August 25, 2023 • 32 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The "Never Surrender" graphic and the "Never Surrender" $47 T-Shirt and the "Never Surrender" return-to-Twitter post all feature a photo taken literally AS TRUMP SURRENDERED. At least the Trump measurements - 6'3" 215 strawberry or blonde hair - are accurate. So long as they were determined from a satellite in high space orbit.
Though the idea of the MUGSHOT is new, for most of us, the booking of Donald Trump is by now a ritual as old as time itself, passed from one generation of Americans to the next. To his supporters it is something they seem to have convinced themselves was not going to happen, and about which they take DIRE umbrage. Ned Ryun, the onetime George W Bush speechwriter and now head of one of the three million different organizations there to fight against the lack of conservative representation, went on Fox and said we were in a “cold civil war” and Sarah Palin, a dope, went on Newsmax and said “do you want us to be in a civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We do need to rise up and take our country back” and one is inclined to remind the Witch from Wasilla who has all the tanks. Well, if this means Civil War at least it’s about something important.
The real news from Atlanta: another step taken by Kenneth Chesebro to put Donald Trump in jail before the election. I wish I understood his game here.
B-Block (17:48) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani is potentially facing the end of his pitching career - because unicorns don't exist - at exactly the same time the equally-hyped Stephen Strasburg retires due to an injury that his limited him to eight games since 2019. All of which reminds me of the greatest pitcher you've never heard of: Harry Krause. And when you're too big to do the Super Bowl halftime show (23:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Another year, another CNN streaming service. Plus Riley Gaines doxxes a librarian and the library gets a bomb threat. And just when we thought we had all debunked last year's "Litter boxes in schools" urban legend, Fox "newscaster" Shannon Bream announces it - as if it were true.
C-Block (28:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's what I turn to whenever it is the Dark November of my Soul: "A Box To Hide In."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio two
fifteen celsius six foot three, two fifteen blonde or strawberry
(00:32):
hair per the booking office at the Rice Street Jail
in Atlanta. So if Trump actually does flee, the police
of the world will be busy looking for carrot top
while Trump himself escapes. The never Surrender graphic with the
mugshot was posted at nine twenty four Eastern Time last night,
(00:53):
and the never Surrender t shirt, priced at forty seven
dollars with the mugshot, went live minutes later. And the
never Surrender photo is a photo of him right after
he he's surrendered. So talking about a mugshot on a podcast,
I'm suddenly reminded of the hundreds of listeners in the
(01:16):
thirties and forties and the joke in the more recent
movie Radio Days, all asking the same question every time
ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy appeared on
network radio. He's a ventriloquist on the radio. How do
you know he's not moving his lips? As I assume
(01:37):
you have figured out for yourself, they do not actually
weigh the defendants who are booked in Atlanta, and as
it turns out, it does not seem like they even
ask them. The likeliest explanation is that they employ one
of those guests your weight guys from the carnival or
the county fair, only not one of the good ones. Quote.
(01:59):
In the case of former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, explained,
the Washington Post jail records initially listed him at five
foot nine and one hundred and eighty pounds, but later
in the same day, the numbers had changed without explanation,
to five foot eleven and two hundred and thirty pounds.
An individual who accompanied Giuliani to his booking said they
(02:22):
did not recall anyone asking the former New York mayor
for his weight, nor do they recall him being asked
to step on a scale. End result, according to the
Atlanta offices, Giuliani outweighs Trump by fifteen pounds. Though the
idea of the mugshot is new for most of us,
(02:45):
the booking of Donald Trump is by now a ritual
as old as the nation itself, passed from one generation
of Americans to the next. To his supporters, this is
something they seemed to have convinced themselves until last night
was never actually going to happen, at about which they
take dire umbradge ned Ryan Ryan with a you, the
(03:11):
one time George W. Bush speech writer and now head
of one of the three million different organizations out there
to fight against the lack of conservative representation. Ned Ryan
with a you went on Fox and said we were
in a cold civil war, and Sarah Palin, who is
a dope, went on Newsmax and said, do you want
(03:32):
us to be in a civil war? Because that's what's
going to happen. We do need to rise up and
take our country back. And one is inclined to remind
the witch from Wasilla who has all the tanks, and
which side is enraged to the point of insurrection another
insurrection enraged to the point of insurrection by a photo
(03:54):
of an insane old man who would sell them all
for three dollars a piece, and who has spent the
last eight years conning them out of their money. They're
ready to go and fight over his momentous decision to
return to the dying social media site formerly known as
Twitter to post this photo he so hates. Well, if
(04:17):
it's civil war at least it's about something important. There
is a lot of amateur psychoanalysis of the pose and
a lot of projection on both sides. And oh, by
the way, the fake turned out to be pretty close,
didn't it. But as a now middle aged man, I
(04:38):
can offer you insight that others cannot. I can tell
you that whatever Trump wants his cultists to believe, he
positioned himself like that, not to look stern, nor resolute,
nor civil warish, nor incapable of surrender at an event
(04:59):
literally called a surrender. He positioned himself like that for
one reason, and one reason alone, to hide his chins.
The irony here is that the real action in Atlanta
(05:20):
had nothing to do with Trump, not directly anyway. But,
as I suggested yesterday, if Trump actually winds up in
prison before the election, we may have to thank an
ex Democrat from Harvard Law who devised a scheme he
knew would be eviscerated by the courts, but proposed anyway
because he thought it would buy Trump time to tie
Biden up in the courts and throw American democracy into
(05:43):
a confused mess in which the dominant political structure would
be provided by roving gangs of attorneys. Of all of
the Trump nineteen only Kenneth Cheesebro invoked the Georgia law
guaranteeing a defendant a speedy trial, a law which guaranteed
him at least a scheduled first day in corps no
(06:05):
later than Friday, November three. DA Fannie Willis came back
yesterday and said, I'll see your November third and raise
you one speedy trial date. And she proposed that it
all starts on Monday, October twenty third. And she was
specific not just Cheeseboro's trial, but all of them. That's
sixty days from now. Shakespeare may have had Hamlet ask
(06:28):
who would bear the law's delay, but the law's delay
is the primary feature of the legal game. Sixty days
is lightning fast. Whether Willis is seizing the unexpected door
Cheesebro has opened for her, or she's playing chicken against him,
I could only guess either way. She and Cheesebro's team
(06:49):
are in essence drag racing, And if the DA's motives
are uncertain, Cheesebros are unfathomable unless he's avenging himself against
Trump for getting him into this fine mess. Also, if
note Jim Jordan Is threatening a congressional investigation up fivey
Willis because I guess her name came up in the
investigation a day popomatic device that Jordan and Jamie Comer
(07:13):
and Marge Green co own Nitwitz. The other actual news
story from Atlanta buried under Mugshot Watch twenty three was
the sudden punt by Mark Meadows. Yesterday morning, Meadows was
still trying to get out from under the onus of
the same booking process. Trump boneheadedly trumpeted he got his
(07:35):
hearing on his motion to move his trial into federal court,
and he argued that should relieve him of the burden
of having to be processed at the Rice Street jail,
and then the judge said, nah, sorry, smile and watch
the birdie. Not that Meadows had another legal play at
that point, but the alacrity with which he raced to
get fingerprinted was amazing. By three seventeen yesterday afternoon, meadows
(08:00):
mugshot was available online and suitable for framing the hearing
on the Meadows motion that what they've indicted him for
he did while an official in the presidential administration, and
thus it is suitable only for a federal court. Will
be Monday. D A. Willis replied yesterday and said that's
part of the reason they indicted him, that while a
(08:22):
federal official, he violated the Hatch Act, which precludes simultaneous
political activities, like when he joined Trump in a meeting
with Michigan legislators at the White House on November twenty
at twenty twenty, and when he tried to connect Trump
with Pennsylvania legislators the next day to talk about the
election results, clearly political activity, wrote the district attorney. The
(08:46):
judge now has an even more complicated decision than at
first looked to be. Meadows was arguing to move his
case to federal court because he was a federal officer
during the alleged crimes. The district attorney is now conceding that,
but saying he can't hide behind it because he was
specifically doing something that was illegal for a federal officer
(09:10):
while he was a federal officer. So does criming while
in the White House void the protections of being in
the White House. But of course all of that is
really complicated, especially for American television viewers, at least in
the opinion of news executives. So instead, let's just point
(09:30):
at the mugshot and count the chins. I'm not criticizing
the spectacle. It also matters. I'm also doing it right now.
I'd just like to see a little of the steak
along with the sizzle from the reporters who had the
steak at the Milwaukee Chophouse Monday night before the debate,
(09:52):
presumably on the Trump campaign on their dime. I'd love
to see those expense reports, by the way, it wouldn't
be like reporters to double dip on dinner receipts. And
speaking of that debate, a little PostScript, I would like
to apologize to you for having missed the unfathomable lack
(10:13):
of logic that this provided.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the
twenty first century.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It's a fact. Trump at two twenty Thursday morning, by
the way, declared Ramaswami the winner of the debate because
he said that because he praised him, Trump never noticed,
wouldn't care, wouldn't understand. The moderators didn't notice in real time.
I didn't notice watching it, most of us didn't notice
(10:42):
the blank, unanswerable stupidity of that statement. If Trump is
the best president of the twenty first century. Why would
you run against him? Fella? Vivek was supposedly the most
searched name during the debate. And this is one of
those vague statements of fact that everybody can impose their
(11:02):
own assumptions on. It's like the percentage of Americans who
think the country's going in the wrong direction. That includes
people who think the Democrats are destroying it and the
people who think the Republicans are destroying it. Search data
doesn't mean like or hate. It just means who the
hell is this guy? It can also mean that the
(11:23):
audience in real time caught the best president nonsense or
the other gaff made by this male version of Elizabeth Holmes.
I miss this one too, possibly because I find the
guy so amazingly off putting, so wreeking of the three
card Monte Dealers of Broadway, that I found myself instinctively
checking to make sure my wallet had not been stolen.
(11:45):
Quote the US Constitution. It is the strongest guaranteur of
freedom of human history. That is what won us the
American Revolution. Now that's not quite as hallucinatory as Trump's
great moment in revolutionary war history, the day he claimed
that George Washington's army took over the airports from the British,
(12:09):
but it's still pretty bad, especially considering it came as
Rameswami was talking about immigrants like his mother knowing more
about American civics than voters do, and how some of
the voters should have to pass a civics test before
getting to vote, in which case Ramswami himself would be
sitting the next cycle out. The timeline is not difficult.
(12:29):
You don't have to have it in as much detail
as I will give it to you now. Last true
battle of the Revolutionary War Yorktown, ended October nineteenth, seventeen
eighty one, well before lunch. Treaty of Paris ending the hostilities.
September three, seventeen eighty three. Annapolis Convention, which we kind
of owned up to the fact that the Articles of
(12:49):
Confederation just were not enough and we needed a constitution.
September fourteenth, seventeen eighty six. Final draft of the Constitution
presented September twenty eight, seventeen eighty seven. Constitution comes into
force March fourth, seventeen eighty nine. Oops, we forgot the
Bill of Rights. It's adopted December seventeen ninety one. So
(13:11):
saying the US Constitution is what won us the American
Revolution is like saying Abraham Lincoln rode to his inauguration
in an automobile. Either way, I wonder if Ramaswami has
any idea of what my old college professor, Ted Loewe
(13:32):
used to say about the adoption of the Constitution, that
that was the beginning of the end of personal freedom
in this country. Still we're talking about the guy also
of interest here. It is utterly amazing how much the franchise,
the experts, the sport itself are all playing down the
(13:54):
fact that Baseball's unicorn, the sudden centerpiece of its entire
marketing strategy, its potential one hundred million dollar a year
free agent, has torn the critical ligament in his pitching
elbow and may need Tommy John surgery again. And no
picture has ever come back full strength from a second
(14:16):
such surgery. It's almost as if nobody wants to believe
that unicorns are called unicorns because they don't exist. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman
(14:58):
in sports juxtaposition is everything. Early yesterday morning, the Los
Angeles Angels announced show Hey Otani, the unprecedented combination pitcher
and designated hitter, had torn the ulner collateral ligament in
his elbow. The UCL Thus he will not pitch again
(15:18):
this year. He may need surgery. They call that surgery
Tommy John surgery, and if he needs it, he will
not pitch for at least a calendar year, and at
least some of that time he would not be able
to hit either. Last month, the Angels chose not to
trade show Hey Otani, even though he was approaching free
agency UNSIGNED. What happens to him now, what happens to
(15:40):
them now is anybody's guests. Otani was leading in home runs,
slugging and pitcher's er plus he was practically speaking, baseball's
first two way player since Win Mercer served as the
regular third baseman and one of the starting pitchers of
the eighteen ninety nine Washington Senators. And he didn't do
(16:03):
it that well. About twelve hours after the Otani announcement,
Stephen Strasbourg of the Washington Nationals, not the Senators anymore,
but the Nationals, announced he is retiring from baseball. At
the age of thirty five, entering the majors as one
of the best pitching prospects of the century. Strasbourg struck
out fourteen men in his first big league game, and
(16:24):
while he was often brilliant, he was also often hindered
by injuries. Strasburg was the most valuable player in the
twenty nineteen World Series won by Washington. Since then, he
had appeared in thirty one innings over eight games. Due
to thoracic outlet syndrome, where everything nerves, blood vessels, everything
(16:46):
going from your lower neck to your armpit gets compressed
Otani hurt, Strasburg retired. This underscores the great truth about
baseball pitching. Ever since throwing overhand was made legal for
the eighteen eighty five season, every pitcher has ultimately been
the architect of his own demise. The motion, the throwing motion,
(17:10):
just cannot be sustained indefinitely, and in many of the
game's greatest pitchers, it can't be sustained for very long
at all. And it is absolutely possible that the greatest
stretches of pitching in baseball history were accomplished by guys
you have never heard of. You heard of Harry Krause.
(17:33):
Harry Kraus was a rookie with the nineteen hundred and
nine Philadelphia A's. He was not even in the starting
rotation of that team when the season began, but in
his first fifteen starts of the nineteen oh nine season,
Kraus had an earned run average of one point zero zero,
probably less because they didn't keep track of the difference
(17:54):
between earned runs and unearned runs in nineteen oh nine,
one point zero zero was the highest it would have been.
Kraus won fourteen of those fifteen games. He threw seven
shutouts in those fifteen games, and he won four of
those games one to nothing. And sometime in game thirteen
(18:14):
or Game fourteen, he hurt something in his arm or
his shoulder, and he would pitch in only fifty one
more games and would be back in the minor leagues
three years after his extraordinary run pitching fleeting. As in aside,
I must note that in tweeting about this yesterday, I
(18:35):
pulled off a Lulu, an all time great blooper. In writing,
I said that Otani's ucl Tare quote could at minimum
keep him off the mound indefinitely. Well, if indefinitely is
the minimum. I'd hate to know what the maximum is.
Also in Sports, London's Daily Mail claims in an exclusive
(18:59):
that the Super Bowl organizers are going to have to
look elsewhere for a halftime show next February in Las Vegas.
They have been turned down by Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Ms. Swift says she's flattered, but she'd rather wait until
the game is played in a city closer to her heart,
like Nashville. She did not say this, but bluntly she
could have. At this point in their respective popularities, the
NFL should have the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia
Eagles play a game at halftime of a Taylor Swift concert.
(19:43):
Stell ahead on countdown. Since literally nineteen seventy nine, I
have been reading this one, James Thurber's story allowed to classmates,
to girlfriends, to TV audiences, to the dogs, to you guys,
to passers by on the street. Whenever it is that
dark November in my soul, is not Herman Melville put it.
(20:06):
I get this one Thurber story down, and I read
it out loud, and so I will again today box
to hide in first time for the daily roundup of
the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world. Lebrons, Warner Bros.
Discovery It has announced a new streaming service called CNN
(20:31):
on Max. If you don't know what Max is, it
used to be HBO, but they're smarter than that, so
they renamed it Max, as in Max Power, PEPSI Max
or Max Zaslovsky. So they'll start streaming CNN shows, Jake
Tapper and the Anderson Cooper Silo Report, and it'll be
(20:52):
part of the Max streaming service, CNN on Max. And wait,
didn't CNN have a streaming service like last year? And
then they killed it after they spent millions on it
and they fired everybody and they fired the boss. And
what was that called again, CNN Murray or something CNN
(21:15):
plus Max. So when are they going to kill this one?
Is this an annual thing they do over there or
what The runner up? Riley Gaines, the immortal collegiate swimmer
who starred at while she was second team All Southeastern Conference,
angered because she was defeated in the pool by a
transgender competitor. Gaines has been working out her personal demons
(21:39):
by endangering members of that community. Ever since, sadly, unlike swimming,
she's good at it. A right wing organization posted a
video of a California library asking anti transgender protesters to
leave after they violated library rules. Gaines retweeted that video
and added quote, do we know the librarian's name and
(22:00):
our phone number? We need silent majority to do its thing.
And silent majority did its thing aided when Gaines did
a follow up with all of the contact info anonymous
people who are scumbags. Scumbags like Riley Gaines swamped the
library with phone calls, and one of the phone calls
included the inevitable bomb threat, which forced the evacuation of
(22:24):
the library. And then Fox did a story about how
Riley Gaines was slamming men trying to silence, et cetera,
rather than pointing out that Riley Gains is a troubled
young woman with a Messiah complex and not very much
skill at you know, swimming. The winner Another one from Fox,
(22:44):
Shannon Bream Fox quote news unquote, and another reminder that
the so called non opinion anchors there just as full
of crap as Jatsy Waters is, and that's pretty full.
I live in the Washington DC area, she said pertly
during an appearance on one of the Fox Days Time programs.
(23:05):
I think it was the Guesswork and Rumors report with
Harris Faulkner. I have a lot of Northern Virginia moms
who have kids in school, she continued, Who've told me
that there are schools who are now having to put
litter boxes in for kids who identify as cats. This
has not only been debunked four or five thousand times,
(23:26):
but it was debunked most recently, like last year. You
know the origin of this, right, It makes the fact
that morons like Shannon Bream are on TV anywhere even
worse kind of tragic. In fact, there are schools that
have litter boxes for their kids. The litter boxes are
kept in classrooms in case the schools are locked down
(23:50):
because there is a shooter, where there is another assault
and the kids have to go. Shannon Bream a Fox
quote news unquote, one of the real journalists bringing you unconfirmed, debunked,
third hand rumors from Latin. She's now an assignment finding
the guy who was killed by that role of mentos
inside the bottle of coke two days. Worse person in
(24:16):
the world. It's been a long week. And every time
I find myself thinking it's been a long week, I
(24:38):
like to turn to my book of James Thurber, and
it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been a few fridays
since I've done any James Thurber. And so let's start
at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times, I read
this story first aloud in a class in college in
nineteen seventy nine, and a friend of mine came up
to me and said, you should forget that sportscasting thing.
You should read Thurber for a living, and I said, yeah,
(25:00):
that'll ever happen. This is, for some reason, salvation for me, Catharsis,
and every other emotion that is appropriate after it has
been a long week. A Box to Hide In by
James Thurber. I waited till the large woman with the
(25:23):
awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out,
peering at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way.
The clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got
a box, I asked, A large box. I want a
box to hide in. You want a box, he asked,
(25:48):
I want a box to hide in? I said, what
do you mean, He said, you mean a big box.
I said, I meant a big box big enough to
hold me. I haven't got any boxes, he said, only
cottons that cans come in. I tried several other grocery
and none of them had a box big enough for
me to hide in. And there was nothing for it
(26:09):
but to face life out. I didn't feel strong, and
I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a box
for a long time. Well, what do you mean you
want to hide in this box, one grocer asked me.
It's a form of escape. I told him, hiding in
(26:31):
a box. It circumscribes your worries and the range of
your anguish. You don't see people either. How the hell
do you eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer,
How the hell do you get anything to eat? I
said I had never been in a box and didn't know,
but that that would take care of itself. Well, he said, finally,
(26:53):
I haven't got any boxes, only some pasteboard cartons that
cans come in. It was the same every place. I
gave up when it got dark and the grocery closed
and hid in my room again. I turned out the
light and lay on the bed. You feel better when
it gets dark. I could have hit in a closet,
(27:16):
I suppose, but people are always opening doors. Somebody would
find you in a closet. They would be startled, and
you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet.
Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor.
You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think
to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My
(27:42):
cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up,
and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if
she knew where I could get a large box. How
big a box you want? She asked, I want a
box big enough for me to get inside of, I said.
She looked at me with big, dim eyes. There's something
(28:03):
wrong with her glass. She's awful, but she has a
big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband
is sick, and her children are sick, and she is
sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would
be if I were in a box now and didn't
have to see her. I'd bet a box right there
in the room and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if
you had a desire to bark or laugh when someone
(28:27):
who doesn't know walks by the box you were in.
Maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If
I did that would die right there. The officers and
the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny.
Doggone thing happened at the building last night. The doorman
would say to his wife, HI led in this woman
(28:48):
to clean up tenf and she never come out. See
she's never in there more in an hour, but she
never come out. See. So when it got time for
me to go off duty, why, I says to Krenic,
who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell
you suppose has happened to that woman cleans tenf? He
says he didn't know. He says he never seen her
after he took her up. So I spoke to mister
Drammage about it. I'm sorry to bother you, mister Grammage,
(29:10):
I says, but there's something funny about that woman cleans
ten f. So I told him so he said we
better have a look, and we all three goes up
and knuts on the door and rings the bells, seeing
nobody answers, So he said we'd have to walk in.
So credit opened the door and we walked in and
here was this woman cleans the apartment, dead as a
herring on the floor, and the gentleman that lives there
(29:35):
was in a box. The cleaning woman kept looking at me.
It was hard to realize she wasn't dead. It's a
form of escape, I murmured, wat say. She asked, Dully,
you don't know of any large packing boxes, do you?
(29:58):
I asked, now, I don't. She said, I haven't found
one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to
hide in a box. Maybe it will go away, maybe
I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse. It's
(30:18):
hard to say A box to hide in by James
thurber So let me see seventies. I read it aloud.
(30:40):
In the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the aughts, the
scenes in the twenties. Six decades. I've been reading that story.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studios high atop the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arrange produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip, Chanel, who
(31:02):
are the countdown musical directors. All orches and keyboards by
John Phillips, Cheneil guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music
is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
(31:23):
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and sixty first day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. My
(31:46):
next scheduled countdown is Monday bulletins. As the news warrants.
Until then, I'm Keith Olrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith olm is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(32:11):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio two
fifteen celsius six foot three, two fifteen blonde or strawberry
(00:32):
hair per the booking office at the Rice Street Jail
in Atlanta. So if Trump actually does flee, the police
of the world will be busy looking for carrot top
while Trump himself escapes. The never Surrender graphic with the
mugshot was posted at nine twenty four Eastern Time last night,
(00:53):
and the never Surrender t shirt, priced at forty seven
dollars with the mugshot, went live minutes later. And the
never Surrender photo is a photo of him right after
he he's surrendered. So talking about a mugshot on a podcast,
I'm suddenly reminded of the hundreds of listeners in the
(01:16):
thirties and forties and the joke in the more recent
movie Radio Days, all asking the same question every time
ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy appeared on
network radio. He's a ventriloquist on the radio. How do
you know he's not moving his lips? As I assume
(01:37):
you have figured out for yourself, they do not actually
weigh the defendants who are booked in Atlanta, and as
it turns out, it does not seem like they even
ask them. The likeliest explanation is that they employ one
of those guests your weight guys from the carnival or
the county fair, only not one of the good ones. Quote.
(01:59):
In the case of former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, explained,
the Washington Post jail records initially listed him at five
foot nine and one hundred and eighty pounds, but later
in the same day, the numbers had changed without explanation,
to five foot eleven and two hundred and thirty pounds.
An individual who accompanied Giuliani to his booking said they
(02:22):
did not recall anyone asking the former New York mayor
for his weight, nor do they recall him being asked
to step on a scale. End result, according to the
Atlanta offices, Giuliani outweighs Trump by fifteen pounds. Though the
idea of the mugshot is new for most of us,
(02:45):
the booking of Donald Trump is by now a ritual
as old as the nation itself, passed from one generation
of Americans to the next. To his supporters, this is
something they seemed to have convinced themselves until last night
was never actually going to happen, at about which they
take dire umbradge ned Ryan Ryan with a you, the
(03:11):
one time George W. Bush speech writer and now head
of one of the three million different organizations out there
to fight against the lack of conservative representation. Ned Ryan
with a you went on Fox and said we were
in a cold civil war, and Sarah Palin, who is
a dope, went on Newsmax and said, do you want
(03:32):
us to be in a civil war? Because that's what's
going to happen. We do need to rise up and
take our country back. And one is inclined to remind
the witch from Wasilla who has all the tanks, and
which side is enraged to the point of insurrection another
insurrection enraged to the point of insurrection by a photo
(03:54):
of an insane old man who would sell them all
for three dollars a piece, and who has spent the
last eight years conning them out of their money. They're
ready to go and fight over his momentous decision to
return to the dying social media site formerly known as
Twitter to post this photo he so hates. Well, if
(04:17):
it's civil war at least it's about something important. There
is a lot of amateur psychoanalysis of the pose and
a lot of projection on both sides. And oh, by
the way, the fake turned out to be pretty close,
didn't it. But as a now middle aged man, I
(04:38):
can offer you insight that others cannot. I can tell
you that whatever Trump wants his cultists to believe, he
positioned himself like that, not to look stern, nor resolute,
nor civil warish, nor incapable of surrender at an event
(04:59):
literally called a surrender. He positioned himself like that for
one reason, and one reason alone, to hide his chins.
The irony here is that the real action in Atlanta
(05:20):
had nothing to do with Trump, not directly anyway. But,
as I suggested yesterday, if Trump actually winds up in
prison before the election, we may have to thank an
ex Democrat from Harvard Law who devised a scheme he
knew would be eviscerated by the courts, but proposed anyway
because he thought it would buy Trump time to tie
Biden up in the courts and throw American democracy into
(05:43):
a confused mess in which the dominant political structure would
be provided by roving gangs of attorneys. Of all of
the Trump nineteen only Kenneth Cheesebro invoked the Georgia law
guaranteeing a defendant a speedy trial, a law which guaranteed
him at least a scheduled first day in corps no
(06:05):
later than Friday, November three. DA Fannie Willis came back
yesterday and said, I'll see your November third and raise
you one speedy trial date. And she proposed that it
all starts on Monday, October twenty third. And she was
specific not just Cheeseboro's trial, but all of them. That's
sixty days from now. Shakespeare may have had Hamlet ask
(06:28):
who would bear the law's delay, but the law's delay
is the primary feature of the legal game. Sixty days
is lightning fast. Whether Willis is seizing the unexpected door
Cheesebro has opened for her, or she's playing chicken against him,
I could only guess either way. She and Cheesebro's team
(06:49):
are in essence drag racing, And if the DA's motives
are uncertain, Cheesebros are unfathomable unless he's avenging himself against
Trump for getting him into this fine mess. Also, if
note Jim Jordan Is threatening a congressional investigation up fivey
Willis because I guess her name came up in the
investigation a day popomatic device that Jordan and Jamie Comer
(07:13):
and Marge Green co own Nitwitz. The other actual news
story from Atlanta buried under Mugshot Watch twenty three was
the sudden punt by Mark Meadows. Yesterday morning, Meadows was
still trying to get out from under the onus of
the same booking process. Trump boneheadedly trumpeted he got his
(07:35):
hearing on his motion to move his trial into federal court,
and he argued that should relieve him of the burden
of having to be processed at the Rice Street jail,
and then the judge said, nah, sorry, smile and watch
the birdie. Not that Meadows had another legal play at
that point, but the alacrity with which he raced to
get fingerprinted was amazing. By three seventeen yesterday afternoon, meadows
(08:00):
mugshot was available online and suitable for framing the hearing
on the Meadows motion that what they've indicted him for
he did while an official in the presidential administration, and
thus it is suitable only for a federal court. Will
be Monday. D A. Willis replied yesterday and said that's
part of the reason they indicted him, that while a
(08:22):
federal official, he violated the Hatch Act, which precludes simultaneous
political activities, like when he joined Trump in a meeting
with Michigan legislators at the White House on November twenty
at twenty twenty, and when he tried to connect Trump
with Pennsylvania legislators the next day to talk about the
election results, clearly political activity, wrote the district attorney. The
(08:46):
judge now has an even more complicated decision than at
first looked to be. Meadows was arguing to move his
case to federal court because he was a federal officer
during the alleged crimes. The district attorney is now conceding that,
but saying he can't hide behind it because he was
specifically doing something that was illegal for a federal officer
(09:10):
while he was a federal officer. So does criming while
in the White House void the protections of being in
the White House. But of course all of that is
really complicated, especially for American television viewers, at least in
the opinion of news executives. So instead, let's just point
(09:30):
at the mugshot and count the chins. I'm not criticizing
the spectacle. It also matters. I'm also doing it right now.
I'd just like to see a little of the steak
along with the sizzle from the reporters who had the
steak at the Milwaukee Chophouse Monday night before the debate,
(09:52):
presumably on the Trump campaign on their dime. I'd love
to see those expense reports, by the way, it wouldn't
be like reporters to double dip on dinner receipts. And
speaking of that debate, a little PostScript, I would like
to apologize to you for having missed the unfathomable lack
(10:13):
of logic that this provided.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the
twenty first century.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It's a fact. Trump at two twenty Thursday morning, by
the way, declared Ramaswami the winner of the debate because
he said that because he praised him, Trump never noticed,
wouldn't care, wouldn't understand. The moderators didn't notice in real time.
I didn't notice watching it, most of us didn't notice
(10:42):
the blank, unanswerable stupidity of that statement. If Trump is
the best president of the twenty first century. Why would
you run against him? Fella? Vivek was supposedly the most
searched name during the debate. And this is one of
those vague statements of fact that everybody can impose their
(11:02):
own assumptions on. It's like the percentage of Americans who
think the country's going in the wrong direction. That includes
people who think the Democrats are destroying it and the
people who think the Republicans are destroying it. Search data
doesn't mean like or hate. It just means who the
hell is this guy? It can also mean that the
(11:23):
audience in real time caught the best president nonsense or
the other gaff made by this male version of Elizabeth Holmes.
I miss this one too, possibly because I find the
guy so amazingly off putting, so wreeking of the three
card Monte Dealers of Broadway, that I found myself instinctively
checking to make sure my wallet had not been stolen.
(11:45):
Quote the US Constitution. It is the strongest guaranteur of
freedom of human history. That is what won us the
American Revolution. Now that's not quite as hallucinatory as Trump's
great moment in revolutionary war history, the day he claimed
that George Washington's army took over the airports from the British,
(12:09):
but it's still pretty bad, especially considering it came as
Rameswami was talking about immigrants like his mother knowing more
about American civics than voters do, and how some of
the voters should have to pass a civics test before
getting to vote, in which case Ramswami himself would be
sitting the next cycle out. The timeline is not difficult.
(12:29):
You don't have to have it in as much detail
as I will give it to you now. Last true
battle of the Revolutionary War Yorktown, ended October nineteenth, seventeen
eighty one, well before lunch. Treaty of Paris ending the hostilities.
September three, seventeen eighty three. Annapolis Convention, which we kind
of owned up to the fact that the Articles of
(12:49):
Confederation just were not enough and we needed a constitution.
September fourteenth, seventeen eighty six. Final draft of the Constitution
presented September twenty eight, seventeen eighty seven. Constitution comes into
force March fourth, seventeen eighty nine. Oops, we forgot the
Bill of Rights. It's adopted December seventeen ninety one. So
(13:11):
saying the US Constitution is what won us the American
Revolution is like saying Abraham Lincoln rode to his inauguration
in an automobile. Either way, I wonder if Ramaswami has
any idea of what my old college professor, Ted Loewe
(13:32):
used to say about the adoption of the Constitution, that
that was the beginning of the end of personal freedom
in this country. Still we're talking about the guy also
of interest here. It is utterly amazing how much the franchise,
the experts, the sport itself are all playing down the
(13:54):
fact that Baseball's unicorn, the sudden centerpiece of its entire
marketing strategy, its potential one hundred million dollar a year
free agent, has torn the critical ligament in his pitching
elbow and may need Tommy John surgery again. And no
picture has ever come back full strength from a second
(14:16):
such surgery. It's almost as if nobody wants to believe
that unicorns are called unicorns because they don't exist. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman
(14:58):
in sports juxtaposition is everything. Early yesterday morning, the Los
Angeles Angels announced show Hey Otani, the unprecedented combination pitcher
and designated hitter, had torn the ulner collateral ligament in
his elbow. The UCL Thus he will not pitch again
(15:18):
this year. He may need surgery. They call that surgery
Tommy John surgery, and if he needs it, he will
not pitch for at least a calendar year, and at
least some of that time he would not be able
to hit either. Last month, the Angels chose not to
trade show Hey Otani, even though he was approaching free
agency UNSIGNED. What happens to him now, what happens to
(15:40):
them now is anybody's guests. Otani was leading in home runs,
slugging and pitcher's er plus he was practically speaking, baseball's
first two way player since Win Mercer served as the
regular third baseman and one of the starting pitchers of
the eighteen ninety nine Washington Senators. And he didn't do
(16:03):
it that well. About twelve hours after the Otani announcement,
Stephen Strasbourg of the Washington Nationals, not the Senators anymore,
but the Nationals, announced he is retiring from baseball. At
the age of thirty five, entering the majors as one
of the best pitching prospects of the century. Strasbourg struck
out fourteen men in his first big league game, and
(16:24):
while he was often brilliant, he was also often hindered
by injuries. Strasburg was the most valuable player in the
twenty nineteen World Series won by Washington. Since then, he
had appeared in thirty one innings over eight games. Due
to thoracic outlet syndrome, where everything nerves, blood vessels, everything
(16:46):
going from your lower neck to your armpit gets compressed
Otani hurt, Strasburg retired. This underscores the great truth about
baseball pitching. Ever since throwing overhand was made legal for
the eighteen eighty five season, every pitcher has ultimately been
the architect of his own demise. The motion, the throwing motion,
(17:10):
just cannot be sustained indefinitely, and in many of the
game's greatest pitchers, it can't be sustained for very long
at all. And it is absolutely possible that the greatest
stretches of pitching in baseball history were accomplished by guys
you have never heard of. You heard of Harry Krause.
(17:33):
Harry Kraus was a rookie with the nineteen hundred and
nine Philadelphia A's. He was not even in the starting
rotation of that team when the season began, but in
his first fifteen starts of the nineteen oh nine season,
Kraus had an earned run average of one point zero zero,
probably less because they didn't keep track of the difference
(17:54):
between earned runs and unearned runs in nineteen oh nine,
one point zero zero was the highest it would have been.
Kraus won fourteen of those fifteen games. He threw seven
shutouts in those fifteen games, and he won four of
those games one to nothing. And sometime in game thirteen
(18:14):
or Game fourteen, he hurt something in his arm or
his shoulder, and he would pitch in only fifty one
more games and would be back in the minor leagues
three years after his extraordinary run pitching fleeting. As in aside,
I must note that in tweeting about this yesterday, I
(18:35):
pulled off a Lulu, an all time great blooper. In writing,
I said that Otani's ucl Tare quote could at minimum
keep him off the mound indefinitely. Well, if indefinitely is
the minimum. I'd hate to know what the maximum is.
Also in Sports, London's Daily Mail claims in an exclusive
(18:59):
that the Super Bowl organizers are going to have to
look elsewhere for a halftime show next February in Las Vegas.
They have been turned down by Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Ms. Swift says she's flattered, but she'd rather wait until
the game is played in a city closer to her heart,
like Nashville. She did not say this, but bluntly she
could have. At this point in their respective popularities, the
NFL should have the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia
Eagles play a game at halftime of a Taylor Swift concert.
(19:43):
Stell ahead on countdown. Since literally nineteen seventy nine, I
have been reading this one, James Thurber's story allowed to classmates,
to girlfriends, to TV audiences, to the dogs, to you guys,
to passers by on the street. Whenever it is that
dark November in my soul, is not Herman Melville put it.
(20:06):
I get this one Thurber story down, and I read
it out loud, and so I will again today box
to hide in first time for the daily roundup of
the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world. Lebrons, Warner Bros.
Discovery It has announced a new streaming service called CNN
(20:31):
on Max. If you don't know what Max is, it
used to be HBO, but they're smarter than that, so
they renamed it Max, as in Max Power, PEPSI Max
or Max Zaslovsky. So they'll start streaming CNN shows, Jake
Tapper and the Anderson Cooper Silo Report, and it'll be
(20:52):
part of the Max streaming service, CNN on Max. And wait,
didn't CNN have a streaming service like last year? And
then they killed it after they spent millions on it
and they fired everybody and they fired the boss. And
what was that called again, CNN Murray or something CNN
(21:15):
plus Max. So when are they going to kill this one?
Is this an annual thing they do over there or
what The runner up? Riley Gaines, the immortal collegiate swimmer
who starred at while she was second team All Southeastern Conference,
angered because she was defeated in the pool by a
transgender competitor. Gaines has been working out her personal demons
(21:39):
by endangering members of that community. Ever since, sadly, unlike swimming,
she's good at it. A right wing organization posted a
video of a California library asking anti transgender protesters to
leave after they violated library rules. Gaines retweeted that video
and added quote, do we know the librarian's name and
(22:00):
our phone number? We need silent majority to do its thing.
And silent majority did its thing aided when Gaines did
a follow up with all of the contact info anonymous
people who are scumbags. Scumbags like Riley Gaines swamped the
library with phone calls, and one of the phone calls
included the inevitable bomb threat, which forced the evacuation of
(22:24):
the library. And then Fox did a story about how
Riley Gaines was slamming men trying to silence, et cetera,
rather than pointing out that Riley Gains is a troubled
young woman with a Messiah complex and not very much
skill at you know, swimming. The winner Another one from Fox,
(22:44):
Shannon Bream Fox quote news unquote, and another reminder that
the so called non opinion anchors there just as full
of crap as Jatsy Waters is, and that's pretty full.
I live in the Washington DC area, she said pertly
during an appearance on one of the Fox Days Time programs.
(23:05):
I think it was the Guesswork and Rumors report with
Harris Faulkner. I have a lot of Northern Virginia moms
who have kids in school, she continued, Who've told me
that there are schools who are now having to put
litter boxes in for kids who identify as cats. This
has not only been debunked four or five thousand times,
(23:26):
but it was debunked most recently, like last year. You
know the origin of this, right, It makes the fact
that morons like Shannon Bream are on TV anywhere even
worse kind of tragic. In fact, there are schools that
have litter boxes for their kids. The litter boxes are
kept in classrooms in case the schools are locked down
(23:50):
because there is a shooter, where there is another assault
and the kids have to go. Shannon Bream a Fox
quote news unquote, one of the real journalists bringing you unconfirmed, debunked,
third hand rumors from Latin. She's now an assignment finding
the guy who was killed by that role of mentos
inside the bottle of coke two days. Worse person in
(24:16):
the world. It's been a long week. And every time
I find myself thinking it's been a long week, I
(24:38):
like to turn to my book of James Thurber, and
it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been a few fridays
since I've done any James Thurber. And so let's start
at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times, I read
this story first aloud in a class in college in
nineteen seventy nine, and a friend of mine came up
to me and said, you should forget that sportscasting thing.
You should read Thurber for a living, and I said, yeah,
(25:00):
that'll ever happen. This is, for some reason, salvation for me, Catharsis,
and every other emotion that is appropriate after it has
been a long week. A Box to Hide In by
James Thurber. I waited till the large woman with the
(25:23):
awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out,
peering at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way.
The clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got
a box, I asked, A large box. I want a
box to hide in. You want a box, he asked,
(25:48):
I want a box to hide in? I said, what
do you mean, He said, you mean a big box.
I said, I meant a big box big enough to
hold me. I haven't got any boxes, he said, only
cottons that cans come in. I tried several other grocery
and none of them had a box big enough for
me to hide in. And there was nothing for it
(26:09):
but to face life out. I didn't feel strong, and
I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a box
for a long time. Well, what do you mean you
want to hide in this box, one grocer asked me.
It's a form of escape. I told him, hiding in
(26:31):
a box. It circumscribes your worries and the range of
your anguish. You don't see people either. How the hell
do you eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer,
How the hell do you get anything to eat? I
said I had never been in a box and didn't know,
but that that would take care of itself. Well, he said, finally,
(26:53):
I haven't got any boxes, only some pasteboard cartons that
cans come in. It was the same every place. I
gave up when it got dark and the grocery closed
and hid in my room again. I turned out the
light and lay on the bed. You feel better when
it gets dark. I could have hit in a closet,
(27:16):
I suppose, but people are always opening doors. Somebody would
find you in a closet. They would be startled, and
you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet.
Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor.
You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think
to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My
(27:42):
cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up,
and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if
she knew where I could get a large box. How
big a box you want? She asked, I want a
box big enough for me to get inside of, I said.
She looked at me with big, dim eyes. There's something
(28:03):
wrong with her glass. She's awful, but she has a
big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband
is sick, and her children are sick, and she is
sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would
be if I were in a box now and didn't
have to see her. I'd bet a box right there
in the room and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if
you had a desire to bark or laugh when someone
(28:27):
who doesn't know walks by the box you were in.
Maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If
I did that would die right there. The officers and
the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny.
Doggone thing happened at the building last night. The doorman
would say to his wife, HI led in this woman
(28:48):
to clean up tenf and she never come out. See
she's never in there more in an hour, but she
never come out. See. So when it got time for
me to go off duty, why, I says to Krenic,
who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell
you suppose has happened to that woman cleans tenf? He
says he didn't know. He says he never seen her
after he took her up. So I spoke to mister
Drammage about it. I'm sorry to bother you, mister Grammage,
(29:10):
I says, but there's something funny about that woman cleans
ten f. So I told him so he said we
better have a look, and we all three goes up
and knuts on the door and rings the bells, seeing
nobody answers, So he said we'd have to walk in.
So credit opened the door and we walked in and
here was this woman cleans the apartment, dead as a
herring on the floor, and the gentleman that lives there
(29:35):
was in a box. The cleaning woman kept looking at me.
It was hard to realize she wasn't dead. It's a
form of escape, I murmured, wat say. She asked, Dully,
you don't know of any large packing boxes, do you?
(29:58):
I asked, now, I don't. She said, I haven't found
one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to
hide in a box. Maybe it will go away, maybe
I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse. It's
(30:18):
hard to say A box to hide in by James
thurber So let me see seventies. I read it aloud.
(30:40):
In the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the aughts, the
scenes in the twenties. Six decades. I've been reading that story.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studios high atop the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arrange produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip, Chanel, who
(31:02):
are the countdown musical directors. All orches and keyboards by
John Phillips, Cheneil guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music
is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
(31:23):
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and sixty first day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. My
(31:46):
next scheduled countdown is Monday bulletins. As the news warrants.
Until then, I'm Keith Olrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith olm is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(32:11):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.