein
and all the people he knew, including Donald Trump. But
it doesn't exist. My office was told that these personnel
were instructed to flag any records in which President Trump

(13:37):
was mentioned. He asks, why we're personnel told to flag
records in which President Trump was mentioned? A Please list
all political appointees and senior DOJ officials involved in the
decision to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned.
B What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once

(13:57):
they were flagged? See is there a log of the
records mentioning President Trump? If yes, please transmit a copy
of the log to the committee flagging the Trump records.
I am reminded suddenly of the great comedian and politician
Eddie Izzard of England how to found a new country.

(14:22):
I claim this country for mine. Do you have a flag? Yes?
I do, Oh, then it's yours. Please list all political
appointees in senior DOJ officials involved in the decision to
flag records in which President Trump was mentioned, Well, we
have another library that just lists them. The scandal that

(14:43):
this will continue to be the cover up possibilities makes
Watergate look like somebody cutting out three words from a
five thousand word document. The Watergate cover up is shaping
up to be nothing compared to the Trump Epstein cover up.

(15:05):
And just as if more were needed here, since I
last spoke to you, Trump has cleverly again insulted his
own people and called them trouble makers. In a post,
he repeated his request that grand jury testimony be released,
and again the grand jury testimony would only refer to
Epstein and Gallaine, Maxwell and some FBI agents summarizing what

(15:29):
they knew. He pretends that his request for that grand
jury testimony is new. He may have forgotten that he
had already done this, And then he seemed to have
a glimmer of insight. You know about Shakespearean and in
fact classic tragedy in which the victim hero realizes literally

(15:51):
an hour too late, his great mistake and speaks to
it and then gets hit by a bus That Shakespearean
equivalent of a bus Trump wrote, even if the court
gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good
enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request.

(16:13):
It will always be more more more. Well, yeah, got
that right, sparky, and you invoked the Andrea True connection,
the theme song from Sex in the City.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
More more more.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
But what self insight at the end, It will always
be more, more and more, exactly right. Donald Trump has
turned this story which could have been perhaps embarrassing to him,
Probably not if the worst that they were ready to
break out was that he wrote a body letter or
note or drew something that alluded vaguely to a secret.

(16:57):
That could have been which cologne works best on these women?
It could have been anything. If that was the worst
they had in the Trump world, that would have lasted
six to eight hours. You wouldn't have even needed to
see in her physician. Instead, the rest of his life

(17:18):
is going to be Trumpstein. Ultimately, Trump's furious and crazed
response since just last Thursday, has locked the Epstein story in.
It will not go away. It is Trump Epstein, It
is Epstein, Trump, It is trump Stein. Greg's sergeant noted

(17:40):
the fact that Trump has not stuck to one's story.
He listed the various stories and their evolution. In fact,
I calculate Trump has not stuck to one story about
trump Stein for more than seventy two hours. One Greg
wrote DEM's manufacture idea that Epstein files contain explosive revelations
about Trump. Two demes deliberately don't release the files because

(18:01):
they know there's nothing in them about Trump. Once Trump
takes over and Petellin Bongino find nothing in them, Dems
cleverly manipulate countless MAGA influencers into demanding release of the files,
knowing Trump will never release them, even though it would
exonerate him. Four MAGA influencers demand their release, having gotten

(18:27):
Snookered into carrying out the dems dastardly scheme. Q the
curling of the waxed mustache here and five from the
Greg Sergeant list. Trump still opposes their release, and House
Republicans vote against their release, even though it would exonerate
him and reveal Dems are guilty of a massive hoax.

(18:49):
And they do this because shrug emoji. I'll add six
added to the Greg Sergeant list. Now it's only liberals
demanding the release. Of the files not you know eighty
nine percent of all Americans according to the CBSU Go
poll from yesterday. So there is an Epstein client list,

(19:16):
and Pam Bondy has it, although it appears under another
name like Epstein victim List or Epstein evidence List or
Trumpstein client list or list Client Epstein. Pam Bondy has it.
Trump has it. Trump is burying it, and Rupert Murdoch

(19:40):
is working up another Trumpstein story as we speak. At
least the rumor mill has that. And Trump is guaranteeing
that the Trumpstein story will never die. And he is
doing this by suing his number one advocate in the
world since Roy Kohene died. Trumpstein now trump Stein forever, genius.

(20:08):
I tell you before I delete the CBS you Go.

(20:36):
Pulled from yesterday the non trump Stein headlines. In February,
Trump had fifty nine percent approval on deportations by his
ISIS mob. It is now fifty one percent disapproval. From
fifty nine percent approval to fifty one percent disapproval. He's
lost twelve points on deportations fifty two percent say more

(21:00):
people are being deported than they expected, and then pull
from yesterday show's only twenty six percent favoring the detention facilities,
you know, the concentration camps alligator motes. Trump's overall approval
keeps dropping. It's down to forty two point nine percent.
First term territory underwater by nearly eleven points. His best

(21:21):
issue is immigration. He raies only underwater by six points
on immigration. He's underwater on immigration. His worst number is
on inflation. He's underwater by twenty four points on inflation.
So it's time to queue all the lies, the threats
by Tulsey Gabbard to prosecute Obama and I don't know

(21:45):
me who knows who she has in mind? Oh right, hey,
tulse skunkhead, Trump's concierge. Supreme Court immunized all presidents.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Oops.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Also, your premise is wrong. Nobody ever accused Trump or
Russia of altering the voting machines. All it says, even
in Gabbard's own release, Russian and criminal actors did not
impact recent US elections by conducting malicious cyber activities against
election infrastructure. Noll, no kidding. They also did not manipulate

(22:25):
the twenty sixteen World Series. Nobody accused them of that, obviously,
Gabbard is conflating two stories. Whether from her stupidity or deliberately,
it's hard to tell, but the two stories are one
what Russia really did for Trump in twenty sixteen, which
was to facilitate the hacking of democratic emails and feeding
them to Trump via WikiLeaks. Russian collusion, which he asked

(22:48):
for at that one summer news conference Russia, if you're listening,
which was by the way, in response to a question
from a then great reporter named Katie Turr, should have
circled that date and went this is when she peaked
as a journalist. There's that story which happened, which, if

(23:10):
you read the Muller Report, happened. And then there's the
completely tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that Russian's tampered with the
actual voting machines via space lasers or something in twenty sixteen,
which I believe was explored. I remember wondering about it,
and it was dismissed within hours because there was no evidence,

(23:30):
because we're evidence based. But Gabbard is selling this as
if it was one story altogether, Russia or not Russia,
and disproving one half of one percent of it disproves
one hundred percent. I don't think it's her stupidity, and
boy is she stupid. She really believes this, which raises

(23:52):
the question, how do you get morons like Telsea Gabbard
to repeat and embellish and believe lies of this proportion.
The methodology, as I understand it is you give them
the sketchy outline and you sort of force them to
fill in the gaps to please their bosses. As it

(24:13):
was explained to me by a former producer of mine
who went to work for Fox News, the idiots on
the air, the Harris Faulkners and such on Fox are
not told say this, say this, say this. They are
given the outlines of a story. The will Kines, the
Morning Morons, these people are given the outlines of stories.

(24:34):
The Jesse Waters. They are given the outlines of something
and basically told just do your own research. And they
go online and they find the first piece of crap
they can find, and they report that to please their bosses.
That way, the boss can never have to say, well,
I told them to say that they influenced the twenty

(24:56):
sixteen World Series. The Russians did that, they manipulated the
Seventh Game. I never said that to them so their
hands are clean. And more importantly, if you are telling
a story like this to please your bosses, you are
going to believe it, because believing it is the essence
of you holding your job. There is an example that

(25:16):
I know of second hand from one of the perpetrators,
one of the producers who did this to an unfortunate,
well meaning weather man who they made into a newscaster
in New York. I was told this story in the
early nineteen nineties. It's dating to the nineteen eighties and
the death of the playwright Tennessee Williams. I'll leave his

(25:38):
name out of it. I'm sure this is searchable somewhere.
Have fun. They didn't like him doing the news, and
they didn't like him particularly, and so these two producers
decided to trip him up on the death of Tennessee Williams,
cat on a hot tin roof, etc. They stood around
his desk and in seeming conversation that had nothing to

(25:59):
do with him, that kept mentioning how Tennessee Ernie Williams
had died. The reference was to a singer from the
nineteen fifties and sixties named Tennessee Ernie Ford, who did
a memorable version of sixteen tons you drew sixteen tons?
Like that, they decided to try to make this anchor

(26:20):
conflate Tennessee Williams and Tennessee Ernie Ford. And they came
back and did it again just before the five o'clock news.
And sure enough, the guy goes on the air and
announces and knows he's doing something special that his bosses
will be happy about, because clearly somebody has left out

(26:41):
the name Ernie. They've just written Tennessee Williams. No, his
name was Tennessee Ernie Williams. I did my own research.
Good evening, the great American playwright, Tennessee Ernie Williams is dead.
I'm happy to say they suspended the anchor for a
day or two, but I'm sure to this day he

(27:03):
believes that Tennessee Ernie fordstein Tons and Tennessee Williams. I've
always relied on the kindness of strangers are the same
damn person. Speaking of stupid, there's Representative Anna Paulina Luna

(27:31):
real name my Hoff, thank you, Attorney General Pam Bondy,
and then another tag Pam Bondy. While others were busy
trying to knife the president this was quietly in the works,
behind the scenes. Blah blah blah blah blah, releasing the
grand jury testimony. She's thanking Pam Bondy in a stupid

(27:51):
off between herself and Pam Bondy for releasing stuff that
doesn't pertain to anybody except Epstein and Glane Maxwell. But
here's the punchline. Here's the stupid about what this is.
This is phase three, according to Anna Paulina A Luna,
of the revelations about Jeffrey Epstein enjoy phase three. Anna

(28:13):
Paulina Luna writes, it's going to be the coup d'eta.
Now you know coup d'eta was January sixth, Miss you're
thinking of another phrase, coup de gras Tennessee Ernie Williams

(28:39):
one from a conservative writer named Luke. We are changed,
Luke Roudkowski, What if Donald Trump is being held hostage
right now and forced to do these things? Do you
think that's a plausible theory. That's a hostage who you
release every what ten minutes so we can make a

(29:00):
speech or go do something. You think you've got a
guy standing behind him with a gat in his ribs.
I don't know what's wrong with this though, If Donald
Trump's being held hostage right now, can we not begin
negotiations as soon as possible. But of course, the stupidest
person in the room is always Donald Trump himself. This
is from yesterday, eight seventeen am truth social The Washington

(29:27):
Whatevers should immediately change their name back to the Washington
Redskins football team. There is a big clamoring for this.
Spoiler alert, there isn't. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of
the six original baseball teams with a storied past our
great Indian people in massive numbers want this to happen.

(29:48):
Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.
Times blah b owners get it done. This is how
much he needs a distraction. He's going back to this
one again. But I CA, I can't tell you how
much is wrong factually. I mean, this literally is a delusion.

(30:09):
In case you think Trump is not brain dead, this
may be the strongest evidence yet this one sentence. The
Cleveland Indians one of the six original baseball teams with
a storied past one there is no group called known

(30:30):
as or constituting the six original baseball teams. In fact,
that phrase there one of the six original baseball teams.
This is the first time I've even heard anybody make
that mistake, and I have been a baseball historian since
I was eight years old. He must have dreamed it,

(30:53):
or two he had a dream based on the original
six National Hockey League teams. Problem being, there also is
no original six National Hockey League teams group. The misnamed
original six from hockey consists of one team from the
first year of the precursor of the National Hockey League, Montreal,

(31:15):
the National Hockey Association another that is kind of one
of those teams, Toronto, although there's some historical debate over
whether or not that's the same franchise. Those two teams
plus four expansion teams from the nineteen twenties that's Hockey's
original six. It's a brand name. It doesn't mean anything.
The NHL had four teams in its first year at

(31:36):
the end of World War One. It had ten as
late as nineteen thirty one, It had seven as late
as nineteen forty two. It only had six teams from
nineteen forty two through nineteen sixty seven. And this has
somehow been in a game of telephone or game of
misheard lyrics. This has been erroneously transformed into the Original six,
which now Trump has transferred from hockey to baseball, where

(32:00):
it's even more wrong somehow. But back to Trump's delusion
about the Cleveland Guardians Original six. The first baseball major
League was founded in eighteen seventy one. The American League,
the league in which Cleveland plays and always has, was

(32:21):
created in nineteen oh one, thirty years later. The Cleveland
Blues were their first name. Then they became the Cleveland
Naps after their star Nap Lasureway, and then in nineteen
fifteen they became the Cleveland Indians. The term Indians is
not only not some sort of baseball original six, it's
not even the original name of this Cleveland team. Four

(32:42):
where the storied passed. Now, I'm sorry. In eighteen ninety nine,
Cleveland's old franchise, Cleveland Spiders, lost one hundred and thirty
four out of one hundred and fifty four games. They
were so bad they stopped playing home games. They just
went on the road and then disappeared forever. This newer team,

(33:03):
the Old Indians. They won the World Series in nineteen
twenty and nineteen forty eight, and since then nothing nice town,
great fans, some great players, laugh out loud. Past. I mean,
no World series since nineteen forty eight. That's a more
unstoried past than even the one World Series in the

(33:26):
last twenty four years. Crapshack, New York Yankees. Five. Finally,
so who does Trump think constitutes baseball's six original teams?
I'm just guessing, because, as I said, it must have
been a dream. Let's guess Cleveland Indians of course, and

(33:47):
Montreal Montreal Canoodleman, and of course the Yankees and the
New York Knights from the movie The Natural. You know,
let's see two more, the Saint John Barns, and of
course Chico's bail bonds. One quick reference to the cultural

(34:16):
story of the moment, the cold Play Canoodlers just move
from Montreal, particularly this rash of articles and tisk tisk
pieces about how none of us should be mocking two
people who managed to destroy their families and their careers
at that concert. Seriously, has anybody noticed that there is

(34:41):
an insurance commercial running right now, right now on television
postulating the mayhem caused by a stadium kiss cam if
somebody were to kiss somebody else's wife. I mean, what
just played out in real life. Is not original. Not
just not original. It was literally foretold an insurance commercial.

(35:07):
Don't you make fun of them. More importantly, they were
at a Coldplay concert. Their lives were already over. Also
of interest here you may get mad at me for
saying this, but I have to explain it. No, Stephen
Colbert was not canceled just to appease Trump. That might

(35:30):
be a side component to it, but no, Stephen Colbert
was not canceled just to appease Trump. Stop giving Trump
credit for this. Moreover, there is one inarguable and unanswerable
fact that proves Stephen Colbert was not canceled just to
appease Trump. That's next. This is Countdown, George Caroling, the

(35:53):
pleasure to have you here. Thank you. This is the
best news show ever. I told that to one of
your producers, and I want you to know that I've
seen them all and it's just for especially the first
thirty five minutes. Thank you such just and I got
bad news between you and I. We got six minutes
to completely throw.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
That in there.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
That's okay, Still ahead on Countdown. Haven't done any thurber lately.
I think it is time to bring out the Thurber
of all Thurbers, the greatest man in the world. Spoiler alert,

(36:30):
He's now President of the United States. On Mondays with Thurber.
But first postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
some snark. This is the Countdown podcast, and these are
the places where there's news. Dateline the Ed Sullivan Theater,

(36:50):
New York. If you heard my bulletin Thursday night on
Trump's Epstein cover up and his escalation of that story
into something that now cannot and will not ever go away,
is it attack on his own cult? You may have
heard that. As I was recording that bulletin, a different

(37:11):
and separate story broke and we included that in the
bulletin the cancelation of Stephen Colbert's show by CBS. I
want to revisit this after a couple of days of
thinking about it, because virtually everything I have seen about
the cancelation of the Colbert Show since then, from those
who are appalled by it and those who are gloating

(37:33):
over it, has accepted on both sides without a second thought,
that Colbert was canceled as part of Trump's attack on dissent,
as part of the new ownership there turning CBS into
the proverbial whorehouse network, as Patty Chaievsky had it described
in his movie Network. It's not true. Well, it's true

(37:57):
in part. But I'm going to say something to you
that has already enraged friends of mine when I have
said it to them. Not in large part. Stephen Colbert's
show was not canceled because of Trump. Stephen Colbert's show
was not canceled because he was critical of Trump. Stephen
Colbert is not a martyr to criticism of Trump. If anything,

(38:23):
this is the Phil Donahue cancelation story all over again.
If anything, CBS may be using both Trump and Colbert
to get away with this, Trump as an excuse for
firing Colbert and shutting down that franchise, Colbert as a
sacrificial lamb to appease Trump, a sacrificial lamb, and who

(38:46):
they have been trying to sacrifice for several years now,
and who I think they would have sacrificed even if
Kamala Harris were president right now, and if not right
now then at the end of his contract next year.
I understand this does not fit the narrative, and I
confess I do not know the world of Late Night

(39:07):
television as well or as personally as I used to
know the world of cable news. When Phil Donahue was
canceled and fired by MSNBC in two thousand and three,
I mean when that happened, I was literally working at MSNBC.
They asked me about it, they told me they were
going to do it, they walked through the logic of
it when it happened. But I do know the late

(39:30):
night TV world. I was on David Letterman Show eighteen times.
I was on Leno's show three four or five times,
Conan once, Fallon once, Snyder three times, mar Like four times. Hell,
I may be the last living survivor of the late

(39:50):
night Pat Sayjack show on CBS from the eighties. At
least I'm the last one who still admits it. I
still have friends who work in late night television, and
whatever I do not know, they sure do. It's happening
to them. Late night television is dying. And just as

(40:13):
there was an unanswerable fact that disproved the idea that
Phil Donna, who had been canceled purely so NBC could
obey in advance, purely to censor anti war commentary to
terrified dissenters. There is also a different but equally unanswerable
fact that disproves this idea that Stephen Colbert has been

(40:35):
canceled purely to obey in advance, purely to censor anti
Trump commentary to terrified dissenters. In the Donahue case in
two thousand and three, the unanswerable fact was this, MSNBC
sure canceled Phil Dona Hugh's liberal show just as we

(40:56):
went into Iraq, canceled it in Phil Dona Hugh's liberal
eight PM timeslot, canceled the whole operation, fired half the people,
shut down the studio, ushered the live audience out of
the building, and then they replaced Phil Donahues liberal eight
PM show with me. I would argue modestly that eight

(41:20):
pm got more liberal at MSNBC, not less. Why in
the hell would they go through all that to get
rid of a liberal only two put on a liberal
who actually got ratings and made the network a success. Money.
In the Colbert case, it's also money, and the unanswerable

(41:41):
money fact comes in the form of a rhetorical question.
They canceled Colbert last Thursday, effective next May. Next May.
If you are repressing dissent. If you are martyring Stephen
Colbert at the devil worshiping altar of Donald Trump, the

(42:04):
hell you're letting him stay on the air for the
next ten months. For the next ten months, he will
be an uncontrollable lame duck, free to say almost anything
about Trump, about Sherry Redstone, who now owns CBS, about
this baboon Larry Ellison, about the deplorable and dishonest new
CBS boss Jeff Shell, about what Trump is doing to media.

(42:30):
What are they going to do to Colbert if he
does say something like that's something really bad? Fire him again?
What if he waits a few months to collect the
larger part of his fifteen million dollar salary and then
blows them up at Christmas? If this were purely political purge,

(42:50):
he would have been canceled effective that night. If they
liked him, they would have said, Okay, you can go
on and say goodbye, and if you say anything wrong,
we'll edit it out and replace it with I don't
know what was the guy's name, the letterman sidekick Larry
sid Melman. You don't fire a guy because he rightly

(43:15):
hates Trump and punish him because he rightly hates Trump,
and humiliate him because he rightly hates Trump, and take
away his career because he rightly hates Trump, and then
say to him, well, now go out there, son, and
do the best hour long satirical political interview show you
can for the next forty three weeks. Go out there

(43:37):
and give us the best two hundred and fifteen shows
you can come up with. We'll just assume you won't
do anything that he'll embarrass us. We'll just assume you
won't mention Trump at all in the next forty three weeks.
Even if you think that Colbert, a uniquely stubborn individual,

(44:04):
will play ball like that for fifteen million dollars after
making fifteen million dollars for nearly ten years, so he
should have enough money to carry him through the rest
of this and several other lifetimes. If you really think
he is going to censor himself and just interview Renee
Zelweger every night for the next forty three weeks, every

(44:29):
night he's on the air, just sitting there starting with
tonight's show, will be another red flag to the anti
Trump bulls. Every time you see Stephen Colbert, you will
think he got canceled. Because of Trump. Why is he
still on CBS If this really was about that, what

(44:49):
are you trying to accomplish? And how have you just
sabotaged that? If you're firing him to shut him up,
he needs to shut up. I don't think it's that difficult.
And I think we're overlooking the most obvious thing in
the world. If they were firing him to keep him
from making comments about Trump and to please Trump and
to think Trump make him believe he's running CBS, they

(45:13):
would have taken him off the air. As an additional reminder,
I'll point out Stephen Colbert doesn't even have to blow
up on CBS. He can say something to a reporter,
he can say something at an event. He can wait,
as I said, until next spring and say it then
and get the money and say the nasty thing and

(45:37):
blame Sherry Redstone and say, I don't know Sherry Redstone
is in the Epstein files. That's free for nothing. He
can run with that, Steven. I mean, he could keep
his tongue till the contract runs out next May and
spend the rest of his life attacking Trump. That's what

(45:59):
I did it at Fox. Fox took me off the air.
And expected I would be enraged and say something that
would allow them not to pay me the remaining one
point two five million dollars on my contract or whatever
it was in the year two thousand and one. And
I looked at it and I said, are you people
out of your minds? You're gonna pay me this amount

(46:20):
of money for the next eight months, then I get
to say all these terrible things about you. You're expecting
me to start saying it now because I feel like
saying it now. I'll I'll just hone the material. Colbert
can spend the next ten months practicing what he's going
to do to Trump when his show is off the
air and you're underwriting it. CBS once had me play

(46:48):
out my contract after they decided not to renew my contract,
and I was on the air every night for I
think two and a half months on the local station
in Los Angeles at a price to them of half
a million dollars a year pro rated obviously, and they
trust me with doing the news and not just the
sports news. I anchored Magic Johnson's announcement that he had HIV.

(47:12):
I was on the air from something that important, live
and unsupervised for ten or twelve hours one day and
every other day. I was on the news three times
a day and half an hour on Sundays and after
the football games. They trusted me to do it. They
do sometimes let your run out your contract because they

(47:37):
want to get something out of the money they're paying you.
But you don't do that if you're expecting that you
are silencing an evil, trouble making liberal bastard. The finances

(47:58):
of this industry are terrible. Throughout television. There's almost nothing
making money on network televie vision. That's not a cover story.
The online ad data firm Guideline reports that the networks
combined late night show ad revenues in the year twenty
eighteen totaled four hundred and thirty nine million dollars. That's

(48:22):
the ABC, CBS and NBC shows. By last year, that
figure four hundred and thirty nine million was down to
two hundred and twenty million half Colbert alone. That show
is making fifty million dollars a year less in advertising revenue,
not profits, but in incoming money. Fifty million a year

(48:44):
less than it was five or six years ago. Doesn't
matter that it's number one rated among the shows. If
they're all terribly rated. Being number one doesn't make much difference,
and it's not political reasons that have driven the viewers away.
It's not exclusive to him. The good shows and the
bad shows based on ratings, metrics or your personal opinion

(49:07):
doesn't have anything to do with it. The reason late
night television made so much money over about a forty
year span was that its peak at a decade ago,
it was the last thing left on TV outside of
sports that drew the younger audience viewers under forty, viewers
under twenty five, and they are now gone gone. They

(49:30):
don't watch television at all, let alone Stephen Colbert at
eleven thirty five at night after your late local news.
They're gone. Colbert's audience under the age of fifty is
now two hundred and nineteen thousand viewers a night. A
tenth of his audience is in the so called ad demo.

(49:53):
In twy ten, two hundred and nineteen thousand younger viewers
was a good, strong, kind of towards average night for
young viewers for Countdown on MSNBC. That's how much the
industry has changed. What used to be pretty good but
not spectacular for cable. We sometimes had four hundred thousand

(50:17):
younger viewers or three hundred thousand younger viewers. Two hundred
nineteen thousand younger viewers. Okay, we did well. There wasn't
anything particularly driving the news or whatever. Two hundred nineteen
thousand younger viewers was now the number one rating in
late night television. There's a point at which it no
longer becomes worth turning on the lights or spending the

(50:39):
money to broadcast in color rather than black and white.
I mean, look at what happened to Seth Myers last year.
I think it was first they cut back to four
shows a week, four new shows a week and a rerun.
Then they cut the work schedule back from four nights

(51:01):
a week doing four shows to three nights a week
doing four show. On most occasions, one day they would
do two shows in one day. The staff was exhausted,
and those were methods and changes made to try to
preserve the franchise. I don't know if they proposed that
to Colbert, to go to four nights a week or

(51:21):
to go to three work days a week. Of course,
Seth Myers is next. Do you think Stephen Colbert's is
the first CBS late night show or the first late
night show to get canceled recently. You didn't know about
the other one CBS canceled a couple months ago. You

(51:43):
didn't know about it because you never heard about it.
It was called After Midnight, and it was on after Colbert,
It was on at It was on at twelve thirty AM,
and it ran for one hundred and ninety nine episodes,
not two hundred, one hundred and ninety nine. They canceled
it right before the milestone. They canceled it last month

(52:05):
was the last episode. The host was Taylor Tomlinson. She
it was part talk show, part game show, and complete failure,
not because of her, not because of the format, but
because people are not watching at all. As the old
gross joke used to go, you could take christ fresh

(52:29):
off the Cross and put him on at twelve thirty
five on CBS and he wouldn't get an audience either.
So Myers is probably next. Not that there's anything wrong
with what Seth does, nor his commentary being of value,
but prepare yourself for that. He's on at twelve thirty
and if there's nobody watching at eleven thirty, to the

(52:49):
point where the number one show at eleven thirty gets
canceled because it's no longer economically worth the trouble the
profits are insufficient. Well, obviously the twelve thirty shows are
all going to go. The CBS one already went, what's
left the NBC on one. Now it could be that
without Colbert in the picture, with just two shows on

(53:11):
at eleven thirty, Fallon and Kimmel could gain just enough
of his audience to survive. Or maybe one of them
will survive and the other one won't. It's hard for
people to believe now after the glood of these shows,
But until the end of the Johnny Carson regime and era,
there was really only one network late night talk show

(53:34):
and it was Carson's. They tried a Joey Bishop show
on CB on ABC, and as I mentioned, they later
brought in Pat Sajack on the theory that Carson would
retire soon and say Jack would be the only one
that was still on the air. Then people would see
Sajack as, oh, he's the guy I'm familiar with. He's
still on the air no matter who replaced Carson. Well,
of course Sajack sucked at it, so that blew that

(53:55):
plan out the window. But there used to be only
one late night show. We could get down to one
late night show again. It could be Fallen, it could
be Himmel likelier than not to be both of them.
And the idea that Cole Bear's ratings were the highest
means nothing. Live TV and information based TV and studio

(54:20):
based TV. It's dying faster than the rest the sports
studio shows are dying. MSNBC was ballyhooing the growth in
ratings in the Jensaki Show, and I looked at the numbers,
and I was startled to see that her ratings, now
after some growth, are up to about seventy five percent

(54:44):
of what my ratings were when I first went back
on MSNBC in two thousand and three, and nobody watched
the network, and we were outrated by Fox by ten
to one and outrated by CNN by like seven to one.
Right now, our terrible failures of two thousand and three
are being put out in press releases by the same

(55:06):
company because they're so comparatively good. Having the top ratings
doesn't mean as much if your audience, your total audience
is two million, four hundred thousand people a night, but
it used to be three million, eight hundred thousand people
a night, and starting two years ago, there was a
sea change, literally in one month June twenty twenty three.

(55:28):
Nothing to do with Trump. I'd love to blame it
on him, you know me, I'd love to, But right
then things changed. Streaming improved, the amount of shows available
in other venues increased. Starting two years ago, the Colbear audience,
the whole industry's audience, began to disappear, especially that younger audience.

(55:53):
People also forget, because who bothers to cover this stuff anymore?
CBS has been trying to get out from under the
expenses of that terribly expensive Coldbar show for years. The
Ed Sullivan Theater has been for sale for at least
a couple of years. The last time I heard they

(56:14):
were about to cancel Colbert, like the announcement was imminent
was November twenty seventeen. They were talking about it then.
The year before was at least half spent with stories
that they were about to flip flop James Corden, who
did the twelve thirty Show and Colbert, because Colbert's ratings

(56:35):
were so bad he'd lost so much of what had
been Letterman's audience that they weren't going to let him
continue at eleven thirty every night. It was a disaster.
Then Trump came along and the ratings went up and
they started to make some of that money back, and
they let him have his head, as they say, And
that continued in pretty good form for CBS for six years,

(56:57):
and then the bottom fell out two years ago. Now
my caveat behind all this. I mentioned this in the
special in the Bulletin on Thursday, but I should own
up to it again in case you didn't hear that.
I dislike Stephen Colbert intensely. I saw an Internet meme

(57:18):
with his picture and his chin on his hands like
it was glued there, and the mean part of it
read this is what integrity looks like. Nonsense, bullshit, mean
spirited phony with almost no integrity at all. And the

(57:39):
way I judge somebody principally in that regard is this,
if you do them a favor, you can count on
them to never remember it. I was asked to be
a guest on his Comedy Central show when they weren't
sure it was going to make it to one month
when they spun him off from John Stewart, and nobody

(58:00):
watched and nobody wanted to go on the show, and
they couldn't book anybody. And the guest booker was the
wife of one of our regular Countdown guests, Jonathan Alt.
Can you do me? Can you do her a favor?
Can she ask you to please come on? We'll explain
the show to you. You'll be the only guest. It'll
be good publicity for that audience. It'll be a great
favorite to us. I was like, how many times have

(58:21):
you been on the show? John's twenty five, twenty six? Okay,
I owe you that, at least I don't know which
number show it was, fourth, fifth, seventh. It was within
the first three weeks of the Colbert Rapport. Then I
was asked to be a guest on his CBS demo,

(58:41):
his second or third demo, the Pilot, when they wanted
to see if it would work in the newly rebuilt
ed Sullivan Theater. And he asked me, as I told
the other day on the Bulletin podcast, he asked me
what I was going to do with my career now
that my ESPN two show had just been canceled. And
I said, honestly, Steve, and I don't know if there's
some things going on in news and in sports, and

(59:02):
I don't know which. And he said, in front of
a live audience taping, although it wasn't going to be
on the air, what did you do in countdown when
somebody gave you a bullshit answer like that? And I
said to myself, I should just tell him to f
himself and get up and leave, but it'll be on tape.
Probably a bad idea, I said, honestly, I'm telling you

(59:25):
the truth. If you don't like it, i'll you know,
I can leave, that's not a problem. But I'm telling
you the truth. I don't know what I was going
to do, and I didn't. Asked to do a favor.
Go on and do the favor. Get told by the
guy you're doing the favor for that you're lying to him.
Then I was asked to do him a third favor.
They asked me to come over and do this terrible bit,
a comedy bit. The intro was pre recorded, meaning our

(59:50):
segment was pre recorded. He was live. I saw him
as he said this, here's the man who's had more
jobs than you've had hot dinners. And I go home
to watch it to see if maybe it was funny.
After they played it, and they changed the intro. Somewhere
along the line, he re recorded the intro to the
man who's been fired more times than you've had hot dinners.

(01:00:11):
Nice touch, you want to make the crack, make it
while I'm standing there. Don't wait till I leave you, coward,
And I'll point out once again, for most of his
tenure at CBS, the executive producer of The Colbert Report
was Chris Licked, the guy who destroyed CNN, that fopping idiot,
a Joe Scarborough trainee. How much integrity could Stephen Colbert

(01:00:36):
have if he had any? Then he met Chris Lickt,
who was all sucked into the Chris Licked universe, not
an honest broker. And the more I have reflected on it,
the more I think there really was something to the
old conservative defensive theory we used to laugh about when
the Comedy Central show got successful, in which, if you'll remember,

(01:00:59):
it was a stick and once the stick stopped, the
funny stopped. That he was not a liberal pretending to
be a stupid conservative. He was a conservative willing to
take on the mask of being a stupid conservative so
he could use the liberal media base to surreptitiously counter

(01:01:19):
liberal narratives and more importantly, to counter liberal reality and facts.
And as I said, the worst thing about Stephen Colbert
is what he ordered his staff to do after they
took over for Letterman. The show was not even cold yet,
the last Letterman episode was not even cold yet, and

(01:01:41):
the live audience was barely out of the building. And
the little post mortem party had just barely begun at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art on that day in the
spring of twenty fifteen, when Colbert had a literal wrecking
crew come in and destroy the entirety of the Letterman
set and the entire contents of the theater, the Ed

(01:02:01):
Sullivan Theater, thousands of seats or hundreds of seats in
the theater that could have gone up as charity auctions,
the sets Paul Schaffer's musical bandstand. Some of these things
were retrieved by passers by. These things were thrown out
overnight onto Broadway. A guy who happened to have a

(01:02:23):
truck picked up the Paul Schaeffer set, contacted me. I
bought it from him and donated it to the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame, which is where I believe
it sits to this day. I got one seat out
of it. One of the great stage hands who Letterman
made into a star, because that's the kind of guy
he was, procured me a seat and said, I don't

(01:02:47):
know how much longer they're going to let me have this.
They took two or three away from me. Earlier today
they were destroying the set because Colbert did not want
any possible remembrance of David Letterman. That's who Colbert is.
I have no personal problem with him getting canceled and
humiliated and in my mind forced to work the next

(01:03:09):
ten months as a lame duck. But the point is
he now has the opportunity to vivisect Donald Trump on
CBS every night for the next forty three weeks. And
that's the fundamental fact here. Why if you are canceling
somebody because he is criticizing Trump, why in God's name

(01:03:32):
would you leave him on the air to continue to
criticize Trump for the next forty three weeks. It doesn't
make any sense. The bottom line to this is they
did not cancel Colbert to please Trump. They are making
Trump and his people falsely believe that they canceled Colbert
to please Trump. When they were going to cancel Colbert. Anyway,

(01:03:56):
Trump is not the cause of this, not this one time,
the other fifty million terrible things he's doing. Yes, let's
blame him, let's vivisect him for those things. This is
not something he did. This is not something he should
be allowed to take credit for in that perverse, brain
dead world of his. Do not give him credit for

(01:04:20):
canceling Stephen Colbert. Hell, this isn't even Stephen Colbert's fault.
The audience disappeared, and so Stephen Colbert will too after
forty three weeks as a lame ducker got to say
anything the hell he wants about Trump? How is that obeying?

(01:04:43):
In advance Thurber and the Greatest Man in the World
next to the Master the work of James Thurber. There
is a short film of this story. I don't think
it really does it justice. I don't think anything does

(01:05:05):
it justice. Occasionally, real life does do it justice. I've
thought I've seen this story playing out in real time
in this country almost every day for about seven years.
Sit back and relax, if relax is the right word
for it. For the Greatest Man in the World by

(01:05:28):
James Thurber, looking back on it. Now, from the vantage
point of nineteen forty one can only marvel that it
had not happened. Long before it did. The United States
of America had been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing
the elaborate petard by which, sooner or later it must

(01:05:49):
be hoist. It was inevitable that someday there would come,
roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background,
and character, successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory
prepared for aviators who stayed up for a law long
time or flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Bird,

(01:06:10):
fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen.
So had our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully,
withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually
fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the
enjoyment of their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a

(01:06:32):
worldwide scale marred the perfection of their conduct on the
perilous heights of fame. The exception to the rule was, however,
bound to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven,
when Jack pal Smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small

(01:06:53):
garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a second hand, single motored
Breasthaven Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world
without well it's stopping. Never before in the history of
aviation had such a flight as Smirch has even been
dreamed of. No one had even taken seriously the weird

(01:07:15):
floating auxiliary gas tanks invention of the mad New Hampshire
professor of astronomy, doctor Charles Lewis, Gresham, upon which Smirch
placed full reliance. When the garage worker, a slightly built,
surly unprepossessing young man of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt
Field early in July nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a

(01:07:38):
great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced nobody ain't seen
no flying yet. The newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon
his projected twenty five thousand mile flight. Aeronautical and automotive
experts dismissed the idea, curtly implying that it was a hoax,
the publicity stunt. The rusty, battered second hand plane wouldn't

(01:08:03):
go the auxiliary tanks wouldn't work. It was simply a
cheap joke smirch. However, after calling on a girl in
Brooklyn who worked in the flap folding department of a
large paper box factory, a girl whom he later described
as his sweet Pittuti, climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane

(01:08:28):
at dawn the memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven,
spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air,
and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of
bootleg gin and six pounds of salami. When the garage
boy thundered out over the ocean, the papers were forced
to record in all seriousness that a mad, unknown young

(01:08:52):
man his name was variously misspelled, had actually set out
upon a preposterous attempt to span the world in a
rickety one engine contraption, trusting to the long distance refueling
device of a crazy schoolmaster. When nine days later, without
having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco

(01:09:12):
Bay headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure,
but still magnificently and miraculously aloft the headlines which long
since had crowded everything else off the front page. Even
the shooting of the governor of Illinois by the Valetti
Gang swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began
to run to twenty five and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however,

(01:09:39):
that the accounts of the epoch making flight touched rather
lightly upon the aviator himself. This was not because the
facts about the hero as a man were too meager,
but because they were too complete. Reporters who had been
rushed out to Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted

(01:10:00):
over the little French coast town of Serlee Lemaire to
dig up the story the great man's life, had promptly
discovered that the story of his life could not be printed.
His mother, a sullen short order cook and a shack
restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield,
met all inquiries as to her son with an angry

(01:10:20):
and the hell with him a hoppy drowns. His father
appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and
lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother, a weak
minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory,
and was already wanted in several Western towns for the
theft of money order blanks from post offices. These alarming

(01:10:44):
discoveries were still piling up at the very time that
Pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear eyed,
dead for sleep, half starved, was piloting his crazy junk
heap high above the region in which the lamentable story
of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New
York and a greater glory than any man of his

(01:11:05):
time had ever known. The necessity for printing some account
in the papers of the young man's career and personality
had led to a remarkable predicament. It was, of course,
impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling
in favor of the young hero had sprung up like

(01:11:25):
a grass fire when he was halfway across Europe on
his flight around the globe. He was therefore described as
a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular
with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at
the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio,
at an amusement park was touched up so that the

(01:11:48):
little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed
into a pleasant smile. The truth was in this way
kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did not dream
that the Smirch family was despised and feared by its
neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself,

(01:12:09):
because of numerous unsavory exploits, had come to be regarded
in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace. Pal's Smirch had,
the reporters discovered, once knife the principle of his high school,
not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him,
and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an

(01:12:30):
stealing altar cloth from a church, he had bashed the
sexton over the head with a pot of Easter lilies.
For each of these offenses he had served a sentence
in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York
and in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however

(01:12:50):
awful such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty,
battered plane and its illustrious pilot whose unheard of flight
had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise.
The authority were convinced that the character of the renowned
aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound

(01:13:10):
to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan,
mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame.
I trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of
the many secret cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma.
I trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by

(01:13:34):
which he referred to missus Emma's. Smirch's wish that her
son might be drowned was, however, too late, for that
Smirch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as
if they were mill ponds. At three minutes after two
o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven,
the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field

(01:13:55):
for a perfect three point landing. It had, of course
been out of the question to arrange a modest little
reception for the greatest flier in the history of the world.
He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and
pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the worn

(01:14:15):
and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily
from his plane, and was spirited from the field without
having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize
the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by
the presence of the Secretaries of War and the Navy,
Mayor Michael J. Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada,

(01:14:36):
Governors Fanamine Groves, mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array
of European diplomats. Smirch did not, in fact come too
in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged
at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed
to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed. It
was nine days before he was able to get up, or,

(01:14:57):
to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile,
the greatest minds in the country in solemn assembly, had
arranged a secret conference of city, state and government officials
which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being
instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the

(01:15:21):
day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get
up in dress and for the first time in two weeks,
took a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to
receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out.
Smirch did not wait for questions. Use guys, he said,
and the Times Man winced. Use guys can tell a

(01:15:41):
cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindberg.
See yeah, man, an assaid, I'm two frogs. The two frogs.
It was a reference to a pair of gallant French
flyers who, in attempting to flight only halfway around the world,
had two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The

(01:16:01):
Times Man was bold enough at this point to sketch
out for merch the accepted formula for interviews in cases
of this kind. He explained that there should be no
arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes
of foreign nations. Ah the hell with that, said Smirch.
I did it. See I did it, and I'm talking

(01:16:23):
about it. And he did talk about it. None of
this extraordinary interview was, of course printed. On the contrary,
the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret
directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors,
gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie,

(01:16:44):
as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say
only that he was very happy, and that anyone could
have done what he did. My achievement has been I
fear slightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest
with a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from
the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate

(01:17:06):
the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed
extremely grave for Palell. Smirch was, as he kept insisting,
raring to go. He could not much longer be kept
from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the
most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced

(01:17:27):
since the sinking of Bellusitania. On the afternoon of the
twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a
conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist,
psychologists and editors. He gave them each a limp moist
paw and a brief, unlovely grin Hi, he said. When

(01:17:52):
Smirch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose and,
with obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say
and how he must act when presented to the world,
ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero's
current and integrity. The Mayor was followed by Governor Fannman
of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith,
introduced Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris,

(01:18:16):
the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of
public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow
tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved,
smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer
on his lips. I get you, I get you, he

(01:18:37):
cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softie?

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Huh? You want me to act like that memnymmany baby
face lind big huh. Well nuts to that. See, everyone
took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and
a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple
with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his

(01:19:04):
nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd, He exclaimed, Oh,
for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies
with a sharp word.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
A newcomer had entered the word the room. Everyone stood
up except Smirch, who was still busy with his nails,
and he did not even glance up. Mister Smirch, said
someone sternly, the President of the United States. It had
been thought that the presence of the chief Executive might
have a chastening effect on the young hero, and the
former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press,

(01:19:35):
secretly brought to the obscure conference room. A great painful
silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a hand at the president.
How you coming, he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette.

(01:19:59):
The silence deepened. Someone coughed in a strained way.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Jesus hot, ain't it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
Said Smirch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a
hairy chest, and the tattooed word Sadie, enclosed in a
stenciled heart. The great and important men in the room,
faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged
worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on,

(01:20:32):
come on, said Smirch. Let's get the hell out of here.
Why do I start cutting in on the podies?

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
And when is there gonna be this in it? He
rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly, Money, exclaimed a
state senator, shocked. Pale, Yeah, money, said pal, flipping his
cigarette out of the window. And big money. He began
rolling a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated, Frowning over

(01:21:03):
the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and
leered at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal
that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose
in a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake,
let's get someplace where it's cool, he said. I've been
cooped up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and

(01:21:26):
walked over to an open window, where he stood staring
down into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting
of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name,
Hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over
the sill. You tell him, babies, he shouted down, Hot

(01:21:48):
Diggity Dog, and the tense little knot of men standing
behind him a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken
word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room,
yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L. Brand, secretary
to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be
standing nearest Smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of

(01:22:11):
the United States. The President, pale grim nodded shortly. Brand,
a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University,
stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by
his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and
pushed him out the window. My god, he's falling out
the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out

(01:22:33):
of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side,
and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward
a side entrance of the building. The editor of the
Associated Press took charge. Being used to such things crisply,
he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay quickly.
He outlined a story which all the papers were to
agree on, sent two men to the street to handle
that end of the tragedy, commanded a Senator to sob

(01:22:54):
and two Congressmen to go to pieces nervously. In a word,
he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that
was to follow, the task breaking to a grief stricken
world the sad story of the untimely accidental death of
its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was, as

(01:23:17):
you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and
the saddest ever held in the United States of America.
The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft
of marble and the simple device of a tiny plane
carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in

(01:23:40):
deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid
lofty tributes to Little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At
a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout
the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town
of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony agents of the

(01:24:03):
Department of Justice sought that one of them was especially
assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little
shack restaurant on the edge of the tourists camping ground
just outside the town. There under his stern scrutiny, missus
Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling

(01:24:24):
on her grill. Bowed her head and turned away so
that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely
familiar leer on her lips. I've done all the damage

(01:24:53):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of
our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillips Chanel, our musical directors of Countdown.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanel handled orchestration and keyboards. Our
satirical and fifthy musical comments are by the best baseball

(01:25:13):
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme for Me
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
That is the sports music. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed, and my announcer today
was my late friend and hero, George Carlin. Everything else
was as always.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
I fault.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Let's countdown for today, Day one hundred and eighty three
of America held hostage again just and eighty eight days
until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame
brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein and the trump Stein Story, or by the

(01:25:58):
original six from Baseball. The next scheduled countdown is my day.
Until then, I'm Keith Oldreman. I did want to close
with a quick memorial. I told his full story on
his birthday last month, but today is one year to
the day since my great leaping rescue Pop Mine, the

(01:26:20):
guy who came to me just before his fifteenth birthday
without a home, almost comatose. They thought he had all
kinds of dementia, and turns out he just had bad teeth,
and after we removed them, within months, he was apparently
remembering that he could literally jump for joy over the
lines on the sidewalks and the streets. I miss him

(01:26:41):
every day. He has been gone one year. In his
memory today, just once, jump for joy, even if you
have to rationalize some of the joy. Countdown with Keith
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

(01:27:01):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.

All Episodes

TRUMP SUING MURDOCH MEANS THE TRUMPSTEIN STORY WILL NEVER END - 7.21.25

Episode Transcript

Host

Keith Olbermann

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Crime Junkie

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}TRUMP SUING MURDOCH MEANS THE TRUMPSTEIN STORY WILL NEVER END - 7.21.25