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 America
(00:26):
held hostage day ninety five of the Trump dictatorship, and
Trump's personal counter terrorism chief is now threatening to charge
anybody who criticizes Trump with aiding and abetting terrorists. I
don't know if the surprise is that the Trump dictatorship
(00:46):
of the morons did this so fast, or that they
waited so long, And it is the dictatorship of the
morons by the team of idiot rivals. And as such,
as the wheels fall off, as Trump's poll numbers collapse,
as Trump crashes the world economy, as Trump can't keep
one economic policy in place for two consecutive hours, and
(01:09):
as Trump depopulates the life or death bureaucracy fostering public
health and education and safety and scientific research and climate change,
as the president of the New York Fed predicts five
percent unemployment within the year, as his minions literally disappear
US citizens and others with legal rights to be here
off our streets and ship them to foreign hells, as
(01:33):
his Secretary of Defense might as well be shouting our
battle plans at passers by on a Washington Street corner,
as we betray and threaten our allies, and reward the
scum of the earth, both kinds Russian scum and non
Russian scum, as the media and academia and the law
firms and the judiciary cover their own asses and throw
(01:55):
the rest of us to the lions. As the nation collapses.
Because it is day ninety five of the Trump dictatorship
of the morons, fled by the most moron public figure
in our history, there is only one play left for
the feral animal in charge, the one with the failing
reptile brain. There is only one play left for Trump.
(02:18):
We've all known it would come to this. We've all
warned it would come to this. We've all predicted they
would try to ease the knife in slowly that they
take the boiling frog roots. And here it comes. It
is in every piece of political science fiction from nineteen
eighty four to V for Vendetta. We are now here.
(02:40):
If everything Trump deserves criticism and gets criticism, there will
be only one thing left for Trump and his gang
to do, and that is to prosecute criticism of Trump
and to claim those who criticize Trump are aiding and
abetting terrorists.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
People who love America like the president, like his cabinet,
like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans.
And then there is the other side that is on
the side of the cartel members, on the side of
the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists. And
you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and
(03:19):
abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is
a crime in federal statute.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
You doubtless recognize there the foppish voice of the imbecilic
Sebastian Gorka, the former Victor Orban advisor, so fringe and
so cringe that Trump ushered him out of his first
White House during its seventh month. Well, he's back, trying
to sound sane on Newsmax, threatening to make criticism of
(03:47):
the furor a terrorist adjacent act, or even terrorism itself,
because there are no adults to stop Trump this time.
And now Gorka is Deputy Assistant to the President and
Senior Director for counter Terrorism, and thus he is a
clear and present danger to the stability of this country
and not just some asshole so sketchy, it's so egotistical.
(04:12):
To the first inauguration, he wore not only that beard,
that consumes half the nation's supply of just for men,
but also a tunic. It was the last time you
saw somebody wearing a tunic and a Garish medal with
a conflicted history connected to both Hungarian World War two
Nazi resistors and Hungarian World War two Nazi collaborators, but
(04:35):
ultimately so bizarrely inappropriate because the metal looks either like
an Eastern European fascist idea of class or something a
minor league hockey team would wear as part of its
special uniform on ren and stimpy night. Well, Sebastian Gorka,
whoever the f he really is, has now begun the
(04:57):
process of trying to make criticizing Trump an act of terrorism.
The full thought of nineteen eighty four, the satirical but
unbearably terrifying political torturer played by Michael Palin in Terry
Gilliam's movie Brazil. The disappearing of the Stephen Fry character
in V for Vendetta after he satirized the paranoid, crazy
(05:22):
dictator the Countless. This is really happening, stories of true
life torture in Spain and Germany and Venezuela and a
thousand other places. It's not enough, apparently, to wrap up
a bankroll of a couple of billion dollars and threaten
to metaphorically beat the owners of ABC and CBS and
(05:43):
NBC to death with it, and know that at least
one of them will fold, and one day, like day
before yesterday, you'll read that the executive producer of sixty
Minutes has left CBS News after thirty seven years because
his bosses are collaborators and colluds and goddamned cowards. It's
not enough, apparently, to try to stochastically inspire vigilante death
(06:05):
squads against reporters. It's not enough to threaten universities, usually
universities with strong journalism programs like Columbia, with financial destruction
and extra constitutional judicial overlords. It's not enough to prosecute
news organizations and reporters about stories and leaks when you
are really just trying to force them into praising Trump,
(06:29):
like they did at the Washington Post. It's not enough, apparently,
to put individuals in your crosshairs so that one day
I wake up to watch people I worked with and
trusted because they had spine and ethics fold up like
a three card monte dealer's table during a raid people
like Jeff Schell now destroying CBS News, or people like
(06:49):
Claire Shipman now destroying Columbia University and thus the Columbia
Journalism School. None of that is enough because none of
that has worked, because none of that has scared enough
people viscerally, none of that has scared enough people personally,
(07:10):
and the only thing still working in the Trump dictatorship
is the prospect of scaring people into obeying. Also, there
is the realization that if you think it is going
badly now in Trump Land, wait wait until the predictions
come true. The predictions that the CEOs of Walmart and
(07:31):
Target and Home Depot reportedly made to Trump this past
Monday in the Oval Office, that it's not just that
his tariff madness and his unshakable delusion that it was
all so much better in the year eighteen ninety three,
the delusion so tenacious, so complete within him that it
(07:51):
is worthy of being a full visual and auditory hallucination
caused by a brain tumor. The prediction that all this
will not just disrupt supply chains, not just double or
treble inflation, not just leave store after store in every
city in this country with empty shelves, but that it
(08:14):
will do all that within two weeks. Wait until those
predictions come true. And it's a matter of degree now,
because Trump folded again on tariffs after those warnings, and
folded on China on Tuesday because he was so scared
by what the CEOs told him. And then the delusion
(08:35):
gripped him again yesterday and he went right back to
his brain symptom of financing the national budget with effing tariffs.
But wait until the undeniability of empty shelves hits the
new cathedrals of America, the Target in Hoover, Alabama, one
(08:55):
hundred and ninety one thousand square feet, the Home Depot
and Buxhall, New Jersey, two hundred and seventeen thousand square feet,
the Wall March at Crossgates Commons in Albany, New York
two one hundred and sixty thousand square feet. Wait until
their shelves are empty, and the worshippers of our Lady
(09:18):
of the Megabox store riot in the parking lots two
one hundred and sixty thousand square feet of a Walmart.
I mean, Saint Peter's basilica is only two hundred and
forty seven thousand square feet. Ah, sorry about your Pope,
(09:42):
says the American tourist. And this stadium here you got.
This is nice, but it sure ain't as impressive as
the Walmot at Crossgates commons back to doctor Gorka and
(10:26):
his lifetime supply of just for men Beard when there
is nothing left in this Trumpian shit show but criticism
of it. The pompous, falsely ominous, simplistic effort to terrify
the Americans with the minds of children from the dregs
of humanity like Sebastian Gorka will take on a totally
(10:46):
different meaning. The clip of what he threatened, and to
use the cliche, it is so full of false and
illogical extrapolation. It is so Sebastian Gorka that it hurts.
That clip is nearly a week old, but it is
just resonating today after their Axios has managed to put
(11:07):
the truly evil pieces together, while as usual, never passing
judgment on the morality of any of it, Like they
were writing out assembly instructions for a potty seat for
a child or for Trump. I'll quote from this Axios compendium.
Now Trump administration officials are suggesting their immigration crackdown could
(11:27):
expand to include deporting convicted US citizens and charging anyone,
not just immigrants, who criticizes Trump's policies. One sending convicted
US citizens to prisons abroad. This has been floated as
a spit off of Trump's deal with l Salvador, where
(11:47):
a high security prison is holding about three hundred US
immigration detainees that the administration says are suspected criminals and
gang members. Quote homegrowns are next, Trump said during an
Oval Office meeting with I would point out as an
aside his employee, Salvadoran President Naib Bucele last week, referring
(12:09):
to sending Americans convicted of crimes to serve time in
foreign prisons. Two, putting critics of the administration's policies in jeopardy.
Some officials say US citizens who criticize administration policies could
be charged with crimes based on the notion they're aiding
terrorists and criminals. Then comes the quote from the Gorka interview.
(12:32):
Trump's team has also questioned the legality of civic groups
providing immigrants with know your Rights trainings on how to
respond to federal agents. Borders are Tom Holman suggested that
such seminars help people evade law enforcement. I would suggest
it allows people to evade fascists like Tom Holman and
(12:56):
their brown shirt Gestapo death squads. And I would note
also that Tom Holman in particular has something for or
Alexandria Accasio Cortes and is drooling at the thought of
putting handcuffs on her. Quote. They're trying to use terrorism
laws to attack people for their speech and for their
(13:17):
political activism, and that's an authoritarian effort, said Carrie Talbot,
co executive director of the Immigration Hub, an immigration advocacy
group three questioning the authority of court orders, The administration's
resistance to returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was legally in
(13:39):
the US with an order not to be deported back
to Al Salvador, but was deported to the prison there anyway,
has raised questions about how far Trump's team can go
in trying to skirt court orders. The White House says
the decision to return Abrego Garcia rests with El Salvador
because the US Supreme Court told the administration only to
(14:00):
facilitate his return, not effectuated. Axios, of course, peppered this
with its moronic life for dummies interjections like why it matters.
I've always wondered what their coverage of an impending nuclear
war would look like. Why it matters because everybody would
be dead. Axios also missed one other component. This is
(14:23):
from Reuters from a month ago. Now. US House Speaker
Mike Johnson on Tuesday warned that Congress's authority over the
federal judiciary includes the power to eliminate entire district courts.
As the White House rails against activist judges blocking Trump's agenda,
Johnson sold reporters the numerous injunctions issued by judges nationally
(14:45):
that have steimied Trump's initiatives were part of a dangerous hand.
This ugly, little, useless Johnson is talking about defunding the judges.
That if the Democrats can't frame that as Republicans want
to defund law enforcement, give up. What in whole all
(15:07):
this indicates is that Trump is, as I suggested earlier,
out of moves, he is, in fact now road testing
using terrorism charges against Americans for their exercise of free speech.
They've already done it in the Khalil case at Columbia.
(15:29):
Then Trump said the quiet part out loud about homegrowns.
The idiocy of the DEI Attorney General Blondie is another
facet of this. Remember her boast that attacks on Tesla
dealerships or Tesla vehicles would be treated as domestic terrorism.
I'm not sure if this includes keing the cars, though
(15:50):
the newspaper The Daily Mail reported that a decade ago
Musk found a foreign born whistleblower in his company about
bad breaks on Tesla's and threatened to deport her and
her team. And that was in two thousand fourteen. But
if you put all these components together, you may face
(16:12):
a terrorism charge for criticizing how good a car a
Tesla is, or for criticizing how good a president A
Trump is. The other headlines Dick Durbin is retiring. Good
(16:39):
should have happened two elections ago. Take Schumer with you,
and take Ron Johnson with you. There are dumber senators,
There are more dangerous Republican Johnson's. There are snottier politicians.
But no one quite combines these three attributes as brilliantly
as Russia. Ron his newest gambit as chair of the
(17:02):
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investment Mitigations, he wants one he
has declared that World Trade Center Building seven collapse due
to a quote controlled demolition, something disproved literally on nine
to eleven and believed only by morons and rich losers
who have never held any elected office other than the
(17:25):
Senate seat they bought from Wisconsin. They brought down Ron's
brain with a controlled demolition long before nine to eleven.
Also today, the last king of five thirty eight dot
com Elliot Morris reports Trump has completely spent his approval
ratings on immigration and the economy and the cost of living.
At the beginning of February, he was a net plus
(17:48):
eight on the economy plus eight. He's now at minus ten.
At the same time, he was plus five on the
cost of living, He's now at minus twenty two. And
on immigration. In the middle of February, he was at
plus twelve. He's now at just plus two and a half.
On immigration, he is hemorrhaging his support specifically and generally
(18:13):
the overall. When he was at plus five in February,
he is now twelve points lower at minus seven. New
theory on the Christy Nome handbag theft, the one literally
stolen out from under her at a DC restaurant with
three thousand dollars in cash inside to pay for the
family Easter dinner. I assume because the cash anyway, because
(18:36):
her family had long since learned to disbelieve her promises
like I'll put it on my card or I'll take
care of your dog. Police think the culprit at an
adjoining table gradually pushed the handbag away from Nome with
their foot. My addition to this theory is that Nome
has by now had so much work done that she
(18:57):
could not move her head anymore to the side to
check if the White House Correspondence din there is Saturday,
having been forced to attend in two different centuries in
far happier circumstances. My pro tip to the members of
the DC political media industrial complex consists of just two words,
(19:17):
uber eats and your pete. Hegseth update. He's still there,
I guess, but he's clearly not all there. Jennifer Jacobs
of CBS News reports that heg Seth has made a
major change at the Pentagon. He has spent thousands of
dollars to install in the green room next to the
press briefing room, a makeup room, a new director's chair,
(19:44):
and a large mirror with vanity bulbs has been installed.
All true, says the Pentagon, but the heg Seth spokesperson
proudly insists Pete Hegseth does not have a makeup artist.
He does his own makeup himself. Because all fighters need
(20:05):
to know when to powder their nose. And Trump is
still behind hag Seth because we all presidents need to
know when to empty another can of spray on their
hair matrix or another car load lot of bronzer on
their reptilian skin. Here we go again, It's just a
(20:26):
waste of time he is doing. He is doing a
great job. Because he's doing a great jobs to ask
the hoodies how he's doing it? Why were they in
the signal Chat two? Also of interest here, no word
(20:47):
yet from HBO Max as to when and where the
memorial services will be held for Bill Maher's career, now
that it has been ended by a pitch perfect guest
essay in the New York Times. If by now you
have somehow not read it, I am not going to
spoil your surprise by telling you about it, reading from it,
(21:08):
nor telling you who the author is. Well, I'm not
going to do that now. I'll do it next This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Stell ahead
(21:42):
on this initiative countdown all new as it is. Did
I ever tell you about the time I sang and
danced on Broadway? I mean in an actual Broadway show,
actually on Broadway, a political Broadway show. No, I didn't
tell you because I had completely forgotten about it until
(22:04):
I went to see George Clooney in Goodnight and good Luck,
And then I forgot about it again until it turned
out that my foot doctor's offices across the street from
where George Clooney is doing Goodnight in good Luck. Anyway,
my Broadway career that was so bad it would have
made zero Mostelle and or Nathan Lane and the producers
(22:24):
proud next 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 miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Krueger effect specimens who constitute the latest other worse
persons in the world worse than me dancing on Broadway
(22:46):
Lebron's worst Congressman Derek Van Orden. If you want a leaving,
breathing example of evidence that the new research is correct
that for years the American military has been giving our
war fighters brain damage and PTSD because our weapons move
(23:07):
so violently when they are shot or otherwise employed, that
just training on them literally shakes a soldier's brain. If
you need to be able to point at somebody and say,
like this guy, look at the brain damage the military
did to this guy. All he did was shoot a rifle.
It's Congressman Van Orden of Wisconsin. I mean, I don't
(23:30):
know how this actually works, because I'm not a brain surgeon,
but it always seemed to me, having had a concussion,
that if you had a small brain to begin with,
it would rattle more, thus creating more damage. But who knows,
maybe if you have a small brain to begin with,
there's less two damage. Anyway, Van Orden has got major,
(23:51):
major issues. He's got anger problems, he's got seeming delusions
of grandeurs, he likes to order people around, and of
course he is a buffoonish idiot. Maybe it was the
machinery in the army that caused this one social media
disaster the other day. Maybe it was just that he
was made this way. Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin tweeted
(24:16):
a video trying to hook the upcoming National Football League
Draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin with the year of the Kid.
So Van Orden found a way to take this benign,
kind of meaningless, generic tweet and turn it into a
way to express all of his own problems anger, low
class use of language, conspiracy theory, addiction, stupidity. And he
(24:40):
did this all in a retweet of only ten words
in length. Got to hand it to him for that
great job. Turd a sitting US Congress and rights referring
to the governor of his own state. How many kids
in Milwaukee can read? And of course Van Orden misspelled
(25:01):
the word how he spelled it hoe, So the RT
actually reads and continued to read all day ho many
kids in Milwaukee can read, which by itself tells you
everything you need to know about Derek Van Orden, but which,
because of that one word ho, may lead us down
(25:23):
the path of wondering if there's another issue mister Van
Orden has been dealing with any who the runner up
worser Ryan kill mead to Fox and Friends. I've mentioned before,
it's a real hall of fame of dumb white guys
and gals over there. Jesse Waters will Cain, Janine Piro,
Rachel Campos, Duffy. But if you had first draft choice,
(25:46):
where would you go, where would you start? You would
start with kill Mead. He has been there forever. He
has been there literally twice as long as anybody else.
And now he's made a major major boo boo even
for him interviewing his former colleague eat as in PTSD.
(26:06):
I'll just text it to you Hegseth at eight twenty
one Eastern the other morning. Brian Kilmead was clearly upset
at having to do this interview, and with good reason, nervous, worried.
Heg Seth was so jumpy, arms flailing, mugging to the
camera twice as much as usual that you would have
thought he was just coming in at that hour of
the morning, not just getting up. Hey wait a minute,
(26:29):
maybe he was just kidding him. No, no, I bet
he was just coming in. Any who. Kill Mead's part
of this was saying, as usual, exactly what the Trumpsts
did not want him to say, the Freudian slip of
all Freudian slips. At the moment quote here to set
the record straight himself, the former secretary, the current Secretary
of State Pete Hegseth. First off, state no, I'm sorry,
(26:55):
I would have accepted secretary of Defense or secretary of vodka.
Also the former secretary you called Hegseth, the former secretary
you meant to call him the former secretary of Defense, Brian,
I believe that's what we call in the business a
(27:16):
spoiler alert, bro. But our winner Bill Maher or whatever
is now left of him, and frankly, all that is
left of him now is pretty much graffiti. If you
have not read the best piece of satirical newswriting this year,
I urge you to go do so. It was in
(27:38):
Monday's New York Times op ed section, and as in
the last episode, I now read from somebody else's epic
literary composition. First it was the objective power is Power
speech by O'Brien has written by Orwell in the novel
nineteen eighty four. But now I would like to read
(27:59):
just a couple of paragraphs from this instant classic in
the New York Times, and I urge you to go
finish it. There is not one wasted word nor misplaced
comma in the whole damn beautiful thing. Title of the
guest essay, my dinner with Adolph opening three paragraphs, I
(28:19):
have to quote them. I can't edit it down. Quote.
Imagine my surprise when in the spring of nineteen thirty
nine a letter arrived at my house inviting me to
dinner at the Old Chancellory with the world's most reviled man,
Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his
on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything
(28:41):
he was going to do on the road to dictatorship.
No one I knew encouraged me to go. He's Hitler,
He's a monster. But eventually I concluded that hate gets
us nowhere. I knew I couldn't change his views, but
we need to talk to the other side, even if
it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable
crimes against humanity. Two weeks later, I found myself on
(29:05):
the front steps of the Old Chancellory and was led
into an opulent livering room where a few of the
Furor's most vocal supporters had gathered, Himmler, Gering Lany Riefenstahl,
and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward the Eighth.
We talked about some of the beautiful art on the
(29:25):
walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews.
But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard loud footsteps
coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room.
He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband
and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly,
it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from
(29:47):
my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on
my back. I found the whole thing quite disarming. I
joked that I was surprised to see him in a
tan suit, because if he wore that out, it would
be perceived as unfeurerlike. That amused him to no end,
and I I realized I'd never seen him laugh before.
Suddenly he seems so human here. I was prepared to
(30:11):
meet Hitler, the one I'd seen and heard, the public Hitler,
But this private Hitler was a completely different animal, And
oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was
the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.
Forgive my sudden move towards my pathetic impression of the
(30:34):
pathetic mar but it seemed fitting at the moment. I
might add this piece, this extraordinary bit of writing, only
gets better from here. And I add further that with admiration, pride,
and as somebody who's actually written stuff for The Times
op ed page's pure bright green envy, I am not
in the same universe as the author of that, and
(30:57):
the author of that is, of course Larry David, somebody
I'm proud to call a friend and friend of the podcast. Again,
read the whole thing. That's just the start. This part
about the the art stolen from the homes of Jews,
just thrown away like that. Oh my goodness. The irony,
(31:19):
of course, is as the historian Rick Pearlstein noted in
the thirties, the Nazis really did what Larry David fantasizes
about in this piece in The Times. They really did
bring critics in to meet Hitler at one of Hitler's homes,
and mostly they did this to tamp down the widespread
assumptions in Germany that the unmarried Hitler was gay. There
(31:42):
is even a book about this campaign, this pr whitewashing,
that invited the Bill Mahers of nineteen thirty nine to
come meet the Donald Trump of nineteen thirty nine. The
book is titled Hitler at Home by Despina Stratagatos from
Yale Books from twenty fifteen. Larry sat top is so
(32:05):
good it's real. The fact of that book makes Larry's
piece even better. But nothing, nothing will ever top the
best part of Larry's vivisection of Mar, which is he
never wants in the piece mentions Mar by name, never
mentions Mar's obsequious, squirming praise of Trump after dinner with
(32:30):
him at the Old Chancellery. Now there could be a
good reason for not mentioning Bill Maher, because after what
Larry David wrote about him, there no longer is a
Bill Maher left to mention Bill. I hope they saved
what's left of him to drop with the rest of
the confetti in Times Square on New Year's Eve, Mar
(32:50):
two days other worst person hellowel to the number one
(33:11):
story on the Countdown and things I promised not to tell,
And this actually falls into the category of things I
forgot to tell. It may be a sign of age.
I like to think it's a sign of having done
so much in a now fifty year career. In front
of microphones and audiences. But it could be the idea
(33:32):
of age. But I had, until a couple of weeks ago,
completely forgotten that I once sang and danced on Broadway.
I don't mean out in the street when I used
to work in Times Square, I mean on the Broadway
stage with an audience who paid money to see it.
(33:56):
I was not the star of the show, thank goodness.
It would have closed during the first act. But nonetheless
I sang and danced on the stage of the Blasco Theater.
And I did it twice, meaning someone made the decision
that after the first time I did it, they should
have me come back and do it again. Here's the background.
(34:20):
In the spring of twenty seventeen, I got a call
from Michael Moore. Michael and I have done countless things together,
landmark events in our respective careers. He was the first
guest on the first edition of Countdown on Current TV
in twenty eleven, when we beat both CNN and MSNBC
in the ratings, even though our network was in digital
(34:42):
might as well have been in black and white, might
as well have been available only in three cities in
the country, and we beat them. And Mike did that
I did it too. Mostly Mike. We did a thing,
believe it or not, speaking of Bill Maher, we did
a thing for Bill Maher in which Michael and I
did the halftime show when mar Once did a live
(35:04):
stand up special on HBO and then went to a
different studio to do a live edition of his Real
time I Capitulate to Trump. Whatever the name of the
show is called. We did the show in between while
he went from one theater to the other in Washington.
And we've been on each other's programs, and on each
other's podcasts and on each other's coat tails for years.
(35:30):
Michael and I have always gotten along very well, and
that's often a challenge, both for him and for me.
The call for Michael was he's going to do a
one man show on Broadway, but they can't really trust
it to be just one person. They want to experiment.
They've done a couple of them already, but in previews,
you know, one guy talking for an hour and a half,
(35:52):
as good as that might be, is a little challenging
if you're seated in a theater and you're expecting, I
don't know, the Lion King songs something. Now, they did
have a wow finish to this thing that was songs
and lights and dancing, but that you didn't see till
(36:13):
the end. So the idea was, let's break this up
at some point. Let's have a surprise guest, a different
guests show up in the middle of Michael's one man
show every night at the Belasco Theater, unannounced, and just
have Michael talk to him ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever works.
Would you come in, Keith and be one of the
(36:34):
first people we try this with, In fact, would you
be the first person we will try this with? And
I said, of course I would. So I get to
the theater and they explained to me what we're going
to do and how I'm going to enter and just
walk on, And I said, you sure? You just want
me to walk on? People are going to think I'm
just rushing the stage, aren't they?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
No, people will recognize you instantly. And no, that's not
a problem or anything. I went, are you sure anyway?
Then they said at the end of the show, the
premise of Michael's show is that to defeat Trump, we
must confront our fears. We must some of us choose
to run for office. We must express ourselves when we
(37:13):
are not used to expressing ourselves. We must protest when
we're not used to protesting, and we must put ourselves
on the line to some degree. And he used as
an example something that really rang home with me. Four years,
four decades. The death knell of anyone's career in entertainment
in America has been the dreaded invitation to appear on
(37:35):
one show, and one show alone in American television, Dancing
with the Stars. When you are asked to be on
Dancing with the Stars, it means you are or shortly
will be dead to the world of television. Yes they
(37:55):
invited me. Yes, I simply burned the letter. Yes they
invited Tucker Carlson, and he did the one thing you
should never do, which is say yes. And he has
been since dead to the world of television. He now
is out there in the extremes, first to Fox and
now to a place where he's not reachable by human language.
(38:19):
I mean, he had a good head start on that,
but this really is this is no I think on
behalf of the United States of America. I as the
judge ruling on your sanity case, say you know, etc.
But that's another topic for another edition of Things I
Promise Not to Tell back to Michael Moore and the
invitation to appear on Dancing with the Stars. He was invited.
(38:44):
Not only did he recognize, as we all do intuitively,
that's the end, but he also particularly because like me,
he's not necessarily a great dancer. He's a big guy
like me, he's a little bigger guy than I am,
in fact, and he's not really confident about physical motions
in public. So he thought, what would be a great
(39:07):
example to people in the audience of really challenging yourself
at this time when we need to challenge ourselves, was
to actually say, tell the story about being invited on
Dancing with the Stars, and then at the end of
the show, do a version of Dancing with the Stars.
Put on a top hat, put on a glittery jacket,
(39:28):
have a professional dancer just like I'm Dancing with the Stars,
appear out of nowhere in a beautiful skirt with all
kinds of beads on it and glits and tirly things,
and she comes out onto the stage going sixty miles
an hour in a perfect semi circle. And then he
gets up and dances with her, and as I'm being
made up to go out and do my little cameo.
(39:50):
They say, now, would you mind participating in this? And
I was like, wait, you didn't mention this before. No,
we find that it's probably a better idea just to
bring this up. Once you're here inside the Belasco Theater,
just stay till the end of the show. And here's
what we want you to do. It's nothing big. When
Michael is out there dancing with the woman from essentially
(40:13):
Dancing with the Stars, we want you to again appear
out of nowhere, go out onto the stage and interrupt
them dancing. And I went and then danced with the
woman from Dancing with the Stars. No, we want you
to tap her on the shoulder and start dancing with Michael. Well,
I'm as open minded as the next guy, but it
(40:35):
seemed to me that this was probably a bad idea,
so I did it anyway. I also had, as I
have had recently, problems with my feet, so I was
actually in bad shape knee and foot wise. And yet
the possibility of being on stage on a Broadway stage
(40:56):
at least this one time in my life. I mean,
when would I get the opportunity to dance in public
however badly I might do it. There were a few
extra added efforts to this. Well, for one thing. The
other part of this was Michael's fear of being arrested
for saying something, for some sort of threat that he
might be perceived as making against Trump by doing this show,
(41:19):
and it was a setup for the police to come
get him while he's dancing with the woman and then
the guest star me. So this first night, they're still
officially in previews, I come out unannounced, and I can
hear this kind of from the crowd, like there's a
terrorist rushing the stage. I'm thinking, I told you so.
(41:41):
And I just come out and I'm wearing a Lavalier
microphone that no one can see even on the stage.
And I just come out and Michael says, it's Keith
ol Rimman. Everybody, and a nice response and a nice
conversation and thanks for coming out. And I walked off
the stage and I said, do you agree with me now?
And the producer went, yeah, you should have like at
least a microphone. And I said, you gotta do a bit. Well,
(42:04):
we want you to come back and do it went
so well. I said, you haven't seen me dance yet, No,
that's even better, especially if you break something. So at
the end of the show, I'm standing in the wings, going,
what in the hell am I doing here? What am
I doing here? Why am I out here dancing? I
can't dance. He can't dance, but he's been practicing, he's
(42:24):
been taking lessons. He's been talking about how he couldn't
go on Dancing with the Stars because he can't dance.
So what did he do? He took dancing lessons. He's
not going on Broadway every night not knowing how to dance.
You are going on Broadway tonight not knowing how to dance.
So of course it was a terrible idea, and I
did it anyway. Among other things, the dancer was really cute,
(42:45):
not Michael, but the professional dancer. So I come out
and interrupt and start dancing with him, and then start
dancing with her, at which point the cops descend on
the stage. And now the audience is really scared because
Michael has talked about something that he said that might
get him arrested. Now it looks like he's getting arrested,
(43:07):
and maybe me too. I didn't know about the cops
coming on to the stage. I was as surprised as anybody.
I went then and realized, that's probably not a cop.
He's wearing makeup, not even in New York. Is that
a likelihood? So I did the whole dramatic, you know,
perils of Pauline Dudley do wright protect the girl with
(43:27):
both hands. The dancer, the woman dancer. I shouldn't call
her a girl, but that's the image she was projecting.
So I'm protecting this professional woman dancer, shielding her with
my body, and Michael is being arrested, and then of
course it turns out the cops are stripper cops, and
so they play the music again, and we're all out
(43:48):
there dancing and the stripper cops are down to their
g strings and I'm trying to dance with the woman
and Michael is dancing with them, and then the curtain falls,
and I went, oh my god, I'm never doing this again.
They called two weeks later and asked me to do
it again, and of course I said, yeah, yes, only
this time. Well, I'll tell you the punchline to it.
(44:10):
At the appropriate moment, I did say to them I
have a better idea for the entrance, and they said, great,
we have come up with this idea where a couple
of doors open in the middle of the stage and
you come out through that and you're holding a handheld microphone,
so it doesn't look like a terrorist attack. And I said,
but there's got to be a bit. There's got to
be some interruption that matches the interruption in the monologue,
(44:33):
because nobody's being told in advance that there is a
guest star. Nobody knows this. It's not being built. And
in fact, if I remember correctly, they eventually put it
in the program. Don't tell people that there's a guest star.
First off, some nights they couldn't get a guest star.
There's a guest star. Oh, there isn't a guest star.
So I come out with a microphone. The spotlight is
(44:54):
on me suddenly as Michael goes, wait, who's that is that?
And I come out going this, I do this. Hello,
my name is Elder Key. Oh sorry wrong theater, big laugh.
It is, of course, the opening words of the opening
song from Book of Mormon, the only musical I've ever seen.
(45:17):
In fact, I've seen it twelve times. My argument that
anybody could sing for three seconds was proved correct. I
sang on Broadway. I had already danced on Broadway. It
was time for me to sing on Broadway too, and
it was a good way to explain what the hell
is happening here audience. And we had another nice conversation,
(45:37):
and in fact, some news had just broken that I
was able to give him. We were able to act
and react to just things that had just happened in
trump Land. And then we finished the show with the
whole bit where I came out and danced. And now
I'm prepared and I can really dramatically shield the dancer
when the stripper cops come out to arrest us. All
but here is the punchline. I had thought about this,
(46:02):
and thought about this as I was waiting to go
on during the preview, during the first time to dance,
that the smell of burning Ham that I could perceive
in the Belasco Theater was in fact me that long
ago desire to be an actor that I've told you
about in a previous episode, when I was instinctively aware
(46:26):
of how I could improve a scene in the odd
couple while doing it in the moment, I come up
with a few lines and a few movements and stares
that got laughs, and the producer of this in high school,
who was the high school advisor, to the drama group
and to the newspaper in the radio stations, I said,
(46:48):
forget all that, f all that go and become an actor.
You have instincts none of the rest of us have.
We could never teach you. You could become one of
the great actors. I'm dead serious. And then in the
next time we did the show, the youngest member of
the cast froze on stage. We had to bring the
curtain down in the middle of the odd couple. He
went off stage and face planted and wailed for fifteen minutes.
(47:11):
And I said, I never want to get this close
to it again. I never want to see this again,
let alone risk it happening to me. So my career
as an actor died that day. And here it was
coming back and saying, no, you can do it now,
Remember you have the gift. Step out in front of
the lights. Everything will be fine. And I went and
(47:35):
danced with a badfoot and a bad knee and no
ability to dance, and then stripper cops. So now the
second time, here's the punchline to it. When they asked
me to do it again on Broadway. What did I do?
I brought a change of clothes for the second appearance.
I had changed into a kind of fusia colored dimpled
(48:01):
smoking jacket for the dance scene. That's how much of
a burning Ham I really was. The next day, by coincidence,
I spoke to my friend, the late Norman Lloyd, the actor,
who was then about one hundred and three years old,
who said, oh, you're at the Belasco two points. I
(48:24):
made my debut on Broadway at the Belasco. I was
in nineteen thirty eight with Awson. He met orson Wells,
of course, and he also said, what time was this?
I said, well, the dancing part, Yes, the dancing part,
What time was that? The singing? I said that was
(48:44):
probably about I don't know, nine forty five, so six
forty five my time here in La Yes, that explains
what I smelled. I had this awful smell coming from
the east.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
It smelled like it smelled like burning Ham.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. That's me burning Ham. But it's nice
to think that my late friend Norman Lloyd and I
both made our Broadway debuts on the same stage. He
did a little better than I did, although I shielded
that dancer really well. Brian Ray and John Phillip shaneil
(49:36):
the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most
of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister
Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was
produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(49:56):
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other
music arranged and performed by the group. No horns allowed
except for that three snippet from Book of Mormon. My
announcer today was my friend, the new op ed editor
of The New York Times, Larry David. Everything else was,
(50:17):
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today. Day ninety
five of America held hostage just three hundred and sixty
eight days until the scheduled end of his lane duck
and lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner or
the actuarial tables do the next scheduled countdown is Thursday,
as always, bulletins as the news warrants, No, this is Thursday.
(50:41):
I was going to mention the fact that I might
be a little cloudy because of the medication for my foot,
which continues to worsen. I'll say it again. The next
scheduled countdown is Monday, unless unless I forget because of
the medication. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, unless
I can't do them because of the medication or the
(51:02):
fact that my foot is breaking off in small pieces.
Remember impeach Trump. It won't work now, it will win
the Democrats the midterms. I want pulling on a presidential
recall vote. And by the way, when I walk downhill now,
because of this foot, I look like Trump did after
that one speech at West Point. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Till
(51:23):
next time, if there is one. I'm Keith Oldrimman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman
(51:55):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcast s.