November 29, 2023 • 44 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is actually trying to keep his ass out of prison for subverting the 2020 election, by insisting that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. "Russia Russia Russia. And THAT, your honor, is the case for the defense of Dementia J. Trump"
Trump is demanding that Judge Tonya Chutkan give his lawyers access to the FULL classified intelligence report proving the 2016 Russian interference, and so what if he’s spent seven uninterrupted years honking and bleating about “The Russia Hoax” and denigrating the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, while insisting there was no Russian interference and making it an article of faith within the Republican Cult that he was cleared of any Russian collusion and election subversion and so what if he WASN’T cleared of Russian collusion and election subversion because there WAS no Russian collusion and election subversion except now his defense is: there was TOO Russian collusion and election subversion.
“Whereas the Special Counsel’s Office falsely alleges that President Trump ‘eroded public faith in the administration of the election,’” write his lawyers in a light night filing demanding more documents for their defense against Jack Smith’s Washington case, “the 2016 Election Intelligence Community Assessment uses strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion to foreign influence – that is, foreign efforts to ‘undermine public faith in the U-S democratic process,”
Plus: Some of Mike Pence's interview with Jack Smith and his Grand Jury testimony has leaked and Trump could go to jail over the placement of a comma. In his book, Pence recounted that he spoke to Trump on Christmas Day of 2020 when the Pence-Can-Block-The-Certification Plot was already well underway. In the book Pence quotes himself as telling Trump – and the punctuation is essential: “You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome." But Pence told the investigators that the comma shouldn’t have been there at all and what he said was, quote, “You KNOW I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” which suggests that Trump had begun to pressure – to threaten – Pence to violate the constitution at least 13 days before the January 6th coup attempt. And that is DAMNING. Not the colloquial “y’know” but “You KNOW I can’t do that.”
And some of Liz Cheney's book is out and the shock of all shocks: Donald Trump has actually spent some of his adult life not eating: “She recounts the moment she first found out that McCarthy, fearing he had lost his ability to fundraise, secretly went to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago just three weeks after the Jan. 6 attack. At first, Cheney thought the photo of the two men smiling and shaking hands was fake. But she was incredulous at McCarthy’s defense of his visit. He claimed Trump’s staff summoned him. “Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked. “They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.” “What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney responded. “Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy said.
Oh have I got a couple jokes for YOU.
B-Block (21:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Elon Musk insists on Twitter that Pizzagate is real and the only person who proved it wasn't has gone to jail for child porn. So I'm leaving Twitter. (27:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: BBC Washington anchor covers Rosalynn Carter memorial, mispronounces her first name THREE TIMES; Ron DeSantis may have helped kill a guy; Senator John Kennedy gets blown out of the water by a mild-mannered gun violence expert.
C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My friend who wrote all the original "This Is SportsCenter" commercials, Hank Perlman, visited yesterday. So it's time to review our greatest work, especially the famous Alexi
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
is now actually trying to keep his ass out of
(00:25):
jail for subverting the twenty twenty election by insisting that
Russia interfered in the twenty sixteen election. You heard me, Russia, Russia, Russia,
and that your honor is the case for the defense
of Dementia j Trump. Trump is demanding the Judge Tanya
(00:45):
Chutkin give his lawyers access to the full classified intelligence
report proving the twenty sixteen Russian interference. And so what
if he spent seven uninterrupted years honking and bleating about
the Russia hoax and denigrating the intelligence communities conclusion that
Russia in feared in the twenty sixteen election, while insisting
(01:07):
there was no Russian interference and making it an article
of faith within the Republican cult that he was cleared
of any Russian collusion and election subversion. And so what
if he wasn't cleared of Russian collusion and election subversion
because there was no Russian collusion an election subversion. Except
now his defense is there was two Russian collusion an
election subversion quote, whereas the Special Council's Office falsely alleges
(01:32):
that President Trump quote eroded public faith in the administration
of the election, write his lawyers in a late night
filing demanding more documents for their defense against Jack Smith's
Washington case. The twenty sixteen election intelligence Community assessment uses
strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion
(01:53):
to foreign influence, that is, foreign efforts to undermine public
faith in the US democratic process unquote. Please note here
Trump and his lawyers have used the phrases foreign influence
and foreign efforts, while the document they seek says Russian
(02:16):
influence and Russian efforts. This Trumpian argument worthy of Alice
in Wonderland is that the whole idea that the twenty
twenty election was stolen or rigged or corrupt was not
something Trump dreamed up. That it was the natural, organic
reaction of the American public to the intelligence community assessment
(02:36):
that foreigners tried to fix the twenty sixteen election. Wait,
which foreigners again operating on whose behalf? Mister Trump lawyer, Well,
never mind that right now foreigners moving on the hutzpah
(02:57):
would be extraordinary. It would be on the level of
the ultimate courtroom cliche. The guy who murders his parents,
is throwing himself on the MURRCA the court because he's
now an orphan. It would be like that, except this
is how Trump has lived his life. If you can't
feel shame, you can demand anything. If you can't feel guilt,
(03:18):
you can do anything. If you can't tell the difference
between reality and what you want reality to be, you
can insist the twenty sixteen election Intelligence Community Assessment is
a slander and an insult and a travesty and a
travesty of a mockery of a sham, of a mockery
of two mockeries of a sham, and then demand the
government produced the unreleased, undeclassified version of that document because
(03:39):
it's so true that it's Katy your defense Trump's lawyer's
right to judge Chutkin that the Intelligence Community Assessment the ICA,
contains quote information relating to a significant escalation of foreign
influence in the twenty sixteen election, which motivated then president
(04:00):
Trump and his administration to focus on foreign and cyber
rich and to be skeptical of claims about the absence
of foreign influence in the twenty twenty election. We don't
know what the ICA actually contains, because obviously, if Trump
is asking the government to give him this classified secret document,
(04:22):
it means he did not steal this particular classified secret document.
But what the public unclassified ICA actually says is Russia's
goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a
(04:44):
clear preference for President elect Trump unquote. I'm guessing Trump's
lawyers don't plan to use that last part of the
ICA in his defense, But that's the problem. If they
use the other parts of it, don't, Jack Smith, then
his team get to use the Russian parts of it
to further the impression, the correct impression, that Trump was
(05:08):
already an immoral, cornered animal who would break any law
and violate any oath to this country just to get
what he wanted. I mean, you can see the defense logic.
Here's a document that says faith in the elections was
already damaged in twenty sixteen. So the charge that it
was Trump who damaged faith in the elections in twenty twenty, well,
that can't be true. But how does it help him
(05:31):
if we are relitigating the Trump Russia conspiracy. Only it's
Trump now putting into the court record classified documents that
prove that there was a Trump Russia conspiracy. If it
sounds like Trump's lawyers are already at the throwing anything
at the wall to.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
See if it sticks stage, you know, like Trump did
with lunch with ketchup on the side the side of
the wall. If it sounds like they are already well
past desperation, it is because because while Kyle Cheney of
Politico and Philip bump Up the Washington Post did such
a good job exposing this Russia self contradiction story, they
(06:11):
did not stitch it together with ABC's Fly on the
Ketchup stained Wall report of what Mike Pence told the
Special Council in his interview and grand jury testimony, and
how Pence could not only testify against Trump in the
subversion case now, but could put Trump away incredibly, Pence's
(06:34):
testimony could pivot on a misplaced comma in his book,
I Believe the title was Mother, let me write this book.
In his book, Pence recounted that he spoke to Trump
on Christmas Day twenty twenty, when the Pence can block
the certification plot was already well underway. In his book,
(06:56):
Pence quotes himself as telling Trump, and the punctuation is essential,
quote you know, comma, I don't think I have the
authority to change the outcome unquote. But Pence told Jack
Smith's investigators that the comma should not have been in
that sentence at all, And what in fact he said
(07:17):
to Trump was quote, you know, I don't think I
have the authority to change the outcome, which suggests that
Trump had begun to pressure to threaten Pence to violate
the Constitution at least thirteen days before the January sixth
coup attempt. And that is damning, not the colloquial you know,
but you know I can't do that. While this next
(07:41):
part is far less important to the trial than is
the one comma, if you think that was a near
run thing, ABC reports Pence almost went along with Trump's
backup plan. If Pence would not subvert the electoral College certification,
he should just skip it and let somebody else do it.
Looking at you, Chuck Grassley, let me quote ABC. With
(08:05):
the pressure on Pence mounting, he concluded on Christmas Eve,
just for a moment, that he would follow Trump's suggestion
and let someone else preside over the proceedings on January sixth,
writing in his notes that doing otherwise would be too
hurtful to my friend. Not feeling like I should attend
(08:26):
electoral count, Pence wrote in his notes in late December,
too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore,
I'm not going to participate in certification of election. Then,
sitting across the table from his son, a marine while
on vacation in Colorado, his son said to him, Dad,
(08:50):
you took the same oath I took. It was an
oath to support and defend the Constitution. Pence, recalled to
Smith's investigators' sources, said, unquote.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Glory, glory, hallelujah, ah, everything but father and son then
standing up and joining together in an embrace, while each
of them started waving giant thirty foot American flags in
the air, while mother went into the kitchen and baked
three thousand apple pies. A as I suggested yesterday, You
(09:29):
and I apparently were raised to recognize treason and fascism
and the attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of
the United States, and manipulation when we saw them, to
say nothing of people who say something never happened, but
if it did, I can use it for my defense,
can I? But the alarming reality is that a huge
(09:52):
and possibly decisive percentage of voters don't, wouldn't, and wouldn't
do a damn thing about it if they did see it.
The real problem, of course, is that there is also
a huge and possibly decisive percentage of political reporters who don't, wouldn't,
and wouldn't do a damn thing about it if they did.
(10:14):
Media Matters, you know, the people Elon Musk is trying
to get arrested for daring to point out his anti
Semitic social media site and more on Elon and that
later Media Matters did the math. And here's a shock.
Remember on Veteran's Day when Trump paraphrased Adolph Hitler and promised, quote,
we will root out the communists, Marxist fascists, and radical
(10:34):
left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of
our country. Remember that little colorful imagery evoking blood running
in the streets. You remember in twenty sixteen when Hillary
Clinton called Trump supporters a basket of deplorables, you don't well,
she said that, and when she said that, people actually
(10:57):
thought she was over at the top, when in fact,
only about two percent of Trump supporters are as good
as deplorable. AnyWho Media Matters has compared the coverage of
Clinton's deplorable comment by American political media and Trump's vermin
comment by American political media. And if you think those
two statements are not comparable, boy oh boy, you are right. ABC, CBS,
(11:21):
and NBC provided eighteen times more coverage of Clinton's deplorables
than Trump's vermin. On CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, the
Clinton coverage was nine times more than the Trump coverage.
In the five highest circulating US newspapers, Clinton's line got
(11:41):
twenty nine times the attention that Trump's did. I don't
know if I've mentioned this before, but American political journalism
is terrible. Those who can't do teach, those who can't
teach teach Jim. Those who can't teach Jim, report, those
(12:02):
who can't report report on politics. Politico has room for
Kyle Cheney's excellent work, as I already noted, and it
also has room for Rachel Bade, the repeatedly fired from
everywhere Ryan Liza and Eugene Daniels, who put together the
Daily Playbook newsletter. One of them, and none of them
(12:23):
is proud enough to demand a specific byline. And when
you hear this crap that will actually make sense to you.
One of them opened Yesterday's recitation of the utterly amoral
lack of convictions of the media political industrial complex with
this quote. A handful of storylines appeared destined to dominate
the twenty twenty four presidential campaign. Donald Trump's myriad legal woes,
(12:48):
voter doubts about Joe Biden's age, an unsettled economy, a
vollatile global stage. And then there's the saga of Hunter
Biden unquote. Notice anything missing in there? Yep, no mention
of Trump's plan for dictatorship. American political reporters are still
(13:11):
not taking it seriously. Trump's myriad legal woes sounds like
he's got too many parking tickets, doesn't it. He tried
to violently overthrow the government of the United States, and
if he gains power again, he hopes to terminate the Constitution.
You great useless idiots. Rachel Bade, Ryan Lizza, and Eugene
(13:37):
Daniels bet Hunter Biden bet the emails bet Hunter Biden's emails. Happily,
there was some petard hoisting about Hunter Biden. Yesterday, the
president's son publicly volunteered to testify before Congressman James I'm
(13:57):
not too good at this, am I Comer. Comer's henchman
Chairman Jason Smith of Ways and Means tweets I welcome
Hunter Biden finally agreeing to testify it it's long overdue
for him to come clean in front of the American people.
Only within minutes Smith's deletes that tweet that welcome, because,
of course, the last thing Jamie Comber wants is Hunter
(14:17):
Biden testifying in public, because that's when it would be
unavoidably shown that the only thing Comber has in his
hand is is well is little. Jamie Comer's Committee to
Obstruct Justice wants a closed deposition, not a public hearing,
so it can then leak what it wants to, because
the Hunter Biden's story is not about the truth, even
(14:38):
if it did make President Biden look bad, and it's
about making dumb voters and even dumber reporters like these
idiots at the Politico Playbook believe that the real truth
is way wait wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, way
worse and it will be revealed real soon, along with
Trump's replacement for Obamacare in just two weeks from now
(14:59):
during Infrastructure Week, Well played, Hunter Biden. One last thing
part of Liz Cheney's book has leaked out via CNN.
See she had a reason to not write a Trump
book in real time she was in Congress. Her job
was not reporting Maggie Haberman. And in addition to Liz
(15:25):
Cheney confirming what we all knew, Congress and Mark Green
called Trump quote orange Jesus. Jim Jordan doesn't give a
damn about law told her the only thing that matters
is winning, which is odd since he so seldom has.
And Cheney quotes Kevin McCarthy two days after the twenty
twenty elections saying of Trump, quote, he knows it's over.
He needs to go through all the stages of grief.
(15:49):
And now Speaker Mike Johnson the Little Worm, was pressuring
House Republicans to sign the amicus brief to help Trump's
coup lawsuit, and Johnson told her quote, we just need
to do this one last thing for Champ. In addition
to that to be expected confirmation that every American who
has ever thought, gee, we keep losing the elections. Say
(16:10):
I've got an idea, let's stop having elections. That every
one of them is in the Republican leadership at the moment.
In addition to that, there was this remarkable vignette. We
don't yet have the exact text from the Cheney book,
so I'll just read the CNN recap verbatim quote, She
(16:31):
recounts the moment she first found out that Kevin McCarthy,
fearing he had lost his ability to fundraise, secretly went
to visit Trump at marri Lago just three weeks after
the January sixth attack. At first, Cheney thought the photo
of the two men smiling and shaking hands was fake,
but she was incredulous at McCarthy's defense of his visit.
(16:55):
He claimed Trump's staff summoned him marri A Lago. What
the hell? Kevin Cheney asked, are really worried? McCarthy said,
Trump's not eating, so they asked me to come see him.
What you went to mari A Lago because Trump's not eating.
(17:18):
Cheney responded, Yeah, he's really depressed. McCarthy said, Trumps not eating. Okay,
I got three here Trump's not eating because he threw
(17:42):
all of it against the wall. Trumps not eating. You
mean he's dead and Trump's not eating, not eating? Who
(18:03):
all show of interest here? Elon Musk insists Pizzagate is true,
posts as such on Twitter. So that's it. I'm done
with Twitter. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snark, some prediction. Dateline, San Francisco,
(18:38):
Good luck, Twitter, wherever you are.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Who knew that? When Elon Musk dubbed himself chief Twitch,
he meant it literally. After financially rewarding all the hate
speech and welcoming back Kanye West and Trump and going
full anti Semite and threatening Ukraine and trying to get
media matters arrested in Texas, yesterday, Musk endorsed the QAnon
(19:00):
Pizzagate theory. He shared a meme in which he said,
they who whoever they are, trafficked children, but that you're
whoever you are expert debunking pizzagate went to prison for
child porn. Musk then added a link to an NBC
News story about the conviction of a former ABC News
producer named James Meek, who did go to prison for
(19:22):
child porn and who once did refer to the debunked
Pizzagate theory, you know, the one that turned out to
actually be nothing less than an intricate political smear against
Hillary Clinton and Democrats, one so repulsive that it sent
somebody reminiscent of Musk, a deranged man named Edgar Madison
Welch into a restaurant in Washington carrying an AR fifteen,
(19:43):
demanding to be taken to the basement so he could
free the kids. There were no kids. In fact, there
was no basement, and there is no Pizzagate, and there
is no conscience in Elon Musk, because in Musk's damaged brain,
those events in the life of this guy Meek somehow
confirmed the Pizzagate theory is the truth. Musk latched onto
(20:08):
those events in Meek's life, not say Meek's appointment by
a Republican congressman to become a counter terrorism advisor to
the Republicans on the US House Committee on Homeland Security.
In any event, that was the last straw for me
Musk saying Pizzagate is true. I have been posting on
(20:29):
Twitter since early twenty ten I've promoted all my work,
including this series, on there. I've also helped recover and
save a lot of lost and at risk dogs on Twitter,
and I'll continue to do that from my account devoted
to them, which is at tom Jumbo Grumbo. But as
long as Musk is involved in Twitter, and as long
as it is now QAnon friendly, I am done posting
(20:53):
anything else there. There is actual news related to this,
not my part. I will not be missed. I will
not have an impact on this. The utility of Twitter
is so damaged now that even four years ago, every
political video I posted got thousands of actual plays because
it was on Twitter. The advantage of the podcast medium
is that you can now literally trace how every listener
(21:16):
gets to the site they listened to you from via
in my case, iHeart directly or Apple podcasts, or off Facebook,
or via YouTube, or via the video version at YouTube
or the video promos on Twitter. Well, one day last month,
we got roughly one hundred and twenty five thousand downloads
verified video plays included actual listeners who listened and by
(21:38):
the way, thank you, one hundred and twenty five thousand
listeners on one day and the number according to the
pie chart that they show you that reached the podcast
from Twitter X was twenty two, not twenty two percent.
Twenty two the number between twenty one and twenty three.
Twenty two people out of one hundred and twenty five
(22:00):
thousand got there via Twitter. I'm actually late to this part, Pardy.
CNN's media guy Oliver Darcy reports that not only are
advertisers continuing to flee Twitter X, but the flagship accounts,
the brand awareness accounts, the main Disney account, and the
main Paramount account, and Lionsgate and Sony and Universal and
Warner Bros. Discovery. None of them have posted anything anything
(22:25):
at all on Twitter X in nearly two weeks since
Elon Musk endorsed the anti Semitic Great Replacement theory. Musk's
announcement that he has joined the deranged Pizzagate conspiracy lunacy
is not going to do anything to fix this obviously
quite the opposite. One of the top psychopaths promoting this filth,
(22:45):
a woman named Liz Croken, celebrated Musk joining their little
boor yesterday. She said, quote, he would not be putting
a laser pointer on Pizzagate if Pizzagate wasn't real unquote
meet your new Twitter neighbors. I'm not going to tell
you or any company to get away from Twitter X,
certainly not while I'm still using it to save dogs,
(23:08):
although I will note that saving the dogs is more
important even than my disgust, and it is more important
than Elon Musk's psychosis. But I would just point out
that if you post on twitter X, somewhere, somehow, someday,
your name will appear next to something like Pizzagate, because
the guy who owns that hell hole now metaphorically owns Pizzagate,
(23:33):
and he owns whatever you post on his site, and thus,
in a very real way, he now owns you. Still
(24:04):
ahead of us on countdown, the creative genius who wrote
the original This Is Sports Center commercials, the originals, not
the later clever counterfeits, Hank Pearlman, was over to the
studios yesterday and we were reminiscing about some of the
amazing stuff we got away with, like the day we
had Gordy Howe beat me up, and the day I
destroyed a guitar in the middle of the ESPN newsroom.
(24:26):
But Hank and I didn't tell anybody I was going
to do that, so needless to say, I now need
to tell you all those stories in an updated version
of things I promised not to tell next, including audio
from some of the commercials first time for the daily
roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the world.
(24:50):
Besides Elon Musk, worse anchor Katrina Perry and BBC World
News America, there Washington based newscast that they run not
just on their channel worldwide, but also on a large
number of PBM stations across this country. Miss Perry is Irish.
She just moved to Washington last year. She's the one
(25:11):
Trump hit on during a news conference in twenty seventeen.
Her BBC newscast covered the memorial to former First Lady
Rosalind Carter, and the anchor, Miss Perry did the standard
anchor concerned and sad face and whispering the script and stuff.
And she mispronounced missus Carter's name, called her Roslin, called
(25:33):
her Roslind three times. How do you not tell your
anchor that the name she's going to read is not
pronounced in some common fashion? How when she screws it?
Up in the teas to the show. Do you not
then slip her a note so she doesn't do it again?
Three times? Roslin? And if you are a anchor like
(25:56):
Katrina Perry whose first name is spelled unusually, how do
you not make it your special cause in life to
spell and say other people's first names correctly? Worser Ron
de Santis? Remember Ron de Santis, no big deal. He
just may have killed a guy, well, led to a
(26:17):
guy's death. The online Florida government watchdog, The Florida Bulldog,
got redacted details from a public information records request about
how DeSantis's chief elections fraud official collapsed and died outside
DeSantis's office in September twenty twenty two. The tip they
had gotten was that Peter Antonacci was so stressed after
(26:39):
a meeting with DeSantis that he stormed out of the
meeting and then collapsed in the hallway. Nothing in the
seventeen pages of previously unknown details about the death of
the seventy four year old Antonacci confirms that Governor De
Santis was actually at the meeting, but it does confirm
his Secretary of State was and the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement chief was, and the report concludes that after
(27:00):
Antonacci collapsed, he lay where he fell, either dead or dying,
outside Ron DeSantis's office. After the twenty twenty election, mister
Antonacci had praised Florida's handling of it as perfect. Then
he suddenly changed his mind and said Trump was right
to complain. Oh, in the emergency defibrillator outside DeSantis's office,
(27:23):
it didn't work. I don't mean it didn't save the man.
I mean they could not get it to produce a
shock of any kind. And our winner the worst, the
mister Heeney of the Senate, the melted caramel faced fraud
John Kennedy of Louisiana. Once again, to quote Clarence Darrow,
there is nothing quite like seeing the fishermen pulled into
(27:46):
the water by the fish. I'm gonna play all of
his condescending, stupid, racist question about gun control and gun
violence to doctor Meghan Rannie of the Yale School of
Public Health. We're gonna play the whole thing just so
you can enjoy the completeness of the cell own. When
doctor Rannie matter of factly answers him again, just remember,
(28:10):
Senator John Kennedy is from Louisiana. Why do you.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Think that Chicago has become America's largest outdoor shooting arrange.
Do you think it's because of Chicago citizens who have
no criminal record but who have awfully a gun in
(28:41):
their home for protection or perhaps for hunting, Or do
you think it's because of a finite group of criminals
who have rap sheets as long as King Kong's arm.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates.
Release vation splash, Senator Kennedy is now in the water.
Senator John Hoist with his own fetard Kennedy, on the
other hand, that makes doctor Meghan Rannie the winner of
the award for Verbal Comeback of the Year. Senator Kennedy
(29:20):
Today's worst person and the to the number one story
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And as I told you
(29:41):
before the break, the guy who wrote all the original
This is Sports Center commercials, Hank Pearlman, visited yesterday and
that brought back the day that we had the pitcher
Roger Clemens proved that he still had his fastball by
throwing ESPN's Jack Edwards out a window. Don't worry it
it was a dummy and very obviously a dummy. And
(30:01):
the day we had both George Miken and Gordie Howe
at em ESPN doing commercials and one of the chief
ESPN executives said, nobody knows who George Mikeen is. And
the day I won Amy Vandykin's gold medals from her
in a card game, and Alexi Lalas day. The nineteen
(30:22):
ninety four Soccer World Cup did not really do that
much for American soccer, which as you know, is the
sport of the future in this country and always will be.
But it did make a lot of Americans into fans
of European soccer clubs, especially the British ones. But for
a while, Alexei Lallis, with his shoulder length, reddish blonde
(30:42):
hair and billy goat beard and anti establishment vibe was
on the front burner of American sports and he made
quite a nice career out of it as a commentator
on soccer on TV. But back then, naturally, ESPN, launching
its surrealist fake documentary commercial series, wanted him to be
in it, and sure enough he came to Bristol and
(31:03):
Hank Perlman devised bit in which Gary Miller, our anchor,
who was himself a soccer immortal for his soccer breakdown
which I played to you, you know, John Luca Palyuka,
the Mother, et cetera. Gary would be sitting at a
desk in the Sports Center newsroom, as atop the adjoining desk,
Alexei Lalas sat cross legged in sunglasses, philosophizing on relaxation
(31:27):
and finally playing on his guitar Michael Rowe the boat ashore.
At that point, the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's film Animal House. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom, pull the guitar out
of Alexei Lalas's hands and smash it against a cubicle
wall and emit a loud, primal grunt as he did so,
(31:51):
and then hand Lallas back whatever was left of the guitar,
and like Belushi in the movie, say sorry, well, Hank
had a sportscaster in mind for that role and guess
who it was me? So picture that in your mind
as I play what it sounded like, And then I
have what I think is a really good backstory to
(32:14):
the filming of this. This is Sports Center Sports Center commercial,
and I'm talking to you all afternoon about intention, about
the darkness. We got to do something about that, Michael.
(32:42):
For time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it. So
the backstory and it's out of chronological order. The guitar
that Alexei Laois was playing was not the one I smashed.
There was an exact duplicate that had been bought. It
had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and basically
it was put back together with scotch tape. It would
hold together long enough for him to sprung a few
(33:05):
sour notes on it, and then for me to grab
it and smash it. They were confident it would not
fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
But they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar and Alexe holding the
rest of it. This was especially problematic because we only
(33:27):
had the one prop guitar. That's right. We made the
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign. Not only freaquently achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two,
(33:49):
we often shot three of these commercials in one day,
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the sports center anchors who started in one or two
or three even get credit for a day off. In
one of them, Charlie Sneiner, he trying to get his
tape of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are
passing it around like a basketball, and he says, can
(34:11):
he's a little help, And I'm typing away at my
computer and I say, sure, Charlie, and I don't even
look at him, let alone stop typing, let alone give
any help. And that's done because the commercial was shot
in the area right behind my desk, because nobody was
working there that day except me, and it was around
five PM, and I was, in fact sitting at my
(34:32):
desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script, and the
original commercial script did not call for me to even
be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the writer said, hey, Keith,
can you give us one line? And I said, as
long as I can keep writing, and they said perfect.
And by the way, Charlie did the commercial around five
o'clock or so, and then went and anchored the six
(34:55):
thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we did where hockey
legend Gordy Howe beats me up while I am trying
to read through a script also shot at my also
on a day I was anchoring the show, and that
was my real script. Anyway, back to alex A. Lallis
and the guitar, so we only had the one prop guitar,
(35:16):
and so we only had the one take, and we
were shooting it in the actual SportsCenter newsroom of course.
In fact, they were remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate
the launch of the new ESPN News network, so this
was the temporary even more crowded than usual newsroom. So
the cameraman and the producer and the writer and I
walked through how they thought it would work best, since
(35:38):
I would have to weave past people who were really
doing their jobs and going to other desks and talking
to people and stuff. They had two cameras in the
little hallway that constituted the temporary newsroom's northern border, and
they put a third, smaller camera on the floor where
they guessed that a piece of the guitar might land
after I smashed it. See if you can get the
(35:59):
fret or something to go here. The producer said that
would make a great shot. I asked him how the
hell I was supposed to do that since we couldn't
even practice the smash, and he said, well, honestly, I
don't know. Telepathy. Maybe that was the other salient part
of the backstory, since we only had the one take
and we wouldn't even be doing a dry run because
(36:20):
they didn't want the guitar to fall apart in my hands.
I would say less than half the people crowded into
the temporary newsroom had any idea that when I came
in I was in the commercial, let alone, that I
was going to actually and loudly destroy a guitar by
smashing it against a low cubicle wall. Even if the
(36:41):
guitar has been pre broken and taped back together, as
that one was, it is still going to make a
lot of noise. Wait, I said to my friend Hank,
who wrote it. You're not warning anybody, are you, your
little devil? Hank got a gleeful, evil glazed look in
his eyes. No, isn't that great? So they filmed the
closeups of Gary, and they filmed the closeups of Alexi,
(37:03):
and then they set me up to enter from a
vestibule through two swinging doors with windows in them, which
was along the periphery of the temporary newsroom. Then a
right turn and then about no No fifteen twenty feet
to where Alexei and Gary were still sitting. My target
for exactly where I should hit the guitar was clearly
marked on the cubicle wall, and they even put marks
(37:23):
on the carpet of where a couple of practice walks
had shown would give me the best chance at a
solid stance. When I swung the guitar and sent it
el kabonging to its doom, and nobody ever said quiet
or roll or here we go. They told people in
the room that they were just shooting some cover angles
(37:43):
on Gary and Alexi, and people could say or move
whatever and wherever they wanted to, just so long they
didn't get away to the cameras. Then they just tapped
the desks for Alexa and Gary to start, and the
producer waved to me, and in I went, trying to
channel John Blushi when he takes the guitar away from
Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front House and
Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I tried to
(38:07):
fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found the emotion
as I came through the doors. I kept thinking that
since I had been eight years old, I had heard
people call soccer the sport of the future. Here and
I was now thirty seven, and I was damn tired
of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the nearly neutered
prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I took my strides,
(38:30):
I hit the marks. I grabbed the guitar by the
neck with my right hand and simultaneously Alexey let go,
and then with both hands, I swung the guitar back
over my head and smashed it right on the mark.
As you heard Michael Shale. The Sports Center newsroom promptly
(38:58):
went silent for several seconds. The reaction was identical to
what it would have been. There's been no commercial being
made and no cameras present, and I had just walked
in and destroyed somebody's guitar, which I guess a lot
of people expect that I might do someday because even
a lot of the people who were surprised were not
surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the skinny research guy, can be
(39:23):
seen in the finished commercial, which is on YouTube for
a second far left, just staring at me like, yeah, well,
we always knew Keys would do something like that. After
I'd destroyed the guitar, and I have to say, I
did it really well. I kept moving for the plan
until I walked back through the swinging doors and out
of shot. The director shouted cut. I walked back in,
(39:46):
and the crew gave me a round of applause, and
a couple of them were cheering out of all proportion.
Even if I had done is good of a job,
as I thought, Come here, Come here. The cameraman kept saying,
come here. That extra camera on the floor. They backed
the videotape up from it, and they showed it to me.
When I smell the guitar, the fretboard, the actual wood
(40:08):
and metal piece on the neck, flew off and not
only landed near the third camera's lens, it hit it
on the fly and it stuck there. They were as
happy as if they were engineers imploding a building for
the first time, and it had fallen exactly as they
had hoped. Plus they showed me the playback from the
first camera, and there was an assignment desk editor with
(40:30):
her back to the action on the phone, completely unaware
of what was happening or even that they were rolling
film and videotape, and she literally jumped several inches out
of her seat of her chair. But to me, the
best part of this thing is Gary Miller. Even if
you know a loud noise is coming, it is quite
(40:51):
the effort to not flinch a little when it happens
basically right over your shoulder. I mean, ask the little
kid in the movie north By Northwest where Iva Marie
Saint shoots Carry Grant and he sticks his fingers in
his ears because it's take thirty seven and he knows
the noise is coming. I mean, you're aware of it
(41:12):
just for the possibility that somebody will screw it up
like me and debris will fly into the back of
your head. But if you watch Gary Miller in this
Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink, just a little
dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What also amazes me
is that we got all this done in twenty four
(41:33):
seconds of running time Alexe goes on about negativity, they
have to do something about it. He plays enough of
the song that you recognize it. You got a shot
at cheerleaders, incongruously in the middle of the background. I
appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar while
roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of the thing.
The only thing missing is that shot from the fret
bar flying into camera three. They explained they didn't have
(41:54):
the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying doing this
so much that I asked them for the front of
the body of the guitar, and I had Alexei sign
it to me on the spot. It hung framed in
my various offices for about fifteen years. In twenty fourteen,
I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's final episode
(42:17):
for Comedy Central. I was one of one hundred guests,
and I went out onto the street to find a
cab home and I got one, and in getting into it,
I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas, who was one of
the other one hundred guests. I laughed, He laughed, and
he said, and I don't even have my guitar with me.
And one last note. I doubt this will be of
any practical use to you, but I must say, as
(42:40):
somebody who was accorded this rare privilege, not only of
doing this, but of doing this with impunity, and doing
this to applause. If you are trying to HEALTHI event
any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing a guitar
against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as satisfying as
(43:02):
you would expect it would be. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at
(43:23):
the Olberman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Countdown musical directors
Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed
most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and
the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
produced by Tko Brothers. The woman at the assignment desk
jumped probably ten feet out of her seat one hundred
(43:46):
feet out of her seat. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. And it's
called the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was to keep the
(44:08):
ESPN theme going my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was
obviously pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the
one thousand and fifty eighth day since dementia Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government in the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants
(44:29):
till then, I'm Keith Oldrerimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldremman is a production
(44:51):
of 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
is now actually trying to keep his ass out of
(00:25):
jail for subverting the twenty twenty election by insisting that
Russia interfered in the twenty sixteen election. You heard me, Russia, Russia, Russia,
and that your honor is the case for the defense
of Dementia j Trump. Trump is demanding the Judge Tanya
(00:45):
Chutkin give his lawyers access to the full classified intelligence
report proving the twenty sixteen Russian interference. And so what
if he spent seven uninterrupted years honking and bleating about
the Russia hoax and denigrating the intelligence communities conclusion that
Russia in feared in the twenty sixteen election, while insisting
(01:07):
there was no Russian interference and making it an article
of faith within the Republican cult that he was cleared
of any Russian collusion and election subversion. And so what
if he wasn't cleared of Russian collusion and election subversion
because there was no Russian collusion an election subversion. Except
now his defense is there was two Russian collusion an
election subversion quote, whereas the Special Council's Office falsely alleges
(01:32):
that President Trump quote eroded public faith in the administration
of the election, write his lawyers in a late night
filing demanding more documents for their defense against Jack Smith's
Washington case. The twenty sixteen election intelligence Community assessment uses
strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion
(01:53):
to foreign influence, that is, foreign efforts to undermine public
faith in the US democratic process unquote. Please note here
Trump and his lawyers have used the phrases foreign influence
and foreign efforts, while the document they seek says Russian
(02:16):
influence and Russian efforts. This Trumpian argument worthy of Alice
in Wonderland is that the whole idea that the twenty
twenty election was stolen or rigged or corrupt was not
something Trump dreamed up. That it was the natural, organic
reaction of the American public to the intelligence community assessment
(02:36):
that foreigners tried to fix the twenty sixteen election. Wait,
which foreigners again operating on whose behalf? Mister Trump lawyer, Well,
never mind that right now foreigners moving on the hutzpah
(02:57):
would be extraordinary. It would be on the level of
the ultimate courtroom cliche. The guy who murders his parents,
is throwing himself on the MURRCA the court because he's
now an orphan. It would be like that, except this
is how Trump has lived his life. If you can't
feel shame, you can demand anything. If you can't feel guilt,
(03:18):
you can do anything. If you can't tell the difference
between reality and what you want reality to be, you
can insist the twenty sixteen election Intelligence Community Assessment is
a slander and an insult and a travesty and a
travesty of a mockery of a sham, of a mockery
of two mockeries of a sham, and then demand the
government produced the unreleased, undeclassified version of that document because
(03:39):
it's so true that it's Katy your defense Trump's lawyer's
right to judge Chutkin that the Intelligence Community Assessment the ICA,
contains quote information relating to a significant escalation of foreign
influence in the twenty sixteen election, which motivated then president
(04:00):
Trump and his administration to focus on foreign and cyber
rich and to be skeptical of claims about the absence
of foreign influence in the twenty twenty election. We don't
know what the ICA actually contains, because obviously, if Trump
is asking the government to give him this classified secret document,
(04:22):
it means he did not steal this particular classified secret document.
But what the public unclassified ICA actually says is Russia's
goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a
(04:44):
clear preference for President elect Trump unquote. I'm guessing Trump's
lawyers don't plan to use that last part of the
ICA in his defense, But that's the problem. If they
use the other parts of it, don't, Jack Smith, then
his team get to use the Russian parts of it
to further the impression, the correct impression, that Trump was
(05:08):
already an immoral, cornered animal who would break any law
and violate any oath to this country just to get
what he wanted. I mean, you can see the defense logic.
Here's a document that says faith in the elections was
already damaged in twenty sixteen. So the charge that it
was Trump who damaged faith in the elections in twenty twenty, well,
that can't be true. But how does it help him
(05:31):
if we are relitigating the Trump Russia conspiracy. Only it's
Trump now putting into the court record classified documents that
prove that there was a Trump Russia conspiracy. If it
sounds like Trump's lawyers are already at the throwing anything
at the wall to.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
See if it sticks stage, you know, like Trump did
with lunch with ketchup on the side the side of
the wall. If it sounds like they are already well
past desperation, it is because because while Kyle Cheney of
Politico and Philip bump Up the Washington Post did such
a good job exposing this Russia self contradiction story, they
(06:11):
did not stitch it together with ABC's Fly on the
Ketchup stained Wall report of what Mike Pence told the
Special Council in his interview and grand jury testimony, and
how Pence could not only testify against Trump in the
subversion case now, but could put Trump away incredibly, Pence's
(06:34):
testimony could pivot on a misplaced comma in his book,
I Believe the title was Mother, let me write this book.
In his book, Pence recounted that he spoke to Trump
on Christmas Day twenty twenty, when the Pence can block
the certification plot was already well underway. In his book,
(06:56):
Pence quotes himself as telling Trump, and the punctuation is essential,
quote you know, comma, I don't think I have the
authority to change the outcome unquote. But Pence told Jack
Smith's investigators that the comma should not have been in
that sentence at all, And what in fact he said
(07:17):
to Trump was quote, you know, I don't think I
have the authority to change the outcome, which suggests that
Trump had begun to pressure to threaten Pence to violate
the Constitution at least thirteen days before the January sixth
coup attempt. And that is damning, not the colloquial you know,
but you know I can't do that. While this next
(07:41):
part is far less important to the trial than is
the one comma, if you think that was a near
run thing, ABC reports Pence almost went along with Trump's
backup plan. If Pence would not subvert the electoral College certification,
he should just skip it and let somebody else do it.
Looking at you, Chuck Grassley, let me quote ABC. With
(08:05):
the pressure on Pence mounting, he concluded on Christmas Eve,
just for a moment, that he would follow Trump's suggestion
and let someone else preside over the proceedings on January sixth,
writing in his notes that doing otherwise would be too
hurtful to my friend. Not feeling like I should attend
(08:26):
electoral count, Pence wrote in his notes in late December,
too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore,
I'm not going to participate in certification of election. Then,
sitting across the table from his son, a marine while
on vacation in Colorado, his son said to him, Dad,
(08:50):
you took the same oath I took. It was an
oath to support and defend the Constitution. Pence, recalled to
Smith's investigators' sources, said, unquote.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Glory, glory, hallelujah, ah, everything but father and son then
standing up and joining together in an embrace, while each
of them started waving giant thirty foot American flags in
the air, while mother went into the kitchen and baked
three thousand apple pies. A as I suggested yesterday, You
(09:29):
and I apparently were raised to recognize treason and fascism
and the attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of
the United States, and manipulation when we saw them, to
say nothing of people who say something never happened, but
if it did, I can use it for my defense,
can I? But the alarming reality is that a huge
(09:52):
and possibly decisive percentage of voters don't, wouldn't, and wouldn't
do a damn thing about it if they did see it.
The real problem, of course, is that there is also
a huge and possibly decisive percentage of political reporters who don't, wouldn't,
and wouldn't do a damn thing about it if they did.
(10:14):
Media Matters, you know, the people Elon Musk is trying
to get arrested for daring to point out his anti
Semitic social media site and more on Elon and that
later Media Matters did the math. And here's a shock.
Remember on Veteran's Day when Trump paraphrased Adolph Hitler and promised, quote,
we will root out the communists, Marxist fascists, and radical
(10:34):
left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of
our country. Remember that little colorful imagery evoking blood running
in the streets. You remember in twenty sixteen when Hillary
Clinton called Trump supporters a basket of deplorables, you don't well,
she said that, and when she said that, people actually
(10:57):
thought she was over at the top, when in fact,
only about two percent of Trump supporters are as good
as deplorable. AnyWho Media Matters has compared the coverage of
Clinton's deplorable comment by American political media and Trump's vermin
comment by American political media. And if you think those
two statements are not comparable, boy oh boy, you are right. ABC, CBS,
(11:21):
and NBC provided eighteen times more coverage of Clinton's deplorables
than Trump's vermin. On CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, the
Clinton coverage was nine times more than the Trump coverage.
In the five highest circulating US newspapers, Clinton's line got
(11:41):
twenty nine times the attention that Trump's did. I don't
know if I've mentioned this before, but American political journalism
is terrible. Those who can't do teach, those who can't
teach teach Jim. Those who can't teach Jim, report, those
(12:02):
who can't report report on politics. Politico has room for
Kyle Cheney's excellent work, as I already noted, and it
also has room for Rachel Bade, the repeatedly fired from
everywhere Ryan Liza and Eugene Daniels, who put together the
Daily Playbook newsletter. One of them, and none of them
(12:23):
is proud enough to demand a specific byline. And when
you hear this crap that will actually make sense to you.
One of them opened Yesterday's recitation of the utterly amoral
lack of convictions of the media political industrial complex with
this quote. A handful of storylines appeared destined to dominate
the twenty twenty four presidential campaign. Donald Trump's myriad legal woes,
(12:48):
voter doubts about Joe Biden's age, an unsettled economy, a
vollatile global stage. And then there's the saga of Hunter
Biden unquote. Notice anything missing in there? Yep, no mention
of Trump's plan for dictatorship. American political reporters are still
(13:11):
not taking it seriously. Trump's myriad legal woes sounds like
he's got too many parking tickets, doesn't it. He tried
to violently overthrow the government of the United States, and
if he gains power again, he hopes to terminate the Constitution.
You great useless idiots. Rachel Bade, Ryan Lizza, and Eugene
(13:37):
Daniels bet Hunter Biden bet the emails bet Hunter Biden's emails. Happily,
there was some petard hoisting about Hunter Biden. Yesterday, the
president's son publicly volunteered to testify before Congressman James I'm
(13:57):
not too good at this, am I Comer. Comer's henchman
Chairman Jason Smith of Ways and Means tweets I welcome
Hunter Biden finally agreeing to testify it it's long overdue
for him to come clean in front of the American people.
Only within minutes Smith's deletes that tweet that welcome, because,
of course, the last thing Jamie Comber wants is Hunter
(14:17):
Biden testifying in public, because that's when it would be
unavoidably shown that the only thing Comber has in his
hand is is well is little. Jamie Comer's Committee to
Obstruct Justice wants a closed deposition, not a public hearing,
so it can then leak what it wants to, because
the Hunter Biden's story is not about the truth, even
(14:38):
if it did make President Biden look bad, and it's
about making dumb voters and even dumber reporters like these
idiots at the Politico Playbook believe that the real truth
is way wait wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, way
worse and it will be revealed real soon, along with
Trump's replacement for Obamacare in just two weeks from now
(14:59):
during Infrastructure Week, Well played, Hunter Biden. One last thing
part of Liz Cheney's book has leaked out via CNN.
See she had a reason to not write a Trump
book in real time she was in Congress. Her job
was not reporting Maggie Haberman. And in addition to Liz
(15:25):
Cheney confirming what we all knew, Congress and Mark Green
called Trump quote orange Jesus. Jim Jordan doesn't give a
damn about law told her the only thing that matters
is winning, which is odd since he so seldom has.
And Cheney quotes Kevin McCarthy two days after the twenty
twenty elections saying of Trump, quote, he knows it's over.
He needs to go through all the stages of grief.
(15:49):
And now Speaker Mike Johnson the Little Worm, was pressuring
House Republicans to sign the amicus brief to help Trump's
coup lawsuit, and Johnson told her quote, we just need
to do this one last thing for Champ. In addition
to that to be expected confirmation that every American who
has ever thought, gee, we keep losing the elections. Say
(16:10):
I've got an idea, let's stop having elections. That every
one of them is in the Republican leadership at the moment.
In addition to that, there was this remarkable vignette. We
don't yet have the exact text from the Cheney book,
so I'll just read the CNN recap verbatim quote, She
(16:31):
recounts the moment she first found out that Kevin McCarthy,
fearing he had lost his ability to fundraise, secretly went
to visit Trump at marri Lago just three weeks after
the January sixth attack. At first, Cheney thought the photo
of the two men smiling and shaking hands was fake,
but she was incredulous at McCarthy's defense of his visit.
(16:55):
He claimed Trump's staff summoned him marri A Lago. What
the hell? Kevin Cheney asked, are really worried? McCarthy said,
Trump's not eating, so they asked me to come see him.
What you went to mari A Lago because Trump's not eating.
(17:18):
Cheney responded, Yeah, he's really depressed. McCarthy said, Trumps not eating. Okay,
I got three here Trump's not eating because he threw
(17:42):
all of it against the wall. Trumps not eating. You
mean he's dead and Trump's not eating, not eating? Who
(18:03):
all show of interest here? Elon Musk insists Pizzagate is true,
posts as such on Twitter. So that's it. I'm done
with Twitter. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
This is countdown with Keith Alberman. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snark, some prediction. Dateline, San Francisco,
(18:38):
Good luck, Twitter, wherever you are.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Who knew that? When Elon Musk dubbed himself chief Twitch,
he meant it literally. After financially rewarding all the hate
speech and welcoming back Kanye West and Trump and going
full anti Semite and threatening Ukraine and trying to get
media matters arrested in Texas, yesterday, Musk endorsed the QAnon
(19:00):
Pizzagate theory. He shared a meme in which he said,
they who whoever they are, trafficked children, but that you're
whoever you are expert debunking pizzagate went to prison for
child porn. Musk then added a link to an NBC
News story about the conviction of a former ABC News
producer named James Meek, who did go to prison for
(19:22):
child porn and who once did refer to the debunked
Pizzagate theory, you know, the one that turned out to
actually be nothing less than an intricate political smear against
Hillary Clinton and Democrats, one so repulsive that it sent
somebody reminiscent of Musk, a deranged man named Edgar Madison
Welch into a restaurant in Washington carrying an AR fifteen,
(19:43):
demanding to be taken to the basement so he could
free the kids. There were no kids. In fact, there
was no basement, and there is no Pizzagate, and there
is no conscience in Elon Musk, because in Musk's damaged brain,
those events in the life of this guy Meek somehow
confirmed the Pizzagate theory is the truth. Musk latched onto
(20:08):
those events in Meek's life, not say Meek's appointment by
a Republican congressman to become a counter terrorism advisor to
the Republicans on the US House Committee on Homeland Security.
In any event, that was the last straw for me
Musk saying Pizzagate is true. I have been posting on
(20:29):
Twitter since early twenty ten I've promoted all my work,
including this series, on there. I've also helped recover and
save a lot of lost and at risk dogs on Twitter,
and I'll continue to do that from my account devoted
to them, which is at tom Jumbo Grumbo. But as
long as Musk is involved in Twitter, and as long
as it is now QAnon friendly, I am done posting
(20:53):
anything else there. There is actual news related to this,
not my part. I will not be missed. I will
not have an impact on this. The utility of Twitter
is so damaged now that even four years ago, every
political video I posted got thousands of actual plays because
it was on Twitter. The advantage of the podcast medium
is that you can now literally trace how every listener
(21:16):
gets to the site they listened to you from via
in my case, iHeart directly or Apple podcasts, or off Facebook,
or via YouTube, or via the video version at YouTube
or the video promos on Twitter. Well, one day last month,
we got roughly one hundred and twenty five thousand downloads
verified video plays included actual listeners who listened and by
(21:38):
the way, thank you, one hundred and twenty five thousand
listeners on one day and the number according to the
pie chart that they show you that reached the podcast
from Twitter X was twenty two, not twenty two percent.
Twenty two the number between twenty one and twenty three.
Twenty two people out of one hundred and twenty five
(22:00):
thousand got there via Twitter. I'm actually late to this part, Pardy.
CNN's media guy Oliver Darcy reports that not only are
advertisers continuing to flee Twitter X, but the flagship accounts,
the brand awareness accounts, the main Disney account, and the
main Paramount account, and Lionsgate and Sony and Universal and
Warner Bros. Discovery. None of them have posted anything anything
(22:25):
at all on Twitter X in nearly two weeks since
Elon Musk endorsed the anti Semitic Great Replacement theory. Musk's
announcement that he has joined the deranged Pizzagate conspiracy lunacy
is not going to do anything to fix this obviously
quite the opposite. One of the top psychopaths promoting this filth,
(22:45):
a woman named Liz Croken, celebrated Musk joining their little
boor yesterday. She said, quote, he would not be putting
a laser pointer on Pizzagate if Pizzagate wasn't real unquote
meet your new Twitter neighbors. I'm not going to tell
you or any company to get away from Twitter X,
certainly not while I'm still using it to save dogs,
(23:08):
although I will note that saving the dogs is more
important even than my disgust, and it is more important
than Elon Musk's psychosis. But I would just point out
that if you post on twitter X, somewhere, somehow, someday,
your name will appear next to something like Pizzagate, because
the guy who owns that hell hole now metaphorically owns Pizzagate,
(23:33):
and he owns whatever you post on his site, and thus,
in a very real way, he now owns you. Still
(24:04):
ahead of us on countdown, the creative genius who wrote
the original This Is Sports Center commercials, the originals, not
the later clever counterfeits, Hank Pearlman, was over to the
studios yesterday and we were reminiscing about some of the
amazing stuff we got away with, like the day we
had Gordy Howe beat me up, and the day I
destroyed a guitar in the middle of the ESPN newsroom.
(24:26):
But Hank and I didn't tell anybody I was going
to do that, so needless to say, I now need
to tell you all those stories in an updated version
of things I promised not to tell next, including audio
from some of the commercials first time for the daily
roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the world.
(24:50):
Besides Elon Musk, worse anchor Katrina Perry and BBC World
News America, there Washington based newscast that they run not
just on their channel worldwide, but also on a large
number of PBM stations across this country. Miss Perry is Irish.
She just moved to Washington last year. She's the one
(25:11):
Trump hit on during a news conference in twenty seventeen.
Her BBC newscast covered the memorial to former First Lady
Rosalind Carter, and the anchor, Miss Perry did the standard
anchor concerned and sad face and whispering the script and stuff.
And she mispronounced missus Carter's name, called her Roslin, called
(25:33):
her Roslind three times. How do you not tell your
anchor that the name she's going to read is not
pronounced in some common fashion? How when she screws it?
Up in the teas to the show. Do you not
then slip her a note so she doesn't do it again?
Three times? Roslin? And if you are a anchor like
(25:56):
Katrina Perry whose first name is spelled unusually, how do
you not make it your special cause in life to
spell and say other people's first names correctly? Worser Ron
de Santis? Remember Ron de Santis, no big deal. He
just may have killed a guy, well, led to a
(26:17):
guy's death. The online Florida government watchdog, The Florida Bulldog,
got redacted details from a public information records request about
how DeSantis's chief elections fraud official collapsed and died outside
DeSantis's office in September twenty twenty two. The tip they
had gotten was that Peter Antonacci was so stressed after
(26:39):
a meeting with DeSantis that he stormed out of the
meeting and then collapsed in the hallway. Nothing in the
seventeen pages of previously unknown details about the death of
the seventy four year old Antonacci confirms that Governor De
Santis was actually at the meeting, but it does confirm
his Secretary of State was and the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement chief was, and the report concludes that after
(27:00):
Antonacci collapsed, he lay where he fell, either dead or dying,
outside Ron DeSantis's office. After the twenty twenty election, mister
Antonacci had praised Florida's handling of it as perfect. Then
he suddenly changed his mind and said Trump was right
to complain. Oh, in the emergency defibrillator outside DeSantis's office,
(27:23):
it didn't work. I don't mean it didn't save the man.
I mean they could not get it to produce a
shock of any kind. And our winner the worst, the
mister Heeney of the Senate, the melted caramel faced fraud
John Kennedy of Louisiana. Once again, to quote Clarence Darrow,
there is nothing quite like seeing the fishermen pulled into
(27:46):
the water by the fish. I'm gonna play all of
his condescending, stupid, racist question about gun control and gun
violence to doctor Meghan Rannie of the Yale School of
Public Health. We're gonna play the whole thing just so
you can enjoy the completeness of the cell own. When
doctor Rannie matter of factly answers him again, just remember,
(28:10):
Senator John Kennedy is from Louisiana. Why do you.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Think that Chicago has become America's largest outdoor shooting arrange.
Do you think it's because of Chicago citizens who have
no criminal record but who have awfully a gun in
(28:41):
their home for protection or perhaps for hunting, Or do
you think it's because of a finite group of criminals
who have rap sheets as long as King Kong's arm.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates.
Release vation splash, Senator Kennedy is now in the water.
Senator John Hoist with his own fetard Kennedy, on the
other hand, that makes doctor Meghan Rannie the winner of
the award for Verbal Comeback of the Year. Senator Kennedy
(29:20):
Today's worst person and the to the number one story
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And as I told you
(29:41):
before the break, the guy who wrote all the original
This is Sports Center commercials, Hank Pearlman, visited yesterday and
that brought back the day that we had the pitcher
Roger Clemens proved that he still had his fastball by
throwing ESPN's Jack Edwards out a window. Don't worry it
it was a dummy and very obviously a dummy. And
(30:01):
the day we had both George Miken and Gordie Howe
at em ESPN doing commercials and one of the chief
ESPN executives said, nobody knows who George Mikeen is. And
the day I won Amy Vandykin's gold medals from her
in a card game, and Alexi Lalas day. The nineteen
(30:22):
ninety four Soccer World Cup did not really do that
much for American soccer, which as you know, is the
sport of the future in this country and always will be.
But it did make a lot of Americans into fans
of European soccer clubs, especially the British ones. But for
a while, Alexei Lallis, with his shoulder length, reddish blonde
(30:42):
hair and billy goat beard and anti establishment vibe was
on the front burner of American sports and he made
quite a nice career out of it as a commentator
on soccer on TV. But back then, naturally, ESPN, launching
its surrealist fake documentary commercial series, wanted him to be
in it, and sure enough he came to Bristol and
(31:03):
Hank Perlman devised bit in which Gary Miller, our anchor,
who was himself a soccer immortal for his soccer breakdown
which I played to you, you know, John Luca Palyuka,
the Mother, et cetera. Gary would be sitting at a
desk in the Sports Center newsroom, as atop the adjoining desk,
Alexei Lalas sat cross legged in sunglasses, philosophizing on relaxation
(31:27):
and finally playing on his guitar Michael Rowe the boat ashore.
At that point, the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's film Animal House. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom, pull the guitar out
of Alexei Lalas's hands and smash it against a cubicle
wall and emit a loud, primal grunt as he did so,
(31:51):
and then hand Lallas back whatever was left of the guitar,
and like Belushi in the movie, say sorry, well, Hank
had a sportscaster in mind for that role and guess
who it was me? So picture that in your mind
as I play what it sounded like, And then I
have what I think is a really good backstory to
(32:14):
the filming of this. This is Sports Center Sports Center commercial,
and I'm talking to you all afternoon about intention, about
the darkness. We got to do something about that, Michael.
(32:42):
For time's sake, the word sorry didn't make it. So
the backstory and it's out of chronological order. The guitar
that Alexei Laois was playing was not the one I smashed.
There was an exact duplicate that had been bought. It
had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and basically
it was put back together with scotch tape. It would
hold together long enough for him to sprung a few
(33:05):
sour notes on it, and then for me to grab
it and smash it. They were confident it would not
fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
But they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar and Alexe holding the
rest of it. This was especially problematic because we only
(33:27):
had the one prop guitar. That's right. We made the
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign. Not only freaquently achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two,
(33:49):
we often shot three of these commercials in one day,
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the sports center anchors who started in one or two
or three even get credit for a day off. In
one of them, Charlie Sneiner, he trying to get his
tape of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are
passing it around like a basketball, and he says, can
(34:11):
he's a little help, And I'm typing away at my
computer and I say, sure, Charlie, and I don't even
look at him, let alone stop typing, let alone give
any help. And that's done because the commercial was shot
in the area right behind my desk, because nobody was
working there that day except me, and it was around
five PM, and I was, in fact sitting at my
(34:32):
desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script, and the
original commercial script did not call for me to even
be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the writer said, hey, Keith,
can you give us one line? And I said, as
long as I can keep writing, and they said perfect.
And by the way, Charlie did the commercial around five
o'clock or so, and then went and anchored the six
(34:55):
thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we did where hockey
legend Gordy Howe beats me up while I am trying
to read through a script also shot at my also
on a day I was anchoring the show, and that
was my real script. Anyway, back to alex A. Lallis
and the guitar, so we only had the one prop guitar,
(35:16):
and so we only had the one take, and we
were shooting it in the actual SportsCenter newsroom of course.
In fact, they were remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate
the launch of the new ESPN News network, so this
was the temporary even more crowded than usual newsroom. So
the cameraman and the producer and the writer and I
walked through how they thought it would work best, since
(35:38):
I would have to weave past people who were really
doing their jobs and going to other desks and talking
to people and stuff. They had two cameras in the
little hallway that constituted the temporary newsroom's northern border, and
they put a third, smaller camera on the floor where
they guessed that a piece of the guitar might land
after I smashed it. See if you can get the
(35:59):
fret or something to go here. The producer said that
would make a great shot. I asked him how the
hell I was supposed to do that since we couldn't
even practice the smash, and he said, well, honestly, I
don't know. Telepathy. Maybe that was the other salient part
of the backstory, since we only had the one take
and we wouldn't even be doing a dry run because
(36:20):
they didn't want the guitar to fall apart in my hands.
I would say less than half the people crowded into
the temporary newsroom had any idea that when I came
in I was in the commercial, let alone, that I
was going to actually and loudly destroy a guitar by
smashing it against a low cubicle wall. Even if the
(36:41):
guitar has been pre broken and taped back together, as
that one was, it is still going to make a
lot of noise. Wait, I said to my friend Hank,
who wrote it. You're not warning anybody, are you, your
little devil? Hank got a gleeful, evil glazed look in
his eyes. No, isn't that great? So they filmed the
closeups of Gary, and they filmed the closeups of Alexi,
(37:03):
and then they set me up to enter from a
vestibule through two swinging doors with windows in them, which
was along the periphery of the temporary newsroom. Then a
right turn and then about no No fifteen twenty feet
to where Alexei and Gary were still sitting. My target
for exactly where I should hit the guitar was clearly
marked on the cubicle wall, and they even put marks
(37:23):
on the carpet of where a couple of practice walks
had shown would give me the best chance at a
solid stance. When I swung the guitar and sent it
el kabonging to its doom, and nobody ever said quiet
or roll or here we go. They told people in
the room that they were just shooting some cover angles
(37:43):
on Gary and Alexi, and people could say or move
whatever and wherever they wanted to, just so long they
didn't get away to the cameras. Then they just tapped
the desks for Alexa and Gary to start, and the
producer waved to me, and in I went, trying to
channel John Blushi when he takes the guitar away from
Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front House and
Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I tried to
(38:07):
fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found the emotion
as I came through the doors. I kept thinking that
since I had been eight years old, I had heard
people call soccer the sport of the future. Here and
I was now thirty seven, and I was damn tired
of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the nearly neutered
prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I took my strides,
(38:30):
I hit the marks. I grabbed the guitar by the
neck with my right hand and simultaneously Alexey let go,
and then with both hands, I swung the guitar back
over my head and smashed it right on the mark.
As you heard Michael Shale. The Sports Center newsroom promptly
(38:58):
went silent for several seconds. The reaction was identical to
what it would have been. There's been no commercial being
made and no cameras present, and I had just walked
in and destroyed somebody's guitar, which I guess a lot
of people expect that I might do someday because even
a lot of the people who were surprised were not
surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the skinny research guy, can be
(39:23):
seen in the finished commercial, which is on YouTube for
a second far left, just staring at me like, yeah, well,
we always knew Keys would do something like that. After
I'd destroyed the guitar, and I have to say, I
did it really well. I kept moving for the plan
until I walked back through the swinging doors and out
of shot. The director shouted cut. I walked back in,
(39:46):
and the crew gave me a round of applause, and
a couple of them were cheering out of all proportion.
Even if I had done is good of a job,
as I thought, Come here, Come here. The cameraman kept saying,
come here. That extra camera on the floor. They backed
the videotape up from it, and they showed it to me.
When I smell the guitar, the fretboard, the actual wood
(40:08):
and metal piece on the neck, flew off and not
only landed near the third camera's lens, it hit it
on the fly and it stuck there. They were as
happy as if they were engineers imploding a building for
the first time, and it had fallen exactly as they
had hoped. Plus they showed me the playback from the
first camera, and there was an assignment desk editor with
(40:30):
her back to the action on the phone, completely unaware
of what was happening or even that they were rolling
film and videotape, and she literally jumped several inches out
of her seat of her chair. But to me, the
best part of this thing is Gary Miller. Even if
you know a loud noise is coming, it is quite
(40:51):
the effort to not flinch a little when it happens
basically right over your shoulder. I mean, ask the little
kid in the movie north By Northwest where Iva Marie
Saint shoots Carry Grant and he sticks his fingers in
his ears because it's take thirty seven and he knows
the noise is coming. I mean, you're aware of it
(41:12):
just for the possibility that somebody will screw it up
like me and debris will fly into the back of
your head. But if you watch Gary Miller in this
Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink, just a little
dead pan head jerk. It's perfect. What also amazes me
is that we got all this done in twenty four
(41:33):
seconds of running time Alexe goes on about negativity, they
have to do something about it. He plays enough of
the song that you recognize it. You got a shot
at cheerleaders, incongruously in the middle of the background. I
appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar while
roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of the thing.
The only thing missing is that shot from the fret
bar flying into camera three. They explained they didn't have
(41:54):
the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying doing this
so much that I asked them for the front of
the body of the guitar, and I had Alexei sign
it to me on the spot. It hung framed in
my various offices for about fifteen years. In twenty fourteen,
I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's final episode
(42:17):
for Comedy Central. I was one of one hundred guests,
and I went out onto the street to find a
cab home and I got one, and in getting into it,
I nearly ran into Alexei Lalas, who was one of
the other one hundred guests. I laughed, He laughed, and
he said, and I don't even have my guitar with me.
And one last note. I doubt this will be of
any practical use to you, but I must say, as
(42:40):
somebody who was accorded this rare privilege, not only of
doing this, but of doing this with impunity, and doing
this to applause. If you are trying to HEALTHI event
any frustrations or anger in your life, smashing a guitar
against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly as satisfying as
(43:02):
you would expect it would be. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at
(43:23):
the Olberman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Countdown musical directors
Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed
most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and
the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums,
produced by Tko Brothers. The woman at the assignment desk
jumped probably ten feet out of her seat one hundred
(43:46):
feet out of her seat. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. And it's
called the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was to keep the
(44:08):
ESPN theme going my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was
obviously pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the
one thousand and fifty eighth day since dementia Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government in the
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants
(44:29):
till then, I'm Keith Oldrerimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldremman is a production
(44:51):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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