January 5, 2024 • 51 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For the second time in as many days and the fourth time in one week, Trump has gotten the message out to the Justices of the Supreme Court - and especially the three he appointed - that they’d better rule in favor of Trump in the 14th Amendment and Presidential Immunity cases because he put them there.
Attorney Alina Habba did it again, again on Fox. Wednesday it was in the afternoon; last night it was in prime time. The message is loud and clear, and God knows with the utter corruption of the conservatives on THIS court you could never convict anybody of doing anything, but this is either an illegal threat AGAINST Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others, or it is the back half of an illegal quid pro quo. Habba said she "had faith" in "people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place. He'll step up."
A week ago today Maggie Haberman went on CNN and said Trump feared SCOTUS might rule against him because it was trying to look balanced. On Tuesday, his first simpleton attorney Christina Bobb said that any ruling - even one declaring that Trump was guilty of insurrection - would be irrelevant if the people wanted Trump as their ruler. Wednesday, Habba insisted that "Republicans" (she meant Supreme Court Justices) "unfortunately sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law’s on our side they might be swayed much like the Democratic side would be, right? So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call."
The political pressure is astonishing, even for Trump. And in the light of his stochastic terrorism against Justices Engoron and Chutkan, it is intolerable, and it portends true threats against any justice Trump feels hasn't been "loyal" to him.
THERE MIGHT be good news out of New Hampshire: one poll shows Trump leading Nikki Haley by just four points with two weeks until the primary. There was also a good opening advertising salvo by the Biden campaign against the threat Trump is manifesting. And the same Alina Habba went on another streaming show and insisted that given the choice between being smart or pretty she'd choose pretty because "I can fake being smart."
Well, no, sorry. You clearly can't.
B-Block (32:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Like every other rich fascist before him, Elon Musk wants to destroy the National Labor Relations Board. Politico has a good joke at his expense. RFK Jr's Super Pac apparently made it up about Dionne Warwick AND Martin Sheen. And the Associated Press article that actually headlines Bothsidesism on tomorrow's 3rd Anniversary of Trump's January 6th Coup: “One Attack, Two Interpretations: Biden And Trump Both Make The January 6 Riot A Political Rallying Cry.”
C-Block (40:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: In 1913 just as in 2024, people are likeliest to believe the dumbest, the most outrageous, the least believable thing. James Thurber commemorates "The Day The Dam Burst" in Columbus, Ohio, the most noteworthy feature of which was, the DAM DID NOT BURST.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
the second time in as many days, one of Trump's
attorneys has gone on Fox and in the best passive
(00:26):
aggressive style possible, she has threatened one or more justices
of the Supreme Court that they had better rule in
his favor in the Fourteenth Amendment and presidential immunity cases
because Trump put them there. Alina Habba. She did it
again Wednesday in the afternoon last night in primetime. The
(00:50):
message is loud and clear, and God knows, with the
utter corruption of the Conservatives on this Supreme Court, you
could never convict anybody of doing anything wrong. But this
is either an elegal threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and
the others, or it is the back half of an
illegal quid pro quote by Brett Kavanaugh and the others.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think it should be a slam duncan the Supreme Court.
I have faith in them. You know, people like Kavanaugh,
who the President fought for, who the President went through
hell to get into place. He'll step up. Those people
will step up.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The corruption, the cynicism, the perversion of justice, the disdain
for America so great that you don't even try to
hide the fact that you're expecting a justice of the
Supreme Court to vote against the Constitution and against the
democracy because the case involves the corrupt and festering animal
(01:54):
who appointed him to it. This was so obvious that
even this idiot, Alena Habbah realized she had better skeer
out of that skin just in case, and she did
that immediately.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
He'll step up. Those people will step up not because
they're pro Trump, but because they're pro law, because their
pro fairness and the lawness is very clear.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
There is nothing to prosecute here, but there is everything
to publicize here. This is the fourth time in one
week that Trump has gotten this message out to the
three justices whom he appointed to the Supreme Court, and
to the other three Conservatives who were already there urinating
(02:39):
on the Constitution the day he got there. The message
is they had better find in his favor on these
two critical cases headed their way. A week ago today,
Maggie Haberman went on CNN and vaguely quoted Trump without
characterizing her sources as being worried that the justices might
be too worried about appearing fair that they might rule
(03:02):
against him just to make themselves look good. And then
on Tuesday, another Trump attorney, Christina bob when on the
streaming channel Real America's Voice and said quote, it should
be the entire nation who determines who they want for president,
whether they're guilty of insurrection or not. It's up to
(03:24):
the people. That can be read not just at minimum
as an admission of Trump's potential guilt as an insurrectionist,
but more importantly, it is a blatant warning to the
Supreme Court, to the entire judicial system, to the nation
that Trump would not recognize any decision to enforce the
fourteenth Amendment, to declare him an insurrectionist, to remove him
(03:48):
from the ballot, and under those circumstances, the only way
Trump would wind up in power would be by armed violence.
If it's up to the people whether they're guilty of
insurrection or not, that is no longer in the realm
of an election. And Wednesday, Alina Haba had continued the
theme on Fox as I mentioned confirming first last week's
(04:12):
Haberman report and then adding quote, I can tell you
that Trump's concern is a valid one. Republicans are conservative,
They get nervous, They unfortunately sometimes shy away from being
pro Trump because they feel that even if the laws
on our side, they might be swayed, much like the
Democratic side would be right. So they're trying so hard
(04:35):
to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call.
There's no politics that should be involved in this. It's
simply American, unquote, even for Trump. This is astounding and alarming,
and it has now last night been escalated one more
(04:55):
evil notch, with Haba insisting that Kavanaugh would step up. First,
she mentions that Trump went through hell to get him
on the Supreme Court. Then she insists that's not why
he would rule for Trump. Well, if that's not why
he would rule for Trump, why did she mention it.
These are uncoded messages, blatant warnings to the justices that,
(05:20):
regardless of the law, they are expected to act on
Trump's behalf. It is putrid, it is vile, it is Trump.
And if the messages do not come back reassuring Trump,
or when as assumed, the Court turns him down on
presidential immunity, to provide itself with cover for vetoing the
(05:42):
Constitution and not enforcing the fourteenth Amendment, we have to
be ready for an all out assault on the justices,
and on their safety and on their existence by Trump himself,
as he has shown with Judge Engern in the New
York business fraud case and with Judge Chutkin in the
Washington election subversion case. Trump has no respect for the court,
(06:05):
no respect for any court, and certainly no respect for
the lives or the safety of the justices or the judges.
And it is essential for the Biden administration and the
Biden campaign to saturate the advertising platforms with reminders that
Trump is already right now presenting vivid previews of his
(06:29):
full throated dictatorship, where the rule of law will be
erased and replaced by the rule of threat and coercion
and quid pro quo. There is more to discuss about this,
Alena Haba. She made an earlier appearance yesterday in which
(06:50):
she underscored her top tier role in this Trump ideocracy,
but first to the still low chance but nonetheless intriguing
possibility that trouble waits for Trump in New Hampshire. In
the New Hampshire Republican primary eighteen days from now, newest
poll Trump thirty seven, Haley thirty three, Christy ten so
(07:15):
Trump up by only four caveats. Last month, the same
polster had Trump up by four and he has them
both going up four points since then. More caveats. The
polster is American Research Group, and American Research Group has
a really bad track record and a really long, really
(07:36):
bad track record, even just in New Hampshire. And American
Research Group is based in New Hampshire. Two days before
the two thousand Republican primary, it had Bush beating McCain
by two. McCain won by eighteen. More caveats. The logo
of American Research Group. I swear they use the printer
(07:57):
I bought for my first Apple Macintosh in nineteen eighty six,
and its website glitches it keeps reading still thirty seven
thirty three. Trump could be wrong by ten points and
still be only Trump forty two to twenty eight, which
is roughly where the five thirty eight pole of poles
has it. Trump forty two, Hailey twenty nine, Christy eleven.
(08:19):
And the first meaningful part of that is there is
Trump vulnerability. If Christy dropped out, his voters might scatter
among DeSantis and Ramaswami and Haley, but they would not
be going to Trump. The other meaningful part of all
this is New Hampshire polling is clarifying just who is
(08:40):
who in this race. Haley, she is the acceptable face
of fascism, the alternate for Trumpists who are worried that
their cult leader might be in prison or fully insane
or I don't know, dead by election day. She has
already promised to pardon Trump. She has already intentionally or
not said she was comfortable with the good old Confederate
(09:00):
States of America, and she won't be bringing up any
of those pesky issues of ski in color or immigration,
despite her you know self. She is also obviously the spoiler.
This arg pull says only sixty three percent of likely
New Hampshire voters are Republicans. The other thirty seven are undeclared,
(09:23):
that could be independents, that could be Democrats, and they
break thirty six twenty nine for Haley. But clearly Haley
is now the trumpests break glass in event of emergency candidate,
and New Hampshire Republicans seem to be a lot closer
to actually pulling that alarm than those in the other
states do. Christy, he is obviously the choice of conservatives
(09:46):
with consciences, and you knew that the moment that the
number ten percent came up, didn't you, DeSantis? He is
the winner of the Rudy Giuliani Memorial Self Destruction Prize,
and Ramaswami, who day before yesterday declared Trump was damaged
and predicted they would make make sure he would never
be elected again. He has only realized far too late
(10:09):
that that could have been his lane all along. The
New Hampshire polling also indicates that the most stunning part
of the Republican world, this crazed mixture of fantasy, violence, authoritarianism, racism,
and really stupid people, is that it seems to be
slightly more worried about the prospect of being chained to
a metaphorical corpse of a candidate in Trump than it
(10:32):
is about the prospect of being chained to an ever
increasingly insane and thus perhaps unelectable candidate in Trump. Haley
is there in case someone or something removes Trump from
the election. If that does not happen, Trump can be
literally speaking in tongues by the time of the Republican
(10:54):
Convention and they will not abandon him. And every day
he gets a little bit closer to speaking in tongues.
At nine thirty yesterday morning, Trump hosted, quote, the invasion
through our southern border is for purposes of voting in
the twenty twenty election. Un quote voting in the twenty
(11:20):
twenty election. You say, even in Maga world, that would
be a neat trick. Moreover, about six hours later, Trump
reposted the same damn thing, the invasion through our southern
border is for purposes of voting in the twenty twenty election.
No correction, no stupid excuse that the cultists would lap up.
(11:45):
I meant to write that and they'd say, see, I
told you the twenty twenty election was fixed. They're still
counting votes against him once again. Right now, Trump does
not know where he is, He does not know who
you are, and increasingly he does not know when it is.
(12:08):
And by the way, between his two warnings about twenty
twenty four migrants voting in the twenty twenty election, Trump
made thirty one posts in one hour, all of them
insults and or threats against E. Gene Carroll. And he
says he is going to testify eleven days from now
(12:29):
in the damage's phase of the lawsuit that she's already
won against him, as opposed to the second defamation suit
she has against him. And if it was not obvious
that what is left of Trump's brains are oozing out
of his ears, the idea that he should take the
stand in a rape case he has already lost should
(12:50):
confirm that. Happily, Trump is surrounded by legal geniuses who
would never let something like that happen. And when I
say never, I mean always. And when I say gene,
I mean Alina Habba, Christina Bob and now har Meat
Dylan Haba is back with her dumbest moment yet. She
(13:17):
is the Trump attorney who Wednesday gently threatened the six
conservative Supreme Court justices that they had better not be
trying so hard to look neutral in the Fourteenth Amendment
and presidential immunity cases. She's that lawyer, as opposed to Bob,
who is the Trump attorney who Tuesday gently threatened the
justices and everybody else that it doesn't matter if Trump
(13:38):
is guilty of insurrection and ineligible for the presidency, because
the American people will have the final word and they
will install him anyway, presumably by violence. Now this is Haba.
Haba went on one of the three million pro Trump
podcasts PbD, and she managed to score a ten out
(14:03):
of ten on not one, but two different delusions of grandeurw.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'll tell you something. Somebody said to me, Elina, would
you rather be? Would you rather be smart? Or pretty?
And I said, oh, easy, pretty, I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Well, no, no, you can't. I don't know. She just
confessed she isn't smart and she's trying to fake it,
or if she actually thinks she's smart and also self deprecating.
But one day, as we have just lionized Robert Oppenheimer
with his own film, we will also honor professors Dave
(14:47):
Dunning and Justin Krueger in a combination scientific biography and
buddy film in which we are shown how they proved
that stupid people truly think they are smart, and smart
people truly cannot believe that there aren't lots of people
as smart or smarter than they are. Either way, somebody
will have to play Elina Habba in that film, because
(15:09):
the Dunning Krueger moments explode from her cortex like Trump
posts about Egene Carroll.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
You have to be honest. It doesn't hurt to be
good looking in this world, in the pr world on TV,
it doesn't hurt. And when you're good looking, that's great,
but it can also mean people think you're stupid, or
people think that President Trump hired me because I was
good looking. That is absolutely not the case.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Finally, she's right, people do think she's stupid, and clearly
Trump did not hire her because she was good looking.
He hired her because you just can't have too many
parking lot law experts at your beck and call. Incidentally,
as she said these things, miss Haba was dressed in
(15:56):
a Kuela Deville outfit, only the kind you would find
at Ross dress for less and no, I know she
is not as important as, say, the first Biden campaign
ad that sticks a toe into the waters of the
real meaning of this election, democracy or dictatorship, or of
(16:17):
Biden's speech today. And she's also not as important as
the House Oversight Committee findings about how many millions Trump
took from foreign governments while president, both of which stories
I will get to presently. But Alina Habba is invaluable
in one way as a reminder both of what we
are up against and more happily, of what Trump is
(16:39):
up against in twenty first century America. Stupidity will get
you a long way, but eventually that stupidity. Bill Barr
trusted Trump, Trump trusted him. Trump knew Brad Raffensberger would
break the law for him. Eventually, that stupidity will be
(17:03):
someone's downfall. Because unlike the rest of us, who wonder
if there is somebody smarter out there, or somebody more evil,
or just somebody more prepared, these thoughts never cross Trump's mind,
nor the minds of his various Alena Habbas. Thus, the
(17:24):
last ten percent of the scheme, whatever it is, is
left to chance because they cannot conceive of anything they
do going wrong, because they are them, and none of them,
not one can answer that first question of mental health correctly.
(17:47):
Can you approximately accurately say how you are viewed by
all the people around you? This is what Alena Habba,
who went pressed, explained that how good looking she thinks
she is has helped her in her feet, being on
TV and being in public relations. Not one word about,
(18:08):
you know, lawyering. This is what Alena Habba, who is
on television or online every day, every day, working for
a creature who in one hour can send out thirty
one posts disparaging a woman he raped, who puts out
more videos online than I do, This is what Alena
(18:29):
Habba thinks everybody thinks of her compared to what everybody
thinks of the Special Council.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
They love having pressers, they love having press conferences, Jack Smith,
they love having press conferences, getting in front, having their moment.
It's almost a narcissistic.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
As Special Counsel Jack Smith has had two press events.
Neither was a press conference a presser. He has read
two brief statements. He has never answered nor acknowledged any
reporter's question. Jack Smith has sixteen associates and deputies in
(19:13):
his office. None of them has ever held a news
conference nor answered a reporter's question. And bluntly, I don't
know if that number sixteen is correct because other than
Thomas Wyndham and Molly Gaston, as I researched that number,
I didn't recognize any of the other names of Jack
Smith's deputies. Haba is not just wrong about this press
(19:37):
conference stuff, not just stupid, but unless she is knowingly
and deliberately lying, she is actually hallucinating. By the way,
new fourteenth Amendment lawsuit filed in Illinois yesterday trying to
get the state Board of Elections there to block him
from both the Republican primary in March and the general.
(20:01):
I'm sure Elina will deal with it as soon as
she finishes her acting exercises.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Of more substance, but less novelty. What we all knew
we knew has now been confirmed. During his presidency, foreign
government's funneled at least seven million, eight hundred thousand dollars
through Donald Trump's bribery glory holes, the Trump Washington Hotel,
the Trump Las Vegas Hotel, and the Trump Towering Inferno
(20:34):
of Ego around the corner from me here in fun City.
And five million, six hundred thousand of that came from China.
China bought its share of Trump's presidency for five million,
six hundred thousand dollars. The Democrats on the House Oversight
Committee who have the receipts and who actually show them
(20:56):
rather than pretend to hide them, they showed them. And
those are the numbers about just Trump's foreign violations of
the Emolument's clause, as presented by Jamie Raskin in a
news conference on Capitol Hill. All of the numbers gleaned
from the documents from Trump's former accounting firm, documents which
(21:17):
were subpoened when Democrats still had the majority in twenty nineteen,
and which even with the success of Trump's henchmen on
the committee to sabotage that subpoena and the lawsuit to
enforce it, even despite them, the Democrats have managed to
get a portion of those documents from the accounting firm,
So seven point eight million in payoffs to Trump five
(21:38):
point six million from China alone. Those are floors we
sometimes forget amid the insanity, the dictatorship, the depravity, the
disloyalty to this country, and the hot and cold running
immorality that Donald Trump is also a whore, that his
(21:59):
administration was a whore house, and that those who worked
for him there were at best the procurers. NBC News
provided an unintentional punchline to this sordid if unsurprising story. Quote.
Trump's twenty twenty four presidential campaign did not immediately reply
(22:19):
to a request for comment unquote, to which the only
possible response is did you remember to write it in Chinese?
And the start of Wabbitt season has been moved up
to day and President Biden will launch the full frontal
attack on Trump that would be dictator today at Valley
(22:40):
Forge because of likely bad weather there over the weekend.
He was to speak on the third anniversary of the
January sixth insurrection, which is on January sixth. All indications
are that the campaign's attitude towards how best to remind
the voters or explain to the ones not really paying attention,
of the unprecedented threat of a deranged, amoral, vengeful, not
(23:02):
quite human animal running for dictation. The best way to
do that is to roll it out slowly, rather than
to hit them with it all at once. Thus, the
president's speech may not even mention his opponent by name,
either of his names Trump or Baby Hitler. It may
be more on the lines of what we saw in
the first Biden ad on the topic, which dropped yesterday
(23:25):
and which will not knock you out, but which does
get the point across.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I've made the preservation of American democray the central issue
of my presidence.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
I believe in free and fair.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Elections and the right to vote fairly and.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Have your vote counted.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
There's something dangerous happening in America. There's an extremist movement
and does not share the basic police in our democracy.
All of us are being asked right now, what will
we do to maintain our democracy? History's watching, the world
is watching. The most important our children. Congrantiate will hold
(24:04):
us responsible. Vice President and I I've supported Vote Rise
since day one of this administration, and I ask every
American to join me in this cause. America is still
a place of possibilities, where the power resides with we
the people. That's our soul. We are the United States
of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity that we
(24:27):
act together. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And I'm Keith Olberman and I also approved this message. Again,
if that was the closing argument add against Trump, guess
what President Biden loses. But it's not. I fully expect
the naming of names and the clipping of clips, as
we've done here in the silly way that I do it.
The promise to be a dictator, the quotation of Hitler,
the talk of terminating the Constitution, the threats to the
(24:54):
Supreme Court justices, the rest of this list a little long.
It's the Internet. We only have infinity. I can't get
all five thousand possible. Biden adds about Trump for you here,
the ultimate goal is to drive Trump and his cult
back into their sewers, and you do as much as
you need to do. But in the end, I think
it is essential to remember that whatever angle works should
(25:19):
be used. Biden commercials about the resurgent economy, Biden commercials
about Trump, admiring Hitler, Yes and yes, and buy two
spot availabilities in the same commercial break. So you hit
each angle in a span of two and a half minutes.
Spots about January sixth, spots about the Republicans holding Ukraine hostage,
(25:42):
spots about Trump using the immigration issue rather than doing
anything to try to solve it. All of it make
one hundred and seventy five different spots, just as all
the methods that can be used to stop and destroy
Trump must be utilized despite any squeamishness about the long
(26:03):
term consequences. When I hear got Lucky once, dilettants like
David Axelrod say that enforcing the fourteenth Amendment would rip
the country apart. I wonder exactly what he thinks will
happen to the country if Trump prevails. I guess, David,
it wouldn't be ripped apart. It would just be torn apart.
(26:25):
That make you feel better, I'm going to invoke the
movie Oppenheimer again. You have to do it. You have
to build the bomb, you have to be ready to
use the bomb. I am as anti nuclear weapons as
anybody could be. I am also from a time when
Robert Oppenheimer was still alive, and from when my father
(26:48):
reminded me that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,
it was eight days after he had turned sixteen years old,
and that was the first time it dawned on him
that when he turned eighteen years old he might not
be drafted to fight in World War Two, because it
(27:08):
might be over by nineteen forty seven. Later, the English
teacher who shaped my understanding of literature and writing mentioned
in passing that when that bomb was dropped, he was
in the army two years ahead of my dad, eighteen
years old, and he was in training, and what he
(27:29):
was in training for was the land invasion of Japan.
I don't want the consequences of a man removed from
the ballot by criminal conviction or by the enforcement of
the fourteenth Amendment, or by anything other than voting. I
don't want them, but I will take them because cleaning
(27:52):
up whatever tantrums the Trump cult throws is immeasurably better
and easier and frankly less disastrous and bloody then the
revolution that would have to be staged to remove Trump
and his cult from the dictatorship. They seek and plan.
(28:22):
Also of interest here so that RFK Junior super packs
celebration to be headlined by Andrea Bocelli and Dion Warwick
and Martin Sheen. Well, one out of three ain't bad.
Actually one out of three is bad. Kennedy's people lied
two of those three headliners, deny having ever said they
(28:44):
would do anything of the kind. But you know, actually
it ain't bad being right thirty three percent of the time.
That's like RFK Junior's high water mark this century. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman
(29:26):
still to come on. Count down. A century ago, literally
one century ago, something happened in Columbus, Ohio, and it
would have fit right next to all the headlines this
week about the Epstein files because it was something that
actually didn't happen a century ago in Columbus, Ohio. And
(29:47):
it proves two things. The writings of James Thurber are
as topical today as they were when he wrote them,
and people have always been willing to believe nonsense, and
the more impossible, the more stupid it is, the more
nonsensical it is, the more likely they are to believe it.
The explanation coming up on Fridays with Thurber first time
(30:10):
for the daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons
in the world The bronze worse. Elawn Musk Lannie has
sued the National Labor Relations Board, trying to end its
authority to you know, protect workers from you know, slimeballs
(30:37):
like Elon Musk. I'm assuming the Politico dot com headline
for this story was unintentionally funny, but who knows. Quote
Musk's SpaceX seeks to blow up federal labor enforcer Unquote Well, sir,
if there's anything you can depend on Elon Musk and
(30:58):
his SpaceX rockets to do, it's blow up Worser with
the silver her American Values twenty twenty four The Bobby
Kennedy Junior super Pack it tweeted out a Daily Mail
article quoting well the American Values twenty twenty four Superpack,
saying that the singer Andrea Bocelli would be performing at
(31:20):
a California event on January twenty second to raise funds
for the Robert F. Kennedy Junior campaign, and he would
be joined there by what they termed well wisher guests,
including Martin Sheen and Dion Warwick MS. Warwick was the
first to call Kennedy's people out for lying about her quote.
(31:42):
I don't know anything about this event. I did not
agree to it, and I certainly won't be there. Yesterday,
my old friend Marty Sheen, who has stationary and a
fleece bearing a logo reading the acting President of the
United States, he issued a statement through friends, reading I
do not endorse RFK Junior, nor will I be attending
(32:03):
his party. I wholeheartedly support President Joe Biden and the
Democratic ticket in twenty twenty four. Sincerely, Martin Sheen. So
two down, one to go, mister Butchelli. Not only does
this fiasco add to Robert F. Kennedy Junior's reputation for
being unable to separate his fantasies from reality, but just
(32:25):
to confuse him a little more. One of the people
who tweeted out Martin Sheen's denial was the actor Bradley
Whitford when Sheen played President Bartlett on the West Wing. Whitford,
of course played President Bartlett's chief of staff, Josh Lyman.
But the winner the worst. Will Wissert of the Associated Press. Sometimes,
(32:50):
in our troubled years, the journalistic both sides, ism that
may yet destroy this country is subtle, or it's self defensive,
or it's stuck in the middle of so much material
that is at worst mediocre that it's hard to find
or hard to fully perceive. And then there is this
story about tomorrow by the national political reporter of the
(33:14):
Associated Press, mister Weissert. In the story, there's this quote
with Biden and Trump now headed toward a potential twenty
twenty rematch. Both they're talking about the same event in
very different ways and offering framing they believe gives them
an advantage. The dueling narratives reflect how an attack that
(33:35):
disrupted the certification of the election is increasingly viewed differently
along partisan lines, and how Trump has bet that the
riot won't hurt his candidacy. Unquote, uh, here we go.
January sixth means different things to different people, Like you know,
mass murder does man's worst inhumanity to man or a
(34:00):
means of easing metropolitan overcrowding. Or there there's the subject
of lying the root of all evil or an efficient
way to avoid uncomfortable silences. Mister Weissert's article veers back
and forth from paragraph to paragraph between the supposed Biden
view that the January sixth, twenty twenty one attempt to
(34:21):
overthrow the government was you know, bad, while the Trump
view was it was a beautiful day, and the GOP
views now that the Democrats are overreacting because you know,
a president goading a mob to attack the US capital
and kill the speaker of the House. That happens after
every election. Wow, nearly every election. Wow. Okay, it never
(34:45):
happened before this, but it's happened one in a row.
It's possible Will Weisert did not write the headline accompanying
his piece of crap story. But I also haven't seen
him quitting in protest over that headline, and bluntly, he should,
or he should get fired, or he should just go
to some other line of work, like I don't know,
(35:09):
packaging bullshit and selling it at some gardening store. Here's
the headline. Associated press makes me proud to have worked
for United Press International Associated Press quote one attack, two interpretations.
Biden and Trump both make the January sixth riot a
(35:30):
political rallying cry, Will Wissert of the Associated Press. Hey,
we'll look at it this way. If the democracy dies
next year, you will have written the epitaph that we
can put on its tombstone. You, sir, are two days
worst person.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Even in the context of something and prest Not every
James Thurber's story still holds up, but for a surprisingly
large percentage of them, the point of the story is
(36:14):
as topical now as it was when he wrote it,
or when it happened. When it happened, which in this
case is the year nineteen thirteen. The Day the Dam
Broke is from his essential masterpiece, My Life in Hard Times,
And if it is about anything, it is about people
believing and acting upon nonsense. In the face of science,
(36:35):
in the face of common sense, in the face of
you could just ask somebody, they will almost always avoid
those solutions and choose instead to believe whatever the hell
they want to believe, which results in things like The
Day the Dam Broke by James Thurber. My Memories of
what my family and I went through during the nineteen
(36:56):
thirteen flood in Ohio, I would gladly forget. And yet
neither the hardships we endured, nor the turmoil and confusion
we expel sperienced, can alter my feeling toward my native
state and city. I am having a fine time now
and wish Columbus were here. But if anyone ever wished
a city was in hell, it was during that frightful
(37:16):
and perilous afternoon in nineteen thirteen when the dam broke, or,
to be more exact, when everybody in town thought the
dam broke. We were both ennobled and demoralized by the experience.
Grandfather especially rose two magnificent heights, which can never lose
their splendor for me, even though his reactions to the
(37:36):
flood were based upon a profound misconception, namely that Nathan
Bedford Forest's cavalry was the menace we were called upon
to face. The only possible means of escape for us
was to flee the house, a step which Grandfather sternly forbade,
brandishing his old army saber in his hand. Let the
sungevver come, he roared. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were streaming
(38:02):
by our house in wild panic, screaming go east, Go East.
We had to stun Grandfather with the ironing board, impeded
as we were by the inert form of the old gentleman.
He was taller than six feet and weighed almost one
hundred and seventy pounds. We were passed in the first
half mile by practically everybody else in the city. Had
(38:23):
Grandfather not come too at the corner of Parsons Avenue
in Town Street, we would unquestionably have been overtaken and
engulfed by the roaring waters. That is, if there had
been any roaring waters. Later, when the panic had died
down and people had gone rather sheepishly back to their
homes and their offices, minimizing the distances they had run
(38:44):
and offering various reasons for running, city engineers pointed out
that even if the dam had broken, the water level
would not have risen more than two additional inches in
the west side. The west side was at the time
of the dam scare under thirty feet of water, as
indeed were all Ohio River towns during the Great Spring
(39:07):
floods of twenty years ago. The east side, where we
lived and where all the running occurred, had never been
in any danger at all. Only a rise of some
ninety five feet could have caused the floodwaters to flow
over High Street, the thoroughfare that divided the east side
of town from the west and engulfed the east side.
(39:28):
The fact that we were all as safe as kittens
under a cookstove did not, however, assuage in the least
the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon
the residents of the east side. When the cry spread
like a grass fire that the dam had given way.
(39:49):
Some of the most dignified, staid, cynical, and clear thinking
men in town abandoned their wives, stenographers, homes, and offices,
and ran east. There are few alarms in the world
more terrifying than the dam has broken. There are few
persons cave stopping to reason when that clarion cry strikes
upon their ears, even persons who live in towns no
(40:10):
nearer than five hundred miles to a damn. The Columbus,
Ohio broken Damn rumor began, as I recalled, about noon
of March twelfth, nineteen thirteen. High Street, the main canyon
of trade, was loud, with the placid hum of business
and the buzzing of placid businessmen arguing, computing, wheedling, offering, refusing, compromising.
(40:33):
Darius Cunningway, one of the foremost corporational lawyers in the
Middle West, was telling the Public Utilities Commission in the
language of Julius Caesar, that they might as well try
to move the Northern Star as to move him. Other
men were making their little boasts and their little gestures.
Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he
(40:55):
had simply remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to
meet his wife, for which he was now frightfully late.
Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street, probably
toward the Marramour Restaurant, a favorite place for a man
to meet his wife. Somebody else began to run, perhaps
a newsboy in high spirits, another man, a portly gentleman
of affairs, broken to a trot. Inside of ten minutes,
(41:19):
everybody on High Street, from the Union Depot to the
courthouse was running a loud mumble gradually crystallized into the
dread word dam. The dam has broke. The fear was
put into words by a little old lady in an
electric or by a traffic cop or by a small boy.
Nobody knows who, nor does it now really matter. Two
(41:42):
thousand people were abruptly in full flight. Go east was
the cry that arosed east away from the river, east
to safety. Go east, Go east, Go east. Black streams
of people flowed eastward down all the streets leading in
that direction. These streams, whose headwaters were in the dry
goods stores, office buildings, harnessed shops, movie theaters, were fed
(42:05):
by trickles of housewives, children's cripples, servants, dogs, and cats
slipping out of the houses, past which the main streams flowed,
Shouting and screaming. People ran out of homes, leaving fires
burning and food cooking, and doors wide open. I remember, however,
that my mother turned out all the fires, and that
she took with her a dozen eggs and two loaves
(42:27):
of bread. It was her plan to make memorial haul
just two blocks away and take refuge somewhere in the
top of it, in one of the dusty rooms where
war veterans met and where old battle flags and stage
scenery were stored. But the seething throngs shouting go East,
drew her along and the rest of us with her.
(42:47):
When grandfather regained full consciousness. At Parsons Avenue, he turned
upon the retreating mob like a vengeful profit, and exhorted
the men to form ranks and stand off the rebel dogs.
But at length he too got the idea that the
dam had broken, and roaring go east in his powerful voice,
he caught up in one arm a small child and
(43:08):
in the other a slight clerkish man of perhaps forty two,
and we slowly began to gain on those ahead of us.
A scattering of firemen, policemen and army officers in dress
uniforms there had been a review at Fort Hayes in
the northern part of town, added color to the surging
billows of people. Go east, cried a little child in
(43:28):
a piping voice, as she ran past a porch on
which drowsed A lieutenant colonel of infantry. Used to quick decisions,
trained to immediate obedience, the officer bounded off the porch, and,
running at full tilt, soon past the child, bawling go east.
The two of them emptied rapidly the houses of the
little street they were on. What is it? What is it?
Demanded a fat waddling man who intercepted the colonel The
(43:51):
officer dropped behind and asked the little child what it was.
The damn has broke, gasped the girl. The damn has broke,
roared the colonel. Go east, Go east, Go east. He
was soon leading, with the exhausted child in his arms,
a fleeing company of three hundred persons who had gathered
(44:12):
around him from living rooms, shops, garages, backyards and basements.
Nobody has ever been able to compute with any exactness
how many people took part in the Great Route of
nineteen thirteen. For the panic, which extended from the Winslow
bottling works in the south end to Clintonville six miles north,
ended as abruptly as it began, and the bobtail and
(44:36):
ragtag and velvet gowned groups of refugees melted away and
slunk home, leaving the streets peaceful and deserted. The shouting, weeping,
tangled evacuation of the city lasted not more than two hours.
In all, some few people got as far east as Reynoldsburg,
twelve miles away. Fifty or more reached the Country Club
(44:57):
eight miles away. Most of the others gave up, exhausted
or climbed trees in Franklin Park, four miles out. Order
was restored and fear dispelled finally by means of militia
men riding about in motor lorries balling through megaphones. The
dam has not broken. At first, this tended only to
(45:18):
add to the confusion and increase the panic from many
stampeders thought the soldiers were bellowing. The dam has now broken,
thus setting an official seal of authentication on the calamity.
All the time, the sun shone quietly, and there was
nowhere any sign of oncoming waters. A visitor in an
(45:39):
airplane looking down on the straggling, agitated masses of people
below would have been hard put to it to divine
a reason for the phenomenon. It must have inspired in
such an observer a peculiar kind of terror, like the
sight of the Marie Celeste abandoned at sea, its galley
fires peacefully burning, its tranquil decks bright in the sunlight.
(46:01):
An aunt of mine, Aunt Edith Taylor, was in a
movie theater on High Street, went over and above the
sound of the piano in the pit, a william S.
Hart Cowboy picture was being shown, there rose the steadily
increasing tramp of running feet persistent shouts rose above the tramping.
An elderly man sitting near my aunt mumbled something, got
(46:23):
out of his seat and went up the aisle to
a dog trot. This started everybody in an instant. The
audience was jamming the aisles. Fire shouted a woman who
always expected to be burned up in a theater. But
now the shouts outside were louder and coherent. The damn
has broke, Prie. Somebody go east, screamed a small woman
(46:43):
in front of my aunt. And east they went, pushing
and shoving and clawing, knocking women and children down, emerging
finally into the street, torn and sprawling. Inside the theater,
Bill Hart was calmly calling some desperadoes bluff, and the
brave girl at the piano played Row Row row loudly,
and then in my harem. Outside, men were streaming across
(47:06):
the State House yard. Others were climbing trees. A woman
managed to get up onto These are My Jewels statue,
whose bronze figures of Sherman, Stanton, Grant and Sheridan watched
with cold unconcern the going to pieces of the capital City.
I ran south to State Street, east on State to
(47:27):
Third south on Third to Town and out east on Town.
My aunt Edith has written me. A tall, spare woman
with grim eyes and a determined chin ran past me
down the middle of the street. I was still uncertain
as to what was the matter. In spite of all
the shouting, I drew up alongside the woman with some effort,
for although she was in her late fifties, she had
a beautiful easy running for him and seemed to be
(47:49):
an excellent condition. What is it, I puffed. She gave
me a quick glance and then looked ahead again, stepping
up her pace a trifle. Don't ask me, ask God,
she said. When I reached Grant Avenue, I was so spent.
The doctor h R. Mallory. You remember doctor Mallory, the
man with the white beard. It looks like Robert Browning. Well,
doctor Mallory, whom I had drawn away from at the
(48:10):
corner of Fifth in Town, passed me. It's got us,
he shouted, and I felt sure that whatever it was,
it did have us, For you know what conviction doctor
Mallory statements always carried. I didn't know at the time
what he meant, but I found out later. There was
a boy behind him on roller skates, and doctor Mallory
mistook the swishing of the skates for the sound of
rushing water. He eventually reached the Columbus School for Girls
(48:35):
at the corner of Parsons Avenue in Town Street, where
he collapsed, expecting the cold, frothing waters of the Sciota
to sweep him into oblivion. The boy on skates swirled
past him, and doctor Mallory realized for the first time
what he had been running from. Looking back up the street,
he could see no signs of water, but nevertheless, after
resting a few minutes, he jogged on east again. He
(48:57):
caught up with me at Ohio Avenue, where we rested together.
I should say that about seven hundred people passed us.
A funny thing was that all of them were on foot.
Nobody seemed to have had the courage to stop and
start his car, but as I remember it, all cars
had to be cranked in those days, which is probably
the reason. The next day the city went about its
(49:20):
business as if nothing had happened. But there was no joking.
It was two years or more before you dare to
treat the breaking of the dam lightly, and even now,
twenty years after, there are a few persons like doctor Mallory,
who will shut up like a clam if you mentioned
the afternoon of the Great Run, the day the dam
(49:45):
broke by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical director
is Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel arranged, produced, and
(50:07):
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
the bass, and the drums. 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. The sports music is the
Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis,
(50:29):
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today is my friend Jonathan Banks from Better
Call Saul and Breaking Bad and Airplane and everything else
was pretty much my fault as always. That's countdown for
this three hundred and two days until the twenty twenty
(50:50):
four US presidential election and the one thy ninety fifth
day since dementia. J Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States three years ago.
Tomorrow use the fourteen Amendment, the Insurrection Act, and the
justice system to stop him from doing it again while
(51:11):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
the second time in as many days, one of Trump's
attorneys has gone on Fox and in the best passive
(00:26):
aggressive style possible, she has threatened one or more justices
of the Supreme Court that they had better rule in
his favor in the Fourteenth Amendment and presidential immunity cases
because Trump put them there. Alina Habba. She did it
again Wednesday in the afternoon last night in primetime. The
(00:50):
message is loud and clear, and God knows, with the
utter corruption of the Conservatives on this Supreme Court, you
could never convict anybody of doing anything wrong. But this
is either an elegal threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and
the others, or it is the back half of an
illegal quid pro quote by Brett Kavanaugh and the others.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think it should be a slam duncan the Supreme Court.
I have faith in them. You know, people like Kavanaugh,
who the President fought for, who the President went through
hell to get into place. He'll step up. Those people
will step up.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The corruption, the cynicism, the perversion of justice, the disdain
for America so great that you don't even try to
hide the fact that you're expecting a justice of the
Supreme Court to vote against the Constitution and against the
democracy because the case involves the corrupt and festering animal
(01:54):
who appointed him to it. This was so obvious that
even this idiot, Alena Habbah realized she had better skeer
out of that skin just in case, and she did
that immediately.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
He'll step up. Those people will step up not because
they're pro Trump, but because they're pro law, because their
pro fairness and the lawness is very clear.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
There is nothing to prosecute here, but there is everything
to publicize here. This is the fourth time in one
week that Trump has gotten this message out to the
three justices whom he appointed to the Supreme Court, and
to the other three Conservatives who were already there urinating
(02:39):
on the Constitution the day he got there. The message
is they had better find in his favor on these
two critical cases headed their way. A week ago today,
Maggie Haberman went on CNN and vaguely quoted Trump without
characterizing her sources as being worried that the justices might
be too worried about appearing fair that they might rule
(03:02):
against him just to make themselves look good. And then
on Tuesday, another Trump attorney, Christina bob when on the
streaming channel Real America's Voice and said quote, it should
be the entire nation who determines who they want for president,
whether they're guilty of insurrection or not. It's up to
(03:24):
the people. That can be read not just at minimum
as an admission of Trump's potential guilt as an insurrectionist,
but more importantly, it is a blatant warning to the
Supreme Court, to the entire judicial system, to the nation
that Trump would not recognize any decision to enforce the
fourteenth Amendment, to declare him an insurrectionist, to remove him
(03:48):
from the ballot, and under those circumstances, the only way
Trump would wind up in power would be by armed violence.
If it's up to the people whether they're guilty of
insurrection or not, that is no longer in the realm
of an election. And Wednesday, Alina Haba had continued the
theme on Fox as I mentioned confirming first last week's
(04:12):
Haberman report and then adding quote, I can tell you
that Trump's concern is a valid one. Republicans are conservative,
They get nervous, They unfortunately sometimes shy away from being
pro Trump because they feel that even if the laws
on our side, they might be swayed, much like the
Democratic side would be right. So they're trying so hard
(04:35):
to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call.
There's no politics that should be involved in this. It's
simply American, unquote, even for Trump. This is astounding and alarming,
and it has now last night been escalated one more
(04:55):
evil notch, with Haba insisting that Kavanaugh would step up. First,
she mentions that Trump went through hell to get him
on the Supreme Court. Then she insists that's not why
he would rule for Trump. Well, if that's not why
he would rule for Trump, why did she mention it.
These are uncoded messages, blatant warnings to the justices that,
(05:20):
regardless of the law, they are expected to act on
Trump's behalf. It is putrid, it is vile, it is Trump.
And if the messages do not come back reassuring Trump,
or when as assumed, the Court turns him down on
presidential immunity, to provide itself with cover for vetoing the
(05:42):
Constitution and not enforcing the fourteenth Amendment, we have to
be ready for an all out assault on the justices,
and on their safety and on their existence by Trump himself,
as he has shown with Judge Engern in the New
York business fraud case and with Judge Chutkin in the
Washington election subversion case. Trump has no respect for the court,
(06:05):
no respect for any court, and certainly no respect for
the lives or the safety of the justices or the judges.
And it is essential for the Biden administration and the
Biden campaign to saturate the advertising platforms with reminders that
Trump is already right now presenting vivid previews of his
(06:29):
full throated dictatorship, where the rule of law will be
erased and replaced by the rule of threat and coercion
and quid pro quo. There is more to discuss about this,
Alena Haba. She made an earlier appearance yesterday in which
(06:50):
she underscored her top tier role in this Trump ideocracy,
but first to the still low chance but nonetheless intriguing
possibility that trouble waits for Trump in New Hampshire. In
the New Hampshire Republican primary eighteen days from now, newest
poll Trump thirty seven, Haley thirty three, Christy ten so
(07:15):
Trump up by only four caveats. Last month, the same
polster had Trump up by four and he has them
both going up four points since then. More caveats. The
polster is American Research Group, and American Research Group has
a really bad track record and a really long, really
(07:36):
bad track record, even just in New Hampshire. And American
Research Group is based in New Hampshire. Two days before
the two thousand Republican primary, it had Bush beating McCain
by two. McCain won by eighteen. More caveats. The logo
of American Research Group. I swear they use the printer
(07:57):
I bought for my first Apple Macintosh in nineteen eighty six,
and its website glitches it keeps reading still thirty seven
thirty three. Trump could be wrong by ten points and
still be only Trump forty two to twenty eight, which
is roughly where the five thirty eight pole of poles
has it. Trump forty two, Hailey twenty nine, Christy eleven.
(08:19):
And the first meaningful part of that is there is
Trump vulnerability. If Christy dropped out, his voters might scatter
among DeSantis and Ramaswami and Haley, but they would not
be going to Trump. The other meaningful part of all
this is New Hampshire polling is clarifying just who is
(08:40):
who in this race. Haley, she is the acceptable face
of fascism, the alternate for Trumpists who are worried that
their cult leader might be in prison or fully insane
or I don't know, dead by election day. She has
already promised to pardon Trump. She has already intentionally or
not said she was comfortable with the good old Confederate
(09:00):
States of America, and she won't be bringing up any
of those pesky issues of ski in color or immigration,
despite her you know self. She is also obviously the spoiler.
This arg pull says only sixty three percent of likely
New Hampshire voters are Republicans. The other thirty seven are undeclared,
(09:23):
that could be independents, that could be Democrats, and they
break thirty six twenty nine for Haley. But clearly Haley
is now the trumpests break glass in event of emergency candidate,
and New Hampshire Republicans seem to be a lot closer
to actually pulling that alarm than those in the other
states do. Christy, he is obviously the choice of conservatives
(09:46):
with consciences, and you knew that the moment that the
number ten percent came up, didn't you, DeSantis? He is
the winner of the Rudy Giuliani Memorial Self Destruction Prize,
and Ramaswami, who day before yesterday declared Trump was damaged
and predicted they would make make sure he would never
be elected again. He has only realized far too late
(10:09):
that that could have been his lane all along. The
New Hampshire polling also indicates that the most stunning part
of the Republican world, this crazed mixture of fantasy, violence, authoritarianism, racism,
and really stupid people, is that it seems to be
slightly more worried about the prospect of being chained to
a metaphorical corpse of a candidate in Trump than it
(10:32):
is about the prospect of being chained to an ever
increasingly insane and thus perhaps unelectable candidate in Trump. Haley
is there in case someone or something removes Trump from
the election. If that does not happen, Trump can be
literally speaking in tongues by the time of the Republican
(10:54):
Convention and they will not abandon him. And every day
he gets a little bit closer to speaking in tongues.
At nine thirty yesterday morning, Trump hosted, quote, the invasion
through our southern border is for purposes of voting in
the twenty twenty election. Un quote voting in the twenty
(11:20):
twenty election. You say, even in Maga world, that would
be a neat trick. Moreover, about six hours later, Trump
reposted the same damn thing, the invasion through our southern
border is for purposes of voting in the twenty twenty election.
No correction, no stupid excuse that the cultists would lap up.
(11:45):
I meant to write that and they'd say, see, I
told you the twenty twenty election was fixed. They're still
counting votes against him once again. Right now, Trump does
not know where he is, He does not know who
you are, and increasingly he does not know when it is.
(12:08):
And by the way, between his two warnings about twenty
twenty four migrants voting in the twenty twenty election, Trump
made thirty one posts in one hour, all of them
insults and or threats against E. Gene Carroll. And he
says he is going to testify eleven days from now
(12:29):
in the damage's phase of the lawsuit that she's already
won against him, as opposed to the second defamation suit
she has against him. And if it was not obvious
that what is left of Trump's brains are oozing out
of his ears, the idea that he should take the
stand in a rape case he has already lost should
(12:50):
confirm that. Happily, Trump is surrounded by legal geniuses who
would never let something like that happen. And when I
say never, I mean always. And when I say gene,
I mean Alina Habba, Christina Bob and now har Meat
Dylan Haba is back with her dumbest moment yet. She
(13:17):
is the Trump attorney who Wednesday gently threatened the six
conservative Supreme Court justices that they had better not be
trying so hard to look neutral in the Fourteenth Amendment
and presidential immunity cases. She's that lawyer, as opposed to Bob,
who is the Trump attorney who Tuesday gently threatened the
justices and everybody else that it doesn't matter if Trump
(13:38):
is guilty of insurrection and ineligible for the presidency, because
the American people will have the final word and they
will install him anyway, presumably by violence. Now this is Haba.
Haba went on one of the three million pro Trump
podcasts PbD, and she managed to score a ten out
(14:03):
of ten on not one, but two different delusions of grandeurw.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'll tell you something. Somebody said to me, Elina, would
you rather be? Would you rather be smart? Or pretty?
And I said, oh, easy, pretty, I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Well, no, no, you can't. I don't know. She just
confessed she isn't smart and she's trying to fake it,
or if she actually thinks she's smart and also self deprecating.
But one day, as we have just lionized Robert Oppenheimer
with his own film, we will also honor professors Dave
(14:47):
Dunning and Justin Krueger in a combination scientific biography and
buddy film in which we are shown how they proved
that stupid people truly think they are smart, and smart
people truly cannot believe that there aren't lots of people
as smart or smarter than they are. Either way, somebody
will have to play Elina Habba in that film, because
(15:09):
the Dunning Krueger moments explode from her cortex like Trump
posts about Egene Carroll.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
You have to be honest. It doesn't hurt to be
good looking in this world, in the pr world on TV,
it doesn't hurt. And when you're good looking, that's great,
but it can also mean people think you're stupid, or
people think that President Trump hired me because I was
good looking. That is absolutely not the case.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Finally, she's right, people do think she's stupid, and clearly
Trump did not hire her because she was good looking.
He hired her because you just can't have too many
parking lot law experts at your beck and call. Incidentally,
as she said these things, miss Haba was dressed in
(15:56):
a Kuela Deville outfit, only the kind you would find
at Ross dress for less and no, I know she
is not as important as, say, the first Biden campaign
ad that sticks a toe into the waters of the
real meaning of this election, democracy or dictatorship, or of
(16:17):
Biden's speech today. And she's also not as important as
the House Oversight Committee findings about how many millions Trump
took from foreign governments while president, both of which stories
I will get to presently. But Alina Habba is invaluable
in one way as a reminder both of what we
are up against and more happily, of what Trump is
(16:39):
up against in twenty first century America. Stupidity will get
you a long way, but eventually that stupidity. Bill Barr
trusted Trump, Trump trusted him. Trump knew Brad Raffensberger would
break the law for him. Eventually, that stupidity will be
(17:03):
someone's downfall. Because unlike the rest of us, who wonder
if there is somebody smarter out there, or somebody more evil,
or just somebody more prepared, these thoughts never cross Trump's mind,
nor the minds of his various Alena Habbas. Thus, the
(17:24):
last ten percent of the scheme, whatever it is, is
left to chance because they cannot conceive of anything they
do going wrong, because they are them, and none of them,
not one can answer that first question of mental health correctly.
(17:47):
Can you approximately accurately say how you are viewed by
all the people around you? This is what Alena Habba,
who went pressed, explained that how good looking she thinks
she is has helped her in her feet, being on
TV and being in public relations. Not one word about,
(18:08):
you know, lawyering. This is what Alena Habba, who is
on television or online every day, every day, working for
a creature who in one hour can send out thirty
one posts disparaging a woman he raped, who puts out
more videos online than I do, This is what Alena
(18:29):
Habba thinks everybody thinks of her compared to what everybody
thinks of the Special Council.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
They love having pressers, they love having press conferences, Jack Smith,
they love having press conferences, getting in front, having their moment.
It's almost a narcissistic.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
As Special Counsel Jack Smith has had two press events.
Neither was a press conference a presser. He has read
two brief statements. He has never answered nor acknowledged any
reporter's question. Jack Smith has sixteen associates and deputies in
(19:13):
his office. None of them has ever held a news
conference nor answered a reporter's question. And bluntly, I don't
know if that number sixteen is correct because other than
Thomas Wyndham and Molly Gaston, as I researched that number,
I didn't recognize any of the other names of Jack
Smith's deputies. Haba is not just wrong about this press
(19:37):
conference stuff, not just stupid, but unless she is knowingly
and deliberately lying, she is actually hallucinating. By the way,
new fourteenth Amendment lawsuit filed in Illinois yesterday trying to
get the state Board of Elections there to block him
from both the Republican primary in March and the general.
(20:01):
I'm sure Elina will deal with it as soon as
she finishes her acting exercises.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Of more substance, but less novelty. What we all knew
we knew has now been confirmed. During his presidency, foreign
government's funneled at least seven million, eight hundred thousand dollars
through Donald Trump's bribery glory holes, the Trump Washington Hotel,
the Trump Las Vegas Hotel, and the Trump Towering Inferno
(20:34):
of Ego around the corner from me here in fun City.
And five million, six hundred thousand of that came from China.
China bought its share of Trump's presidency for five million,
six hundred thousand dollars. The Democrats on the House Oversight
Committee who have the receipts and who actually show them
(20:56):
rather than pretend to hide them, they showed them. And
those are the numbers about just Trump's foreign violations of
the Emolument's clause, as presented by Jamie Raskin in a
news conference on Capitol Hill. All of the numbers gleaned
from the documents from Trump's former accounting firm, documents which
(21:17):
were subpoened when Democrats still had the majority in twenty nineteen,
and which even with the success of Trump's henchmen on
the committee to sabotage that subpoena and the lawsuit to
enforce it, even despite them, the Democrats have managed to
get a portion of those documents from the accounting firm,
So seven point eight million in payoffs to Trump five
(21:38):
point six million from China alone. Those are floors we
sometimes forget amid the insanity, the dictatorship, the depravity, the
disloyalty to this country, and the hot and cold running
immorality that Donald Trump is also a whore, that his
(21:59):
administration was a whore house, and that those who worked
for him there were at best the procurers. NBC News
provided an unintentional punchline to this sordid if unsurprising story. Quote.
Trump's twenty twenty four presidential campaign did not immediately reply
(22:19):
to a request for comment unquote, to which the only
possible response is did you remember to write it in Chinese?
And the start of Wabbitt season has been moved up
to day and President Biden will launch the full frontal
attack on Trump that would be dictator today at Valley
(22:40):
Forge because of likely bad weather there over the weekend.
He was to speak on the third anniversary of the
January sixth insurrection, which is on January sixth. All indications
are that the campaign's attitude towards how best to remind
the voters or explain to the ones not really paying attention,
of the unprecedented threat of a deranged, amoral, vengeful, not
(23:02):
quite human animal running for dictation. The best way to
do that is to roll it out slowly, rather than
to hit them with it all at once. Thus, the
president's speech may not even mention his opponent by name,
either of his names Trump or Baby Hitler. It may
be more on the lines of what we saw in
the first Biden ad on the topic, which dropped yesterday
(23:25):
and which will not knock you out, but which does
get the point across.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
I've made the preservation of American democray the central issue
of my presidence.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
I believe in free and fair.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Elections and the right to vote fairly and.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Have your vote counted.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
There's something dangerous happening in America. There's an extremist movement
and does not share the basic police in our democracy.
All of us are being asked right now, what will
we do to maintain our democracy? History's watching, the world
is watching. The most important our children. Congrantiate will hold
(24:04):
us responsible. Vice President and I I've supported Vote Rise
since day one of this administration, and I ask every
American to join me in this cause. America is still
a place of possibilities, where the power resides with we
the people. That's our soul. We are the United States
of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity that we
(24:27):
act together. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And I'm Keith Olberman and I also approved this message. Again,
if that was the closing argument add against Trump, guess
what President Biden loses. But it's not. I fully expect
the naming of names and the clipping of clips, as
we've done here in the silly way that I do it.
The promise to be a dictator, the quotation of Hitler,
the talk of terminating the Constitution, the threats to the
(24:54):
Supreme Court justices, the rest of this list a little long.
It's the Internet. We only have infinity. I can't get
all five thousand possible. Biden adds about Trump for you here,
the ultimate goal is to drive Trump and his cult
back into their sewers, and you do as much as
you need to do. But in the end, I think
it is essential to remember that whatever angle works should
(25:19):
be used. Biden commercials about the resurgent economy, Biden commercials
about Trump, admiring Hitler, Yes and yes, and buy two
spot availabilities in the same commercial break. So you hit
each angle in a span of two and a half minutes.
Spots about January sixth, spots about the Republicans holding Ukraine hostage,
(25:42):
spots about Trump using the immigration issue rather than doing
anything to try to solve it. All of it make
one hundred and seventy five different spots, just as all
the methods that can be used to stop and destroy
Trump must be utilized despite any squeamishness about the long
(26:03):
term consequences. When I hear got Lucky once, dilettants like
David Axelrod say that enforcing the fourteenth Amendment would rip
the country apart. I wonder exactly what he thinks will
happen to the country if Trump prevails. I guess, David,
it wouldn't be ripped apart. It would just be torn apart.
(26:25):
That make you feel better, I'm going to invoke the
movie Oppenheimer again. You have to do it. You have
to build the bomb, you have to be ready to
use the bomb. I am as anti nuclear weapons as
anybody could be. I am also from a time when
Robert Oppenheimer was still alive, and from when my father
(26:48):
reminded me that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,
it was eight days after he had turned sixteen years old,
and that was the first time it dawned on him
that when he turned eighteen years old he might not
be drafted to fight in World War Two, because it
(27:08):
might be over by nineteen forty seven. Later, the English
teacher who shaped my understanding of literature and writing mentioned
in passing that when that bomb was dropped, he was
in the army two years ahead of my dad, eighteen
years old, and he was in training, and what he
(27:29):
was in training for was the land invasion of Japan.
I don't want the consequences of a man removed from
the ballot by criminal conviction or by the enforcement of
the fourteenth Amendment, or by anything other than voting. I
don't want them, but I will take them because cleaning
(27:52):
up whatever tantrums the Trump cult throws is immeasurably better
and easier and frankly less disastrous and bloody then the
revolution that would have to be staged to remove Trump
and his cult from the dictatorship. They seek and plan.
(28:22):
Also of interest here so that RFK Junior super packs
celebration to be headlined by Andrea Bocelli and Dion Warwick
and Martin Sheen. Well, one out of three ain't bad.
Actually one out of three is bad. Kennedy's people lied
two of those three headliners, deny having ever said they
(28:44):
would do anything of the kind. But you know, actually
it ain't bad being right thirty three percent of the time.
That's like RFK Junior's high water mark this century. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman
(29:26):
still to come on. Count down. A century ago, literally
one century ago, something happened in Columbus, Ohio, and it
would have fit right next to all the headlines this
week about the Epstein files because it was something that
actually didn't happen a century ago in Columbus, Ohio. And
(29:47):
it proves two things. The writings of James Thurber are
as topical today as they were when he wrote them,
and people have always been willing to believe nonsense, and
the more impossible, the more stupid it is, the more
nonsensical it is, the more likely they are to believe it.
The explanation coming up on Fridays with Thurber first time
(30:10):
for the daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons
in the world The bronze worse. Elawn Musk Lannie has
sued the National Labor Relations Board, trying to end its
authority to you know, protect workers from you know, slimeballs
(30:37):
like Elon Musk. I'm assuming the Politico dot com headline
for this story was unintentionally funny, but who knows. Quote
Musk's SpaceX seeks to blow up federal labor enforcer Unquote Well, sir,
if there's anything you can depend on Elon Musk and
(30:58):
his SpaceX rockets to do, it's blow up Worser with
the silver her American Values twenty twenty four The Bobby
Kennedy Junior super Pack it tweeted out a Daily Mail
article quoting well the American Values twenty twenty four Superpack,
saying that the singer Andrea Bocelli would be performing at
(31:20):
a California event on January twenty second to raise funds
for the Robert F. Kennedy Junior campaign, and he would
be joined there by what they termed well wisher guests,
including Martin Sheen and Dion Warwick MS. Warwick was the
first to call Kennedy's people out for lying about her quote.
(31:42):
I don't know anything about this event. I did not
agree to it, and I certainly won't be there. Yesterday,
my old friend Marty Sheen, who has stationary and a
fleece bearing a logo reading the acting President of the
United States, he issued a statement through friends, reading I
do not endorse RFK Junior, nor will I be attending
(32:03):
his party. I wholeheartedly support President Joe Biden and the
Democratic ticket in twenty twenty four. Sincerely, Martin Sheen. So
two down, one to go, mister Butchelli. Not only does
this fiasco add to Robert F. Kennedy Junior's reputation for
being unable to separate his fantasies from reality, but just
(32:25):
to confuse him a little more. One of the people
who tweeted out Martin Sheen's denial was the actor Bradley
Whitford when Sheen played President Bartlett on the West Wing. Whitford,
of course played President Bartlett's chief of staff, Josh Lyman.
But the winner the worst. Will Wissert of the Associated Press. Sometimes,
(32:50):
in our troubled years, the journalistic both sides, ism that
may yet destroy this country is subtle, or it's self defensive,
or it's stuck in the middle of so much material
that is at worst mediocre that it's hard to find
or hard to fully perceive. And then there is this
story about tomorrow by the national political reporter of the
(33:14):
Associated Press, mister Weissert. In the story, there's this quote
with Biden and Trump now headed toward a potential twenty
twenty rematch. Both they're talking about the same event in
very different ways and offering framing they believe gives them
an advantage. The dueling narratives reflect how an attack that
(33:35):
disrupted the certification of the election is increasingly viewed differently
along partisan lines, and how Trump has bet that the
riot won't hurt his candidacy. Unquote, uh, here we go.
January sixth means different things to different people, Like you know,
mass murder does man's worst inhumanity to man or a
(34:00):
means of easing metropolitan overcrowding. Or there there's the subject
of lying the root of all evil or an efficient
way to avoid uncomfortable silences. Mister Weissert's article veers back
and forth from paragraph to paragraph between the supposed Biden
view that the January sixth, twenty twenty one attempt to
(34:21):
overthrow the government was you know, bad, while the Trump
view was it was a beautiful day, and the GOP
views now that the Democrats are overreacting because you know,
a president goading a mob to attack the US capital
and kill the speaker of the House. That happens after
every election. Wow, nearly every election. Wow. Okay, it never
(34:45):
happened before this, but it's happened one in a row.
It's possible Will Weisert did not write the headline accompanying
his piece of crap story. But I also haven't seen
him quitting in protest over that headline, and bluntly, he should,
or he should get fired, or he should just go
to some other line of work, like I don't know,
(35:09):
packaging bullshit and selling it at some gardening store. Here's
the headline. Associated press makes me proud to have worked
for United Press International Associated Press quote one attack, two interpretations.
Biden and Trump both make the January sixth riot a
(35:30):
political rallying cry, Will Wissert of the Associated Press. Hey,
we'll look at it this way. If the democracy dies
next year, you will have written the epitaph that we
can put on its tombstone. You, sir, are two days
worst person.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Even in the context of something and prest Not every
James Thurber's story still holds up, but for a surprisingly
large percentage of them, the point of the story is
(36:14):
as topical now as it was when he wrote it,
or when it happened. When it happened, which in this
case is the year nineteen thirteen. The Day the Dam
Broke is from his essential masterpiece, My Life in Hard Times,
And if it is about anything, it is about people
believing and acting upon nonsense. In the face of science,
(36:35):
in the face of common sense, in the face of
you could just ask somebody, they will almost always avoid
those solutions and choose instead to believe whatever the hell
they want to believe, which results in things like The
Day the Dam Broke by James Thurber. My Memories of
what my family and I went through during the nineteen
(36:56):
thirteen flood in Ohio, I would gladly forget. And yet
neither the hardships we endured, nor the turmoil and confusion
we expel sperienced, can alter my feeling toward my native
state and city. I am having a fine time now
and wish Columbus were here. But if anyone ever wished
a city was in hell, it was during that frightful
(37:16):
and perilous afternoon in nineteen thirteen when the dam broke, or,
to be more exact, when everybody in town thought the
dam broke. We were both ennobled and demoralized by the experience.
Grandfather especially rose two magnificent heights, which can never lose
their splendor for me, even though his reactions to the
(37:36):
flood were based upon a profound misconception, namely that Nathan
Bedford Forest's cavalry was the menace we were called upon
to face. The only possible means of escape for us
was to flee the house, a step which Grandfather sternly forbade,
brandishing his old army saber in his hand. Let the
sungevver come, he roared. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were streaming
(38:02):
by our house in wild panic, screaming go east, Go East.
We had to stun Grandfather with the ironing board, impeded
as we were by the inert form of the old gentleman.
He was taller than six feet and weighed almost one
hundred and seventy pounds. We were passed in the first
half mile by practically everybody else in the city. Had
(38:23):
Grandfather not come too at the corner of Parsons Avenue
in Town Street, we would unquestionably have been overtaken and
engulfed by the roaring waters. That is, if there had
been any roaring waters. Later, when the panic had died
down and people had gone rather sheepishly back to their
homes and their offices, minimizing the distances they had run
(38:44):
and offering various reasons for running, city engineers pointed out
that even if the dam had broken, the water level
would not have risen more than two additional inches in
the west side. The west side was at the time
of the dam scare under thirty feet of water, as
indeed were all Ohio River towns during the Great Spring
(39:07):
floods of twenty years ago. The east side, where we
lived and where all the running occurred, had never been
in any danger at all. Only a rise of some
ninety five feet could have caused the floodwaters to flow
over High Street, the thoroughfare that divided the east side
of town from the west and engulfed the east side.
(39:28):
The fact that we were all as safe as kittens
under a cookstove did not, however, assuage in the least
the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon
the residents of the east side. When the cry spread
like a grass fire that the dam had given way.
(39:49):
Some of the most dignified, staid, cynical, and clear thinking
men in town abandoned their wives, stenographers, homes, and offices,
and ran east. There are few alarms in the world
more terrifying than the dam has broken. There are few
persons cave stopping to reason when that clarion cry strikes
upon their ears, even persons who live in towns no
(40:10):
nearer than five hundred miles to a damn. The Columbus,
Ohio broken Damn rumor began, as I recalled, about noon
of March twelfth, nineteen thirteen. High Street, the main canyon
of trade, was loud, with the placid hum of business
and the buzzing of placid businessmen arguing, computing, wheedling, offering, refusing, compromising.
(40:33):
Darius Cunningway, one of the foremost corporational lawyers in the
Middle West, was telling the Public Utilities Commission in the
language of Julius Caesar, that they might as well try
to move the Northern Star as to move him. Other
men were making their little boasts and their little gestures.
Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he
(40:55):
had simply remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to
meet his wife, for which he was now frightfully late.
Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street, probably
toward the Marramour Restaurant, a favorite place for a man
to meet his wife. Somebody else began to run, perhaps
a newsboy in high spirits, another man, a portly gentleman
of affairs, broken to a trot. Inside of ten minutes,
(41:19):
everybody on High Street, from the Union Depot to the
courthouse was running a loud mumble gradually crystallized into the
dread word dam. The dam has broke. The fear was
put into words by a little old lady in an
electric or by a traffic cop or by a small boy.
Nobody knows who, nor does it now really matter. Two
(41:42):
thousand people were abruptly in full flight. Go east was
the cry that arosed east away from the river, east
to safety. Go east, Go east, Go east. Black streams
of people flowed eastward down all the streets leading in
that direction. These streams, whose headwaters were in the dry
goods stores, office buildings, harnessed shops, movie theaters, were fed
(42:05):
by trickles of housewives, children's cripples, servants, dogs, and cats
slipping out of the houses, past which the main streams flowed,
Shouting and screaming. People ran out of homes, leaving fires
burning and food cooking, and doors wide open. I remember, however,
that my mother turned out all the fires, and that
she took with her a dozen eggs and two loaves
(42:27):
of bread. It was her plan to make memorial haul
just two blocks away and take refuge somewhere in the
top of it, in one of the dusty rooms where
war veterans met and where old battle flags and stage
scenery were stored. But the seething throngs shouting go East,
drew her along and the rest of us with her.
(42:47):
When grandfather regained full consciousness. At Parsons Avenue, he turned
upon the retreating mob like a vengeful profit, and exhorted
the men to form ranks and stand off the rebel dogs.
But at length he too got the idea that the
dam had broken, and roaring go east in his powerful voice,
he caught up in one arm a small child and
(43:08):
in the other a slight clerkish man of perhaps forty two,
and we slowly began to gain on those ahead of us.
A scattering of firemen, policemen and army officers in dress
uniforms there had been a review at Fort Hayes in
the northern part of town, added color to the surging
billows of people. Go east, cried a little child in
(43:28):
a piping voice, as she ran past a porch on
which drowsed A lieutenant colonel of infantry. Used to quick decisions,
trained to immediate obedience, the officer bounded off the porch, and,
running at full tilt, soon past the child, bawling go east.
The two of them emptied rapidly the houses of the
little street they were on. What is it? What is it?
Demanded a fat waddling man who intercepted the colonel The
(43:51):
officer dropped behind and asked the little child what it was.
The damn has broke, gasped the girl. The damn has broke,
roared the colonel. Go east, Go east, Go east. He
was soon leading, with the exhausted child in his arms,
a fleeing company of three hundred persons who had gathered
(44:12):
around him from living rooms, shops, garages, backyards and basements.
Nobody has ever been able to compute with any exactness
how many people took part in the Great Route of
nineteen thirteen. For the panic, which extended from the Winslow
bottling works in the south end to Clintonville six miles north,
ended as abruptly as it began, and the bobtail and
(44:36):
ragtag and velvet gowned groups of refugees melted away and
slunk home, leaving the streets peaceful and deserted. The shouting, weeping,
tangled evacuation of the city lasted not more than two hours.
In all, some few people got as far east as Reynoldsburg,
twelve miles away. Fifty or more reached the Country Club
(44:57):
eight miles away. Most of the others gave up, exhausted
or climbed trees in Franklin Park, four miles out. Order
was restored and fear dispelled finally by means of militia
men riding about in motor lorries balling through megaphones. The
dam has not broken. At first, this tended only to
(45:18):
add to the confusion and increase the panic from many
stampeders thought the soldiers were bellowing. The dam has now broken,
thus setting an official seal of authentication on the calamity.
All the time, the sun shone quietly, and there was
nowhere any sign of oncoming waters. A visitor in an
(45:39):
airplane looking down on the straggling, agitated masses of people
below would have been hard put to it to divine
a reason for the phenomenon. It must have inspired in
such an observer a peculiar kind of terror, like the
sight of the Marie Celeste abandoned at sea, its galley
fires peacefully burning, its tranquil decks bright in the sunlight.
(46:01):
An aunt of mine, Aunt Edith Taylor, was in a
movie theater on High Street, went over and above the
sound of the piano in the pit, a william S.
Hart Cowboy picture was being shown, there rose the steadily
increasing tramp of running feet persistent shouts rose above the tramping.
An elderly man sitting near my aunt mumbled something, got
(46:23):
out of his seat and went up the aisle to
a dog trot. This started everybody in an instant. The
audience was jamming the aisles. Fire shouted a woman who
always expected to be burned up in a theater. But
now the shouts outside were louder and coherent. The damn
has broke, Prie. Somebody go east, screamed a small woman
(46:43):
in front of my aunt. And east they went, pushing
and shoving and clawing, knocking women and children down, emerging
finally into the street, torn and sprawling. Inside the theater,
Bill Hart was calmly calling some desperadoes bluff, and the
brave girl at the piano played Row Row row loudly,
and then in my harem. Outside, men were streaming across
(47:06):
the State House yard. Others were climbing trees. A woman
managed to get up onto These are My Jewels statue,
whose bronze figures of Sherman, Stanton, Grant and Sheridan watched
with cold unconcern the going to pieces of the capital City.
I ran south to State Street, east on State to
(47:27):
Third south on Third to Town and out east on Town.
My aunt Edith has written me. A tall, spare woman
with grim eyes and a determined chin ran past me
down the middle of the street. I was still uncertain
as to what was the matter. In spite of all
the shouting, I drew up alongside the woman with some effort,
for although she was in her late fifties, she had
a beautiful easy running for him and seemed to be
(47:49):
an excellent condition. What is it, I puffed. She gave
me a quick glance and then looked ahead again, stepping
up her pace a trifle. Don't ask me, ask God,
she said. When I reached Grant Avenue, I was so spent.
The doctor h R. Mallory. You remember doctor Mallory, the
man with the white beard. It looks like Robert Browning. Well,
doctor Mallory, whom I had drawn away from at the
(48:10):
corner of Fifth in Town, passed me. It's got us,
he shouted, and I felt sure that whatever it was,
it did have us, For you know what conviction doctor
Mallory statements always carried. I didn't know at the time
what he meant, but I found out later. There was
a boy behind him on roller skates, and doctor Mallory
mistook the swishing of the skates for the sound of
rushing water. He eventually reached the Columbus School for Girls
(48:35):
at the corner of Parsons Avenue in Town Street, where
he collapsed, expecting the cold, frothing waters of the Sciota
to sweep him into oblivion. The boy on skates swirled
past him, and doctor Mallory realized for the first time
what he had been running from. Looking back up the street,
he could see no signs of water, but nevertheless, after
resting a few minutes, he jogged on east again. He
(48:57):
caught up with me at Ohio Avenue, where we rested together.
I should say that about seven hundred people passed us.
A funny thing was that all of them were on foot.
Nobody seemed to have had the courage to stop and
start his car, but as I remember it, all cars
had to be cranked in those days, which is probably
the reason. The next day the city went about its
(49:20):
business as if nothing had happened. But there was no joking.
It was two years or more before you dare to
treat the breaking of the dam lightly, and even now,
twenty years after, there are a few persons like doctor Mallory,
who will shut up like a clam if you mentioned
the afternoon of the Great Run, the day the dam
(49:45):
broke by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical director
is Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel arranged, produced, and
(50:07):
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
the bass, and the drums. 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. The sports music is the
Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis,
(50:29):
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today is my friend Jonathan Banks from Better
Call Saul and Breaking Bad and Airplane and everything else
was pretty much my fault as always. That's countdown for
this three hundred and two days until the twenty twenty
(50:50):
four US presidential election and the one thy ninety fifth
day since dementia. J Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States three years ago.
Tomorrow use the fourteen Amendment, the Insurrection Act, and the
justice system to stop him from doing it again while
(51:11):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I can fake being smart.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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