August 3, 2023 • 42 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 4: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The "it was just free speech, you're criminalizing the 1st Amendment" defense has been replaced. Trump's lawyers, Fox News puppets, and even opponents are all rolling out a new one:
John Eastman did it!
Of course they are phrasing it differently. They are blaming it on Trump relying on "the advice of counsel." It's an ingenious strategy - you were too stupid to know your lawyer was an idiot. But it really only damages Obstruction charges, and it would require Trump to testify. Still, it does indicate Trump will keep throwing different things at the wall to see what might stick.
Plus, the media line for spaces at today's arraignment of Trump in DC began to form before sunset last night. Trump is almost certain to be there, even though cameras won't be. Trump's January 6th Insurrection turns out to have helped destroy America's credit rating. The debate over the identity of Unidentified Co-Conspirator 6 continues to raise with Maggie Haberman and the Times insisting it's Boris Epshteyn - but there's an important flaw in the description that they have ignored.
And you don't want to be Unidentified Co-Conspirator 1. The Rudy Giuliani tape transcripts are out from the rape and sexual abuse lawsuit against him and they actually ARE filled with slurs against Jews and gays and constant gross misogyny. I will give a dramatic reading.
B-Block (22:15) IN SPORTS: 37 days ago he was throwing a perfect game. Today, he's in in-patient alcohol rehab. And is Max Scherzer lying about the Mets? Or are the Mets lying to their fan base? Or did the Mets lie to Scherzer? (26:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Moms For Liberty - still fighting mental health. Warner Bros apologizes after they suddenly realize that "Barbenheimer" and "Ken's Atomic Bomb Hairstyle" might be a little offensive - in Japan. In August. And Uncle Fester steps in it: Joe Rogan smears Ray Epps, who was not a provocateur on 1/6 but IS extremely litigious.
C-Block (33:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Theo, in Queens, needs a forever family! (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Off by a day, but 44 years and a day ago, as a 20-year old rookie sportscaster and editor on a 1,000-station national radio network, I was literally walking into the booth for my first sportscast of the night when the news suddenly broke: the captain of the New York Yankees had died in a plane crash. That day will always be with me.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
has a new defense. You're ready. John Eastman did it.
(00:28):
Quote he had the advisive counsel, a very detailed memorandum
from a constitutional expert. His newer, newest lawyer, John Lauro
said on Fox yesterday, quote, you're entitled to believe and
trust adviceive counsel. The same John Laurrow said on NBC,
you have one of the leading constitutional scholars in the
(00:48):
United States. John Eastman say to Trump, this is a protocol,
you can follow. Its legal The message got out to
our American Goebbels. Laura Ingram says Trump's been charged quote
for adopting and pressing an unconventional legal view. Even his
rivals for the nomination, who seemed to be intent on
(01:08):
hurting him, are actually helping him. Quote. The president was surrounded,
Mike Pence said, by a group of crackpot lawyers that
kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.
Crack pot lawyers, itching ears. Those fit in with what
I observed yesterday, which was that the Jack Smith charges
(01:29):
and the hints in the document leave Trump with really
only one defense. Quote. I'm an idiot. Two of the
four categories of charges on which Donald John Trump will
be arraigned in Washington at four pm Thursday afternoon are
obstruction charges. And for obstruction, you've got to have corrupt intent.
(01:52):
And if you can prove it was not your corrupt intent,
but somebody else's, somebody like let's just say, for the
sake of argument at random, Johnny Shman, then you might
beat the obstruction charges and undermine the other charges as well.
You eliminate criminal intent or, as that lawyer John Loro
(02:15):
put it to the blankly nodding anchors on NBC, quote
that eliminates criminal intent. So first Amendment free speech out.
The attorney made me do it. In please enjoy the
new Eastman plan plan on John Eastman taking the fall. Well,
(02:37):
this is cleared pretty much everybody not named John Eastman.
It seems to have not yet occurred to John Eastman,
because his lawyer went on CNN last night and said
his client would be happy to cooperate with Jack Smith.
But quote, if by cooperation you mean flipping on Trump
or providing incriminating information, then absolutely not, simply because those
(03:00):
aren't the facts of this case. As it pertains to
doctor Eastman, sucker. There is only one complication for the
new the Eastman made me do it defense for Trump,
And god knows, this is day three out of hundreds
(03:21):
and hundreds of days of this to come. And if
he's already on defense number two on day three, who
knows where Trump ends up by trial. The complication, though,
is that to prove that you broke the law only
because you got really bad legal advice, really really really
really really bad legal advice, you will have to testify
(03:45):
yourself under oath, and the prosecutors will not ask you
Trump only about John Eastman, whereas we can now call
him unindicted scapegoat number one, the line for on the right, babe,
(04:06):
the line for media to get into the District of
Columbia Federal Courthouse where Trump will be indicted again. It
formed before sunset last night. There is still, I suppose,
the remote possibility that Trump might think better of the
spectacle and the schlep and stay home. Other January sixth
defendants have been allowed to appear remotely for such preliminaries.
(04:27):
But Trump cannot resist a spectacle. He would march loud
and proud in full on Norma Desmond slink to his
own public execution. The complication here is that the Prettyman
Courthouse in DC has a labyrinthine structure of tunnels and
interior back roots, and for all I know moats, I mean,
(04:49):
who can say for sure it doesn't have moats designed
specifically to bring a defendant in and out of a
courtroom without anybody seeing him except in the courtroom. There
will again be no video its federal court, no still photography,
just artists and no offense to them. But there is
a reason that there is a word sketches and another
(05:11):
word sketchy. There is no expectation that we will get
a repeat of Miami, where it turned out not to
be just a handful of charges but thirty seven counts.
But the Special Council's Office has already proved to have
a certain panache going for it, with surprises and a
notable ability to mesh legalese with pretty solid narrative writing
(05:34):
in its charging documents, So who knows what they're going
to do. Thus, after the formal indictment, Trump will be
on the hook for at least forty four federal counts
at a max of five hundred and five years in
prison or more correctly, John Eastman, will I try to
(05:58):
stay away from economics here as much as possible. I
was told there would be no math, But it turns
out Donald Trump shot this country's credit rating to hell
with all of this. You may have heard that Fitch Ratings,
which is the one that isn't Moody's or Standard and Poor's,
downgraded the US credit rating Tuesday from triple A to
(06:19):
double A plus, enraging the White House and throwing out
a red flag to investors that maybe our government debt
ain't what it used to be. And in an exclusive,
the Reuters News Service has gotten Fitch Senior Director Richard
Francis to say something dumbfounding that I didn't see anywhere
else that part of the downgrade of our national credit
(06:42):
rating owes to the January sixth insurrection. Fitch doesn't like
fights over debt ceilings either, but they're not supposed to
like fights over debt ceilings. Francis is the one who
brought up the coup quote. It was something that we
highlighted because it is just a reflection of the deterioration
(07:02):
of governance. It's one of many lighten up Francis. Thanks Trump,
there is only one silver lining in this society's imperceptible
but steady multi decade march towards. In the unforgettable words
of the late TV playwright Dennis Potter, everything having a
(07:23):
price tag on it. If you threaten the money, the
money will come back and kill you. And hidden in
that fact may be an unexpected line of action against Trump.
The money is not happy about the downngraded credit ratings,
and the money is not happy at the moment with
(07:46):
Republican parties around the country. I've mentioned before, the Republican
Party of Michigan is within weeks of actual default and
perhaps bankruptcy. The bank account of Minnesota's GOP got down
to fifty three dollars and eighty one cents before big
donors bailed it out. Politico now reports that Colorado's GOP
(08:07):
is facing eviction it can't pay the rent. Politico quotes
the former head of the Michigan GOP, Jeff Timmer, about
what's really going on. It shouldn't surprise anybody that real
people with real money don't want to invest in these clowns.
Looking at you, don who have taken over and subsumed
the Republican Party and that's nice. And if you're in
(08:30):
Michigan and Colorado and Minnesota and you believe in democracy
and not fascism, that's nice. But what is Trump care
apart from the collapse of statewide GOP campaign infrastructure. Well,
it turns out Trump really does have the kind of
money issues I speculated about earlier in the week, and
he will later need that statewide GOP campaign infrastructure. That's
(08:54):
down to fifty three dollars in eighty one cents. The
actual numbers for Trump's Save America pack are in And
I am hardly a financial expert, but if it began
the year twenty twenty two with one hundred and five
million dollars, but now Trump's Save America pack has four
million dollars, that's less right Again, it's legal fees and
(09:20):
donor queasiness and that valuable cliche that nothing gets scareder
faster than a billion dollars. Those numbers came out in
this week's FEC filings, and so did something remarkable. And
we won't know for a while if it's going to continue,
but Trump's ability to turn his indictments into hard cash
may be wearing off. After he was arrested in New
(09:43):
York in the Stormy Daniel's hush money case, contributions to
the Save America Joint fundraising Committee peaked at just under
four million in one day and ten million over a
five day window. But since the new filings here literally
provide day by day data, we now know that when
Trump was indicted in Florida by Jack Smith and the
(10:04):
Documents case, the high water mark for donations was just
one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the
peak five day period was only four and a half million,
half less than half. If Trump donors are actually tired
of the Trump Martyrdom Act, these dreams we have of
him being unable to compete for ad time during the
(10:26):
election may be far more real than previously imagined. And
now let's return to America's most popular new game, Trumpele
and the continuing missing piece of our puzzle, a confirmed
identification of unidentified co Conspirator number six. I have to
(10:51):
confess I am more than a little thrown by the
idea that Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Luke Broadwater of
The New York Times have written an entire piece on
co Conspirator Number six. I guess I'm just grateful they
didn't use trumpel. They have a different identification than I do,
(11:15):
using materials not available to the rest of US players.
And that's Maggie Haberman in a nutshell they write quote.
A close look at the indictment and a review of
messages among people working with mister Trump's team provides a
strong clue. An email from December twenty twenty from Boris Epstein,
(11:37):
a strategic advisor to the Trump campaign in twenty twenty,
to mister Giuliani matches a description in the indictment of
an interaction between co Conspirator six and mister Giuliani on
quote and again Giuliani is co conspirator one, resuming the quote.
The email sent on December seven, twenty twenty, and reviewed
(11:58):
by The New York Times, in which section was it reviewed,
I never left so much. The email, sent on December seventh,
twenty twenty, and reviewed by The New York Times, was
from mister Epstein to mister Giuliani and mister Giuliani's son Andrew,
and had the subject line attorneys for Electors memo. It says,
(12:21):
dear Mayer. As discussed below are the attorneys I would
recommend for the memo on choosing electors, and it goes
on to identify lawyers in seven states. Paragraph fifty seven
of the indictment says that co conspirator won mister Giuliani
spoke with co Conspirator six regarding attorneys who could assist
in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states, and
(12:43):
received an email from co Conspirator six identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,
and New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those are the seven
states in the email that mister Epstein sent to mister
Giuliani and that was reviewed by The Times. Unquote, I
had a seat on the aisle for this email. It's
not a bad argument, it's good research. But there's just
(13:06):
one hitch in the indictment. Co Conspirator one is Juliani,
and the indictment's first description of him after saying co
conspirator I comma is quote an attorney. Co Conspirator two
is Eastman, and the indictment's first description of him is
quote an attorney. Co Conspirator three is Sidney Powell, and
(13:28):
the indictment's first description of her is quote an attorney.
Co conspirator. Four is Jeffrey Clark, and the indictment's first
description of him is a Justice Department official, which implies
that he's an attorney. Co conspirator five is Kenneth the
Cheesebro and the indictment's first description of him is quote
an attorney and co conspirator. Six, Maggie thinks is Boris Epstein.
(13:52):
The indictment's entire description is quote a political consultant who
helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential
electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. Unquote. That's it. That's
all it says about number six. So what Boris Epstein
is an attorney? He, in fact is usually described in
(14:13):
news stories as Boris Epstein a Trump attorney. He's also
a political consultant, but it's debatable which is his primary
function if he has one. Giuliani is described in the
indictment as an attorney. Eastman is described in the indictment
as an attorney. Same for Powell, same for Cheeseboro. Only
Clark isn't, but he's described as a Justice Department official.
(14:34):
So if it's Epstein, why doesn't the description of him
as unindicted co conspirator six begin the same way co
Conspirator six an attorney. Seems to me that if it
doesn't say six is an attorney, that can be reasonably
interpreted to mean probably six is not an attorney. It's
(14:57):
not an attorney like Boris Epstein. So I will continue
to believe it is probably and he Carrick, who traveled
with Juliani to pressure the state legislators to send in
the phony electors, and who was described as fetching phone
numbers for Rudy and Kark's professional life has been so
dependent on Rudy that the two of them resembled Dracula
(15:19):
and Renfield. And speaking of Rudy, it was a bad
day to be unindicted co conspirator number one. Remember the
rape and sexual abuse lawsuit against Juliani earlier this year
by his one time assistant or girlfriend or assistant girlfriend,
(15:43):
a woman named Noel Noel Dunfe. She claimed she had
audio tapes of him promising job favors in exchange for
sex and throwing around racial and religious epithets. She also
claimed he asked her to find people willing to pay
him two million dollars for presidential pardons, which she said
she claimed he would split with Trump. Well, he bluff
(16:05):
in court. Bad move number one. A court appointed reporting
agency reviewed the tapes and produced transcripts, and they are out,
and let's just say Rudy does not come off quite
as well in them as he does in the part
where he's an unindicted co conspirator in the most searing
legal case in American history. In the transcripts, Rudy Giuliani
(16:30):
is heard saying insisting Matt Damon is gay. Michael Bloomberg
is gay. No, he doesn't say gay. Actually he uses
an f slur instead. He insists Jewish men have small
private parts because they don't use them after marriage, and
quote Jews, they want to go through that freaking passover
(16:50):
all the time, man oh Man, get over the passover.
It was like three thousand years ago, unquote. But that's
the good part. It is repeated claims of quote ownership
of Ms Dunfie. That's the headline. There is one particularly
(17:16):
lurid quotation, and I would I would read it to
you for batim, but I think in light of where
we began today in this edition, I should follow the
trumpion lead and just blame it all on John Eastman.
So the key word from Rudy on this section of
the tape a well known popular word used for a
part of the female anatomy, which appears seven times in
(17:38):
probably about twenty seconds. I will not use that word.
I will instead use the word Eastman. So let me
quote Giuliani from the Dunfe tape quote, come here, big Eastmans,
Come here, big Eastmans. Your Eastmans belong to me. Give
them to me. I want to claim my Eastmans. I
(18:02):
want to claim my Eastman. I want to claim my Eastmans.
These are my Eastmans. America's mayor everybody also of interest
(18:24):
here in how do you follow that? Will you go
from one boob to another? I wonder if Joe Rogan
will blame Eastman. Two goes out not only says it's
a quote fact unquote that intelligence agencies provoked people to
go into the Capitol on January sixth, also says Ray
Epps quote clearly instigated. And I guess nobody told old
(18:46):
Uncle Fester Joe that Ray app says, just sued Fox
News for millions for the same crap. That's next, This
is countdown Eastmans.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Center.
Wait check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith
(19:23):
Alberman in Sports Thirty Seven days ago, Domingo Herman of
the New York Yankees through what was just the twenty
fourth perfect game in the one hundred and fifty three
year history of Major League Baseball. Today, he is at
an inpatient treatment center for alcohol abuse, placed on the
team's restricted list, almost certain to not appear again in
(19:46):
a Yankee uniform this season.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
If ever. Herman's survival is obviously the issue at hand,
But from a baseball sense and a superstition sense, this
underscores the bizarre reality that there seems to be something
of a perfect game curse. Twenty four perfect games, no
one has ever thrown two, and despite the magnificence of
(20:08):
the accomplishment, only one third of those pitchers reached the
Baseball Hall of Fame. The first two perfect games were
thrown in a five day span in eighteen eighty in.
Both of those pitchers would suffer arm injuries within one
year and have to give up pitching. Dallas Braden pitched
a perfect game in twenty ten. He only won eight
(20:28):
more games in his career. Philip Umber pitched one in
twenty twelve, he only won four more, and even the
great Sandy Kofax could not escape. He pitched a perfect
game in nineteen sixty five, but made only fifty more
starts in his career before having to retire young because
of injuries. And Herman's New York Yankees are still having
(20:49):
a better week than the crosstown New York Mets. Not
only did the Mets punt on their season, trading six
of their twenty six players at the trade deadline in
exchange for minor leaguers, but now they are in a
controversy involving one of the stars they dealt away, and
either he is making stuff up or team owner Steve
Cohen is Max Schuzer told the website The Athletic that
(21:11):
before he agreed to waive the no trade clause in
his contract, he talked to both Cohen and the team's
general manager Billy Eppler about the franchise's short term direction. Quote.
I was like, Okay, are we reloading for twenty twenty four?
He goes, no, we're not. Basically our vision now is
for twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, twenty five at
(21:31):
the earliest, more like twenty six. We're going to be
making trades around that. I was like, so the team
is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason
or assemble a team that can compete for a World
Series next year. He said, no, we're not going to
be signing the upper echelon guys. Schuzer says the owner.
Cohen then told him quote exactly the same thing, kind
(21:53):
of verbatim. The owner, Steve Cohen texted the New York
Post and to some degree contradicted Scherzer. We will be
competitive in twenty four, but I think twenty five twenty
six is when our young talent makes an impact. Lots
of pitching in free agency in twenty four, more payroll
flexibility in twenty five. Cohen seemed to be taking the
(22:15):
Mets out of the hunt for likely free agent shohe
Otani this winter. But since clubs can hide behind anti
tampering rules, nobody is going to get anybody on the
Mets to say that. If the Mets are really going
non competitive for twenty twenty four and maybe twenty twenty five,
Cohen is going to have an empty ballpark on his
hand there is a third option, and it is both
(22:38):
conspiracy theory driven and it presumes a sophistication that the Mets'
front office has rarely shown. Max Scherzer did not succeed
in New York. He was powdered in his most important
start of last season, then blown out in his only
playoff start, and this season he struggled to be competitive,
and he had a no trade clause. The Mets could
(23:02):
have told him what he did, he did not want
to hear in order to get him to go away.
(23:24):
Still ahead on countdown, It's forty four years now, I'm twenty.
I'm on my own as the sportscaster and editor at
a one thousand station national radio network, and a minute
before my first sportscast, the captain of the New York
Yankees is killed in a plane crash. Things I promised
not to tell ahead first time for the daily round
(23:44):
up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worse persons in the world. The Bronze
Alexis Spiegelmann, Sarasota, Florida County Chapter Chair of Moms for Liberty.
I believe that's the group that used to be known
as Moms for Hitler. Anyway, Moms for Liberty has now
(24:04):
how attacked emotional healthcare. Quote. Mental health care is healthcare.
Healthcare has no place in public schools, the organization explains,
while attacking the bipartisan efforts to help kids in this
way in Florida. Bipartisan in Florida. But Mom's for hit
I'm sorry. Moms for Liberty opposes it because they say
(24:27):
mental health care is just part of social emotional learning,
and social emotional learning is just part of critical race theory,
and of course that is woke. So they're opposing mental
health care. Well, obviously they are. Look how crazy they
are used to be This running joke on the TV
series All in the Family, in which Edith Bunker's cousin
Maud would look at Edith's husband Archie Bunker and say,
(24:51):
still fighting mental health? Huh, Archie? And now people are
actually doing it. The runners up Warner Brothers. Sure, after
hundreds of millions of dollars in opening week ticket sales,
Barbenheim seemed like a good idea, and replying positively to
the Twitter mashup of the guy playing Ken, but he's
(25:11):
got an atomic bomb hairstyle, and you write this Ken
is a stylist. Seemed like a good idea, and then no,
Barbenheimer started trending in Japan, and that's when the Warner
Brothers publicity department remembered that Sunday is the seventy eighth
anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, and
(25:32):
Wednesday is the seventy eighth anniversary of the atomic bomb
being dropped on Nagasaki, And this whole Barbenheimer thing and
social media images of walls of flames and mashups of
atomic hairstyles that registers a little differently in Japan. The
Japanese Twitter account for Barbie railed at the US Twitter
(25:55):
account for Barbie for the atomic bomb hairstyle tweet, and
Warner Brothers apologized, And still they have not asked themselves
this other question, why again are we premiering Oppenheimer in
Japan two days after the anniversary of Nagasaki. But our winner,
Joe Rogan, Uncle Fester, America's leading poisoner of the minds
(26:18):
of the especially stupid. Joe Rogan, has now explained that
quote the January sixth thing is bad, but also the
intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol building.
That's a fact. Unquote narrator, it wasn't a fact. And
also Joe Rogan couldn't tell the difference between a fact
(26:39):
and his own ass. However, Uncle Fester may have gone
too far this time. He also decided to invoke ray Epps,
noting others at the Capitol was arrested. Spit for Rains
said quote, this guy wasn't all these different things saying.
Fox News has unjustly accused him of instigating when he
clearly instigated. He did it on camera. I don't know
(27:02):
if he was a FED. I know a lot of
people think he was a fed narrator. He wasn't a fed.
But you know what Ray Epps is, Joe, He's extremely litigious.
His lawyer has already dropped a few hints. He's already
sued Fox for millions, and he's willing to sue Joe Rogan.
You guys need any help on this. Please sue him,
(27:24):
Please please, please please me, Please sue him. Joe. I'm
afraid of vaccine needles. Rogan Today's worst parson and the
Uncle Fester world. Just ahead. The anniversary was yesterday and
(27:54):
my annual commemoration of it had to wait because of
the press of events. So I'll do it now because today,
even forty four years ago, was the day after when
we sat there, fifty one thousand of us still in
stunned silence, as the New York Yankees tried to process
the death of Thurman Munson, their captain, and the day before,
as a twenty year old rookie Network sportscaster, I had
(28:18):
had to cover it next first time to feature another
dog in need. You can help. Every dog has its
day and for once, not a mention of the word
death or asking for your money, just a dog in
need of a family. THEO is eighteen pounds. He's a
Sheitsu Maltese mix, maybe looks like a giant Maltese with
(28:38):
some brown and his white coat. He's five and he's
had a rough couple of years, but he's healthy now
and happy and looking for his forever family. He's being
fostered in Queens in New York, so an East Coast
adoption would be great and he's probably okay with another
dog in the family. You have to apply for him
with American Maltese Association Rescue and you will be vetted thoroughly,
(28:58):
but THEO is worth it. I'll post the link and
his photo on my Twitter feeds. THEO thanks you, and
I thank you. A certain part of me is always
living back there on August second, nineteen seventy nine, and
(29:20):
the rest of that day is seared into my memory
like my name and address. One month earlier to the day,
July second, nineteen seventy nine, I had been in the
stands in my family seats back of first base at
Yankee Stadium in New York, a twenty year old Yankees fan,
applauding Thurman Munson's RBI double and Lou Penela's two for
four day and Roy White's appearance since Roy White was
(29:43):
my mother's favorite Yankee player, but months in particularly, he
had been playing for the Yankees since I was nine.
I was now twenty, thus more than half my life now.
On August second, nineteen seventy nine, I was finishing the
first month of my professional broadcasting career. It was my
seventh or eighth solo ship lift Anywhere for money. I
(30:07):
was the nighttime sportscaster of United Press Internationals Radio Network,
one thousand stations worldwide known as UPI Audio. For my
first sportscast of the night due to go at five
forty five pm. I had long since finished my script.
Tom Watson was leading round one of the PGA golf
in Michigan. The lawyer who owned Washington of the NFL,
(30:29):
Edward Bennett Williams. He had just bought the Baltimore Orioles.
There was an exposed Cubs matinee a baseball game in
Montreal that prevailed through three rain delays. It was just
about five forty three pm Eastern Time, and I was
making the short walk from the little sports cubby hole
to the little main on air studio in UPI World
(30:50):
headquarters in the Daily News Building, or if you saw
the movie the Superman Building on forty second Street in Manhattan.
I was just walking past the bank of thermal printers,
each making their sluggish, muted honking sound as they slowly
printed stories out onto what wasn't really paper. There was
(31:12):
the main UPI wire, the UPI Sportswire, the UPI Business Wire,
the UPI International Wire, the UPI Radio Wire, several internal
message wires via which the UPI bureaus around the world
could communicate with headquarters in New York or as it
was abbreviated NX. Those message wires were the nineteen seventy
nine equivalent of texting. As I got within a foot
(31:34):
of these machines, one of them made a noise I
had never heard before, a series of ten really loud bells.
As I moved over to see what the hell they
could mean, the news editor, Frank Rayfield, came over to
check as well. We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously,
(31:55):
Cleveland Bureau to NX Thurman Munson Catcher, Captain New York
Yankees dead, piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport. Still it
stuns me to read those words aloud. As soon as
they finished printing, Cleveland sent it again. The bells went
off again. I could see. I now had about a
(32:16):
minute until I went on the air. The editor pointed
this out to me, you'll have to add lib the
sports cast, then come out here and do a voicer.
Just talk about his career. Keep repeating that it's a
bulletin that he's dead, and that he was piloting a
private plane. You know anything about him and planes? And
I remember saying, oh God, I do, and he said, well,
use whatever you think fits. If more details come in,
(32:37):
I'll bring them into you. I'll try to get somebody
at the airport for some sound. I don't remember anything
of what I said on the air that night, nor
in the special report the voicer the editor had had
me record. As soon as I finished that live sportscast,
it was all recorded. I never wanted to hear any
of it. I never wanted to keep any of it.
(32:59):
I have basically the rest of my career on tape.
But I knew my youth was over right then. Thurman
Munson had joined the Yankees when I was nine years old,
literally more than half my life ago. He was the
first good rookie I ever saw added to my team.
My family was convinced he looked like my mother's cousin Billy.
(33:22):
I met him a couple of times, had photographed him once,
interviewed him once. He was gruff and forbidding, but I
had never had a problem with him. What I knew
about him and his plane I spoke of as generically
as possible in my mind. I flashed back to lunch
in the press room at Yankee Stadium four months earlier,
when I was still in college with my friend Rick Sarone,
(33:44):
the editor, not the catcher Munson, Rick said, almost surreptitiously
leaning in toward me over the little table. Munson is
flying his own plane back home to Ohio on like
every day off. The Yankees are terrified he's not as
good a pilot as he thinks he is, honest to God.
(34:07):
One of the executives is trying to get George, that
would be George Steinbrenner, the owner, to trade him to Cleveland,
just so he'll get out of the damn plane. They're
all terrified he might wind up killing himself. I don't
know how many special reports I did forty three years
ago today, in addition to a new sports cast every hour. Later,
(34:31):
a friend of mine from college who didn't even know
I'd gotten the job as a sportscaster. I was so
new there, told me he was driving in Buffalo listening
to the all news station on the radio. He heard
them say Munson had been killed, and with more here's
Keith Olderman in New York. And he said he almost
drove off the road because of the double shock. And
(34:52):
I do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the
morning shift and would have only gotten home from it
around one or two pm. He came back into the
office to supervise things and to put together a long
memor special to feed that the thousand stations that used
our stuff would all use I was so glad to
see Sam that day. And then he handed me a
(35:14):
piece of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for
Loop and Ella and Roy White. Call them. Try to
do interviews. Be gentle record first, ask later, like Munson.
They had played in that game a month before. Really
(35:35):
was my last as a fan. Roy White had been
with the Yankees since I was six years old. Loup
Panella answered his phone, and somehow I asked him if
he would talk to me for two minutes, and he did,
and almost immediately he burst into tears. There was such raw,
immediate brutal pain in his voice. I did the only
(35:57):
thing I could think of. I said, listen, you should
not have to do this all night. I will make
copies of this interview and give it to the other
radio networks so they will leave you alone. And only
then did I think to ask my boss, Sam, who
by the way, still does the New York Rangers games
on TV, if that was okay, And mercifully Sam said
(36:17):
it was a great idea. When I called Roy White,
and Roy White was literally on the Yankees the day
I became a Yankee fan. He begged me to tell
him that they had discovered some kind of a mistake,
that Thurman Munson was not dead. Both he and Panela
were blunt, but gentle and courteous. And I did make
(36:40):
copies of the interviews, and I can see myself handing
a cassette to a guy from NBC Radio named Mike Leventhal,
who ran a kind of cartel, almost a black market
among New York radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts
with Panela and White, not me, were all over radio
that day. I also remember discovering, after three or four
(37:00):
hours of literally working non stop, that I had never
really known what that meant before. I remember I was
supposed to be done at eleven PM, that was the
end of the shift, but I stayed until one am,
and I just rarely made the train the last one
of the night back to my house. I remember my
boss Sam Rosen talking to our stringer in San Francisco,
fella named Rob Navius, and he said, they're killing my team.
(37:24):
I should go to Mexico and smoke myself blind the
things you remember at a time of stress and tragedy.
In my youthful misunderstanding of how these things worked, I
found myself coming back to the thought that I had
somehow failed Thurmon Monson by not telling somebody about that
Yankee fear from April that he was not as good
(37:44):
a pilot as he thought he was. Although even then
I asked myself, who were you going to tell? There
are two postscripts to my story of the twenty year
old me covering the night Thurman months and died. Twenty
years later, I was hosting Baseball's Game of the Week
on Fox, and I asked by producer what we were
doing for the months in anti versary. He asked what anniversary.
(38:08):
He was younger than I was. I had to explain
it to him. Even then, you want to write something
we can pre produce, It's like a minute and a half.
Minute and a half. I did it, didn't think much
of it. A couple of years later, I was one
of the public address announcers at Old Timer's Day at
Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director Rick Sarone Sam
(38:30):
Rick Saron who in April nineteen seventy nine told me
about Munson and the private planes and the Yankees spheres.
It is a small world. The twenty fifth anniversary of
Thurman Munson's death was just days away. His widow Diane
was there. We had never met. Then she saw me
on the field and raced up to me and hugged me.
That piece you did on him on the Game of
(38:51):
the week, when was it five years ago? That was
the best memorial I've ever seen to Thurman. We both
cheered up. I couldn't believe she said that I told
her about that night in nineteen seventy nine what had
had been like for me? I said, I knew it
was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought it
was important somehow to share. She hugged me again. It
(39:14):
was deeply moving and it is still The other PostScript
I only learned of last year. For forever and the
coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam Rosen
being the Hall of fam announcer of the New York
Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But for forever, the reporter
covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper of
the New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had
(39:38):
forgotten until last year that the year that Thurman Munson
was killed, Larry was a very very young beat reporter
covering not Rangers hockey, but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent
me a clipping from the New York Post from Saturday,
July twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, five days before Munson's
fatal plane crash. It is almost beyond belief. Larry Brooks's
(40:03):
story began, quote, reports of Thurman Munson's death are exaggerated,
at least slightly unquote. Of course he was using a metaphor.
Munson's knees had been giving him trouble, and the manager
of the Yankees, Billy Martin, was giving him more time
off between catching assignments than usual. But Larry's story also
(40:24):
included an even more jaw dropping quote. Asked about the
rumors he might not catch again this year, Munson said,
I don't know who started them. It was Martin. Asked
after the game how his knees felt, he said, quote sore,
real sore. Hey, you might be seeing my last hurrah.
(41:02):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Schanel, guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Another Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports
(41:23):
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, which was
written by Mitch Warren Davis and which appears courtesy of
the ESPN Inc musical comments by Nancy Faust. 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 thirty
ninth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
(41:45):
democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him again
while oh right. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
has the news warrants because he could plead guilty till then.
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(42:18):
iHeartRadio For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
has a new defense. You're ready. John Eastman did it.
(00:28):
Quote he had the advisive counsel, a very detailed memorandum
from a constitutional expert. His newer, newest lawyer, John Lauro
said on Fox yesterday, quote, you're entitled to believe and
trust adviceive counsel. The same John Laurrow said on NBC,
you have one of the leading constitutional scholars in the
(00:48):
United States. John Eastman say to Trump, this is a protocol,
you can follow. Its legal The message got out to
our American Goebbels. Laura Ingram says Trump's been charged quote
for adopting and pressing an unconventional legal view. Even his
rivals for the nomination, who seemed to be intent on
(01:08):
hurting him, are actually helping him. Quote. The president was surrounded,
Mike Pence said, by a group of crackpot lawyers that
kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.
Crack pot lawyers, itching ears. Those fit in with what
I observed yesterday, which was that the Jack Smith charges
(01:29):
and the hints in the document leave Trump with really
only one defense. Quote. I'm an idiot. Two of the
four categories of charges on which Donald John Trump will
be arraigned in Washington at four pm Thursday afternoon are
obstruction charges. And for obstruction, you've got to have corrupt intent.
(01:52):
And if you can prove it was not your corrupt intent,
but somebody else's, somebody like let's just say, for the
sake of argument at random, Johnny Shman, then you might
beat the obstruction charges and undermine the other charges as well.
You eliminate criminal intent or, as that lawyer John Loro
(02:15):
put it to the blankly nodding anchors on NBC, quote
that eliminates criminal intent. So first Amendment free speech out.
The attorney made me do it. In please enjoy the
new Eastman plan plan on John Eastman taking the fall. Well,
(02:37):
this is cleared pretty much everybody not named John Eastman.
It seems to have not yet occurred to John Eastman,
because his lawyer went on CNN last night and said
his client would be happy to cooperate with Jack Smith.
But quote, if by cooperation you mean flipping on Trump
or providing incriminating information, then absolutely not, simply because those
(03:00):
aren't the facts of this case. As it pertains to
doctor Eastman, sucker. There is only one complication for the
new the Eastman made me do it defense for Trump,
And god knows, this is day three out of hundreds
(03:21):
and hundreds of days of this to come. And if
he's already on defense number two on day three, who
knows where Trump ends up by trial. The complication, though,
is that to prove that you broke the law only
because you got really bad legal advice, really really really
really really bad legal advice, you will have to testify
(03:45):
yourself under oath, and the prosecutors will not ask you
Trump only about John Eastman, whereas we can now call
him unindicted scapegoat number one, the line for on the right, babe,
(04:06):
the line for media to get into the District of
Columbia Federal Courthouse where Trump will be indicted again. It
formed before sunset last night. There is still, I suppose,
the remote possibility that Trump might think better of the
spectacle and the schlep and stay home. Other January sixth
defendants have been allowed to appear remotely for such preliminaries.
(04:27):
But Trump cannot resist a spectacle. He would march loud
and proud in full on Norma Desmond slink to his
own public execution. The complication here is that the Prettyman
Courthouse in DC has a labyrinthine structure of tunnels and
interior back roots, and for all I know moats, I mean,
(04:49):
who can say for sure it doesn't have moats designed
specifically to bring a defendant in and out of a
courtroom without anybody seeing him except in the courtroom. There
will again be no video its federal court, no still photography,
just artists and no offense to them. But there is
a reason that there is a word sketches and another
(05:11):
word sketchy. There is no expectation that we will get
a repeat of Miami, where it turned out not to
be just a handful of charges but thirty seven counts.
But the Special Council's Office has already proved to have
a certain panache going for it, with surprises and a
notable ability to mesh legalese with pretty solid narrative writing
(05:34):
in its charging documents, So who knows what they're going
to do. Thus, after the formal indictment, Trump will be
on the hook for at least forty four federal counts
at a max of five hundred and five years in
prison or more correctly, John Eastman, will I try to
(05:58):
stay away from economics here as much as possible. I
was told there would be no math, But it turns
out Donald Trump shot this country's credit rating to hell
with all of this. You may have heard that Fitch Ratings,
which is the one that isn't Moody's or Standard and Poor's,
downgraded the US credit rating Tuesday from triple A to
(06:19):
double A plus, enraging the White House and throwing out
a red flag to investors that maybe our government debt
ain't what it used to be. And in an exclusive,
the Reuters News Service has gotten Fitch Senior Director Richard
Francis to say something dumbfounding that I didn't see anywhere
else that part of the downgrade of our national credit
(06:42):
rating owes to the January sixth insurrection. Fitch doesn't like
fights over debt ceilings either, but they're not supposed to
like fights over debt ceilings. Francis is the one who
brought up the coup quote. It was something that we
highlighted because it is just a reflection of the deterioration
(07:02):
of governance. It's one of many lighten up Francis. Thanks Trump,
there is only one silver lining in this society's imperceptible
but steady multi decade march towards. In the unforgettable words
of the late TV playwright Dennis Potter, everything having a
(07:23):
price tag on it. If you threaten the money, the
money will come back and kill you. And hidden in
that fact may be an unexpected line of action against Trump.
The money is not happy about the downngraded credit ratings,
and the money is not happy at the moment with
(07:46):
Republican parties around the country. I've mentioned before, the Republican
Party of Michigan is within weeks of actual default and
perhaps bankruptcy. The bank account of Minnesota's GOP got down
to fifty three dollars and eighty one cents before big
donors bailed it out. Politico now reports that Colorado's GOP
(08:07):
is facing eviction it can't pay the rent. Politico quotes
the former head of the Michigan GOP, Jeff Timmer, about
what's really going on. It shouldn't surprise anybody that real
people with real money don't want to invest in these clowns.
Looking at you, don who have taken over and subsumed
the Republican Party and that's nice. And if you're in
(08:30):
Michigan and Colorado and Minnesota and you believe in democracy
and not fascism, that's nice. But what is Trump care
apart from the collapse of statewide GOP campaign infrastructure. Well,
it turns out Trump really does have the kind of
money issues I speculated about earlier in the week, and
he will later need that statewide GOP campaign infrastructure. That's
(08:54):
down to fifty three dollars in eighty one cents. The
actual numbers for Trump's Save America pack are in And
I am hardly a financial expert, but if it began
the year twenty twenty two with one hundred and five
million dollars, but now Trump's Save America pack has four
million dollars, that's less right Again, it's legal fees and
(09:20):
donor queasiness and that valuable cliche that nothing gets scareder
faster than a billion dollars. Those numbers came out in
this week's FEC filings, and so did something remarkable. And
we won't know for a while if it's going to continue,
but Trump's ability to turn his indictments into hard cash
may be wearing off. After he was arrested in New
(09:43):
York in the Stormy Daniel's hush money case, contributions to
the Save America Joint fundraising Committee peaked at just under
four million in one day and ten million over a
five day window. But since the new filings here literally
provide day by day data, we now know that when
Trump was indicted in Florida by Jack Smith and the
(10:04):
Documents case, the high water mark for donations was just
one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the
peak five day period was only four and a half million,
half less than half. If Trump donors are actually tired
of the Trump Martyrdom Act, these dreams we have of
him being unable to compete for ad time during the
(10:26):
election may be far more real than previously imagined. And
now let's return to America's most popular new game, Trumpele
and the continuing missing piece of our puzzle, a confirmed
identification of unidentified co Conspirator number six. I have to
(10:51):
confess I am more than a little thrown by the
idea that Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Luke Broadwater of
The New York Times have written an entire piece on
co Conspirator Number six. I guess I'm just grateful they
didn't use trumpel. They have a different identification than I do,
(11:15):
using materials not available to the rest of US players.
And that's Maggie Haberman in a nutshell they write quote.
A close look at the indictment and a review of
messages among people working with mister Trump's team provides a
strong clue. An email from December twenty twenty from Boris Epstein,
(11:37):
a strategic advisor to the Trump campaign in twenty twenty,
to mister Giuliani matches a description in the indictment of
an interaction between co Conspirator six and mister Giuliani on
quote and again Giuliani is co conspirator one, resuming the quote.
The email sent on December seven, twenty twenty, and reviewed
(11:58):
by The New York Times, in which section was it reviewed,
I never left so much. The email, sent on December seventh,
twenty twenty, and reviewed by The New York Times, was
from mister Epstein to mister Giuliani and mister Giuliani's son Andrew,
and had the subject line attorneys for Electors memo. It says,
(12:21):
dear Mayer. As discussed below are the attorneys I would
recommend for the memo on choosing electors, and it goes
on to identify lawyers in seven states. Paragraph fifty seven
of the indictment says that co conspirator won mister Giuliani
spoke with co Conspirator six regarding attorneys who could assist
in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states, and
(12:43):
received an email from co Conspirator six identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,
and New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those are the seven
states in the email that mister Epstein sent to mister
Giuliani and that was reviewed by The Times. Unquote, I
had a seat on the aisle for this email. It's
not a bad argument, it's good research. But there's just
(13:06):
one hitch in the indictment. Co Conspirator one is Juliani,
and the indictment's first description of him after saying co
conspirator I comma is quote an attorney. Co Conspirator two
is Eastman, and the indictment's first description of him is
quote an attorney. Co Conspirator three is Sidney Powell, and
(13:28):
the indictment's first description of her is quote an attorney.
Co conspirator. Four is Jeffrey Clark, and the indictment's first
description of him is a Justice Department official, which implies
that he's an attorney. Co conspirator five is Kenneth the
Cheesebro and the indictment's first description of him is quote
an attorney and co conspirator. Six, Maggie thinks is Boris Epstein.
(13:52):
The indictment's entire description is quote a political consultant who
helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential
electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. Unquote. That's it. That's
all it says about number six. So what Boris Epstein
is an attorney? He, in fact is usually described in
(14:13):
news stories as Boris Epstein a Trump attorney. He's also
a political consultant, but it's debatable which is his primary
function if he has one. Giuliani is described in the
indictment as an attorney. Eastman is described in the indictment
as an attorney. Same for Powell, same for Cheeseboro. Only
Clark isn't, but he's described as a Justice Department official.
(14:34):
So if it's Epstein, why doesn't the description of him
as unindicted co conspirator six begin the same way co
Conspirator six an attorney. Seems to me that if it
doesn't say six is an attorney, that can be reasonably
interpreted to mean probably six is not an attorney. It's
(14:57):
not an attorney like Boris Epstein. So I will continue
to believe it is probably and he Carrick, who traveled
with Juliani to pressure the state legislators to send in
the phony electors, and who was described as fetching phone
numbers for Rudy and Kark's professional life has been so
dependent on Rudy that the two of them resembled Dracula
(15:19):
and Renfield. And speaking of Rudy, it was a bad
day to be unindicted co conspirator number one. Remember the
rape and sexual abuse lawsuit against Juliani earlier this year
by his one time assistant or girlfriend or assistant girlfriend,
(15:43):
a woman named Noel Noel Dunfe. She claimed she had
audio tapes of him promising job favors in exchange for
sex and throwing around racial and religious epithets. She also
claimed he asked her to find people willing to pay
him two million dollars for presidential pardons, which she said
she claimed he would split with Trump. Well, he bluff
(16:05):
in court. Bad move number one. A court appointed reporting
agency reviewed the tapes and produced transcripts, and they are out,
and let's just say Rudy does not come off quite
as well in them as he does in the part
where he's an unindicted co conspirator in the most searing
legal case in American history. In the transcripts, Rudy Giuliani
(16:30):
is heard saying insisting Matt Damon is gay. Michael Bloomberg
is gay. No, he doesn't say gay. Actually he uses
an f slur instead. He insists Jewish men have small
private parts because they don't use them after marriage, and
quote Jews, they want to go through that freaking passover
(16:50):
all the time, man oh Man, get over the passover.
It was like three thousand years ago, unquote. But that's
the good part. It is repeated claims of quote ownership
of Ms Dunfie. That's the headline. There is one particularly
(17:16):
lurid quotation, and I would I would read it to
you for batim, but I think in light of where
we began today in this edition, I should follow the
trumpion lead and just blame it all on John Eastman.
So the key word from Rudy on this section of
the tape a well known popular word used for a
part of the female anatomy, which appears seven times in
(17:38):
probably about twenty seconds. I will not use that word.
I will instead use the word Eastman. So let me
quote Giuliani from the Dunfe tape quote, come here, big Eastmans,
Come here, big Eastmans. Your Eastmans belong to me. Give
them to me. I want to claim my Eastmans. I
(18:02):
want to claim my Eastman. I want to claim my Eastmans.
These are my Eastmans. America's mayor everybody also of interest
(18:24):
here in how do you follow that? Will you go
from one boob to another? I wonder if Joe Rogan
will blame Eastman. Two goes out not only says it's
a quote fact unquote that intelligence agencies provoked people to
go into the Capitol on January sixth, also says Ray
Epps quote clearly instigated. And I guess nobody told old
(18:46):
Uncle Fester Joe that Ray app says, just sued Fox
News for millions for the same crap. That's next, This
is countdown Eastmans.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Center.
Wait check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith
(19:23):
Alberman in Sports Thirty Seven days ago, Domingo Herman of
the New York Yankees through what was just the twenty
fourth perfect game in the one hundred and fifty three
year history of Major League Baseball. Today, he is at
an inpatient treatment center for alcohol abuse, placed on the
team's restricted list, almost certain to not appear again in
(19:46):
a Yankee uniform this season.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
If ever. Herman's survival is obviously the issue at hand,
But from a baseball sense and a superstition sense, this
underscores the bizarre reality that there seems to be something
of a perfect game curse. Twenty four perfect games, no
one has ever thrown two, and despite the magnificence of
(20:08):
the accomplishment, only one third of those pitchers reached the
Baseball Hall of Fame. The first two perfect games were
thrown in a five day span in eighteen eighty in.
Both of those pitchers would suffer arm injuries within one
year and have to give up pitching. Dallas Braden pitched
a perfect game in twenty ten. He only won eight
(20:28):
more games in his career. Philip Umber pitched one in
twenty twelve, he only won four more, and even the
great Sandy Kofax could not escape. He pitched a perfect
game in nineteen sixty five, but made only fifty more
starts in his career before having to retire young because
of injuries. And Herman's New York Yankees are still having
(20:49):
a better week than the crosstown New York Mets. Not
only did the Mets punt on their season, trading six
of their twenty six players at the trade deadline in
exchange for minor leaguers, but now they are in a
controversy involving one of the stars they dealt away, and
either he is making stuff up or team owner Steve
Cohen is Max Schuzer told the website The Athletic that
(21:11):
before he agreed to waive the no trade clause in
his contract, he talked to both Cohen and the team's
general manager Billy Eppler about the franchise's short term direction. Quote.
I was like, Okay, are we reloading for twenty twenty four?
He goes, no, we're not. Basically our vision now is
for twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, twenty five at
(21:31):
the earliest, more like twenty six. We're going to be
making trades around that. I was like, so the team
is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason
or assemble a team that can compete for a World
Series next year. He said, no, we're not going to
be signing the upper echelon guys. Schuzer says the owner.
Cohen then told him quote exactly the same thing, kind
(21:53):
of verbatim. The owner, Steve Cohen texted the New York
Post and to some degree contradicted Scherzer. We will be
competitive in twenty four, but I think twenty five twenty
six is when our young talent makes an impact. Lots
of pitching in free agency in twenty four, more payroll
flexibility in twenty five. Cohen seemed to be taking the
(22:15):
Mets out of the hunt for likely free agent shohe
Otani this winter. But since clubs can hide behind anti
tampering rules, nobody is going to get anybody on the
Mets to say that. If the Mets are really going
non competitive for twenty twenty four and maybe twenty twenty five,
Cohen is going to have an empty ballpark on his
hand there is a third option, and it is both
(22:38):
conspiracy theory driven and it presumes a sophistication that the Mets'
front office has rarely shown. Max Scherzer did not succeed
in New York. He was powdered in his most important
start of last season, then blown out in his only
playoff start, and this season he struggled to be competitive,
and he had a no trade clause. The Mets could
(23:02):
have told him what he did, he did not want
to hear in order to get him to go away.
(23:24):
Still ahead on countdown, It's forty four years now, I'm twenty.
I'm on my own as the sportscaster and editor at
a one thousand station national radio network, and a minute
before my first sportscast, the captain of the New York
Yankees is killed in a plane crash. Things I promised
not to tell ahead first time for the daily round
(23:44):
up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worse persons in the world. The Bronze
Alexis Spiegelmann, Sarasota, Florida County Chapter Chair of Moms for Liberty.
I believe that's the group that used to be known
as Moms for Hitler. Anyway, Moms for Liberty has now
(24:04):
how attacked emotional healthcare. Quote. Mental health care is healthcare.
Healthcare has no place in public schools, the organization explains,
while attacking the bipartisan efforts to help kids in this
way in Florida. Bipartisan in Florida. But Mom's for hit
I'm sorry. Moms for Liberty opposes it because they say
(24:27):
mental health care is just part of social emotional learning,
and social emotional learning is just part of critical race theory,
and of course that is woke. So they're opposing mental
health care. Well, obviously they are. Look how crazy they
are used to be This running joke on the TV
series All in the Family, in which Edith Bunker's cousin
Maud would look at Edith's husband Archie Bunker and say,
(24:51):
still fighting mental health? Huh, Archie? And now people are
actually doing it. The runners up Warner Brothers. Sure, after
hundreds of millions of dollars in opening week ticket sales,
Barbenheim seemed like a good idea, and replying positively to
the Twitter mashup of the guy playing Ken, but he's
(25:11):
got an atomic bomb hairstyle, and you write this Ken
is a stylist. Seemed like a good idea, and then no,
Barbenheimer started trending in Japan, and that's when the Warner
Brothers publicity department remembered that Sunday is the seventy eighth
anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, and
(25:32):
Wednesday is the seventy eighth anniversary of the atomic bomb
being dropped on Nagasaki, And this whole Barbenheimer thing and
social media images of walls of flames and mashups of
atomic hairstyles that registers a little differently in Japan. The
Japanese Twitter account for Barbie railed at the US Twitter
(25:55):
account for Barbie for the atomic bomb hairstyle tweet, and
Warner Brothers apologized, And still they have not asked themselves
this other question, why again are we premiering Oppenheimer in
Japan two days after the anniversary of Nagasaki. But our winner,
Joe Rogan, Uncle Fester, America's leading poisoner of the minds
(26:18):
of the especially stupid. Joe Rogan, has now explained that
quote the January sixth thing is bad, but also the
intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol building.
That's a fact. Unquote narrator, it wasn't a fact. And
also Joe Rogan couldn't tell the difference between a fact
(26:39):
and his own ass. However, Uncle Fester may have gone
too far this time. He also decided to invoke ray Epps,
noting others at the Capitol was arrested. Spit for Rains
said quote, this guy wasn't all these different things saying.
Fox News has unjustly accused him of instigating when he
clearly instigated. He did it on camera. I don't know
(27:02):
if he was a FED. I know a lot of
people think he was a fed narrator. He wasn't a fed.
But you know what Ray Epps is, Joe, He's extremely litigious.
His lawyer has already dropped a few hints. He's already
sued Fox for millions, and he's willing to sue Joe Rogan.
You guys need any help on this. Please sue him,
(27:24):
Please please, please please me, Please sue him. Joe. I'm
afraid of vaccine needles. Rogan Today's worst parson and the
Uncle Fester world. Just ahead. The anniversary was yesterday and
(27:54):
my annual commemoration of it had to wait because of
the press of events. So I'll do it now because today,
even forty four years ago, was the day after when
we sat there, fifty one thousand of us still in
stunned silence, as the New York Yankees tried to process
the death of Thurman Munson, their captain, and the day before,
as a twenty year old rookie Network sportscaster, I had
(28:18):
had to cover it next first time to feature another
dog in need. You can help. Every dog has its
day and for once, not a mention of the word
death or asking for your money, just a dog in
need of a family. THEO is eighteen pounds. He's a
Sheitsu Maltese mix, maybe looks like a giant Maltese with
(28:38):
some brown and his white coat. He's five and he's
had a rough couple of years, but he's healthy now
and happy and looking for his forever family. He's being
fostered in Queens in New York, so an East Coast
adoption would be great and he's probably okay with another
dog in the family. You have to apply for him
with American Maltese Association Rescue and you will be vetted thoroughly,
(28:58):
but THEO is worth it. I'll post the link and
his photo on my Twitter feeds. THEO thanks you, and
I thank you. A certain part of me is always
living back there on August second, nineteen seventy nine, and
(29:20):
the rest of that day is seared into my memory
like my name and address. One month earlier to the day,
July second, nineteen seventy nine, I had been in the
stands in my family seats back of first base at
Yankee Stadium in New York, a twenty year old Yankees fan,
applauding Thurman Munson's RBI double and Lou Penela's two for
four day and Roy White's appearance since Roy White was
(29:43):
my mother's favorite Yankee player, but months in particularly, he
had been playing for the Yankees since I was nine.
I was now twenty, thus more than half my life now.
On August second, nineteen seventy nine, I was finishing the
first month of my professional broadcasting career. It was my
seventh or eighth solo ship lift Anywhere for money. I
(30:07):
was the nighttime sportscaster of United Press Internationals Radio Network,
one thousand stations worldwide known as UPI Audio. For my
first sportscast of the night due to go at five
forty five pm. I had long since finished my script.
Tom Watson was leading round one of the PGA golf
in Michigan. The lawyer who owned Washington of the NFL,
(30:29):
Edward Bennett Williams. He had just bought the Baltimore Orioles.
There was an exposed Cubs matinee a baseball game in
Montreal that prevailed through three rain delays. It was just
about five forty three pm Eastern Time, and I was
making the short walk from the little sports cubby hole
to the little main on air studio in UPI World
(30:50):
headquarters in the Daily News Building, or if you saw
the movie the Superman Building on forty second Street in Manhattan.
I was just walking past the bank of thermal printers,
each making their sluggish, muted honking sound as they slowly
printed stories out onto what wasn't really paper. There was
(31:12):
the main UPI wire, the UPI Sportswire, the UPI Business Wire,
the UPI International Wire, the UPI Radio Wire, several internal
message wires via which the UPI bureaus around the world
could communicate with headquarters in New York or as it
was abbreviated NX. Those message wires were the nineteen seventy
nine equivalent of texting. As I got within a foot
(31:34):
of these machines, one of them made a noise I
had never heard before, a series of ten really loud bells.
As I moved over to see what the hell they
could mean, the news editor, Frank Rayfield, came over to
check as well. We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously,
(31:55):
Cleveland Bureau to NX Thurman Munson Catcher, Captain New York
Yankees dead, piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport. Still it
stuns me to read those words aloud. As soon as
they finished printing, Cleveland sent it again. The bells went
off again. I could see. I now had about a
(32:16):
minute until I went on the air. The editor pointed
this out to me, you'll have to add lib the
sports cast, then come out here and do a voicer.
Just talk about his career. Keep repeating that it's a
bulletin that he's dead, and that he was piloting a
private plane. You know anything about him and planes? And
I remember saying, oh God, I do, and he said, well,
use whatever you think fits. If more details come in,
(32:37):
I'll bring them into you. I'll try to get somebody
at the airport for some sound. I don't remember anything
of what I said on the air that night, nor
in the special report the voicer the editor had had
me record. As soon as I finished that live sportscast,
it was all recorded. I never wanted to hear any
of it. I never wanted to keep any of it.
(32:59):
I have basically the rest of my career on tape.
But I knew my youth was over right then. Thurman
Munson had joined the Yankees when I was nine years old,
literally more than half my life ago. He was the
first good rookie I ever saw added to my team.
My family was convinced he looked like my mother's cousin Billy.
(33:22):
I met him a couple of times, had photographed him once,
interviewed him once. He was gruff and forbidding, but I
had never had a problem with him. What I knew
about him and his plane I spoke of as generically
as possible in my mind. I flashed back to lunch
in the press room at Yankee Stadium four months earlier,
when I was still in college with my friend Rick Sarone,
(33:44):
the editor, not the catcher Munson, Rick said, almost surreptitiously
leaning in toward me over the little table. Munson is
flying his own plane back home to Ohio on like
every day off. The Yankees are terrified he's not as
good a pilot as he thinks he is, honest to God.
(34:07):
One of the executives is trying to get George, that
would be George Steinbrenner, the owner, to trade him to Cleveland,
just so he'll get out of the damn plane. They're
all terrified he might wind up killing himself. I don't
know how many special reports I did forty three years
ago today, in addition to a new sports cast every hour. Later,
(34:31):
a friend of mine from college who didn't even know
I'd gotten the job as a sportscaster. I was so
new there, told me he was driving in Buffalo listening
to the all news station on the radio. He heard
them say Munson had been killed, and with more here's
Keith Olderman in New York. And he said he almost
drove off the road because of the double shock. And
(34:52):
I do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the
morning shift and would have only gotten home from it
around one or two pm. He came back into the
office to supervise things and to put together a long
memor special to feed that the thousand stations that used
our stuff would all use I was so glad to
see Sam that day. And then he handed me a
(35:14):
piece of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for
Loop and Ella and Roy White. Call them. Try to
do interviews. Be gentle record first, ask later, like Munson.
They had played in that game a month before. Really
(35:35):
was my last as a fan. Roy White had been
with the Yankees since I was six years old. Loup
Panella answered his phone, and somehow I asked him if
he would talk to me for two minutes, and he did,
and almost immediately he burst into tears. There was such raw,
immediate brutal pain in his voice. I did the only
(35:57):
thing I could think of. I said, listen, you should
not have to do this all night. I will make
copies of this interview and give it to the other
radio networks so they will leave you alone. And only
then did I think to ask my boss, Sam, who
by the way, still does the New York Rangers games
on TV, if that was okay, And mercifully Sam said
(36:17):
it was a great idea. When I called Roy White,
and Roy White was literally on the Yankees the day
I became a Yankee fan. He begged me to tell
him that they had discovered some kind of a mistake,
that Thurman Munson was not dead. Both he and Panela
were blunt, but gentle and courteous. And I did make
(36:40):
copies of the interviews, and I can see myself handing
a cassette to a guy from NBC Radio named Mike Leventhal,
who ran a kind of cartel, almost a black market
among New York radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts
with Panela and White, not me, were all over radio
that day. I also remember discovering, after three or four
(37:00):
hours of literally working non stop, that I had never
really known what that meant before. I remember I was
supposed to be done at eleven PM, that was the
end of the shift, but I stayed until one am,
and I just rarely made the train the last one
of the night back to my house. I remember my
boss Sam Rosen talking to our stringer in San Francisco,
fella named Rob Navius, and he said, they're killing my team.
(37:24):
I should go to Mexico and smoke myself blind the
things you remember at a time of stress and tragedy.
In my youthful misunderstanding of how these things worked, I
found myself coming back to the thought that I had
somehow failed Thurmon Monson by not telling somebody about that
Yankee fear from April that he was not as good
(37:44):
a pilot as he thought he was. Although even then
I asked myself, who were you going to tell? There
are two postscripts to my story of the twenty year
old me covering the night Thurman months and died. Twenty
years later, I was hosting Baseball's Game of the Week
on Fox, and I asked by producer what we were
doing for the months in anti versary. He asked what anniversary.
(38:08):
He was younger than I was. I had to explain
it to him. Even then, you want to write something
we can pre produce, It's like a minute and a half.
Minute and a half. I did it, didn't think much
of it. A couple of years later, I was one
of the public address announcers at Old Timer's Day at
Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director Rick Sarone Sam
(38:30):
Rick Saron who in April nineteen seventy nine told me
about Munson and the private planes and the Yankees spheres.
It is a small world. The twenty fifth anniversary of
Thurman Munson's death was just days away. His widow Diane
was there. We had never met. Then she saw me
on the field and raced up to me and hugged me.
That piece you did on him on the Game of
(38:51):
the week, when was it five years ago? That was
the best memorial I've ever seen to Thurman. We both
cheered up. I couldn't believe she said that I told
her about that night in nineteen seventy nine what had
had been like for me? I said, I knew it
was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought it
was important somehow to share. She hugged me again. It
(39:14):
was deeply moving and it is still The other PostScript
I only learned of last year. For forever and the
coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam Rosen
being the Hall of fam announcer of the New York
Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But for forever, the reporter
covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper of
the New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had
(39:38):
forgotten until last year that the year that Thurman Munson
was killed, Larry was a very very young beat reporter
covering not Rangers hockey, but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent
me a clipping from the New York Post from Saturday,
July twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, five days before Munson's
fatal plane crash. It is almost beyond belief. Larry Brooks's
(40:03):
story began, quote, reports of Thurman Munson's death are exaggerated,
at least slightly unquote. Of course he was using a metaphor.
Munson's knees had been giving him trouble, and the manager
of the Yankees, Billy Martin, was giving him more time
off between catching assignments than usual. But Larry's story also
(40:24):
included an even more jaw dropping quote. Asked about the
rumors he might not catch again this year, Munson said,
I don't know who started them. It was Martin. Asked
after the game how his knees felt, he said, quote sore,
real sore. Hey, you might be seeing my last hurrah.
(41:02):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Schanel, guitars, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Another Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports
(41:23):
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, which was
written by Mitch Warren Davis and which appears courtesy of
the ESPN Inc musical comments by Nancy Faust. 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 thirty
ninth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
(41:45):
democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him again
while oh right. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
has the news warrants because he could plead guilty till then.
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of
(42:18):
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