TRUMP TACOS ON PORTLAND INVASION; HINTS HE CAN BESTOW IMMORTALITY - 9.29.25

SEASON 4 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is escalating his terror campaign against you. If you oppose him, if you criticize him, if you even question him, he will try to call YOU a terrorist, put YOU on a terrorism BLACKLIST. And if that doesn’t work, ARREST you, and if THAT doesn’t work, invade your state and terrorize IT.

On the other hand, he has apparently TACO’d out on his terrorist invasion of Portland now saying “well I mean we’re certainly LOOKING AT IT.” But on the OTHER OTHER hand National Security Presidential Memorandum Seven is not on hold; in it Trump claims the right to prosecute you for domestic terrorist if you express quote “anti-Christianity” or oppose the government in any way. 

Get you indicted when there is literally no case, like James Comey. Or reenact the McCarthy Era blacklist and try to get you fired, as with Lisa Monaco. Or just label you a domestic terrorist because you called Stephen Miller a "fascist." When Stephen Miller has called 150 million Democrats "fascists." That'll be quite the indictment against Miller. Which reminds me: Fox's Jesse Watters calls Miller a "sexual matador." Which I presume means he winds up getting gored in the groin.

And just to bring this up a notch, Trump's insanity is growing and it certainly looks like over the weekend, he wanted his social media followers to believe he can bestow upon them the gift of immortality. 

Not IMMORALITY, "immortality." The saga of Trump's Med Beds and RFK jr's face.

B-Block (34:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Isabel Vincent writes the weakest New York Post hit job on me in the history of New York Post hit jobs. The breaking news? An anonymous source says I may have been rude to a waiter in 1997. Marco Rubio bans the president of Colombia, tags him on twitter, tags the wrong guy. And Newt Gingrich complains about Abby Spanberger not voting for a particular bill in the House this month. Maybe because she hasn't been a member of the house since January?

(45:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's Stevie Week! Thirteen years ago tomorrow since I was born again in dogs, when Olivia Nuzzi and I were adopted by a tiny Maltese who opened up a new world to me.

C-Block (1:06:00) PART TWO OF STEVIE WEEK: The adventures of Stevie and the five dogs who have followed her, including a cameo appearance from the Gotcha Day Girl herself.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
is escalating his terror campaign against you. If you oppose him,

(00:28):
if you criticize him, if you even question him, he
will try to call you a terrorist. He will try
to put you on a terrorism blacklist, and if that
doesn't work, he will try to arrest you, and if
that doesn't work, he will invade your state and terrorize it. Plus,
just to bring this up a notch, his insanity is growing,
and it certainly looks like he wanted his social media

(00:50):
followers this weekend to think he can bestow upon them
the gift of immortality. Good morning. Actually there is a
glimmer of hope. Is essential to remember that with Trump
there is a middle. Once in a blue moon. Usually

(01:10):
there are only the extremes. He is a madman capable
of bombing an American city. On the other hand, he
can be flattered into inactivity and better still, any true resistance,
and the taco cliche becomes reality. Governor Cotech of Oregon
and local leaders, including Republican leaders, pushed back on this
war ravaged Portland crap, and they either scared Trump enough

(01:33):
or made him somehow realize he was also making a
fool of himself. There have been twenty nine arrests related
to the robust but almost painfully peaceful one hundred and
sixteen day old protests outside ICE headquarters in Portland, but
twenty two of those twenty nine arrests were before July fourth.
There is no trouble to photograph anymore, and to sell

(01:54):
this to his idiots. Trump needs new photographs because the
leaves are changing color. So now NBC asks him about
Oregon yesterday, and all of a sudden, it's well, I mean,
we're certainly looking at it. You can't have that, we
don't want that. They're attacking our ice facility, and they're
attacking other federal buildings. Translation, Oregon has been tacoed. Oregon

(02:19):
has now become like one of my two weeks announcements
about Putin. We're certainly looking at it like he's looking
at Chicago, like he's looking at New York, like he's
looking at whatever hallucination has just appeared before his jaundiced eyes.
Tacos for the table. Everybody want tacos. Everybody gets tacos.

(02:41):
You get a taco, and you get a taco, and
you get a taco and you get a taco, So
Oregon seems to be on hold. However, the darker new
development is full speed ahead. At its best. It is
a kind of terror blacklist to try to bankrupt, dirty up,
or otherwise damage his critics and people who prosecuted him
for organ oh his crimes, and thus, like any criminal,

(03:03):
Trump has vowed to it at least metaphorically kill them.
And it's worse though, it's something close to a complete
suspension of the First Amendment and outright overt government sponsored terror.
It is National Security Presidential Memorandum seven, which they put
out Thursday, and when if implemented, really definitionally makes the

(03:25):
United States a fascist country. Do not be confused. It
is not one of those tough sounding but legally almost
meaningless executive orders. It is a weighty policy memo which
the White House claims carries quote the force of law,
which is addressed to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and
Homeland and the Attorney General and other people who would

(03:47):
be probably unemployed without Trump. It begins with by the
authority vested in me as President by the Constitution, meaning
if this is challenged because it's blatantly illegal and unconstitutional,
Trump will defend it to the Supreme Court with the
Federalist Society article to inherent powers. Bullshit, And if you

(04:08):
challenge it, he will say you are trying to overthrow
the constitution. This memo was written so Trump can try
to claim that anybody doing anything he does not like
is a terrorist, or funding terrorists or supporting terrorists. Sweeping
new powers to investigate and target organizations, groups, individuals, entities, entities.

(04:32):
I assume he means boosts anything and anybody who give
off any of the following. Indica, that's the word they use, idica,
Indica a violence. You're ready, anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti Christianity,

(04:53):
support for the overthrow of the United States government. J six,
Extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, stility
towards those who hold traditional American views on family, Hostility
towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, Hostility
towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. Well,

(05:20):
that's all sounds like a dating profile for Steven Miller
to me. And hostility towards those who hold traditional American
values on morality, that's a hostility towards those Trump is
one of those. Right. He holds hostility towards those who
hold traditional American views on morality, doesn't he christ that list.

(05:41):
The only thing he left out was I didn't get
a harum for out of that guy. Trump's declaration of
war on the bogey men that he and Steven Miller
and Project twenty twenty five just created in the basement
somewhere actually begins. Quote heinous assassinations and other acts of
political violence in the United States have dramatically increased in
recent years. Well, yeah, you intend them to increase. That's

(06:05):
why they increased. Even in the aftermath of the horrifying
assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who adhered to the
alleged shooter's ideology huh, embraced and cheered this evil murder
while actively encouraging more political violence. Charlie Kirk is the
Reichstag fire In a presidential memorandum, and you'll notice assassinations

(06:31):
in there is plural. So he's mentioning the killing of
the Minnesota Democrats. No, he's mentioning the murder of the
healthcare executive and quote the twenty twenty two assassination attempt
against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And if you're saying,
what assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that
was the one where the guy got near Kavanaugh's home,

(06:53):
realized what he was doing, called nine to one one,
and asked the police to come and stop him because
he felt like he might have lost control of himself.
All assassination attempts should like that one. And the Right, incidentally,
is still milking the death of Charlie Kirk so hard
that Trump doesn't even mention the assassination attempt on himself

(07:15):
until three sentences later he does mention a shooting targeting
and ice facility in Dallas without mentioning that the victims
were detainees, and his administration will not mention that and
claims it's all part of a quote culmination of sophisticated,
organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed

(07:37):
to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct
policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. No,
those are not the lyrics to the Trump National anthem
as sung by the January sixth Foggy Bottom Boys. It
is what Trump is doing but he claims he isn't,

(07:58):
but he claims you are regardless. Soon or late Trump
will use this and to use this against civilians, against democrats,
against political commentators, against anybody who doesn't hurrumph. The rights

(08:18):
level of madness, it's desire to figuratively or literally start
killing liberals is at fever pitch, exacerbated by its growing
shocked and outside its bubble. It's not just that nobody
thought Charlie Kirk was Jesus, it's that barely anybody knew
who Charlie Kirk was. The madness is so pervasive and
so far from any kind of logical through line that

(08:41):
Gavin Newsome mocked another Trump tweet by posting Stephen Miller
as a fascist. Miller retweets that with why did you
call me that? Sebastian Gorka then tweets, that's what you
called Charlie Kirk. Then one of you assassinated him. Why
are you inciting murder? Derek Van Orden, the congressman representing
CTE and PTSD, then tweets this reaches the threshold of

(09:06):
domestic terrorism. This is no longer inflammatory, it's criminal. Calling
somebody a fascist is now incitement to murder and a
crime and domestic terrorism. Well, okay, none of these people,
including Miller himself, even remember that. Before they resumed their dictatorship.

(09:27):
Miller tweeted that the Biden administration was quote fascist, and
in a different tweet, he called that administration fascist tyranny.
And then he tweeted about an investigation of Musk, which meant, quote,
we now live in a fascist country. And in a
fourth one, he tweeted, the Democrat Party is now a
fascist party. Plus all the times Trump called liberals fascists,

(09:50):
so let's let's see calling somebody a fascist on Twitter
is a crime. Miller called Biden and every Democrat in
the country a fascist, so that'll be let's see. Carry
the two one hundred and fifty three forty five counts
of criminal domestic terrorism against defended Stephen Miller. Please pay

(10:10):
at the desk. There are two messages here. One is
if you do not submit to National Security Presidential Memorandum
number seven, which is not to be confused with Strawberry
Letter number twenty three, you will be invaded or accused
of terrorism. We're both. The other message is we will
eventually start killing all of you. The blood lust on

(10:34):
the right is reaching orgiastic proportions. But until then, in
the interim, we're just going to roll out a blacklist,
quote corrupt and totally trump deranged. Lisa Monaco, a purported
pawn of legal lightweight Andrew Weissman, was a senior National
security aid under Barack Hussein Obama and a law fair

(10:56):
and weaponization obsessed Deputy Attorney General under Crooked Joe Biden
and Lisa's puppet boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who are
all architects of the world ever deep state conspirable arm
asleep already, but later on he gets to this. She's
been shockingly hired as the president of Global Affairs for Microsoft,
in a very senior role with access to highly sensitive information.

(11:19):
Monico's having that kind of access is unacceptable and cannot
be allowed to stand. She is a menace to US
national security, especially given the major contracts Microsoft has the
United States government. Because many raw will act, it is
my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of
Lisa Monaco. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

(11:39):
I'm not crazy at all. It's a blacklist trying to
get somebody fired because of what you tell everybody else
is their belief system. You know that Donald Trump a
criminal should be in jail, not in the White House.
This is classic McCarthyism, with the kind of red scare,
pitchforks and torches as old as the nation itself, but

(12:01):
mixed with a new ingredient, the insanity and sated of
this president of the United States of America, and mixed
with a new planning twist, the softening up of the
audience in advance of supporters to this indict comy smear Monaco.
Insistent calling someone a terrorist is domestic terrorism. Insistent calling

(12:21):
someone a fascist is domestic terrorism, except when Stephen Miller
or Trump call somebody a fascist. Put out a memo
saying anti Christianity is one of the terrorist act Indica. Remember,
don't have to be true his cult. Don't even have
to believe it's true. It's enough he says it, no

(12:41):
matter how far from reality he and they might be. Happily.
Democrats are fighting back. And when I say Democrats are
fighting back, I mean Democrats are not fighting back. A
keem jeffries on one of the previous details of Trump's
switched to overdrive on declaring all Democrats terrorists. A Keen

(13:03):
tweeted quote, the Trump administration's threat to deploy troops in
Portland is unlawful. Here's a thought, he writes, focus on
protecting the healthcare of the American people. That'll scare him off,
a Keem. He ain't never heard language like that before.
Oh no, I've forgotten to protect the healthcare of the

(13:23):
American people. I've misspent my presidency. Oh no, let me
call Kiem Jeffries immediately and fix my woefull crimes. Oh nos,
Kim Jeffries tlebated them. I know what you're saying. You're saying,
Keith a Keem Jeffries. Who in the hell is a

(13:44):
Keem Jeffries. Okay, So about Jim Comy. Jim Comy was

(14:12):
indicted so he could be indicted. The case is nonsense.
They sent this beauty pageant contestant, No, no, literally, I'm
not slurring her just because she has TV hair. This
sort of lawyer, Lindsay Halligan. She was in the Miss
Colorado contest. I believe she won Miss Uncongeniality. They sent

(14:33):
this poor woman out just to get something out of
a grand jury so they could dirty com me up
and say we indicted Comy. We're not failures, and they
indicted him because because Trump got indicted. So with Comy,
there's no crime. Only sixty one percent of a grand
jury voted yes on only sixty six percent of the

(14:53):
charges presented to it. There's no crime and no evidence.
Prosecutors had given Miss Uncongeniality a detailed memo saying there's
no case on perjury, there's no case on a instruction,
don't even not even probable cause. And after an investigation
that took months, the only evidence they found. They told
her that will exonerate Comy if you go to trialdum

(15:17):
F and there's no crime and no evidence and no prosecutor.
Haligan really is an idiot. No senior US prosecutor would
sign the charges or any other grand jury documents. She's
never tried a criminal case. They're not sure anybody currently
working for Trump will be willing to try this case.
There's no crime and no evidence and no prosecutor, and

(15:37):
she has no clue. Halligan handed to the judge two
different versions of this indictment, one listing two counts and
one listing three counts, and she had signed the both
and when the judge said, you signed both. You can't
sign both. She didn't know she had signed both. But
how does me here? Look, there's no crime and no

(15:59):
evidence and no prosecutor, and she has no clue, and
there's almost no support among Trump lawyers. Andrew McCarthy on Fox,
I don't think there's a case. It seems to be
premised on something that's not true. I don't think this
case even gets to trial. Megan Kelly, who was a
lawyer once before she found out they did not allow

(16:20):
you to take camera filters into court with you, said
the case was so lean. It was quote shot up
with ozempic Ben Shapiro quote. The indictment is quite weak.
It's unlikely to survive in court. The propagandist and fabulous
John Solomon said it was the quote thinnest worded document
he'd ever seen. So, of course Trump keeps insisting this

(16:42):
is the worst crime in human history, and he's guilty, guilty.
When I was a kid, President Nixon said something that
vaguely indicated that he, Dick Nixon thought Charles Manson was guilty,
and they almost had to dismiss the charges against Manson
and the whole cult because of President chiming in on

(17:04):
a criminal case was considered an unfixable poisoning of the
jury pool. And if that isn't enough of an egg factor,
there's Stephen Miller involved in this too. Quote what James
Comby did. It's truly one of the most severe assaults
on our freedoms and liberties that has occurred to the
whole history of this nation. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.
I'm not crazy. Almost Concurrently, Miller's wife, Katie got off

(17:28):
her broom, went on Fox, and Jesse Waters asked her,
actually asked her, quote, what is at length being married
to such a sexual matador, to which she answered, like,
this was not something that only crazy people ask, and
only crazy your people answer, She answered, quote, he is

(17:49):
an incredibly inspiring man who gets me going in the
morning with his speeches being like, let's start the day.
I am going to defeat the left and we are
going to win well, as they say, whatever turns you on.
But can we backed up just a second, Jesse Waters,

(18:11):
what does sexual matador even mean? Stephen Miller is a
sexual matador? What what that means? He screams olay a lot.

(18:31):
It means that sooner or later his afternoon is going
to end with him getting gored in the groin. Play
with the Matador, Get the Horns. Also, Callmy was indicted

(18:54):
in part because Trump was just humiliated by Jimmy Kimmel
and Trump needed something to make him look less gore
in the groin because something is up with Trump's mental
health and overall health too, but mostly because Trump was indicted.
He's still humiliated by that. They pretend he's not. He

(19:14):
pretends he's not. He is still Callmy is indicted because
now when Trump's people think indicted government officials, they think
they all do it. They all get indicted. Remember how
good it felt when Trump got indicted.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
I'm so indicted and I just can't fide it. I'm
about to go to tail in America likes it. I'm
so indicted.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
My defense he they're.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Tightened, and I know I know the unindicted co conspirators
can bite it inded.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. A couple of other notes. Then
I'll finally pay off on that thing I mentioned at
the start about Trump kind of promising his followers immortal.
You saw the House Dems actually doing something smart cherry
picking more Epstein Estate documents. They released screenshots showing Epstein
meetings with Steve Bannon on two sixteen nineteen, with Peter

(20:17):
Teel on eleven twenty seven seventeen, a potential visit to
Epstein's island for Elon Musk on twelve six fourteen. Prince
Andrew five twelve zero zero is listed as a passenger
on Epstein's gent and the simple message quote, DOJ must
release the Epstein files now accompanied these little screenshots don't

(20:39):
overplay Epstein. At the moment, Trump has managed to bury
a lot of it, ironically using Charlie Kirk's body to
do it. But it will be back. Just keep it warm.
But did you see Trump inadvertently confessing to January sixth? Yeah,
the aforementioned John Solomon completely repurposed an FBI report at

(21:03):
two hundred and seventy four. Two hundred and seventy five
or more than two hundred and fifty bureau agents went
to the Capitol during January sixth. The magas keep changing
the number Solomon, then Glenn back then other outlets immediately
branded them as plane Closed Plants. FBI sent Plane Closed
Plants provocateurs, thus creating two hundred and seventy four new

(21:27):
ray Epps provocateur conspiracy theories. Trump then posted one of
these articles. Oops, let me see if I've got this straight.
Trump Trump's FBI twenty twenty five, run by a Trump
appointee as Trump FBI director, leaks that Trump's FBI twenty
twenty one, run by the previous Trump appointee as Trump

(21:51):
FBI director, sent two hundred and seventy four Trump FBI
agents into the crowd on January sixth to foment a
Trump coup on Trump's behalf. While Trump controlled the FBI,
and Trump control and Trump controlled law enforcement, and Trump
controlled the military. Well, thanks for the confession. The Trump confession. Trump,

(22:14):
it fell to cash Pattel to do the cleanup on
Aisle six. He said that the agents showed up at
two thirty in the afternoon because there just weren't enough
actual cops there to do so. And the FBI is
a lot of things, but incompetent with guns and controlling
crowds is not one of them. Still, nice confession, Trump. Sure,
then we have the dumbest Democrat of the week, and

(22:35):
it's one of our crack staff here in New York. Boy,
oh boy, do we have the worst Democrats in the country,
Eric Adams. I guess the kava bag arrived. So he
ended his campaign yesterday, allowing everybody to focus on the
corruption of only Cuomo. But he's still going to be
on the ballot. He will still siphon votes from Cuomo.

(22:58):
If you supported Adams and your second choice was Mam Danny,
you've probably heard about Adams dropping out. I don't know
if that's true. If you supported Cuomo. Still, the dumbest
Democrat of the week is not him, and it's not
the aforementioned Jeffries. It's the Senator to nowhere, Kirsten Gillibrand.

(23:21):
I'll just read this from Politico quote. Jill Brand has
circulated an invitation obtained by Playbook for a NAPA retreat
for the DSCC, the Senate Fundraising Committee for Democrats, on
October thirteenth and fourteenth, for the government shutdown next week.
It's this week. The retreat could fall on what might

(23:43):
be day twelve of a shutdown. The itinerary features accommodations
at the Hotel Yountville, with a resort and spa that
extends a Tuscan European vibe and a wine tour and
dinner at the Staglan family vineyards amid its wine caves.
The plans for the luxury trip come up Trump administration

(24:05):
threats of mass firings of federal workers. A Democrat briefed
on the event tells us it's also slated to include
Representative Haley Stevens D Michigan, who's campaigning for Estate's open
Senate seat. As a gritty daughter of the Midwest, a
Monty Python line comes to my mind. There's not wrong

(24:26):
with gala luncheons. Are that more gala luncheons than you've
had hot dinners? Optics anybody anybody else? You know, when
they put d and Y next to somebody like Kirsten Gilibrand,
Jilibrand in her case, it's necessary so you have some

(24:48):
idea that she claims to be a Democrat. And as
to the optics, if they knew optics, they wouldn't have
appointed this zero Gilibrand as a Senator in the first place.
When they appointed her to replace Hillary as senator in
two thousand and nine, I had literally never heard of her,
and given her track record, since you know, I have
still never heard of her. And now immortality and again,

(25:18):
I want to be clear. I'm saying immortality, not immorality.
Trump posted and then deleted over the weekend an AI
video of what would have looked to the uninformed like
a clip from his own daughter in law, Lara's Fox
News show, complete with an AI Lara Trump, and an

(25:40):
AI video of Trump reading from a printed script at
his desk about a new med bed card which Trump
is going to give to every American. Huh, what the
hell's a medbed Well, it is the basis of several
really big conspiracy theories, all variations on the idea that

(26:01):
there are new beds, new medical technology now capable of basically,
you know, bestowing immortality, undoing aging, healing, everything. Why am
I trying to summarize this when we have right here
with us AI, Donald Trump, and AI Lara Trump and
AI Fox News, everything except Jesse Waters asking about sexual matadors.

(26:25):
AI Fox News and Donald and Lara Trump are here
to summarize it. Trump posted this breaking Now, President Donald J.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Trump has announced a historic new healthcare system, the launch
of America's first medbed hospitals and a national med bed.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Card for every citizen.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
Every American who soon received their own medbed card. With it,
you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals, led by
the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most
advanced technology in the world. These facilities are safe, modern,
and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.

(27:02):
This is the beginning of a new era in American healthcare.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
In this first phase, only a limited number of medbed
cards will be released. Registration details will be announced very soon.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Now you can tell it's AI because Trump's reading of
the script is too good. Also, Lara, Trump doesn't have
a deviated septim in that one, and in the video,
the Fox News graphics are wrong. There aren't any typos
in them. Plus, of course, there is no such thing
as a MEDBD or a medbed card. But why did

(27:37):
Trump post this then delete it? Was he just trying
to co opt the conspiracy theory among the Q andons
Trump pronounced medbds then and then and then they made
him delete it? Or is he going that Looney Tunes
that he thinks they exist? Or is he so sick
that he's thinking, boy, I could sure use a med

(27:57):
bed right now. Too bad, It's just a conspiracy theory.
I mean Honestly, we all knew he was crazy, but
how does he keep getting more crazy? Like we keep
getting half the distance to the goal line. There is
a PostScript to the q Andon conspiracy about this. One
of the wilder offshoots is remember the insistence, what was

(28:19):
it two years ago, three years ago that President John F.
Kennedy was still alive and his son, you know, John F. Kennedy,
presumably with his head all epoxied together and stuff. The
tertiary syphilist version of the medbed conspiracy theory is that
JFK has been kept alive since nineteen sixty three in

(28:44):
a medbed, which is ridiculous and also such stupid, wasteful
misuse of a creative conspiracy theory, because who would believe
that that there have been medbds for sixty two years
and nobody knows about them, and that they've kept JFK

(29:07):
alive in this and he hasn't gone on any dates
or anything, and it's so stupid. Who would believe this?
Now if they pointed it at RFK Junior with his
face looking like the ass of a five thousand year
old Egyptian mummy, and they said RFK Junior is being

(29:29):
kept alive. He goes home at night and sleeps on
a medbed that I would believe well, it looks like
a five thousand year old Egyptian mummy's ass. Also of
interest here that post hit job I told you about
last week while it came out. If you didn't hear

(29:50):
about it, it was because even for the post it
was really, really, really weak. The big breaking news about
me is I was rude at a restaurant in the
last century in nineteen ninety seven, and the Post has

(30:13):
just found this out in twenty twenty five. No, I'm
not kidding, but more importantly, the true big news, ladies
and gentlemen, it is now at this moment Stevie Week.
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Olberman still ahead. On this edition of Countdown. It's Stevie

(30:57):
Week thirteen years ago tomorrow, unplanned on a mad I
was born again in dogs better late than never. I've
told you most of my dog stories. I've told you
most of my bad Olivia Newsy stories. This is a

(31:18):
good Olivia Newsy story. The day our dog Stevie adopted
us In things I promised not to tell first, believe
it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects
specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world.

(31:41):
The runner up worse Isabelle Vincent New York Post. I
told you this was coming. She was the writer who
must have done something bad there, and they demoted her
from covering what passes for news in the New York
Post to writing the same semi annual bullshit Keith Alriman

(32:02):
is our bad, mean Liberal of the Week article that
The New York Post has been writing about me since
like nineteen ninety six. This was not one of the
Post's better efforts. It was neither imaginative nor true. It
relied on three things. A comment from my former agent

(32:23):
who I fired for professional misconduct fifteen years ago, a
story I have never told, I have never intended to
tell it. I may tell it later. I'm still thinking
about it. Frankly, it made me worry more about her
health more than anything else. I'll get to that later maybe.
But beyond that, they wrote two things that made me

(32:45):
laugh out loud. I don't read the articles anymore. I
learned to do that other people send me tidbits, and
I laughed at both of these. Most of the quotes
about how terrible I was and how everybody hated me
at ESPN were from Sage Steel, whom ESPN reprimanded when

(33:06):
she went in and said she didn't want to work
with me because I was a liberal, whom ESPN fired
after she trashed them about vaccines, who has turned into
a right wing nut job because nobody in television will
touch her. The former host of the NBA Finals and
the six o'clock Sports Center and the Miss America contest,

(33:29):
she goes from that to interviewing Russell brand on podcasts.
Most importantly, she the authority on me, has met me
once in her entire life once and that was when
she came to New York to co anchor Sports Center

(33:49):
from my office instead of hers so she could suck
up to me. I mean, really, she's the authority. I mean,
I don't think she could tell you how tall I
am without googling it. But the best part was a
story that they added and it's anonymous, which I mean,

(34:10):
just listen to this. No source of somebody who said
they heard I was once rude to the weight staff
to the servers or somebody at the White Birch Inn
in Southington, Connecticut. I mean tears welled in my eyes
when I read this, because I know what the backstory
has to have been to this. The White Birch was

(34:31):
a nice, little family owned kind of half diner, half
rustic in small little restaurant that was positioned perfectly. It
and a McDonald's across the street were the only other
businesses within like half a mile of ESPN World Headquarters
in Bristol. After the Friendlies closed, there was literally nothing else.

(34:55):
There were very few street lights. I wasn't sure the
whole street had electricity. There was a tract, a small tractor,
like a half long half small farm tractor place about
three quarters of a mile down by the highway. That
was it. Anyway, The White Birch, decent omelets, nice people,

(35:20):
sat right on the town line between Southington where I
lived in Bristol, where ESPN was, And I was rude
to somebody there before the White Birch closed. The White
Birch doesn't exist anymore. It turns out the White Birch
closed in nineteen ninety eight, the last time I would
have been there would have been nineteen ninety seven. Literally,

(35:41):
the last time I was in this place the New
York Post wrote about last week, was twenty eight years ago.
Then ESPN bought the land on which the White Birch stood,
and they destroyed the White Perch. They leveled it, and
somebody thought I was rude to them. I mean, honestly,
the worst thing you can find on me is something
I said or didn't say, or one day I tipped

(36:05):
fifteen percent instead of twenty percent, or who knows what,
and it was anonymous from twenty eight years ago. I mean,
Miss Vincent, you couldn't find an anonymous source who said
I passed gas during a World Series telecast twenty eight
years ago, something that would have made your hit job
look less stupid, less like a hit job by The

(36:27):
New York Post. On the New York Post, as I
told the author, if I'd written anything that bad when
I worked for Murdoch, he'd have fired me. Oh right,
Murdoch did fire me. Then he had to pay me
one hundred thousand dollars a month for eight months. Anyway,
I wonder if that will happen to Miss Vincent. I
don't think so. The runner up Secretary of State Marco
Rubio or whoever that is, who did the body snatcher

(36:49):
bit with him and turned him into just another Trump
political prostitute with a bad comb. Over Friday night, Marco
Rubio State Department tweeted this, and I'm reading the handle
part verbatim, so you get the point, since this is
audio and not video and you can't see this Department
of State at State Department. Earlier today, Colombian President at
Gustavo Petro stood on an NYC Street and urged US

(37:14):
soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. First off, tweeting
this out is the Barbara streisand effect. Did you know
he did this? He stood on an NYC Street. I
presume you mean New York City. I'm sorry you could
not be troubled to spell out New York. Marco Minion
stood on an NYC Straight and urged US soldiers to

(37:36):
disobey orders and incite violence. I looked up the story
to see what that was all about. Right here in
big city, like wow, I need, I need to follow
Colombian President at Gustavo Petro. We will revoke Petro's visa
due to his reckless and incendiary actions. Well, that's a

(37:59):
stupid and amateurish thing to do in diplomatic circles. But
on the Trump's gale of stupid and amateurish things, it's
only like a four stupid and amateurish thing. I mean,
you could see it's an irrational response to this, but
it's not totally based on you know, an imaginary giant

(38:19):
HeLa monster in Portland that you have to send terrorists
into destroy. This is like, all right, you know, telling
US troops to disobey orders. Scot's touchy. Anyway, The point
is not that at all. The point is the at
Gustavo Petro that gets a ten because Marco's department tagged

(38:40):
at Gustavo Petro and at Gustavo Petro is not the
handle of the President of Columbia Gustavo Petro. He's at
Petro Gustavo. This at Gstavo Petro is the Gustavo Petro
who appears to be a video game magazine writer and
Star Wars addict who posts that his home is on

(39:01):
the outer Rim. Sorry, Gestavo, your visa has been revoked
yours and Boba Fetts My god, what amateurs if we
don't all die because of an accidental nuclear war in
which one of these morons drops ten gigotons on Mississippi

(39:25):
or something, will be lucky. That's my greatest fear. Not
not a Trump takeover, not a dictatorship, none of those things.
My fear is somebody says, maybe, Marc Rubio, what does
this button do? And you realize it's just amazing when
you think about this, But Marco Rubio's entire life peaked

(39:49):
the day he gave the response to the State of
the Union and he had to stop in the middle
of it to grab a bottle of water that was
like just out of his reach on the left side,
and he was trying to pretend nobody would notice, even
though it was on national television, Live good, Good. Imagine this.
There's somebody worse than that. Our winner, one of the

(40:12):
all time grades of worse persons, one of the stupidest
people I have ever known, Newt Gingrich. Let me just
read this thing, because this has got everything that Newt
Gingrich's life was wasted on, including this tone of righteous
indignation as he slowly lights the match to blow himself

(40:32):
to hell. Quote. Why did Congresswoman span Berger vote against
the Continuing Resolution to keep the government open. She wants
to be governor of Virginia, and yet Virginians who work
for the federal government will be directly hurt by her vote.
She should be voting to keep the government open and
federal employees in the jobs, not for a shutdown in
layoffs or even firings for constituents. Four fifty pm September

(40:56):
twenty five, twenty twenty five at Newt Gingridge. Ooh, sick Burn, Newt.
That'll get that other candidate, that un tick woman the
Republicans are running wins since some sears Roebuck, whatever her
name is, that'll get her elected because Spanberger didn't vote
to keep the government. So you're asking why Abigail Spanberger

(41:17):
did not vote for the Continuing Resolution bill, which was
presented to Congress to the House of Representatives for a
vote on the sixteenth of September. Is that right, Newt.
You're asking why she did not vote in the House
for this bill on the sixteenth of September. Well, Newt,
perhaps it's because Abigail Spanburger is no longer a member

(41:38):
of the House of Representatives. She did not stand for
reelection neut a year ago, instead choosing to run for
governor of Virginia, where Newt lives and has a business
and isn't paying attention. Spanberger has not been in the
House of Representatives since her term expired.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
On January third of this year.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
And Newt does not know this. It's two hundred and
fifty seven days between her last day in the House
and the vote he's complaining about that she didn't illegally
vote in. Newt is mad at her for not voting
illegally when she's a member of the House Alumni Association.
It's like asking why you haven't seen President Ulysses S

(42:21):
Grant recently. Newt, no, I have no idea why he
wasted millions of dollars in nine months of America's political
dialogue while the nine to eleven terrorists were plotting against us,
and he impeached Bill Clinton only to see Clinton keep
his job and have his approval ratings go up, while
Nut got fired and lost his job as speaker. Gingrich

(42:41):
two Day's other worst person in the world A little

(43:01):
early today to our number one story and things I
promise not to tell in my favorite topic my dogs today,
I have four dogs last year during Stevie Week, it
was just three My elder rescue, Minee, the guy who
came to me in a dementia like trance, and after
we took out all of his rotten teeth, within months

(43:23):
he was leaping over the white stripes in the crosswork
walk like an Olympian just for the hell of it.
Minee got to his seventeenth birthday on a Monday in
July of twenty twenty four. He took his last walk
on a Thursday. He got his legs kind of crossed
up on the way back. Didn't look good. He stopped
beating on that Friday, and then he gently and peacefully

(43:45):
died in my arms on that Sunday, as if he
were saying, hey, babe, I made it to seventeen. Thanks
for the use of the hall. It's been great. Bye. Now, Ted,
my first rescue, who is seated at my feet as
I record this. He is still going strong at seven
and a half. He is a handsome devil and the
beneficiary of heart surgery when he was about eight months old.

(44:07):
He's probably going to need more heart surgery as it
turns out. He is my son, certainly, as if he
had two legs and was in the second grade. He
flirts with girls, human girls. He did it last night
on our walk, and he plays ball. He also owns.
He owns the world. Just ask him. This is his world.

(44:32):
He has also bravely born the appearance of a kid. Brother.
Kit is fifteen months old. He too had heart surgery
as a puppy. He hasted. Kit looks like a toy
come to life. He greets strangers on the street. He
was born a month before the Great Leaper. Mine died
at seventeen. The name Minee is colloquial French for kitty,

(44:54):
and I have no doubt Mine in some way sent
his virtual namesake Kit to me with the quick message,
go see this guy. He'll take care of you. Rose
is eleven now, a beautiful, austere, classic girl, a little
tough to know, very sincere too. If she could speak,

(45:15):
she would be the one who would address me as father,
as in, oh father, you're being sentimental again. And then
there is Stevie. Stevie thirteen years and what now three
months old, and tougher than all of you and me

(45:36):
put together, Beautiful, sometimes belligerent, always asking is there a
treat involved? And always indispensable, and as late as three
pm Eastern time on September thirtieth, twenty twelve, thirteen years

(45:57):
ago tomorrow, not one word of any of what I
have just said would have made any sense to me whatsoever.
I had never had a dog in my life, cause
allergies mine and my mother's, and travel and work. And

(46:20):
then Olivia Newsy looked at me and said, I need
a puppy fix. Her family dog was dying. She didn't
say it, her folks wouldn't say it. The dog, a
Jack Russell Terrier named Casey, did her best to be
the only truthful one in the bunch. She was moving
purposely and unsteadily with every step, and looking out at

(46:42):
her world with a seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness
and regret that the one time she really needed these
bipeds to speak for her on her behalf, they just
couldn't or wouldn't do it. I just need, Olivia told me,
for dogs, not to mean sadness, just for a couple
of minutes, just for a while. Can we go to
that pet shop on les? I mumbled that well we

(47:06):
could go, of course, but that I had resisted the
dog entreaties of the eleven girlfriends before her, and I
would successfully resist hers as well. I had always loved dogs,
but I was allergic, and more importantly, my doctors had
all said that hypoallergenic dogs were a crap shoot. And
Olivia said, I do not want a dog. I'm not

(47:27):
trying to convince you to get me a dog or
us a dog. I just want to hold a puppy
for a little while and have you there with me.
She paused, as she always did when she felt both
hopeless and angry at being at the mercy of feelings,
and she lapsed into her version of the shrug emoji.

(47:48):
As sappy as all this sounds, and it did sound sappy,
Olivia was not sentimental. We used to look at each
other in stark shock that she, the prematurely cynical girl
and me, the everlastingly cynical old guy, had proved the
maxim about the cynics just being the disappointed romantics of

(48:09):
this world. And then we'd giggle, and then I'd insult
her or she'd insult me, and the next thing you
knew we were insulting some politician. This was different. Casey
was dying and Olivia didn't know how to deal with it,
but to her credit, she recognized she needed some self care,

(48:30):
and she needed my support as she got that self care.
So we left for the pet shop in mid afternoon,
and I told her my true fear was that my
native but dormant shared affinity with dogs would all of
a moment spring fully grown from my soul, and I
would blurt, I'll take all of them. I mean, even then,

(48:53):
what kind of life could I offer a dog? I
was on television. Thus I was always in a television studio,
thus never home for play or walks, or just the
prevention of canine life loneliness. Olivia lived with me nearly
all the time, but was out of town half the
time too on stories. I was clueless as to every

(49:18):
aspect of the dog thing. I had littered the continent
with dead house plants. I no longer thought myself ever
capable of pulling my own ego out of my backside
sufficiently to take care of fish. I'd literally not had
a pet of any kind since nineteen sixty seven. I
had come to terms with living in a wistful, hazy

(49:38):
world in which I might inadvertently have a dog pal
for a few minutes, but almost never indoors, and never
without the pang of knowing that the hello itself contained
the start of the goodbye. And I was allergic. I
was allergic to the obvious, big, furry, friendly dogs. There
was an incident once on a plane when I didn't

(50:01):
know there was a dog on board, in fact sitting
right behind me, and we almost landed the plane on
an emergency basis because I'd stopped breathing. I was allergic.
I might be allergic even to the ones that were
built as non allergic. I could be in the same
room with a dog for an hour, often longer, without incident,
but to hold or touch them within half an hour

(50:23):
I would start to feel my throat swelling and closing.
And if I disobeyed this immutable cannon, the buried tears
of permanent exclusion from dog world might be replaced by
the far worse ones of separation and loss. Coming back
to the present day, literally it's two weekends ago. I

(50:46):
had to send back a rescue dog because I was
allergic to her. We didn't know she was a mix,
and I was allergic to whatever the mix was. She
was here two hours. She's fine, the rescue is fine.
She will be fine. I'm helping with her recovery. I
am still processing my guilt if that had happened to

(51:07):
me at any point in the past, especially in twenty twelve,
to reject worse, to betray the love of a dog,
to send it back. What happened then? Anyway? I went
with her, and as Olivia and I approached the shop,
there was, as there almost always is, a small crowd

(51:28):
kind of undulating around it. The narrow sidewalks of Lexington
Avenue make these human clots easier to form, even late
on the first Sunday of autumn. There is also an
obstacle course there of grates and cellar doors and bikes
chained to poles and parking meters and canopies for diners
and restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that aren't

(51:51):
quite seedy but also are not your first choice. The
uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
maze of the fifty ninth Street Bridge lend the place
a congested even when it's otherwise quiet. We are also
three blocks up from the trying just a little too
hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks double

(52:16):
park three hundred and sixty five days a year there
and then totally out of place, amid the prosaic trappings
of a big city at its most men there they
are bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other, tiny
heads and tails and paws, doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment.
Their yips and the crunch of the shredded cavorting paper

(52:38):
are just audible through the glass and over the din
of the street. They create an oasis of cute. And
just in case you can't tell what they are, there
was this big Neon sign above their street front window
that read puppies. Don't make me go in? I pleaded.

(53:00):
She reassured me. We'd go in. She'd hold the dog.
All I had to do was take a picture a minute.
Tops You don't understand, I reached for her hand. What
I'm trying to say is I've always wanted a dog.
I could never have one. Just as the door to
the shop opened, she grabbed my arm. Olivia pulled forcefully,

(53:24):
swore at me and muttered, you'll survive. Man up. Don't
make eye contact, don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact,
don't make eye contact, my inner dialogue as we moved
towards puppies and passed puppies, and the appearance of a
small staircase to a training off confirmed we were now
going under puppies. And in the deepest recesses of the shop,

(53:46):
there was a wall of puppies to our right, three
cages high, six across, all a yellowish beige behind a
reddish brown for Micah countertop, and then a structural beam,
and then three cages high and two cages across, and
then a corner with a small visiting pen built into
the countertop, and then in front of me the Hollywood

(54:07):
squares of puppies, three high, three across, nine puppies, all
of them staring at me and screaming at me and
making eye contact. A salesman introduced himself as Jeffrey. Jeffrey

(54:29):
asked Olivia if there was any dog she wanted him
to bring to her. Let me see them all tease,
she said the girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly,
this was my cue to get my phone out. I'm
prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy Secondly,
the dog whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from

(54:50):
the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
the pet shop besides me, who was not making any
damn noise at all. Every other dog was perfecting its
adolescent bark. The cat's were making a bewildering variety of noises.
And was that actually a Norwegian blue parrot squawk? I

(55:11):
just heard remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue. Isn't it beautiful plumage?
But this Maltese said nothing. She looked like her torso
would easily fit in one of my hands. And if
she was three pounds, a quarter of that was hair
and half of that was curled. And presumably somebody had
to come by every day to turn what sat atop

(55:33):
her head into a mohawk up top and a mullet
in the back. She was in a cage with another dog,
her brother. Her cage mate brother seemed a little bigger,
but his eyes were clearly smaller than hers. Their color
was immediately visible, even if he still had forlorn hopes
of avoiding eye contact. His eyes shone, Her eyes were illuminated.

(55:58):
He tried to get past her into the salesman's arms.
She simply lifted up her head towards him. It actually
crossed my mind that she looked like she was about
to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today? He put
her gently down in that playpen at the right corner
of the counter. Olivia asked if she could pick her up,
and nodded to me to get the camera ready. Honestly,

(56:20):
Jeffrey confided, this is the sweetest dog we've had here
in months. I mean, I say that every day to
almost everybody, about almost every dog, but this time I'm
actually not lying. Olivia cradled the little Maltese in her arms,
with the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped
the camera on the phone. My hand was actually shaking,

(56:43):
and as I centered up Olivia and the puppy in
the frame, the Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front
paws on Olivia's shirt near her neck, and just as
I snapped the image of the dog, reached up and
kissed my girlfriend on the lips. To this day on

(57:04):
as I am completely incapable of remembering anything that happened
in my life before that exact moment, Olivia made the
appropriate sounds of human approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little
grooming the Maltese breed needed and the great price he
could give us, And even as my head spun, it
seemed silly to me that he was calculating the tax

(57:27):
on something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. Olivia
said something about how we needed a minute outside to
discuss it, and handed the puppy back to Jeffrey. The
dog looked at us sweetly separately in turn, and if
she had said nice to meet you, I wouldn't have

(57:48):
been a bit surprised. Then, as the pup went back
into the cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The
little girl was reaching her head up towards the spout
of the cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement
she just made to stow the kiss on Olivia, when
her brother abruptly body slammed her out of the way

(58:11):
and her tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage. Then,
to my shock and confusion, I heard a deep, threatening growl,
a vengeful reverberating throughout the pet shop. My shock was
because the growl was coming from me. The next sounds

(58:36):
were from Olivia, my god, what's wrong with you. I
didn't know it at the time, but as we turned
to fight our way back to the street to have
this conversation that we weren't going to have because we
were leaving, I evidently half skidded into a display full
of chew toys and bones. I couldn't see, but I
didn't recognize my own tears until they hit the edges

(58:59):
of my lips. Somehow I managed to say it again,
this time in despair. I always wanted a dog, but
I could never have one. I'm sorry. Olivia finally figured
out what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm an asshole.
Newsy was now helping me to hold myself upright, steering
me towards the door to the street. I didn't listen

(59:19):
to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You told me,
and I didn't believe you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
The stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one on top
of the other, tiny the Saint Bernard who only wanted
to embrace me, and the mc connon's mutt next door
Boots used to sit on my lap, and tiny didn't
make me sneezy, only scared me. And the mcconnons had

(59:40):
three boys and a mother who baked cookies by the
car load lot, and Boots never left their side, and
I was always at their house. And if I was allergic,
how was it that I never once had a problem
with Boots? How in the hell did that work? Huh?
And what about Vladimir, that stray cat that my sister found.
I used to live in the garage and behave like
a dog and like to be carried around like a baby.
And how allergic was I? And that beautiful, beautiful little

(01:00:03):
Maltese reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And
the one time I took my dad's movie camera to
the mcconnon's house, half of the film I made was
of Boots. And what if I went back and got
the allergy shots again? It was my mother who said
she was really allergic, so I must be allergic, And
what's the use? The little maltese was perfect, and the
next person who sees HER's gonna snap her up in
an instant. And I asked them just to let me

(01:00:24):
try a little dog who wouldn't shed, And the only
thing my mother would let me have were lizards, and
I could take a zerchech every day. And I'm so sorry, Tiny,
I didn't realize and I never said goodbye to Boots.
And the Maltese is gone. She's gone, she's gone. She's
my dog. I know it. I could feel it. She's
my dog, and she's gone. What happened next Beggar's fiction.

(01:00:49):
And if Olivia's later life could beggar fiction and it
could involve RFK Junior, why shouldn't this part of her
life from more than a decade ago involve Rudy Giuliani,
Rudy Effing Juliani and his part of the story of

(01:01:09):
Stevie Day and what happened to Stevie Next? This is
countdown back to the number one story on the Countdown
and the day I fell in love with a dog
for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend,

(01:01:29):
Olivia Uzi, and I left her in the pet shop
and went home. We were walking up Park Avenue me
mid meltdown, somehow nearing the armory on Park Avenue, one
block west and four blocks north of that pet shop.
To her credit, Olivia had kept me from throwing myself

(01:01:52):
into traffic, or dissolving into a puddle on East sixty
second Street. The overwhelming sensation was not one of having
left the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having
left a part of myself in that shop. That was
my dog. I had never been more certain of anything

(01:02:14):
in my life. And what was worse was she was
obviously going to be taken snapped up by somebody else,
even before I could get back there. Who could resist her?
I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused
only when I had no choice but to shut up

(01:02:35):
and gasp for breath, And the comments with which Olivia
tried to soothe me in these interstices were self abnegating
and solemn. She had talked me off the limb of
my certainty that the dog had already been sold, and
was now steering me back towards sanity. I had to,
she said, later, you were having a breakdown. She said,

(01:02:59):
we should go home, and if I wanted to talk
seriously about the practicalities of owning a dog, we could
do that and still get the puppy the next morning,
even if it meant delaying her scheduled departure next morning.
For DC. Don't worry, I'm sure she's still there. They
were getting ready to close. Didn't you notice that she'll
be there in the morning. For the first time, I

(01:03:21):
exhaled and then immediately went right back into a full panic. Wait,
she's still in there's she's I sniffled anew and the
tears resumed. She's in that cage with that brother of
hers in the basement somewhere. Before Olivia could try to
answer that, and I swear this is true, Rudy Giuliani

(01:03:46):
spilled down the stairs from the Park Avenue armory. A
cop suddenly appeared from a different nowhere and put out
an arm and firmly asked us to stop walking, and
Juliani scuttled rodent like into his waiting car. A white
was with him. I did not and do not know

(01:04:08):
which number. The driver was already closing the door behind
them when I shouted at Rudy, how come my dog
has to spend the night in a cage while that
asshat is allowed to roam around this city without a
leash on Later that evening, recalling my remark, Olivia said

(01:04:30):
that was the first moment she thought we might just
get home safe and sound after all, and I would
not have to be institutionalized. Didn't take more than ten
minutes to get back to my apartment from there, and
we walked it in silence. I had long since saturated
my handkerchief and some tissues Olivia had had in her pockets.

(01:04:51):
I was breathing deeply and restoratively now, and the sniffle
frequency was reduced to once or twice per block. My mind.
THO was crowded with dogs. I had known Boots, Tiny,
Vladimir the cat, who was not a dog but might
as well have been, even Olivia's little Casey, dying out

(01:05:11):
in her parents' home in Jersey and unaware of the
seismic events which she had set in motion that day.
Other dogs, to all the dogs in all of the
stories of James Thurber that I had read on television
every night, I had smiled along with his poetic, loving
descriptions of them, but never confessed that I loved them
as he must have. There was Samantha, whom my late

(01:05:33):
friend Bruce Hagen used to bring everywhere, including our college
radio station newsroom. Samantha was big enough to have had
license plates. The first really big dog who didn't frighten me.
There was my great aunt's Yorki or maybe Morky, whose
gas was so potent that the Christmas just before I
turned nine, my great uncle said he was convinced the

(01:05:57):
dog had been a German terror weapon at Chateau Terry,
and he and I had bonded because I, just before
I was nine, already I knew what Chateau TERI was.
There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of
my sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put
on the phone with me. In my mind, they all
stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, all smiling, smugly,

(01:06:25):
with the kindest type of I told you so. Look
on their gorgeous faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
shapes and sizes, dogs who had belonged to neighbors or
co workers past, who are just chance encounters on the

(01:06:46):
streets of any of a dozen cities decades earlier. There
were moments in which a glimpse this scene in my head,
and I saw all the dogs who'd ever lived. No,
I'm sorry, Olivia said, I shouldn't have been that selfish,
But now I was agreeing with her, And as I
unlocked our apartment, door. I began to tell her of

(01:07:08):
the dogs I had just been communing with and what
had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable, and perfect, but about
which I needed as much to tell as I could
from her in as short a period as possible, And
she tried, well, you just take the dog wherever you can.
My parents have been saying this a lot lately. Now

(01:07:30):
they regret not doing more things with Casey, not adventures,
not just to the park or outside. Just take her
with you. Just go out into the yard, or just
hold her while you watch TV. You just let the
dog be in. We went through topic after topic, cleaning, training,
poop handling, walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground

(01:07:55):
level shelves, discipline, and most importantly, a backup plan in
case this epiphany was false and I was still allergic
or terrified or incompetent at it, or all three. Olivia
was again extraordinarily helpful. I don't think it'll take much
to convince my parents to take her. I mean, after

(01:08:16):
Casey recovers, I can take her to DC tomorrow in
the car. I'll bring her back next weekend. So in
the interim you can get the apartment ready, and you
can get you ready, and you don't have to go
in at the deep end. You have some time to prepare.
I interrupted Olivia with a kiss. Let's go get her

(01:08:37):
before they close. I don't want to wait. I'm still
terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly,
I had a sudden moment of doubt. This isn't just
me having a breakdown, right, I mean, Olivia, she is extraordinary,
isn't she? You know dogs? Olivia stopped being nice and now,

(01:09:00):
for the first time, looked at me like I had
just gone crazy, even though I had gone crazy several
moments before. She said, obviously, that kiss, that kiss that
the dog gave me, that was a real kiss. The
pets Shop had stayed open, partly because Olivia, again to

(01:09:23):
her eternal credit, phoned them as we hit the street
outside the apartment building, and partly because they said they
knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see
it sometimes. Also, you seemed well, kind of emotional. Olivia
again helpfully mentioned that, in fact, I had had a breakdown.

(01:09:45):
They had all the paraphernalia ready for me, little aqua
colored bed, a series of attached gates that could be
used as a pen or a barrier, gates which I
still have. I got them out of the closet a
week ago. It was a small pink blanket. It was
a bag of training pads and the plastic holder for
the pads. There was enough dry food to last a month.
There was some horrific wet food that looked like a

(01:10:08):
discarded early design for liverwurst. There was a few chew
toys in a bag, a bright pink harness and a
leash as light as a ribbon, a black carrying bag,
and paperwork with the puppies family tree, which, to my astonishment,
stretched back beyond her birth three months earlier, through the
six preceding generations, all the way back to six entire

(01:10:33):
years earlier. The stuff they sold me could have included
a moped and a stock portfolio to guarantee her college education,
and a Maltese sized typewriter with a twenty year supply
of replacement ribbons, and I would have also bought them.
A nice lady named Ellie tried to train me to

(01:10:55):
be a dog owner in about ninety four seconds and
handed me a voucher for a vet and a checklist
of stuff to do. I signed a credit card bill.
I think I used my own name. I absolved myself
of the guilt of not getting a sheltered dog because
I was a wherregic and kind of had to go
to the shop and go the root of the bread

(01:11:17):
dog and vowed that I would do something for a
sheltered dog someday. Plus, I was not looking for a dog,
I'd actually fallen in love it for at sight. And lastly,
because no matter the obvious and often tragic flaws in
that system of breeding, there was no arguing with the
fact that those who came from a pet shop had
as much of a right to a happy life as

(01:11:37):
any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from
the back room behind the block of cages where we
had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up
and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to
say that the little Maltese made eye contact from across
the shop floor, or was aware of our presence, or

(01:11:59):
yipped happily at seeing me again, and it would be
completely untrue. The little Maltese calmly scanned the room and
only occasionally glanced up at the manager, who carried her
and didn't look at us once until she was, without
ceremony or comment, handed over to me, whereupon she immediately

(01:12:19):
twisted out of my trembling hands, stuck her front paws
up on my chest as she had Olivia's, and reached
up to give me a kiss on the lips, and
another and a third, and my sunglasses conveniently hid the
tears that welled up again. I managed to ask if
they all did that, and no, came the answer from

(01:12:42):
that original salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly, sweetest puff we've had here
in months, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
I marveled at how light she was, and yet how
articulated and strong her body was. Her eyes were far
more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for or

(01:13:04):
a puppy, almost no white visible, the reflection off the
deep brown irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little
soul who was about one two hundred and twelfth my
age and one eighty seventh my weight, and who had
a great great great great grandmother born in two thousand

(01:13:24):
and six, as opposed to my great great great great grandmother,
who was born in seventeen sixty seven. She was meeting
and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was
seeing in her eyes, whatever the inner being I was
actually processing, she seemed to be doing her equivalent vetting
of me. I kissed her, and was by now not surprised.

(01:13:49):
When she kissed me again, the little tongue poked out
a fraction of an inch, just enough so any one
of us dumb, unsubtle bipeds could tell she meant it.
And then she relaxed from her upright pose, settled back
into my arms, her head in the crook of my elbow,
in an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat
every time I ever picked her up, right through to

(01:14:11):
about an hour ago. I guess it was an hour,
hour and a half, maybe two hours before. Suddenly it
dawned on me what her name was. She was Stevie.
It was the haircut she had, the haircut of Stevie

(01:14:34):
Nicks Stevie. Olivia did not like it at all, not
at first. Within a week she was saying, I's wrong again,
You got that exactly right. She is a effing Stevie,
all right. Olivia's dog, Casey, who started all this, died
within the month, and soon Olivia and I were back

(01:14:55):
in that same pet shop, Olivia solemnly telling me we
were going to get her folks a new dog. Make
the decision for her, thus taking the guilt away from them.
In point of fact, Olivia could not make up her
mind which of two dogs to get her folks. That's
when I was hit by a bolt of inspiration, as

(01:15:17):
unexpected as the day Stevie rescued me. I said, wait,
if we get one dog, that dog will always be
Casey's replacement. That doesn't sound fun. But if we get
them both, your folks won't feel guilty at all. I
asked Jeffrey, you got a price on the two of them.

(01:15:38):
Jeffrey looked at me like I was insane. Olivia looked
at me like I was insane. I said, look, I
haven't figured this out completely, but this just makes sense.
Two dogs as a team, Neither of them will be
a replacement. Together, there'll be successors. Just work with me
on this. Olivia left the next day for her folks
house with Holly the albino Chihuahua and Milo the Maltese.

(01:16:03):
And it was genius of her she named the dogs
in advance, so that when she brought them in to
meet her grief stricken folks, they weren't just dogs. I'd
like you to meet Holly and Milo. They were individuals.
If you're ever in this situation where you want to
give somebody a dog and you don't know if they

(01:16:23):
want them, or you don't know if they're going to
take them, name the dog in advance. Well, it didn't work.
Olivia texted me that her mother would not even look
at them. I don't want Holly and Milo, I want Casey,
she said. She was seated in a darkened room holding
the dead dog's picture. I said, all right, give it

(01:16:47):
half an hour. Keep the car there. Worst thing happens here,
you and I we suddenly have three dogs. I like dogs,
Stevie likes dogs. You like dogs. There are far worse
outcomes here. Give it half an hour. Minutes later, I
get another text from Olivia. It's a photo with the caption,

(01:17:08):
my god, it worked. The picture is of mister and
missus Noosey rolling on the floor laughing with Holly and Milo.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes from suicidal despair to rolling on
the floor with puppies. The solution to the problems of

(01:17:28):
dogs is more dogs. Olivia's parents are long gone. I
like them both, and they liked me. I'd love to
know what happened to the dogs. I do know Milo
was a cousin of Stevie's. More importantly, I do know

(01:17:50):
Holly and Milo and Olivia's parents made each other happy.
And after that her parents treated me like gold. And
every Christmas we would all gather at their house with
all the dogs plural. Olivia and I went and got Rose,
Stevie's sister. A year later, and after Olviya and I

(01:18:12):
broke up, I happened to run into at a pet shop.
Of course, the woman who leads the American Maltese Association
rescue group. Of course I did. I was walking Stevie
and Rose. A year later, Ted, my rescue with the
bad Heart, arrived and he had surgery and he's fine. Mishu,
my other rescue with the bad Heart, was here for

(01:18:32):
just a couple of months. He had a very happy life.
He just didn't have a very long one. Mine got
here just before his fifteenth birthday, left, as I said,
just after his seventeenth. He and Mishu are now commemorated
with tattoos. They are with me always. It's a crowd
who's that old man with those tiny dogs? But then again,

(01:18:56):
I wasted the first fifty three years of my goddamned
life living without a dog. So I had to make
up for a lost time as many dogs as I
can fill into the rest of my life. I'm gonna
Mena's roster spot will be filled again. There will be
a dog in need soon enough. All the stuff you
see for me about dogs on Twitter, all the dog videos,

(01:19:18):
all the fundraising requests, all of this from one crowded
hour thirteen years ago. Tomorrow, when it became official, I
had been adopted. So as you join me in shaking

(01:19:38):
your head about the Olivia Newsy stories, vanity fairs, New
West Coast and sexting politicians. Editor or you laugh, or
like me, you do both do what I try to do.
Remember this Olivia Newsy story too. So thanks so Stevie

(01:20:15):
sends her best. I've done all the damage I can
do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown
music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and
John Phillip Chanel, our musical directors of Countdown. It was
produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our
satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best baseball

(01:20:37):
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, my accompanist company NIST Company.
She played the organ while I sang the Ulerman theme
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy VESPN
is the sports music other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. It occurs to me that

(01:20:58):
the musical staff of this show exceeds the editorial staff
of this show by at least five or six, eight,
eight to one, maybe more. My announcer today was my
friend John Dean. Everything else was, as always my fault.
So that's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty
three of America held hostage again, just one and twenty

(01:21:22):
days until the scheduled end of his lame duck lame
brained term, unless he is removed sooner by Maga and
trump Steen, or by that pavement patch on his hand.
Maybe it is a pothole or a stuck escalator, or
Jimmy Kimmel or Tilen Hall The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

(01:21:43):
Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Rount some food, do you said? Stevie said?

(01:22:09):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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