TRUMP'S BASE ATTACKS HIM OVER HIS EPSTEIN COVER-UP - 7.14.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 144: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Well, there it is, finally - the perfect storm that can dethrone or at least deplete Trump and of course it's his fault. HE has openly admitted he's covering up the Epstein Files, and he has in essence confessed he's in the Epstein Files.

The problem is a simple one: Trump promised to give them pedophiles. They were promised politician pedophiles. They were promised that the politicians who were covering up Epstein were the pedophiles. And then one day Trump suddenly decided to announce that HE was the politician who was covering up Epstein and he SCOLDED them and HUMILIATED them and YELLED at them for challenging his god-ordained RIGHT to cover up Epstein, and they said in their confusion “but you promised us that you would reveal the pedophile politicians that were covering up Epstein and…wait a minute... that means...”

As of mid-afternoon Trump was getting ratioed, on his own social media site, nearly 4:1 by angry, confused, moronic MAGAs. They have lived and died by his insistence that only pedophile politicians personally implicated in the Epstein documents and "client list" would be keeping them from being released. Now his two conflicting piles of bull have clashed, and he has been buried under them.

UNFORTUNATELY TRUMP'S RESPONSE is utterly predictable: he will double down on Trump-ISIS atrocities, on torturing immigrants. It will give his 'people' the snuff films they want and may deflect their rage, at least for awhile. But remember, any time you see ICE threatening kids, to shout "Watcha doin? Grabbing those kids so Trump can take them to Epstein Island?"

B-Block (30:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Karoline Leavitt thinks her conference calls are being interfered with by the devil. Riley Gaines' reward for stirring up murderous hate against Trans people? She gets to audition for Fox, and conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Her skills are so varied: she's 85th best in swimming AND propaganda! And then there's winner Caitlin Francis, a rando from California who has the kind of advice only a homeschooling MAGA mother can present to you: dogs and cats have no souls, so if their vet bills exceed $1000, kill them. Say, Mrs. Francis, what's your over-under on your sick kids?

(44:17) SPORTSBALLCENTER: Would you like to play in tomorrow night's baseball All-Star Game? Because that's the only stunt they have left to save the dying exhibition, now that they've decided that five big league games is sufficient experience to be an All-Star? And the floodgates may have just opened in St. Louis, where a pro sports team is eliminating its separate radio and TV play-by-play teams and simulcasting. This is the future, and it's not pretty.

C-Block (1:05:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody asked me what was my favorite joke that I ever did on the air. So here's a bunch - starring Albert Hall, the Takko-Bell trade, and the day the Reading Phillies set me up to get ejected from a minor league baseball game.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. By

(00:26):
the way, you did notice that Trump confessed to covering
up the Epstein files, and Trump confessed to to being
in the Epstein files. You know, the Epstein files. The
Epstein files that Trump promised to release on day one,
The Epstein files with the Epstein client list that Pam

(00:48):
Bondi had on her desk and was reviewing. The Epstein
files that Cash Patel said included a black book under
direct control of the director of the FBI. The Epstein
files that were backed up by the Epstein suicide video.
The Epstein files that were backed up by the Epstein
sewe side video that just happened to be missing the
suicide minute. The Epstein files unaffected by all that because

(01:11):
all the videos were missing that particular minute. The Epstein
files with the missing suicide minute that it turned out
the Trump Department of Justice had edited to make sure
the missing suicide minute was missing. The Epstein files that
Trump told you to stop asking him about the Epstein files.
That wait, what Epstein files. There are no Epstein files.

(01:35):
The Epstein files that exist, but they were made by
never Barack Obama and the Democrats to fool you. The
Epstein files the ones made by Barack Obama and the Democrats,
even though Epstein was cleared during Bush's term by Trump's
future Labor secretary. The Epstein Files the ones made by
the Democrats, even though Epstein was arrested during Trump's first term.

(02:00):
The Epstein Files the ones made by the Democrats, even
though so Epstein killed himself in jail on the nine
hundred and second day of Donald Trump's first presidency. The
Epstein Files the ones not only not made by the Democrats,
but made by Donald Trump's Department of Justice. Oh, those

(02:24):
Epstein files. The Epstein Files that Trump is now telling
his cult don't exist, or do exist but don't matter,
or may exist, but the Democrats created them while he
was president, or they do exist, but don't waste your
energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about, least

(02:47):
of all me, Donald Trump, the guy who's in all
the photos with Epstein looking at the girls, or all
of the above, all at the same time. And here
is the real selling point, the real convincing moment, the
real point. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

(03:12):
The Epstein Files the ones Trump Junior said contains the
Epstein client list and asked, quote, why would anyone protect
those scumbags? Ask yourselves these questions daily and the answer
becomes very apparent. You bet it does. Dopey Musk has
again bailed out on Trump. Didn't mention his name. That

(03:35):
will happen later. Megan Kelly immediately bailed out on Trump,
and Benny Johnson immediately bailed out on Trump, and Gunther
Eagelman bailed out on Trump, and Matt Walsh blog from
the Matt Walsh Blog bailed out, and dozens and dozens
of mid level MAGA influencers, the morons who aren't making

(03:56):
money off this, but just actually believe this crap. They
bailed out on Trump and Trump's own followers on truth
Social bailed out on Trump forty thousand comments to twelve
thousand reposts by mid afternoon yesterday, Trump getting ratio to
death on his own site, and Nick Fuentes bailed out
on Trump. Nick Fuentes declared MAGA dead. And finally we

(04:24):
see the kind of perfect storm required that can topple Trump,
perhaps not overnight, but certainly in time to lose the
mid terms, maybe both houses. When there is so much bullshit,
so many different conspiracies. Finally it has to happen inevitably, inescapably,

(04:47):
one pile of bullshit completely contradicts the other pile of bullshit.
And when the brainwashed and the brain dead who have
put us into this nightmare suddenly realize that both of
these things can't be true at the same time, they
short out they were promised pedophiles, they were promised politician pedophiles.

(05:15):
They were promised that the politicians who were covering up
Epstein were the pedophiles. And then one day Trump suddenly
decided to announce that he was the politician who was
covering up Epstein. And he scolded them and humiliated them
and yelled at them for challenging his god ordained right
to cover up Epstein. And they said, in their confusion,

(05:37):
but you promised us that you would reveal the pedophile
politicians that were covering up Epstein. And hey, wait a minute,
And in Maga world, seventy seven million light bulbs went
off over seventy seven million slightly alive heads, all at

(05:58):
the same time, as bright as the Rockefeller Center Christmas
Tree so o oh bright. Even the Maga morons couldn't
missed it. Trump just confessed, well, not seventy seven million.
Half of that two thirds one third, it's enough, whatever

(06:23):
it is. The other half, two thirds one third, they're
just dimming for now. They are bravely insisting that it's
more important to believe in Trump than for Trump to
tell them the truth or whatever it is they want
him to tell them. But all you need now to
push either group forever is to say two words, and

(06:46):
you activate their uncertainty. And the two words are Epstein Files.
And oh, by the way, anybody still want to contend
that his threat the other day to revoke the citizenship
of an American born thirty seven miles away from where
he was born was just some kind of diversion to

(07:08):
get you to stop talking about the Epstein Files, when
hours later he brought up the Epstein files and he
dared his own people to do something about it. That
Trump did two of his top twenty all time most
evil things at basically the same time does not mean
one has to be cover for the other. It's not

(07:28):
like human beings. That's not how Trump's mind works. It
just means he's evil and crazy and long term planning
for Donald Trump is now down to about what's gonna
happen five minutes from now. The threat against Rosy O'Donnell
was a deliberate attempt to stake his ground, to claim

(07:50):
that when he said the homegrowns are next for deportation,
he didn't mean some Fourteenth Amendment protected kids. Somewhere he
met arresting and deporting and de citizenizing Americas, Irish Americans
and German Americans and New York Americans and Red State

(08:11):
Americans and you Americans and me Americans. Stephen Miller's enemy
is brown people. Donald Trump's enemy is anybody who criticizes
Donald Trump. And as Bennie Johnson and Gunther Eagelman and
all the others would find out later that same evening,

(08:31):
the people who really need to worry about that are
not Rosy O'Donnell or me or you. Because we have
always stood a really huge chance of being next on
the Trump list. They have to worry supporters who don't
support quite as blindly today as they did Saturday afternoon,

(08:52):
because Benny efing Johnson is now as likely to be
next as I am quote, because of the fact that
Rose than o'donald is not in the best interests of
our great country. I am giving serious consideration to taking
away her citizenship. She is a threat to humanity and

(09:13):
should remain in the wonderful country of Ireland if they
want her. God bless America. There are absolutely no circumstances
under which Trump can take away the citizenship of anyone
born in this country two parents who were themselves born
in this country. It would be easier to take away
the citizenship of Baron Trump than Rosie O'Donnell. There are

(09:38):
no loopholes, there is no concierge Supreme Court trick. There's
no christinome cowboy hat with sequins. There is nothing to
give him that power. Nothing, and his mere threat to
try to do this immediately and finally and irrevocably disqualifies
him from remaining president to the rest of those in office,

(10:01):
those in his cult, those outside of it, tho on
the Epstein list, those not on the Epstein list, those
newly freed from it because of the dropping of the
Epstein scales from their eyes. Someone needs to make a
move here from the regime in power and remove Donald

(10:22):
Trump and put someone else in charge of this country
starting tonight. In fact, that's not good enough, starting today
before nightfall, you get him out. That's all that matters
for your own sake. The rest of the country has

(10:44):
understood he is a mortal danger to us. I'm not
talking about violence here. You guys, just make up a
law and then Trump's no longer president. You certainly can
get a lido to do that for you. We have
been building to this point since twenty fifteen, and now
we are here the moment when Trump believes he is

(11:05):
above all laws and above the Constitution, and most dangerously
for him, above all of his own supporters. He is
a clear and present danger to not just the future
of this country, but it's immediate now and all of
us in it. Now that he happened to reach this

(11:27):
nature of his madness on the same day that he
finally blew it with his own cultish just a happy
coincidence for us and a metaphorically mortal wounding for him.
He might continue in power. I don't really expect anybody
to be smart in the Republican Party and remove him
from office peacefully. There are hundreds thousands of amoral men

(11:53):
and women whose personal power, in fact, whose personal ability
to avoid prison depends on him remaining in power. But
no one, not the most deluded cultist, can look at
this weekend past, at the saga of Epstein and the
branding of an occasionally funny woman born at Comac on

(12:14):
Long Island, as a threat to humanity. No one can
look at that and voluntarily now get on board with Trump.
If nothing else, he just hit his ceiling. There is
still a Trump train, what is evident today. However, out

(12:34):
there at the horizon, do you see it. That's where
the track runs out. The track probably washed away by
those Texas floods that Trump made sure Texas was not
prepared for. Oh and Rosie o'donald was right, by the way,
just like I was right, just like dozens of Democratic

(12:56):
politicians were right, just like the reporters were right, just
like the grieving parents were right. Those dead children in Texas.
Donald Trump and Christy nom and Elon Musk and everybody
in Doge and everybody in Project twenty twenty five and
all the rest of these assholes, they all contributed to
those deaths. But mostly it was Trump. Donald Trump terrorist,

(13:20):
Donald Trump mass murderer. Thank you for your attention to
this matter, the true Trump attempt to distract from Epstein

(14:00):
is unfortunately to simply descend to the next level of
hell in the torturing of immigrants. Washington Post got the
new memo from the director of isis the Chinless Wonder,
todd lyons telling his ISIS Gestapo it can deport immigrants
quote with as little as six hours notice to countries

(14:20):
other than their own, even if officials have not provided
any assurances that the new arrivals will be safe from
prosecution or torture. This works for Trump on two levels. Obviously,
it is performative it produces the kind of snuff film
his sadists want. On a second level, it inevitably also
produces confrontations and I fear increasingly dangerous ones. You already know.

(14:46):
They rated a pot farm in southern California. Seems like
a way to actually alienate Trump supporters, right, I mean,
what's next rating an opioid factory. Mayor Bass of Los Angeles,
though avoiding specifics, reported they approached a group of workers
in LA who were not just utter legit, but who
had been contracted by and were working at the time

(15:09):
for the City of Los Angeles. I suspect this was
a work crew, possibly doing something on the roads or
on maybe a City of Los Angeles building, and Ice
tried to raid them, but getting almost no attention. The

(15:30):
detaining of a seventy one year old American born named
Rick Taylor, who was stopped and held for a time
at the Miami Airport at least an hour as he
made his way back into this country from a vacation
to Turkey because they saw a California sticker on his
suitcase or bag. That was their question to him, Are

(15:54):
you from California? They are test marketing their ability to
detain anybody and then make up the flimsiest excuse there
are undocumented immigrants in California and we are pretending that
that means we are being invaded. So if you're going
to California, how do we not know you're going there

(16:14):
to aid the imaginary invasion that we are pretending is happening.
Rick Taylor is not just some random seventy one year
old guy. Rick Taylor has run campaigns for the last
Republican mayor of LA. He's not only not some sort

(16:35):
of anti ice protester, he may have voted for Trump
and his response to this outrage did he file a complaint?
Did he make sure they released him and he got
home safely, and then file a complaint. He did not
he obeyed. I have seen no reporting indicating that he
has filed any kind of complaint. I am empathetic to

(16:59):
the first part of his conduct and not the second.
And this is just the start. The Trump ISIS budget
has only gone up like five or tenfold, literally, but
the entirety of the so called border security budget just
ballooned to one hundred and seventy billion dollars through the
year twenty twenty nine, which means there will not be

(17:21):
time for even the slightly not corrupt Trumpists inside this
scam to vet the new ISIS hires. We may soon
hit a point in which ISIS raids are not looking
for supposed gang members or violent criminals or Rick Taylors,
but they're looking for supposed gang members or violent criminals

(17:41):
or Rick Taylors who would like to come work for ISIS.
Like today, you too could be a brown shirt, no
experience necessary, and no morals accepted. But that part is
still conjectural. This part is not. Isis is already rating
middle and junior high school baseball practices in New York

(18:05):
City and not in the culturally deprived obvious areas either,
raiding baseball practice on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Not to be clear, I am not a New Yorker saying,
how dare they do a raid near my Cinderella Supermarket,
my Umbridge would be identical if it had happened anywhere

(18:26):
else in this city. This is about the fact that
they are already trying this stuff in Manhattan, and I
don't know what happens if they press a point or
draw weapons. Human Wilder was running batting practice in Riverside
Park for his kids, and as the assembly member for
that area, Linda Rosenthal wrote in her newsletter, quote ice

(18:49):
sighting on the Upper West Side. I recently learned that
ICE agents approached a group of kids attending baseball practice
near the batting cages near West seventy first Street in
Riverside Park. The only thing that stood between those kids
Riverside Park and a Florida detention center buried deep in
the Everglades was a brave coach who knew the law. Unquote.

(19:14):
The coach is mister Wilder. This is New York, the
head of the Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy. Human Wilder has
a law degree from Grand Canyon University. We don't f
around here, kids, He tells two local micro news organizations
that he's out there shooting hoops with some of his

(19:34):
kids as batting practice ends, and then quoting him. When
I'm over there, I see people looking like federal agents
in a different area, but I wasn't paying much attention.
Next thing I know, I look back at the batting
cage and I see them talking to my kids. I
go over quickly, and the agents are asking the kids
inappropriate things like where they are from their country of origin.

(19:56):
So I say whoa, whoa, and I tell the officers
that their questions are inappropriate and that I'm going to
tell my kids not to answer them. The officers are
talking to me about obstruction of justice, and I repeated
that the kids don't have to speak to them, and
as the person in charge of them right now, I'm
going to tell them not to speak to you. Then
they started to talk about cuffing me and that if

(20:17):
the kids were here legally, what do they have to
lose by answering. I told them they still have their
Fifth and Fourth Amendment rights and that they don't have
to speak to you. Or help with any investigation. One
of the reporters then asked, what made mister Wilder think
they were isis quote. They said they were ice and
were wearing everything. They had ice on their chest, they

(20:39):
had their guns, they had their tasers. It's all about civics.
If you don't know your rights, they will trample on them.
Knowing the law and understanding that they had no right
to ask anything of these kids who are American citizens
and don't have anything to prove to them. The officers
were saying, we don't know if they're American citizens, but
I said, it doesn't matter if they're American citizens or not.

(21:01):
They still have constitutional rights. You still violate their fourth,
fifth or fourteenth Amendment rights. I knew that they could
arrest me, but I knew that they couldn't keep me.
My whole thing is that I'm African American and most
of my kids are Latino and black. So it was
all about how do I get these kids home. I
never raised my voice. I just talked about the law

(21:23):
and I was just focused on how can I get
these kids to where they need to go when they
are in my care. This is a hero. It turns
out per that hero coach Euman Wilder. There were eleven kids,
all indeed American born, high school and junior high. Their

(21:45):
families are from Africa, South America, Mexico, it's New York.
We take anybody. Their families are in jeopardy here. And
you can see where this is going. Your isis you
see some kids, they're brown, You grab the kids, and

(22:07):
you then use the kids as bait. You hold them hostage,
and when the parents show up, you seize the parents.
It is simply child trafficking. As an aside, this is
where the Epstein story is truly useful in the days, weeks,
and months ahead. Seems like the best reaction if you

(22:29):
witness something like this with kids is to ask the
isis brown shirt thug gestapo if they are grabbing these
kids so Trump can take them to Epstein Island. The
truly frightening part is shades of Rick Taylor. The coach
was asked if any other adults besides him tried to

(22:50):
get involved, or at least to film or photograph what
was going on. Mind you, this is the neighborhood in
which I get my dogs groomed. This is not an
area of confrontation. It is an area of mobile phone
own stores on literally every corner of Broadway, quoting the

(23:10):
coach again in answer to that question. That was another
thing that was crazy. There were people watching and the
agents were telling them to move back, that they would
be arrested for interfering, and not to take pictures. The
worst thing is that the six or seven people who
were watching followed their orders. So we circle back to

(23:31):
the worst, most dangerous step any of us can take
in dealing with Trump's growing dictatorship. Obeying in advance. You
don't get violent, you don't obstruct, and you don't submit.
But fear is a hell of a drug. And it
can stop a seventy one year old man who spent

(23:52):
his life in politics among Republicans from making sure he's
home and dry and then raising hell. And it can
stop a bunch of New Yorkers who are raised to
be at the ready to push a mugger in front
of an m one bus from even filming the horror
unfolding in front of them. Do not obey in advance.

(24:17):
And a final note on all this, it all comes
back to the only and inevitable solution we are going
to get here. Eventually. We should start moving here now.
The Blue States are going to have to follow the
Gavin Newsom federal tax boycott plan that he still hasn't
brought up again. After the mess in southern California and
throughout California with the usurpation of the California National Guard,

(24:43):
Trump and is Gestapo Isis have all the weapons, and
Trump has the greatest motivation to use them. He succeeds
or he dies in jail, period. But we have something bigger.
In this sad cynical world in which there is one
magic word, we have the magic The magic word is money.

(25:08):
We have the money. The Red States do not. Unfortunately,
it will come to this soon or late. We are
going to have to get ready to defund the federal government.
Thank you for your forbearance during my vacation, during which

(25:30):
I was sick and my knee went south and two
of my dogs got sick. Such a nice rest. Everybody's fine, now,
don't worry. This, however, delayed my previous hope that I
would be able to announce upon return the growing of
the Countdown podcast footprint. I can't announce that, although I
am confident it's going to happen, and shortly, I will

(25:52):
be doing more stuff and right soon. That's all I
can say right now, though, if you saw the video
preview of this episode on YouTube or socials yesterday, and
that'll give you an idea of the starting point. So
also of interest here, the press secretary to el Trumpolini
thinks that her conference calls are being interrupted by the devil.

(26:13):
I mean, she's obviously a big moron, but who knew
she was that big a moron? And in the mistake
of the week, the woman who posted that once your
vet bill gets past one thousand dollars, you should just
kill your cat or dog because cats and dogs do
not have souls. This raises an obvious question about what

(26:36):
happens if this woman's kids get sick. That's next. This
is an all new, supersized edition of Countdown?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Does this Countdown with Keith Oberman? Oberman still ahead on

(27:13):
this all new edition of Countdown?

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Would you like to play in tomorrow Night's Baseball All
Star Game? Because that is the only stunt remaining that
Baseball has not tried to revive the dying Midsummer Classic.
They have named their newest All Star player. He has
played in five Major League Baseball games to this point

(27:39):
five there is an explanation. It's a bad one. Also,
sports games on the radio gone or soon to be first,
believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
talk about. The roundup of the miss Greens, morons, undunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in

(28:03):
the world. A couple of honorable mentions. First, it's's been
a while and they're been piling up. Linda Yakarino, who
used to be in broadcasting and then went to work
as the I don't know, chief incoming flack officer at
Twitter X not anymore. After two incredible years, she writes,

(28:28):
I decided to step down as CEO of X. She
will be succeeded by Grock Mecha Hitler, also from Politico,
Trump wants his skull back. Man sues to prevent the
Trump administration from seizing his seventy million year old fossilized

(28:51):
Tyrannosaurus skull. Planet's original complaint request. Planet doct Robert de
Levinski files this complaint request for declaratory judgment against defended
the United States. I have a fossilized to Rannosaurus batar
skull at issue. Is located in this district, and demand

(29:11):
for forfeiture was made. A guy has a t rex
skull and it's his and Trump wants it. And all
I can assume is Trump knew the guy. The nominees
for a Worst Person in the World, the runner up,
Caroline Levitt, believer in brownies and elves, with the word

(29:33):
lies spelled out in her first name and her last name.
In April this story from Washington. White House Press Secretary
of Caroline Levitt believes quote, evil forces were working against
President Trump on the campaign trail, but that he was
saved by the grace of God when he was shot
during a rally. What about that fireman in the first

(29:56):
row got killed? Was he a bad guy? Grace of
God wasn't applicable there. God didn't like that guy. God said,
af that guy, that's nice. Caroline Levitt told the Christian
Broadcasting Network in an interview released Monday that she believes
in spiritual warfare. On June thirtieth, the White House prayer

(30:20):
call went a cropper. White House Faith director Jenny Korn
remarked that they were waiting for AT and T to
get its act together so that Trump could talk to
the most gullible people in the world and sell them
whatever it is they wanted to hear. But later on
the call, even.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Though even though the Faith director said it was at
and T fault, the White House Press Secretary of Caroline
Levitt implied it his evil spirits quote, there is spiritual warfare,
as we all know. It tried to break up our
call today, as the President even alluded to once again,
just like the t Rex Skull, I assume that Trump

(30:59):
knows about spiritual warfare and evil because he knew the guy.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah. So the Faith director of the White House, which
is bad enough that there is one, believes it was
the phone company, but the press secretary, the former Division
III softball player and professional liar, says it was invisible
demons interfering with cell coverage, not per chance the likelihood

(31:28):
that the White House was using non secure public Wi
Fi because too cheap and too lazy to get the
other kinds. And it's actually surprising that this was a
call rather than just a you know, White House prayer.
Pete Hegseth's signal Chat runner up worser good Old Whiney Gains,
Riley Gaines, now auditioning at Fox News Hey, whiney, you

(31:52):
can be eighty fifth best at that too. Gaines says,
a disturbing poll reveals growing anti semitism on the left.
I gotta see this. What does that poll look like?
This is what it looked like. In twenty seventeen, Gains
continued forty two percent of Democrats supported Israel. But that

(32:12):
has completely flipped. Ah, so it's not about an anti semitism,
it's about support for Israel. I understand your confusion on this,
Riley Gains. You're stupid. That'll confuse anybody criticizing Israel, Criticizing
Israel's war policy, Criticizing Israel's peace policy is criticizing a

(32:36):
country's policy. Anti Semitism is something else. Anti Semitism is
say somebody saying no estate tax, no going through the
banks and borrowing from in some cases a fine banker
and in some cases shylocks and bad people who said that. Oh,
Donald Trump said that. That's anti semitism. Calling people shylocks

(32:58):
is anti semitism. Donald Trump is an anti Semite. When
Joe Biden used that term shylocks twenty fourteen, when he
was vice president the director of the ADL, the Anti
Defamation League called him out immediately said it was inappropriate
and wrong, and Biden said, it is inappropriate, and it

(33:19):
is wrong, and the head of the ADL is correct,
and I'm wrong, and I apologize for it. It is
an anti Semitic slur, and I will not use that
term again. I was wrong to do so, did so immediately.
To this point, Donald Trump has not been asked by
the Washington press corps why he said an anti Semitic slur,

(33:39):
why he referred to shylocks, what he's going to do
about it? Is he going to apologize for it? Why
is he an anti Semite? Because the Washington news corp
covering the President has largely gone to hell in a handbasket,
and the few who have not worked for or news
organizations that are falling apart at the seams like CBS News,
ABC News and the Washington Post, and they're all terrified

(34:01):
that they're the ones who are going to get fired next.
It's not an excuse, but it's an explanation. But nobody
has asked Trump about his anti semitism. And Riley Gaines
is there to interpret the difference between anti semitism and
criticism of Israel, and she does not understand that there is.
And even if she did, she's just reading an effing script.

(34:21):
I mean, let's give her a round of applause because
she could read the script and the teleprompter without complaining
that some transgender floor director was standing in her way.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Maybe we gains I finished eighty fifth. It's all that
guy's fault.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
God, what an idiot and still not the worst the winner.
And we believe there is no evidence suggesting that this
is not a real thing. There is no suggestion we're
being trolled by some missus Betty Bowers on Twitter X
this is Caitlin Francis at missus c M Francis. There's

(35:03):
a picture of her. She doesn't look insane, but listen
to this bio wife of at Jeremy Francis eighty seven
mother times four. Okay, first warning sign, homeschool advocate. I
want to make sure my children are automatically dumber than
I am by teaching them what I vaguely remember from

(35:26):
high school. Then there's an American flag and then on
Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is
sinking sand and the location California, USA, sinking sand. Indeed, Madam,
in any event, she also this Jeremy Francis, forty seven,

(35:48):
who she says is the hubby. He identifies himself on
his Twitter account as it manager at the C. A.
Rasmussen Company, which does something I don't know in Valencia, California,
So that gives you an idea where they are Valencia,
and Francis was responding to somebody who put out this

(36:09):
tweet extremely unpopular opinion today, But if you're going to
have a pet, you should always have at least ten
grand set aside for them at all times in case
of serious emergency. I think that might be a little high.
I don't know that everybody has to have ten thousand
ready to go. You should probably know where you're going
to get that much money if it's something really serious.

(36:32):
The happy news about almost all serious illnesses with dogs
and cats, and most serious injuries that they survive, is
that the cost of getting them well is comparatively small,
with or without insurance. That ten thousand dollars will more
than take care probably of all of your pets in
your life and give you and them added years of love.

(36:56):
But not if you're Caitlin Francis of California.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
She has retweeted this and headed. My extremely unpopular opinion
is that once a pet costs over five hundred dollars
to one thousand dollars, it's time to put them to sleep.
Caitlin Francis says, when it gets more than five hundred bucks,
kill your dog. She's homeschooling her children, four of whom

(37:26):
are going to turn out to be Christinome. This is
how we get Christy Nome. Home schooling was the ground
zero for the end of America. That's where it started,
where we started to teach people not to possibly be
smarter than their parents. And then there's the nightmare Samaria

(37:47):
scenario in which their parents are Missus c. M. Francis,
who wants you to kill your dog or cat, or
your pet, hippo or whatever you have. And then, after
an hour of being chewed up alive and appropriately so online,
she decided that what people were upset about was that
she was not clear enough about what she was talking about.

(38:09):
That that's not a five hundred dollars limit in terms
of food. Quote people determined to misunderstand, I am referring
to vet bills, not daily care. Oh that's much better,
missus CM Francis. You witch. Oh, that's much better. It's
when they're sick and dying or injured, when when one

(38:32):
of your homeschool kids decides to run them over with something. Oh,
it's gonna what's the estimate on this, Oh, one thousand
and one dollars. I'm sorry, sparky, nice touch, missus, CM Francis,
But thank goodness you didn't suggest giving your dog five
hundred dollars worth of food over eighteen years. There's a

(38:52):
C word that applies here. It isn't over yet. I
would just like to say she followed up with this
for the record, it's not that serious. Who the effort
you to deter whether or not it's serious? You pet killer?
And then finally, the dnu mont to all of this
from a woman who homeschools her kids, who has sentenced

(39:17):
them to a life in believing that if they are
not nice to God, the lights will go off in
the basement, that the phones shut down because oh, here's
another warfare by evil spirits, and Carol Lenevitt sees them.

(39:38):
There's the punchline to it. Animals are not people. They
do not have a soul.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Have a nice day.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
The only soul that can be questioned in this occasion
is that of Caitlin Francis, but the one I love
continues to be It's not that serious. I see she's
mad at the world because she he's wrong, and there
are ways to respond to this situation that would make

(40:09):
things better. But of course she homeschools her kids, so
why would she know how to get out of this
jam she has created by suggesting that you should kill
your pet rather than pay a six hundred dollars Vetville bill,
or certainly a one thousand and one dollar vet bill.
I got a quick question for you to wrap this up.

(40:30):
Missus Francis, you're over under on killing your sick or
injured dog or cat. The one that your even homeschooled
kids love is five hundred to one thousand dollars. So
what's your over under on killing your sick kids? How
much does little Caitlin Junior? How much is she worth

(40:51):
if she gets sick? What was the husband's name again,
mister Caitlin Francis, Jeremy? How much is Jeremy Junior worse
when he gets hit by a bus? I'm sorry that's
gonna cost us twelve hundred and seventy four dollars to
straighten his arm out, kill him, Caitlin, like Senator Jony

(41:14):
Ernst said, We're all gonna die one day. Why don't
you just get another daughter? Francis two days worst person
in the world. This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that,

(41:42):
not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Aulberman still ahead.
In this all new edition of Countdown, things I promise
not to tell in my favorite on air jokes, including
the ones perpetrated against me. But first, from the sports
Ball Central Center newsdesk tonight, Atlanta, Georgia. You can always

(42:10):
depend on Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. He'll always make you
ashamed that you like the game. A rookie has been
named to the pitching staff for tomorrow Night's National League
team in the All Star Game, after he has made
exactly one, two, three, four, five big league appearances five
and one of them. In one of them, he was terrible,

(42:34):
and now he's an All Star. Nothing against the guy.
His name is Jacob Mizerowski, and he cried when they
told him about it, and so did a lot of
people in baseball because this is as cheap a stunt
as you could imagine, and as you could force and
fabricate and all the teams who, in a ritual as

(42:55):
old as time itself, have players who should be at
the All Star Game but will not be because there
is a finite number of roster spots, are enraged that
this guy is going and there guy isn't. It's not
Jacob Mizerowski's fault. I don't blame him for this. What
was he supposed to do? Say no, But trust me,
that will get lost quickly, especially if it turns out

(43:16):
that these first five games were his best five games
last year. And this is the root of the problem.
Baseball's number one minor league prospect, a pitcher named Paul Skens,
came up from the minor leagues early in the season,
and in his first eleven games, he won six, he
lost none. He struck out eighty nine batters in sixty

(43:38):
six innings. He got enormous publicity, in large part, though
Baseball will never admit this, because his girlfriend was a
famous gymnast who does a boatload of TV commercials. They
put him on the All Star team. He organically deserved it.
They had him start the game too. He probably organically
deserved that too. He certainly didn't deserve it. The problem

(43:59):
is Whenever something like that happens organically in baseball, baseball
immediately tries to make it happen again. As twenty twenty
four had begun, Paul Skens was the number one prospect
in baseball had been the number one prospect chosen in
the previous year's amateur draft. As twenty twenty five began,

(44:20):
Jacob Miserowski of the Milwaukee Brewers was the number forty
four prospect in baseball, or the number seventy two prospect
or on one list, the official one that is on
the actual baseball website. Jacob Miserowski was the ninety first
top ranked prospect in baseball, and he had been the

(44:43):
sixty third guy chosen in the previous year's draft, not
the first, or the second, or even anything in single
digits or load double digits. Baseball is run by a
group of men who do not like baseball, and more importantly,
do not understand baseball or why things happen. So when
they see something happen that makes some of them money,

(45:04):
the only reaction they are capable of is, let's make
it happen again and make more money. BDBD In twenty eleven,
on the season's final day, Tampa Bay needed to win
its game and the Boston Red Sox needed to lose
theirs for Tampa Bay to complete an unlikely September push
to make the playoffs. As those games were being played,

(45:26):
Saint Louis needed to win its last game and have
Atlanta lose its finale to do the same to make
the playoffs, four games nail Biers, great Theater, all at
the same time, win or go home one and out
do or die, and Baseball immediately changed its playoff structure
for the following year, adding six teams to the playoffs

(45:50):
for the next season and forcing them and two other
teams to play one game winner, go home one and
out do or die games. Utterly artificial, utterly forced, utterly
the way baseball has always mare marketed itself or mismarketed itself. Hey,
this worked last year. Let's force it to happen. Let's

(46:11):
have ties all the time's fake ties in one game playoffs.
There is rage about this, although some of it has
been walked back. Missiroski took it was expected the spot
of a Philadelphia Phillies pitcher, or maybe a San Francisco
Giants pitcher, or if you want to get creative and say, wow,
do we have to have a pitcher take the open

(46:32):
spot on the team? How about Juan Soto of the
New York Mets, who was the thing everybody in baseball
was trying to sell to the public over the winter
because he signed an all time record contract. Oh no,
he's old news. Let's not promote Juan Soto so we
can bring in Jacob five games, Misserroski. Let's not draw
the New York audience so we can get the Wisconsin

(46:54):
audience to watch the guy whose name they can't even
spell yet. In any event, one of the Philly guys,
Trey Turner, said before being in four that one of
the two pitchers that should have been on the All
Star team didn't want to go to the All Star Game.
What a joke. That's effing terrible. His teammate Nick Castellanos

(47:15):
had a memorable line, which he tried to walk back.
It's turning into the Savannah Bananas. That is a reference
to the traveling baseball team that plays baseball in the
same manner that the Harlem Globetrotters played basketball. Only the
Harlem Globe Trotters are funny, and you know it's it's
actually okay, it's the Baseball All Star Game. It long

(47:36):
ago lost any meaning, and instead of just killing it off,
they've been trying gimmicks like Jacob Miseraski for twenty five years.
Baseball will not accept the reality that the game was
priceless back when there were still two separate, distinct leagues
and you got to see maybe George Brett tried to

(47:57):
hit off tom sever and when some teams were on
national television only once a year, and when the All
Star Game was the only chance to see most of
the stars at baseball, especially all in one place. As
late as nineteen eighty, just before cable really happened, thirty
six million people watch the Baseball All Star Game in

(48:20):
the middle of the season on a weeknight in the
summer when it's nice on ABC thirty six. Last year,
Baseball could not stop patting itself on the back because
the TV ratings had gone up to almost almost seven
and a half million nineteen eighty thirty six million twenty

(48:45):
twenty four seven and a half million. Something appears to
be wrong with the audience. So if you want to
build in a gimmick where a rookie just up from
the minor leagues, goes to the All Star Game.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Cool, do it?

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Just don't pretend it's not a gimmick. They've already created
a legends spot for the All Star Game for a
recognizable name. Or to Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers this year,
who was not good enough to make the actual team.
Have a rookie, have a bat boy, let him play
left field, have some guy out of the stands. What's

(49:22):
the difference. There's only seven million people watching. Just go
with it. Just say, we put Jacob Miserowski on the team,
so maybe you will buy a replica Jacob Miseerowski All
Star uniform. And we didn't put Wan Soto on the
team because you already bought a Wan Sodo replica uniform.
As a baseball historian, my problem is the game has

(49:45):
always tried to protect its young players, not rush them,
especially not rush them into the spotlight, especially its young pitchers.
Before Paul Skeens last year, the record for fewest games
played or pitched in before going to the All Star
Game for the first time was by Mark the Bird Fidrich,
the famous I talked to the baseball before I throw

(50:06):
it pitcher of the nineteen seventy six Detroit Tigers. Thirteen
games was all he'd played in the major leagues, and
he went and started the All Star Game. Fidrich was
injured the next year and was never close to an
All Star pitcher again, except for fleeting, painful innings two
or three at a time before his arm would go

(50:28):
bad again. Hideo Nomo, the Japanese Tornado, tied that record
of seven to fourteen games in nineteen ninety five. Within
three years, he had flamed out. The Los Angeles Dodgers
traded him to the Mets, and worst of all, when
they traded him to the Mets, they rented him the
apartment next to mine. Can you imagine anything worse than that?

(50:53):
The next fewest games was Dontreil Willis of the two
thousand and three Florida Marlins, and he is now, oh
my goodness, there is something worse than that. He is
now on the pregame show for Fox Sports Shorts, which
isn't quite hell, but it is at minimum purgatory. I mean,
have you ever heard of Harry Krouse? Harry Krouse was

(51:15):
a rookie with the nineteen hundred and nine Philadelphia A's
and they didn't have an annual All Star Game then.
But if they did, and these people of today were
running baseball, then Harry Kross would have started the nineteen
oh nine All Star Game. In his first fifteen starts
in the nineteen oh nine season, Harry Krouse had an
ERA of under one point zero zero. Harry Krouse won

(51:38):
fourteen of those fifteen games. He threw seven shutouts. He
won four of those games by a score of one
to nothing. His first fifteen starts, he wins four one
to nothing games and throws seven shutouts and goes fourteen
and one, and somewhere during game thirteen or fourteen, he
heard something in his arm or his shoulder. And he

(52:00):
would pitch in just fifty one more major league games
in his life than he was back in the miners.
Three years after his extraordinary run happens to hitters two.
They didn't have top one hundred prospects lists in nineteen
sixty six, but Jackie Warner of the Angels would have
been on them before the season began. He hit seventy
five homers in his first three minor league seasons. He

(52:22):
made the sixty six Angels as their opening day right
fielder and On April fourteenth, in just his second big
league game, the Angels and the White Sox were tied
one to one in the ninth and Jackie Warner homered
off future All Star Joe Horland to win the game
for the Angels two to one in the ninth. Two
days later, the Angels were losing in the seventh and

(52:43):
Jackie Warner hit a two run homer to beat All
Star Mudcat Grant in the Minnesota Twins three to two.
On the twenty third, in his seventh big league game,
Jackie Warner homered again in the eighth to beat future
All Star Jim Merritt and the Twins four to three,
three late game winning homers in his first seven games,

(53:05):
after fifteen games in the Major leagues, Jackie Warner had
five homers, thirteen runs batted in, and he was batting
three forty five. Would you have put him on the
All Star team today, he'd be leading off. They'd special
a rule in there so he could bat twice every inning,
and he'd be participating in the home run derby. Then

(53:25):
Jackie Warner hurt his hand. He only got sixty eight
more at bats in his life. He hit two eleven
for that season. After that great start, he was back
in the miners, having hit three game winning homers in
the first week of his life. He was back in
the miners before the first of August. Should I continue?

(53:48):
Billy Roar of the nineteen sixty seven Red Sox, who
was pitching a no hitter against the Yankees at Yankee
Stadium with two out in the ninth before he finally
gave up a single and had to settle for a
one hitter, a game so dominant that in those pre
satellite days, the sports director of Boston TV station Channel five,
Don Gillis, sent his intern to Logan Airport and had

(54:12):
the intern fly to New York to pick up a
copy of the video tape of the game. When the
videotape of the game weighed about thirty pounds, and carry
it with him back on the flight to Boston. The
tape that was made by a New York station fly
it back to Boston by hand so they could show

(54:33):
highlights of Billy Rohr on the eleven o'clock news, where
he was the lead story. A week later, Billy Rohor
went out and beat the Yankees again, six to one.
This time he struck out seven. His earned run averys
was zero point five to Zho he was two to zero.
He had a one hitter under his belt. Billy Roor
twenty twenty five would have started the All Star Game.

(54:57):
Problem was Billy Roor in nineteen sixty seven had already
won two thirds of all the games, would ever win.
You don't make somebody an All Star after three games,
or after one week, or after five games. You don't,

(55:19):
if for no other reason, then the pressure you put
on the kid. How do you know Jacob Mazerowski is
Paul Skeens. How do you know Paul Skens is Paul Skeans?
How do you know they're not both Billy Rorer or
Harry Krouse. They have always made spots for rookies who

(55:40):
have established themselves in the majors. Lots of rookies on
the All Star team. I've just cited a few examples,
even though they all went down in flames. On the
other hand, that idea of being established in the majors
had to be undisputed. If you were iffy, if there
were holes in your game, no you didn't go to
the All Star Game. Nolan Ryan, have you heard of

(56:03):
Nolan Ryan broke in with the New York Mets in
nineteen sixty six. His first All Star Game was in
nineteen seventy two. And guess what his first All Star
game The debut of Nolan Ryan at the All Star
Game in his sixth big league season. Yeah, make him
wait another three years, six seasons of waiting, Compared to

(56:26):
Jacob Mazerowski's five games in the nineteen seventy two All
Star Game. They didn't even let Nolan Ryan pitch to
one batter. Also dateline Saint Louis on a more serious subject,
if you know a big league sports play by play

(56:47):
man baseball or otherwise, pardon him if he's a little
jumpy today, because it has begun. The simulcast era has begun.
The Saint Louis Blues have dismissed their twenty year veteran
play by play man, John Kelly, himself the son of
their twenty year Hall of Fame play by play man

(57:10):
Dan Kelly, as great a play by play man, with
as much of a big game sound as anybody in
any sport in any time. The wisdom of firing John
Kelly is one issue, but it is largely except to
those of us who compulsively watch hockey games three and
four a night. It's largely contained to Saint Louis and

(57:33):
the fans of the Blues, so we'll put it aside
for a moment. The bigger picture is who is going
to replace John Kelly. The answer is nobody. The Blues
are going to do a simulcast, have the same play
by play done on radio and TV. The radio guys
will do the games and they'll just put it out

(57:55):
with pictures on it. And this matters because it is
inevitable that this will happen almost everywhere in this country
soon or late. This is just the start. This is
just the first shock, and usually it will be the
more expensive announcer who gets the nice note. Sports play

(58:20):
by play on radio has been shrinking ever since TV
was introduced in the nineteen forties, but it's always had
a foothold because it wasn't like you could watch TV
when you weren't near the TV or anything like I
had a TV on your phone or something. Oops. The
beginning of the end probably came when a few years

(58:40):
ago ESPN gave up on ESPN Radio. I may have
mentioned once or twice that I helped found ESPN Radio.
This was a shock to me. I didn't realize it
was going to be this bad. ESPN Radio still exists,
but they basically don't run it anymore at ESPN. Four
years ago they sold their ESPN stations in New York,

(59:00):
LA and Chicago, and two years ago they farmed out
the whole network and the running of it to an
outside company. The outside company runs it now. ESPN Radio
is just a brand name. It has nothing more really
to do with ESPN than a sweatshirt with ESPN printed
on it. There will probably always be separate local radio

(59:22):
sports casts for hockey, baseball, and basketball play by play
in the biggest cities New York, LA, Chicago, and well
maybe just New York, LA and Chicago as I think
of it, Philadelphia maybe. And listen to those radio broadcasts sometime,
listen to the sponsorships, the commercials, and ask yourself, how

(59:46):
on the hell are they making any money on this.
I will not mention the broadcast or the sport, but
there is an excellent radio play by play team whose
games are sponsored sponsored with multiple commercials every game that
treats Pyroney's disease. I swear Pyroney's disease. And if you

(01:00:13):
don't know what I'm talking about, google it. If you
dare by yourself when nobody else can see you googling it,
don't say I didn't warn you, And don't say that
with these blues from Saint Louis. But nothing symbolizes the
future of play by play sports on the radio more
than does Pyrone's disease to the number one story on

(01:00:44):
this all new episode of the Countdown podcast. And somebody
asked me the other day my favorite joke I ever
told on the air. Since I've just crossed the threshold
of forty six years on the air, there were a
lot of jokes. I mean, holy cow, I covered George Bush.
That's eight years of jokes right there, to say nothing

(01:01:07):
of Scarborough and Matthews. Seriously, since this is the greatest
possible excuse to reuse old material that you probably have
not heard before, let me just do a few of them,
and I'll start with sports. The best joke that it
was ever done to me, remaining one of my favorite

(01:01:29):
episodes in my entire history, was done by the late
Bill Robinson, who was the right fielder of the New
York Yankees in nineteen sixty seven and nineteen sixty eight,
and later had a distinguished career with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
mostly also the Phillies, and who was managing in nineteen
ninety six the Reading Phillies, their farm team in the
Eastern League. And I wrote Bill for an autograph on

(01:01:52):
a baseball card that I needed to complete a set,
and he wrote back saying, I'm sending you this demanding
that you give my team a tour of ESPN as
we drive past. We go right past it on one
road trip to New Britain, the New Britain Red Sox
as they were formerly known, later the Hardware City Rock Cats.

(01:02:16):
I swear that's what they called the team. Hey, we're
in Hardware City. You want to mention that publicly anyway,
He said, we drive past it all the time. We
could just stop off and get the Nickel Tour, but
that's the price. But he said, if you give us
the Nickel Tour, I will let you be my bench
coach for a game at New Britain, and you can

(01:02:39):
wear a uniform and you can hang with the players,
and I'll actually have you do coach kind of stuff
and you can sit in the dugout and watch a
game with me and these guys. And we have a
couple of guys who'll be pretty good players, one of
whom was named Scott Roland, who was a third baseman
who is now in Baseball's Hall of Fame. That's how
long ago this happened. So we arranged this, and I

(01:02:59):
report to the Beehive, the home of the New Britain
Red Sox, then the Hardware City rock Cats, for God's sakes,
and they give me a uniform. And the only guy
on the team is a picture named Wayne Gomes, the
only guy with shoes big enough to fit my giant boats.

(01:03:20):
And they give me a cap somewhere, and I'm wearing
I think uniform number forty seven. Of course, there are
no pictures of this. We didn't think to send a camera.
I didn't even think to bring a disposable cardboard camera
to get a shot of me in uniform. I'm actually somewhere.
I am listed as the bench coach of the Redding
Phillies of the Eastern League for one day, so it

(01:03:43):
was a lot of fun. It was a great evening
and I gained tremendous perspective. And later on, when Terry Francona,
then the manager of the Red Sox, twice, invited me
to sit with him on the bench during spring training games.
I had an idea of what to expect and how
to conduct myself, and it was educational beyond belief in
terms of my understanding of the game and what the

(01:04:04):
players and how come players never ever, ever would understand
that the game might seem slow from outside the field.
You miss fifty percent of the boredom if you're in
the dugout. It goes by like a basketball game, like
a rocket ship going back and forth from one side
of the field to the other. In any event, comes

(01:04:24):
the seventh inning and we've been sitting there and I
don't even remember who was leading or who was trailing,
or what the score was or what happened in the game.
But it was then that the actual purpose of my
being in the uniform of the Reading Phillies that day
was revealed to me. I was sitting between two Freading
Phillies players. I think they were Doug Angelie and Matt Giuliano.

(01:04:47):
I'm not sure. I know it was Matt, and they
were engaging me in conversation. And these are two really
nice guys. And sports interviewers, and they had all sorts
of questions, and then at some point one of them
barks out at the umpire, Hunter Wendelstett, the son of
a veteran National League and they yell about a ball

(01:05:08):
and strike charge, and they hey, Blue, when are you
gonna get your guys on? Or where are you gonna
add your eyes? Or when when did they get installed?
Or so whatever it was, and Hunter Wendelstett calls time
out and walks over to our dugout and says, who
said that? And Doug Angelie and Matt Giuliano simultaneously point

(01:05:30):
to me, and Wendelsteat goes, you are out of the game.
The point of my being in a reading Phillies uniform,
thanks to my friend Bill Robinson, was to get me
ejected from a game. I didn't think they were serious
about it. And Robbie came over to me at one
point and says, you'll have to go. He's actually throwing

(01:05:51):
you out. And I said, I'm going to get my
money's worth. And I ran out onto the field and
started screaming at Hunter Wendel's stead. And no one could
hear this. They just saw me offering him my glasses,
the standard insult the umpire trick that was invented by
some manager in the year eighteen ninety two, and screaming
at him. What are I screaming at him? Was you're

(01:06:11):
a very good umpirere strike zone has been consistent throughout
this game. You're gonna make the major leagues despite the
fact that you're a NEPO higher although we didn't use
that term. Then blah blah blah, and you're gonna be great.
And I'm just coming out here to make sure that
everybody knows that I'm not putting up with getting thrown
out of the game, no matter how good an umpire
you are. And then I left, and I thank you
and good night, and off I storm to some applause.

(01:06:33):
I might add that might have been applause because I
was getting thrown out of the game. So that was
my favorite favorite joke. It is followed up by two punchlines.
Number one, Hunter Wendelstett and I have gone back and
forth about this story. I don't know how many times
in the ensuing twenty nine years. But one day I

(01:06:54):
had not seen him in all that time, and one
day I was at Yankee Stadium in the front row
before the game started early in the season of twenty ten,
twenty eleven, and Wendelstett is the home plate umpire, now
a veteran major league umpire because he was a good umpire,
just as I predicted, he made the major leagues. And
there he was, and he's standing there surveying Yankee Stadium

(01:07:18):
packed with forty five thousand fans, and I'm sitting there,
standing there behind the screen. He doesn't see me. And
as soon as the anthem ends, and he's just surveying
the scene that he's in charge of as the home
plate umpire and can't start without him, I suddenly scream revenge, revenge,

(01:07:38):
Wendelstad's revenge. And he came over and he looked at me,
and suddenly he realized it was me and burst into laughter.
And now the game does not start on time because
he's coming over to talk to me. And I said,
go umpire, your damn game, and he said, come see
me in the in the in the umps room afterwards,
and a couple of times during the game brought me
over foul balls and things. He said, I know you're

(01:08:00):
a collector. Here take this. It was a lot of fun.
But the big punch line to this is Scott Roland,
the aforementioned future Hall of Famer all of the nineteen
ninety six Reading Phillies, now seven eight years later, is
playing for the Saint Louis Cardinals by this point, maybe
it's ten years later, and I see him approaching me
on the field, I think at Yankee Stadium. I think

(01:08:22):
it was an interleague game. And he came to me
and he said, very matter of fact, a dry, dead
pan kind of guy, and all he had done. I
didn't even know that he'd noticed. I was in the dugout.
He was the superstar in waiting. He didn't need Doug
Angelie and Matt Giuliano, he didn't need Bill Robinson. He
was on his way to Cooperstown. He stood in that

(01:08:44):
dugout and all he did was practice his golf swing,
I swear, and then he got up and banged out
three or four hits. No need whatsoever for the rest
of the Eastern League. They were just there as props
for Scott Roland. I didn't know he even saw it.
And he walked up to me and said, matter of factly,

(01:09:04):
where was it when you were on our team as
a coach, and they arranged to have you thrown out
for arguing balls and strikes and Hunter Wendelstead threw you out.
Was that in Reading? Was that in Connecticut? Where was it?
And I said, well, it was when you were with
Redding and it was in New Britain and he said ah,

(01:09:26):
I said, yeah, it was ninety six. He says, highlight
of my year nineteen ninety six you getting thrown out
of that game. I said, Scott, that was the year
you got called up to the big leagues for the
first time. And he said, deadpan, like I said, highlight
of my year. My best sports joke pertains to not

(01:09:48):
the Redding a Phillies, but the Philadelphia Phillies. This is
nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven, and the Atlanta
Braves had an outfielder named Albert Hall who didn't play
very often, but played mostly because he was phenomenally fast,
and in the days when they still did things like this,
when they were still enough non pitchers on a baseball
team to have pinch runners, he was basically a professional

(01:10:10):
pinch runner and defensive substitute for the Atlanta Braves. And
so one day he's in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies,
and he's actually going to take ann at bat, and
we are watching in the tiny, cramped sports office the
closet at KTLA in Los Angeles, of which I am
the twenty seven or twenty eight year old sports director,
and we like to watch the games on satellite. We

(01:10:31):
like to watch the whole games. It may have had
something to do with the fact that we were all
in a couple of fantasy baseball leagues and we sort
of produced this four minute sportscast on the side. That
might have been a little factor in why we watched
all these games live when other networks and stations were
content to just accept a one minute feed from New York.
But we're watching this meaningless Braves Phillies game, and in

(01:10:54):
the seventh inning or so, Albert Hall, the light hitting
outfielder of the Braves, hits a really tough ground ball
into the hole at shortstop. Steve jelts On, also light
hitting defensive specialists from the Phillies, who they were convinced
for decades it seems, would be the next superstar would
be the Scott Rowland of the nineteen eighties, is playing

(01:11:17):
at shortstop hitting two O six and he goes after
this ball deep in the hole, and as he nears it,
he rolls, he falls, He dives to get this ball
and in one motion rights himself and does a spin move,
backing up in his own direction. It was as great
a defensive play as I've ever seen. He never really

(01:11:40):
got into the air, but that was the only thing missing.
It was almost a platform dive to get this ball.
And he picked the ball up and through Albert Hall,
who was running his legs off to get to first base,
threw him out by half an inch. And the word
came to my mind, the lyric from the most perhaps

(01:12:00):
quoted lyrics of all Beatles songs came to my mind,
and I blurted out that play has to be in
our show tonight. We have to run that highlight. And
everybody in the room looked at me and it was
like a man It was a good play. But when
we weren't even playing, planning to play any of the
Brave Firate Phillies high rade, nobody cares about this game,

(01:12:22):
don't you know? Now we know how many roles it
takes to foil the Albert Hall. It was creative genius,
if I must say so myself. And while I was
basking in the laughter that followed, the youngest guy in
the room was an intern named Benji. And Benji was

(01:12:43):
I suppose eighteen or nineteen years old at that point,
just starting college. And he looked at me like I
was from outer space. He said, what do you mean?
I said, the Beatles Day in the Life. Now we
know how many rules it takes to phil Yeah, all
there how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

(01:13:04):
Albert Hall. Everybody who saw Albert Hall play for the
Atlanta Braves thought of Day in the Life by the Beatles.
And this guy says the Beatles, and he says, oh,
the band Paul McCartney was in before wings itself the

(01:13:25):
oldest joke in the world, even in nineteen eighty six
or eighty seven. Only he meant it. Needless to say,
I was terrified that when we got on the air
that I'd blow the joke, but I didn't. Now we
know how many roles it takes to foil the Albert Hall.
I was also once challenged by the other sportscaster I

(01:13:47):
worked with in radio when the Dodgers traded their second
baseman Steve Lopes and turned over second base to a
rookie named Steve Sachs. We used to start our sportscast,
and Charlie Steiner was my boss at the RCAO Radio network,
and he used to incur just to do like a
title line, a clever headline, and then say, I'm Keith

(01:14:09):
Olderman with sports, unless you weren't Keith Olderman, so you
say blah blah blah blah blah, I'm Keith Oulderman with sports,
and I wrote Dodgers sack Lopes see sacks as seasoned
senior circuit second sacker. And the other sportscaster in the
room bet me five dollars. I couldn't say that without

(01:14:29):
turning one of those words into an unfortunate, scatological or
anatomical term. I may still have the five dollars. There
was one more sports joke worthy of mentioning before we
get to the all time greatest joke, which was a
news joke on the twenty second of November nineteen ninety
American Thanksgiving, and the use of that term will tell

(01:14:52):
you I'm about to talk about hockey. The Edmonton Oilers
were short a goaltender. They made a trade on American Thanksgiving,
or announced it on American Thanksgiving to get a goaltender
from the Minnesota north Stars, who the Minnesota north Stars,
who don't exist anymore. They're now the Dallas Stars. The
Minnesota north Stars had an extra goalie and they just

(01:15:14):
sent them to the Miners and they traded a defenseman
named Bell for this goalie. And we were at now
KCBS in Los Angeles and my producer and I sitting
there on Thanksgiving with absolutely nothing going on other than
college football games, which invariably bored me to tears, and
previews of college football games, and one or two NFL

(01:15:34):
games involving, as always, the last place Detroit Lions against
whoever was going to beat them by thirty five points,
and the first place, but in those days, last place
Dallas Cowboys, who were about to be beaten by thirty
five points. And this came across the wire and I said,
this is the lead story, and the producer said what

(01:15:55):
I said, The Minnesota north Stars have just traded goaltender
Carrie Taco to the Edmonton Oilers for defenseman Bruce Bell,
And as the producer laughed, I said, it's our lead
story it's the taco bell trade, to which the producer

(01:16:18):
to his everlasting credit, and I had a lot of
problems with him, but he earned himself a lifetime job
with me because of what he said next. He said,
the taco bell trade. He's not Joe player anymore. That's
the best sports joke, and I promptly stole it from him.

(01:16:40):
But the best of all the jokes was an MSNBC joke, which,
speaking of stolen, was stolen entirely from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
I saw this joke for the first time, I believe,
when I was a senior in high school. We're coming
up on the fiftieth reunion, it's now just a month
and a half away.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
And I heard this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Joke in high school. Well, the first time I heard it,
laughed every time I've seen it since, and my laughter
has grown into deep appreciation because it's a joke about
television industry, the television news industry, and the cliches of
people on television, and it is perfect. And I will
read you the joke as it appeared on Monty Python.

(01:17:25):
Michael Palin is presenting the host of a kind of
TV magazine show, a news light show it's this in
Nova Scotia today. Palin, as the host, says, mister roy
Bent of North Walsham in Norfolk, became the first man
to cross the Atlantic on a tricycle. His tricycle, especially

(01:17:48):
adapted for the crossing, was ninety feet long, with a
protective steel hull, three funnels, seventeen first class cabins, and
a radar scanner. At this point on the screen behind Palin,
a head and shoulders picture of roy Bent eric idol
in a fisherman's head and rain spattered glasses appears. And

(01:18:09):
here comes the joke. Palin says, mister Bent is in
our Durham studios, which is rather unfortunate, as we're all
down here in London. I laughed for five minutes. I
still laugh often that long, because the construction of that sentence,

(01:18:30):
such and such our guest is in our studios in
Los Angeles, is in our studios in Katmandu, is in
our studios in Durham, demands at some point somebody say,
which is kind of too bad, because none of the
rest of us are. And they did it, and they
did it in nineteen seventy four, and for years, anytime

(01:18:51):
somebody would write a script for me that included an introduction,
as often the writers did. They did the introductions and
maybe the outline of some questions for some of the guests,
and somebody wrote, whoever it was, Dana Millbank is in
our Washington studios, I would go, which is rather unfortunate,
as we're all here in New Jersey. Well, finally, for

(01:19:14):
some reason, I asked one of our veteran correspondents on
April Fool's Day, probably about two thousand and seven or eight,
if they would participate in this that we'd do a
whole segment about something, and I would then introduce him,
and we'd get the two box with me in one
corner him in the other, and I would do the joke,

(01:19:35):
and then we'd say goodbye, and then come back to
him later and actually do the real interview. So I
got to say, and I think it was my late
friend Howard Feinneman, but it might have been Gene Robinson,
and I said, mister Fyneman is in our Washington studios,
which is rather unfortunate as we're all up here in

(01:19:58):
New York. The joke was so good, not my version
of it, but the original one that you can see
Michael Palin having to stop himself from cracking up, as

(01:20:20):
he says, the joke a joke in which you legitimately
crack up because it's so funny. That's a joke, an
all time joke, which is rather unfortunate. As we're all
down here in London. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our
countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray

(01:20:41):
and John Phillips Chanel, our musical directors of Countdown. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on guitars, bass
and drums, Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are by the Mess Baseball Stadium
organist ever Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from ESPN two
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. That's

(01:21:04):
the sports music. Other music is arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my
friend Larry David. Everything else was as always my fault.
That's Countdown for today. Day one hundred and seventy six
of America held hostage again and just one two hundred

(01:21:24):
and eighty seven days until the scheduled end of his
lame duck and lame brained term, unless Putin removes him sooner,
or the actuarial tables do, or we do, or Ice
does by accident. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Until then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.

(01:22:08):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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