WE NEED A NEW COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IMMEDIATELY - 2.20.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 100: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump thinks we are not vulnerable to attack because the Atlantic Ocean separates us from Europe. He literally wrote this yesterday. This illusion of oceanic walls was shattered no later than the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and more likely the first time a German craft was seen off the shores of this country during the First World War.

It's madness. It's disqualifying. And it got lost amid the madness about calling Zelensky a dictator and threatening Ukraine and Trump describing himself as "King" and and and...

"This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big beautiful ocean as separation.” 

Ironically, the man who disproved the "separation" was Charles Lindbergh with his solo crossing of the Atlantic and it is Lindbergh's America First Isolationists of the '30s whom Trump is now emulating. If you've ever wondered what it would have been like had Lindbergh become president and done a deal with Hitler, stop wondering. We're living through it now - only with Putin.

AND DON'T DISMISS THE "KING" STUFF: “Congestion Pricing Is Dead. Manhattan and all of New York is saved. Long live the king.” I don’t know who the king could BE in this construction if Trump doesn’t mean Trump. I do know a Tea Party slob Trump made Deputy White House Chief of Staff promptly tweeted it with an AI image of Trump in fetching king’s robes that like his suits was clearly cut to hide his belly. The official White House account then put out a fake magazine cover with him wearing a crown two or three sizes too small. It is tempting to dismiss this as trolling but at minimum this is part of the effort to make him look omnipotent and mandated instead of a president with 49-point-eight percent of the vote and a disapproval poll rating that went from 41 percent on inauguration day to 51 percent last week.

B-Block (31:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Markwayne Mullin makes everybody really uncomfortable at a Senate hearing. The NHL somehow thinks Trump's threats against Canada are an excellent marketing tool for their little hockey game tonight. And Stephen A. Smith thinks it's an embarrassment that people keep saying he should run for president and by people he means himself and by embarrassment he means please somebody say it.

C-Block (42:20) COMIC RELIEF: Two lighter stories. There's the weirdest thing ever said to me by an athlete in an interview, by the late hockey great Bobby Hull, who is posthumously in the news. And there was a flashback to my original MSNBC show at of all places The Animal Medical Center. And the flashback involved making fun of Wolf Blitzer.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

(00:25):
nation must have a new commander in chief immediately. The
current one is mentally incapable of keeping the United States
of America safe, and, with one seemingly throwaway remark, he
has literally left this country vulnerable to attack. This is
less about his evil. This is less about his betrayal
of Ukraine and our allies. This is less about his

(00:47):
pouring himself out to putin. This is even less about
his apparent reference to himself yesterday as the King, which
was promptly amplified by White House social media, in which
you dismiss as trolling at your risk and at the
risk of the democracy. This is about Trump's now complete
disconnection from reality, from the baseline truths about what risks

(01:11):
America faces in the twenty first century. This war, he
posted in the middle of his diet tribe against Zelenski
yesterday is far more important to Europe than it is
to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.
This idea that America is in some way protected by

(01:33):
the Atlantic or the Pacific, or both of them, has
been poignantly absurd, since no lighter than Pearl Harbor in
nineteen forty one. It is madness exceeding anything Trump has
said or claimed before. Somehow Trump has forgotten about the
prospect of weapons in space. Trump has forgotten about intercontinental missiles.

(01:56):
Trump has forgotten about airplanes. Trump has forgotten that the big,
beautiful ocean can be crossed in five hours. The ocean
didn't do a damn thing to halt nine to eleven,
that the ocean didn't do a damn thing preventing Putin's
soft power invasions of our country the last nine years,
especially insomuch as Trump helped. But with this ocean madness,

(02:17):
Trump has now moved his incompetence from a twenty four
hour a day risk to the safety of every American citizen, city, territory.
He's moved it from that baseline of potential disaster around
every corner to an immediate crisis in which, because of
what he doesn't seem to understand, in which, because of

(02:40):
what he doesn't seem to understand, our nation could be
bombed out of existence in half an hour, and he
would not even bother to come in off the goddamned
golf course because he thinks we have a big, beautiful
Ocean as separation. You know, the last people to actively
point to the Atlantic and the Pacific as the guarranteurs

(03:04):
of our safety. The isolationists of the nineteen thirties, the
ones who wanted to cut a deal with Hitler, the
ones led by Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly
solo across the Atlantic and thus the first to disprove
what Trump said yesterday, Led by Lindbergh, led by the

(03:24):
other quizzlings of the more disgraceful parts of our history,
the Trumps of their time, the isolationists of the thirties
and early forties. What would have happened if Charles Lindbergh
had been elected president in nineteen forty He was, for
at least a while, one of the favorites for the
Republican nomination to run against Fdr. What if this isolationist

(03:50):
occasional brilliance atop a giant dunghill of selfish laziness nation
really had sided with the Nazis in the nineteen thirties
and either joined them in sublimating the world, or, as
Lindberg and the elationists preferred, simply stood aside and watched

(04:10):
guess what we are finding out in real time? What
would have happened if Lindbergh had been in power and
had sided with the Nazis, Because that's what Trump is
doing now. And it's not even the comparatively happy ending
versions of that which we've seen in the Wroth novel

(04:31):
or a dozen other films and sagas, but the real
life version in which there is no rescue and no
remorse and no collective conscience that stops us in time,
where we elect a president with prejudices and hatreds and
evils in his heart, or worse yet, no heart at all,
nothing but a wallet where his soul should be, and

(04:54):
nothing at all where his brain should be. What would
have happened if Lindbergh had become the thirty third president,
or Senator William Bora had or an unassassinated Huey Long,
and they had done a deal with Hitler and sold
it to this nation as our only chance of survival
in a world where, for all they knew, the imaginary

(05:17):
threats lind Bergen vote were real, but the real threats
he downplayed were unsurvivable. What would have happened to us then, well,
we would have been in nineteen thirty nine or nineteen
forty where we are today. First, we would have had,
within a year, within maybe months, cleared the path for

(05:40):
a European war in which one power would have swept
back from failure and bankruptcy, a near national collapse into
total ruthless, murderous domination of France, of England, to Poland,
of Italy, of all the places who thought we would
help them. Their collapse would have meant nowhere for Canada

(06:01):
or Mexico to turn. If the still resource rich Americans
had wanted their territory or fuel, or people, or just
the land, we would have taken them with little trouble,
and we would have split Latin and South America with Hitler,
maybe not even that, maybe just given him Africa and
we take the entirety of this hemisphere. That would have

(06:25):
been first. If we had made a deal with Hitler,
it would have taken quite an army, of course, to
maintain all that new territory. So the first step would
have been to strip social spending in this country such
as it was in nineteen thirty nine, roll back everything
those liberals had just put in place, destroy that new
safety net put in for a Pentagon budget increase of

(06:49):
just to pick a figure at random, say another three
hundred and five billion a year, while virtually going through
the rest of the budget and just refusing to spend
that money, even though it's in constitution that you can't
just refuse to spend that money, no matter who the
hell you think you are. And we would have folded
the manufacturers and the cutting edge inventors and the new

(07:10):
industries into the Government of nineteen thirty nine in semi
official roles. Maybe something like international business machines would have
been able to speed up the conversion from peaceful society
with at least passing token, clunky efforts to enhance the
lives of citizens, taken it from that into a wartime

(07:31):
literally machine, a perpetual wartime machine. Now there's no fear
of unemployment. If everybody's in the military putting down the
rebellions in British Columbia and British Guiana, well we would
have had to change their names, since Hitler would have
erased Britain by then. We'd have had to change other

(07:52):
things too. If President Lindbergh had subsumed Mexico, I mean,
you wouldn't have a Mexico anymore, would you so? Gulf
of Mexico would have been pretty silly, wouldn't it. We
would have been in nineteen forty where we are today.
The meetings with Russia are not about Ukraine. The Russians

(08:16):
said as much. The meetings between the United States and
Russia are about dividing Ukraine between US and dividing the
rest of Europe between US. Jd. Vance wasn't just avenging
himself against professors who told him he didn't know enough
to pass a freshman course in modern European history. He

(08:37):
was giving them, the Europeans, a hint of what is coming. Noah,
you better install fascist friendly regimes, because we are going
to own North and South America and this neighborhood here,
this is going to be Putin's. And if you already
have a Putin friendly quasi dictatorship ready to roll dictator

(08:57):
orban Madame La Penn, mister Wilders, Putin won't need to
waste any money or blow to install one. He'll just
use yours and you can stay in charge, running your
little corner of his empire. For now, we've been too focused,
understandably on not being critical. I've been doing it too.

(09:19):
We've been too focused to a ghast, to a ghast
at the revisionist acceptance of the Holocaust, and even worse
than now, active promotion of the Holocaust by people like
the Fances and Musks, to a gas at the betrayal
of Ukraine, and more selfishly, the seeming ignorance of our
new insect overlords that know the Zelensky's right. Putin will

(09:43):
take Europe next. Who's going to stop him? In Poland,
in Germany, in England. We have been too stunned by
the details to even contemplate the big picture, let alone
recognize that it is already being painted as we speak
at this minute. The meetings with the Russians are about

(10:04):
device up the world. Because we don't have Lindberg with
his seven illegitimate children in Germany. We have Trump with
his four idiot adult children here. And the utter unabashed
evil isn't in Germany this time anyway, it's lightly to

(10:24):
the eastern Russia. And yet otherwise it's just the World
War two, maps and plans and goals and dreams and
nightmares all over again, only this time they were smarter
than Hitler. Hitler didn't have the presence of mind to
keep his big bazoo shut and keep his true evil
goals to himself until it was too late for anybody
to do anything about it. It never really occurred to

(10:48):
Hitler that sure, funding the German American League in this
country the bund was a nice way to show the
flag here. But again, where was the subtlety? He should
have spent his money on influencers and covert propaganda and
buying it congresswomen. Hitler would have should have could have

(11:11):
compromised the TULSEI Gabbard and J. D Vance and Mark
Zuckerberg types of his day, and assessing the amazing lack
of self defense built into the American form of government
and its naive, pathetic reliance on the goodwill of all
the parties, and spending every ruble he could find making
sure Trump got elected. I'm sorry, Typho, making sure Lindberg

(11:36):
got elected, spending every Deutsche mark he could find, making
sure Lindbergh got elected got my alternative nineteen thirty eight
history confused with my alternative twenty twenty five twenty six history.
It's sorry, except it's not alternative twenty twenty five twenty
six history. Is it? Trump's five dollars horror. Marco Rubio

(12:00):
meets with Lavrov in Riad to figure out which ways
to accelerate the dis memberment of Ukraine. The way in
which we sell Ukraine a truce and take their rare
minerals instead of getting our money back. If we have
to get our money back from bandits who caused this,
that would be the Russians. And then after the truce

(12:23):
or the ceasefire, when the Russians have resupplied and restocked
their war machine and they violate the ceasefire and the
token European troops get slaughtered in Kiev, and we don't
defend our NATO allies and instead we attack the one
north of us and putin rolls into Krackoff and Warsaw
and Berlin and Paris. Hey, what are you gonna do?

(12:46):
Shrug emoji? I mean, what's the big problem here? We've
got that ocean, don't we that beautiful ocean? And the
video game networks is still intact, and look at that
stock market, and the Netflix streams are clearer than ever
they're now in seventy And is it nicer not to
have to worry about where to bigation? Now? Given how

(13:09):
cheap the Mediterranean view. Russian stewge suites are at the
new Trump Gaza Riviera Resort, complete with its two hundred
and twenty seven different golf courses. The next European war
is being planned, and probably the next World war is

(13:30):
being planned, with it first this week in Saudi Arabia,
then whenever Trump goes to the Kremlin and unfortunately comes
back or Putin comes here. The Russians described the Riyad
meeting not as a way to resolve the crisis they

(13:50):
created in Ukraine, but as a first step towards improving
relations with the United States. Their invasion of Ukraine is
incidental to them. Their invasion of the United States is
the key. What the Russians are going to do next
in our country is the key, because we have a

(14:16):
president who thinks we are protected by water. But don't worry,
you aren't at risk. Your stocks will continue to rise,
the Times will keep publishing a new wordle every day,
while both sides in forced relocation as opposed to ethnic cleansing.

(14:37):
Because finally, finally, finally, the United States of America, it's
not going to get surprised by a world war. We're
not going to make that repeat mistake of trying to
stop it. We're going to help start it. Because our
God send visionary fere Trump has seen what Wilson and Teddy,

(15:00):
Roosevelt and FDR and all the other idiots never could.
He has seen in the coming World War, what they
never even dreamed of. He has seen the American ownership
position in the next World War. The beautiful ocean will

(15:20):
protect us. This nation needs a new commander in chief
and needs him or her to day. Oh and Trump's

(15:56):
lies about President Zelenski of Ukraine, who clearly so ticked
him off so much yesterday when he said Trump was
quote living in a disinform space unquote manipulated by Russia,
which is a plain statement of fact. Trump responded by
calling Zelensky a dictator who didn't have elections, even though

(16:17):
the constitution there prohibits elections while there's martial law. And
then he threatens Lensky and this is all about the
phone call. I just need you to do me a favor. Though.
Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have
a country left. Maybe, mister Trump, Zelensky can get himself
a beautiful ocean. I understand an ocean solves everything. Interesting

(16:41):
phrasing here, he better move faster, or he's not going
to have a country left. Zelensky, better move faster. He's
not going to have a country left. America. Better move faster.
They are not going to have a country left. Just
thinking out loud. Trump later boasted that he had stopped
congestion pricing here in New York. He hasn't. The city
and state sued to overturn a ruling about that by

(17:05):
the Secretary of Reality shows, mister Duffy. Even the secretary
himself knew he would be in court instantaneously. His ruling
was not even supposed to take effect for a month.
But Trump wrote, congestion pricing is dead Manhattan and all
New York is saved. Long live the King. I don't
know who the king could be in this construction of

(17:26):
Trump doesn't mean Trump in that sentence. Manhattan is the king.
He said, New York has been destroyed. Congestion pricing is
the king. No, he meant Trump is the king. I
do know a tea party slob that Trump made. Deputy
White House Chief of Staff promptly tweeted that with an
AI image of Trump in fetching King's robes that, like

(17:48):
his suits, was clearly cut to hide his belly, and
the official White House account then put out a fake
magazine cover with a drawing of Trump wearing a crown
two or three sizes too small. And it is tempting
to dismiss, as many people did, as trolling or as
a distraction, but at minimum, this is part of the
effort to make him look omnipotent and invincible and mandated

(18:12):
instead of what he really is, which is a president
with forty nine point eight percent of the vote and
a disapproval poll rating that went from forty one percent
on inauguration day to fifty one percent last week, ten
points in a month in the wrong direction. By the way,

(18:34):
I hear long Live the King, and having lived in
LA for a long time, I think of the guy
who used to do his own commercials for big screen TVs,
Paul the King of big Screens. No emotion in his
voice whatsoever. Sounded like he was trying to be enthusiastic,
but Jess couldn't quite pull it off. And he'd finished
this thing off with I Am the King. I hear

(18:56):
that same inflection in Trump's voice, I am the King,
King forty nine point eight percent. As to the King's Boss.
I hate to endorse anything from Steve Mannon, but Steve
Mannon on e long musk quote a parasitic illegal immigrant

(19:18):
Check who wants to impose his freak experiments and play
act as God Check without any respect for the country's history, values,
or traditions. Wait that last part, Bannon, are you four
or against it? Then there's Trump's attempt to repurpose the

(19:40):
failed mayor of New York City, Eric Adams as a
Trump drone b This will wait another day. The judge
holding off a ruling maybe today on whether or not
to go ahead with the dismissal of the corruption charges
against Adams, giving Trump's first weaponizing tool inside the DOJ.
Emil Beauveat the chance to insist at prosecuting Adams was weaponizing,

(20:08):
and Bove got another chance to threaten everybody still at
the Department of Justice, all five or ten employees. You
know this guy. You've seen this guy. He's the one
who looks exactly like exactly like Uncle Fester. Thank you,

(21:05):
Nancy Faust. We have our first white supremacist. Hey, your
white clan sheet is showing citing the Texas Observer reports
the operator of an extremely racist social media account with
such pithy observations as quote, all blacks are foreign to
my people and quote America is a white nation founded

(21:26):
by whites. And last year quote nobody is proposing feeding
migrants into tree shredders, yet unquote the author of that
is actually an ICE attorney in Dallas. This after the
head of ICE Tom innumerable chins Homeman threatened to put
AOC behind bars because she reminded migrants that they have

(21:49):
rights even if the Gestapo grabs them. Can't be innocent
until proven guilty. Not the Tom Hoeman, the interim US
attorney in DC at Martin, maybe even crazier. He is
angry the Democrats are reacting at all against the doge embezzlements.

(22:13):
He is personally launching an investigation into Senator Chuck Schumer
for trying to stop doge I wish. This underscores my
point to Democrats that milk toast color within the lines.
Responses to the kaleidoscope of crime already perpetrated by Trump

(22:35):
will be treated just as harshly by Trump and his whores,
as will be the kind of responses that actually rally
opposition and cheer. People who remember the good old days
when we still had a democracy. The good old days,
you remember them a month ago this morning, all right,

(23:08):
a couple of laughs. Lauren Bobert has appeared in a
photo standing next to a statue of Trump with his
hand raised and clenched. So she raised her hand and
clenched it. Obviously, this statue honored Bobert's date at that
theater in Colorado. Let's hear it for the boy. Let's

(23:31):
give the boy a hand. Meanwhile, there is this from
Congresswoman Claudia Tenny, who faulted into the House of Representatives
after hosting a radio show in Oneida, New York. Oneida
near Wampsville. Congressman Tenny moves to make President Trump's birthday
a federal holiday. Congressman Claudia Tenney blah blah blah blah blah,

(23:54):
idiot from New Establishment Act officially designate June fourteenth as
a federal holiday to commemorate President Donald J. Trump's birthday
and flag day. Born on June fourteenth, nineteen forty six.
That's right. Remind everybody he's really really old and coming
apart at the seams. Trump's birthday coincided with Flag Day,

(24:16):
had it been adopted by then, had flag Day already
started by nineteen forty six? I mean the Stars and
Shrapes was adopted in seventeen seventy seven. That's roughly that's
like the same decade as Trump's birth. Legislation would permanently
codify a new federal holiday called Trump's Birthday and flag Day. Hey,

(24:38):
let's run Trump up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.
Better be a strong flagpole. This goes along with the
Addison McDowell push to rename Dulles in Washington Trump Airport. Actually,
and sorry in advance for this, the idea of naming
anything Trump Airport that would probably be better used as

(24:59):
the name of that stretch of the Potomac next to
National Airport, and the annap Paulina Luna bill to put
Trump's head on Mount Rushmore. Now hear me out, I
think we should all consider supporting that. Consider Anna Paulina
Luna's idea to put Trump's head on Mount Rushmore, as

(25:25):
long as she means his real head. Also of interest
on an all new editions Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. As
weird enough as it is without getting all broke back
Mountain on US at a Senate hearing. And you would
think even hockey guys would know that Trump's threat to

(25:45):
coerce or annex or invade Canada might just be a
third rail in Canada right before a title game between
the US and Canada. No, sir, the American team general
manager has decided a possible war between these two countries
is good motivation for his team in their stupid, meaningless

(26:08):
exhibition little hockey game tonight. That's next. This is Countdown.
Biscuit in the basket. This is Countdown with Keith Oberman.
Oberman still ahead in this all new edition of Countdown,

(26:48):
a new segment comic relief. It was the creepiest thing
an athlete has ever said to me. I mean unintentionally.
And it just came to the four again with some
sad news yesterday and the person I into it the
animal hospital who sounded like the reporter from my first

(27:09):
MSNBC show twenty seven years ago. That was because she
was the reporter from my first MSNBC show twenty seven
years ago. Well, that ahead in comic relief. I'm working
on a new title first, believe it or not, there's
still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who

(27:32):
constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Dedicated today
to Sean Hannity and Lara Trump. Lara Trump idiot, Eric's
idiot wife, the one whose eyes go in different directions,
who recently started quote singing unquote, who has produced a

(27:53):
fitness video in which it certainly looks like she's appearing
as the before in the before and after contrast. Hannity
introduced her on his show the other night as quote,
this is a exact quote the host of the upcoming
hit show My View with Laura Shitt Trump. Why did

(28:16):
you have to add Trump? I mean he got something
right for the first time, first honest thing, Sean said
in twenty nine damn years My View with Laura, You
bet your ass. Any who hear the nominees the runner
up worse Senator Mark Wain, I'm not creepy at all,
Mullin of Oklahoma. First off, Mark Wayne, Mark Wayne, make

(28:43):
up your mind, Mark Wain. During a hearing last year,
Mark Wayne nearly threw hands with union leader Sean O'Brien.
They screamed at each other and threatened to go outside.
What we thought it was about a fight, Maybe maybe
it wasn't. Yesterday O'Brien attended another hearing at which Senator

(29:04):
said they were now friends, and Senator Mullen added, quote
on the record, if we were in a relationship, I'd
be the man in the relationship. Okay, I am beginning

(29:31):
to suspect, because it would explain everything that when we
do the post mortem, I mean, the frustration and the
lies and everything else, and the madness in these people,
and the desire to hurt members of any minority group,
any oppressed group. When we do the post mortem on
the late United States of America, we will discover that

(29:55):
as many as ninety percent of maga Republican men who
were elected to office during this nightmare, that they were
actually self denying, self clothing gay men. That's just my guess.
If we were in a relationship, mister O'Brien, I'd be
the man in the relationship. Okay, you used your a

(30:21):
loud voice for that, Senator Mark Wayne runners up the
National Hockey League. Okay, at first, it's Bill Garren, the
general manager of the United States team at the four
Nations face Off and with him commentator PK. Sue Ban
from ESPN. The Four Nations Face Off is a series

(30:45):
of meaningless exhibition games for which they stopped the National
Hockey League season at its prime moment for two weeks
so they could play seven exhibition games, which concludes tonight
with the United States versus Canada, with Canada having been
given a kind of penalty weight that could put extra
wait on a jockey. To make it even with the

(31:06):
other horses and jockeys, they have to play their worst
goalie again just to make it close. Mister Garin, who
runs the Minnesota Wild and is from woos To, mass
has decided that the threat made to Canada's sovereignty by
the current president of the United States is bulletin board
material for his team. I think there was a little

(31:29):
bit of political flat to it. It's just the game
that we're in Canada and the United States played Saturday
night and there were three fights in the first nine seconds.
I think our guys use that as inspiration. You let
it get the better of you, then you're in trouble.
But I really do think the play has used it
as inspiration. Garon also called the game the highest level

(31:50):
of hockey ever played, and he extended an invite to
Trump to attend the final game, which is tonight in Boston, Boston.
We would love it if President Trump was in attendance.
We have a room full of prouda may can play
as and coaches and staff and listen, We're just trying
to represent our country the best way we can. Bill

(32:13):
Garroon has a troubled, troubled history, and now he says
this to you need to get him some help. I'm
going no further than that. And then yesterday PK Suban,
who first was the most overrated defenseman in the National
Hockey League, then became the most overrated studio analyst for

(32:34):
ESPN's appallingly bad National Hockey League coverage. He tweeted, imagine
Trump shows up on Thursday. Mister Trump, your up chips
are pushed in folks who you got and he spelled
your yo. You are, mister Bettman. Donald Trump has threatened

(32:55):
to annex Canada. And if this is not a particular
concern to you, I might point out that seven of
your businesses, seven of your franchises, are in Canada. It's
not like baseball where there's just the Toronto Blue Jays,
or football where there are no Canadian teams in the NFL,
where the NBA, where there's one team. Seven of your
businesses are located, including that one in Toronto, where the

(33:18):
Hockey Hall of Fame is, your fans there, your players
from Canada, and forty one percent of the league is
still Canadian. They are enraged about this, just as Gary,
you would be if Prime Minister Trudeau announced that he
was going to annex the United States and he had
the firepower to do it, make it an extra province.

(33:41):
God knows we need to do something else here. If
the general manager of one of your teams in this
four Nations tournament had invited, say the general manager of
the Swedish team or the Finnish team had invited Vladimir
Putin to a game to emphasize his plans to a
next Ukraine, Or if the Canadians had invited AOC to

(34:02):
emphasize plans to impeach Trump, the outrage and the recriminations
from your office would have been amazing and total. There
would have been year long suspensions for this. Right now.
The Canadians have been restrained right now, but as it
has been in the last couple of years, Commissioner Bettman,

(34:23):
you coward's erased Pride Night because of one of Bill
Garn's players from the Minnesota Wild who is a Russian
homophobe and objected to all that gainess. Yet you allow this,
You allow the general manager of the team to basically
invite the president as he's threatening the other country, and
the allow this idiot Sue Band to say essentially the

(34:45):
same thing. No follow up, no comments, no don't do
that again, no killing of the tweet. Even Canada's fans
have been really restrained. I think they should stop being
restrained when the season resumes on Saturday. I hope Canadian
fans at every game in which the American team is
visiting the Canadian team, I hope Canadian fans not only

(35:07):
refuse to even stand for the American anthem, I hope
they boo continuously and drown the American anthem out. See
what you do, then, Betman, you hapless clown, but our winner.
Speaking of hapless clowns, Stephen A. Smith, I'm afraid to
report that Stephen A. Smith's ego has finally escaped. It

(35:30):
is now destroying buildings like the god Zilla sized creature
it is. He went on a podcast with Tommy Veeder
talking politics. I'm not sure why his experience in politics
as being a friend of Sean Hannity's. That's like less
than knowing nothing about politics, but talking politics Stephen A.

(35:51):
Smith when talking sports often proves too much for him.
Stephen did one of those I don't know why everybody's
saying I should be president things, one of those hold
me back, hold me back, I shouldn't be running for president.
Veeter said, I do think there's space between yes, Trump
has a mandate and the suggestion you see sometimes that
Democrats shouldn't be fighting back, or that we're the problem

(36:11):
for fighting back, that it's the wrong optics are messaging,
to which Steven A. Smith said something that had nothing
to do with what had just been said. That's not
that much of a surprise, but here it is. Quote Well,
what I would say is that you are wrong, and
the reason you are wrong is because never before has
the Democratic Party been this damaged. This is bad, bro.

(36:32):
The Democratic Party lost, let's see the nineteen sixty eight elections,
after a landslide in nineteen sixty four, then they lost
in seventy two, nearly lost in seventy six, lost in eighty,
lost in eighty four, lost in eighty eight, But never
before has the Democratic Party been this damaged this year,

(36:53):
that's true this year. Smith also said Democrats need to
run a fearless candidate in twenty twenty eight who has
box office appeal. Quote. I believe it is an utter
embarrassment to the Democrat Party that I am a candidate
in people's eyes for the presidency of the United States.
It's an indictment against them, and they need to get
their act together. Steve, and I have good news for you,

(37:15):
and I have bad news for you. The bad news
there is only one person talking about you as a
candidate for the presidency of the United States, and that's you.
The good news is, I'm happy to inform you you
will remain the only person talking about you as a
candidate for the presidency of the United States. Stephen A.

(37:38):
Smith candidate for well whatever it is he does on
ESPN Today's other Worst Person. Hello, Well, however to the
number one story on the Countdown, And I think I'm

(37:58):
going to need to get new music done for a
new segment called Comic Relief. It seems to me this
is where the stupid stuff of the day should all go.
I mean the stupid stuff that does not directly pertain
to this particular nightmare timeline in which the President of
the United States believes that the ocean will keep us safe,

(38:18):
which is something that Lincoln said and would have realized
by certainly eighteen ninety, something that you know, Kaiser Wilhelm
could have sent the German fleet to New York pretty
easily buy you know, nineteen hundred, to say nothing of
that new thing called the airplane which was used at

(38:40):
Pearl Harmer So comic relief. I have two stories. They
are totally unconnected, and one of them involves brain disease,
which isn't that funny a topic, but it relates only
as the news hook for it. So let's try these
two stories, and I'll save the hilarious brain disease story
for a second. The first one is this the first

(39:03):
time I did a show at MSNBE. It was about
the Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton story. It did not start
out that way, as I've mentioned many times. It was
a news magazine show called The Big Show, and it
premiered on October first, nineteen ninety seven, under the illusion
at NBC management that I simply throwing my glove out

(39:23):
on the mound would draw huge audiences to hear me
talk about things they were not used to hearing me
talk about. And so we did unique news stories. We
did unconventional news leads, and one day I saw myself
interviewing as the live guest in the leads story the
publisher of the Farmer's Almanac. The big news we chose

(39:44):
that day in late nineteen ninety seven was the publication
of the nineteen ninety eight edition of the Farmers Effing Almanac.
It's not as interesting as it sounds. He was the
live guest. We were a little lost. And then unfortunately
the Bill Clinton story came along, and instead of what

(40:06):
I would have hoped in retrospect had happened, which is
that they would have canceled my show, instead we got
Bill Clinton in this stupid little magazine show, which had
its moments, It had good feature segments. It just didn't
convey the idea that at eight o'clock at night on
a cable news network trying to establish itself against CNN,
that maybe we should put news on. Well, we got

(40:28):
all the news we wanted, although I never was convinced
that the story was always news. It was Clinton and
Lewinsky every night, and finally I got so sick of
it that I begged them to get rid of me,
and they sold me to Fox Sports for a million
dollars and I got out and got my wish and
then had to get out of there too, and wound
up going back to MSNBC in two thousand and three.
I've told these stories many times, but this was story

(40:50):
number two thousand out of this and it is not
yet complete because a new development in the story of
the nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight MSNBC The Big
Show with Keith Overman, a new development has occurred this week.
I used to have every night since we led with
Clinton and Lewinsky an opening segment of five to ten

(41:11):
minutes in length that was written for me, largely by
a friend of mine from my CNN days in the
eighties named Bob Lily. Bob worked with me at CNN
at MSNBC, came back to work with me at MSNBC
the second time, and came with me to Current TV.
He worked with me four separate times and lived to
tell the tale and actually looked and felt younger at

(41:35):
the end of the process than at the beginning. Okay,
So Bob would write this, and I would put in
a few tweaks, and sometimes Bob would hand me this
script as we were going on the air at eight o'clock.
It was very intricate, a lot of sound bites and
a lot of videotape, and a lot of puns and
a lot of ad libs, and it needed and killed
a couple of directors. It needed good directors and wore

(41:56):
them out really fast. And then we would go to
the White House lawn where one of NBC's White House
correspondents would appear, needless to say, the White House car
respondents where NBC News were kind of busy in nineteen
ninety eight, certainly from January onwards, so occasionally we would
get still the late great David bloom Ill Starred Ill,

(42:16):
fated and ultimately a tragic story. But David, who would
have been on the Today Show at six o'clock that morning,
or would have been traveling back from Peru or wherever
Bill Clinton had been at six o'clock in the morning,
would often stick around and appear live at eight o'clock
anyway where he got this energy, and how he spent
his time and his money I will never understand in

(42:36):
any event, if it wasn't him. The second choice usually
was a great veteran NBC news correspondent named John Palmer.
And the first time I ever saw John Palmer, he
was doing the news on the Today Show, and I
was a kid, and one of the few genuine thrills
as I became further and further disenthralled with news at
NBC in the year nineteen ninety eight, was the chance

(42:58):
to interview and introduce John Palmer, and I wrote him
a note to that effect, and when he retired after
I left NBC, he sent me a letter thanking me
for having him on my show. One of the great
backwards juxtaposition stories I've ever encountered. You're thanking me, John Palmer.
All right, So it was usually one of those two,

(43:19):
or if not, then the other White House correspondent they
had three of them at that point, was a lovely
and talented woman named Claire Shipman. And Claire clearly had
gotten the idea in her head that she was probably
not going to go long term into news, even though
she had all the skills to do so. But Claire

(43:40):
had something a lot of other people did not. She
had control of her own ego. Claire did not need television.
She did it extraordinarily well. But Claire would be out there,
and if it wasn't Claire, and if it wasn't John Palmer,
and if it wasn't David Bloom, they would break people
in who were just starting at NBC News, either moved
in from other cities where they had worked for NBC affiliates,

(44:03):
or moved in from other publications making their TV debuts.
And the other three, including Claire, were known as somewhat
insultingly but very affectionately in the nicest sense of the word,
as Keith's harem three beautiful and gifted, talented, hard working
women who deserved the job and also just looked like

(44:26):
a million bucks at all times. And I'm not just
saying how they appeared physically, but how they conducted themselves
on television. These people knew what to do to make
a good impression in a professional sense. And it was
always the highlight of the show to me. And the
downturn of the show began when I would say thank
you to her, to him, to whoever it was, and

(44:50):
said you know, thank you Claire Shipman at the White House.
That was the point at which there was no reason
to watch the rest of the show, all right. So
the three women who did this role, led by Claire Shipman,
a White House correspondent, and the two kind of trainees
who I think were in their first year at NBC.
And by the way, the other guy on the show
who was always on from Washington in the middle was
a guy named David Gregory who was just breaking into

(45:12):
NBC News, who did a story for us on The
Big Show every night, something to do with Clinton Lewinsky.
And if you think I had a bad job, his
job was way worse. He had to do a package.
We had to decide and advance what his story was
going to be. Poor David every day, five of them week.
But it made his reputation and eventually, for good or
for ill, he wound up hosting Meet the Press. So

(45:33):
it worked out all right for David. In any event,
I keep teasing this Claire Shipman. If it was not Claire,
and it was not David Bloom and it was not
John Palmer, it was one of the two trainees, a
woman named who we had just hired from a publication
I think called The Hill, a woman named Nora O'Donnell.

(45:54):
Whatever happened to Nora O'Donnell other than her tenure at
NBC News anchoring newscasts and working on all of the
programs and then jumping to CBS to become the anchor
of the CBS Evening News. The great Nora O'Donnell started
her NBC big time career on My show. And if
it wasn't her, the other one was the new local

(46:15):
news person they'd hired with the big hair, who they
brought in and had her appear several times. She was
like fifth string Campbell Brown. That's nineteen ninety eight. In
two thousand and seven, when the bosses of CNN overruled
the president of CNN who wanted to hire me to
do their eight o'clock show, to take Countdown and move
it from MSNBC to CNN, and they got overruled by

(46:38):
a man named Jim Walton. They went instead and hired
Campbell Brown away from NBC News. Campbell Brown and I
once spent a weekend together at thirty Rock Co anchoring
weekend Today. She just looked like television. So there was
my roster of White House Correspondence, David Bloom later weekend
host of The Today Show, John Palmer, a Broadcasting Hall

(47:00):
of Famer, Claire Shipman probably the best of the five
of them, who then went on to ABC News and
then sort of drifted out of news largely or certainly
out of the network news business. And then Nora O'Donnell,
future anchor of the CBS Evening News, and Campbell Brown
soon to be hired to work against me as CNN's

(47:20):
eight o'clock primetime anchor and then to go off into
right wing educational revisionism. So it was a pretty impressive bunch.
And I thought about them because as I was sitting
with one of my pups at the Animal Medical Center
here in New York the other afternoon, in the waiting area,
I heard a very familiar voice and I saw a
very familiar face, and I heard about a woman who

(47:43):
talked about having been a reporter. And I looked at
her and I went, boy, that she looks just like
Clare Shipman. But it couldn't be Claire Shipment, because she
looks like Claire Shipman did in nineteen ninety eight. That
can't be her. It's not nineteen ninety eight anymore. I mean,
you hold up a picture of me from nineteen ninety
eight compared to my face right now, and I look
like my own great grandfather now, or if you can

(48:04):
sidering the nineteen ninety eight picture, I looked like my
own great grandson. Then sure enough it was Claire Shipman.
She was in with her dog as I was in
with my dog, and we visited and hugged and talked
about something, and we weren't there long enough for me
to tell the quick Claire Shipman story. Claire was very
straight laced on the air, with a great sense of humor,

(48:26):
but she sort of restrained herself, and I, by the
middle of May, say, nineteen ninety eight, stopped restraining myself.
I was mocking the story whenever I could, in hopes
for God's sake, stop watching this show and please fire me,
and I could every time I tried that. The ratings
went up. Tells you something. I don't have time to
analyze it. Those of you who can do mass media

(48:50):
psychology can try to ascertain what that means. I guess
it was the liberation and the freedom and the idea
that I didn't give a crap and the audience went,
I like this guy. He doesn't give a crap in
any event. One day, Claireshipman reporting from the White House,
and those days, Wolf Flitzer worked for CNN as the
White House corresponded, and Wolf Flitzer was standing next to

(49:14):
Claire Shipman live on CNN at eight o'clock at night
while we were live on MSNBC. And as Claire was talking,
and she had a pleasant, good broadcasting voice, you could
hear Wolf Flitzer, who's a little little louder than say,
the public address system at Penn Station, the railroad station
in New York, A little louder than that, not much,

(49:35):
but just a little louder than that. You could hear
him quite clearly. And you could see Claire kind of
edging her way screen left to try to get away
from Flitzer. And it felt like this on television. And
I finally she finished up, and I went Claire Shipman
for us at the White House, and Claire, if you

(49:55):
do me a favor, would you tell that Wolf Blitzer
from CNN to pipe down. I mean, I can hear
and she burst into laughter and giggles, and then we
just cut away and was one of my fondest memories
of that show, and Claire, who was always together and
always there, called me up afterwards and said thanks, I
needed that laugh, And I said, I think we all
needed that laugh. So that's the one humorous relief. I

(50:19):
ran into her the other day and somehow or another
she didn't look any older. Good for her. Congratulations to
Claire Shipment on that. And Claire is now I believe
owns Columbia University or something like that. I didn't get
quite the whole story, but she's been in charge of
Columbia University trying to put it back together again, and
as a Cornelian, I just sort of wished her good
luck and with an emoji, you know, a shrug emoji,

(50:40):
and said good, yeah, good luck with that. If you
need any help, don't call me. The other story is
based on a tragedy, but it mainlines back to a
really really, really really strange statement, possibly the strangest thing
any athlete ever said to me in an interview. And
it comes to bear now because the news came out
yesterday officially that the hockey great Bobby Hull, who broke

(51:02):
the record for most goals in a season back when
the record was just fifty goals in one season. Bobby
Hull died two years ago, and it has now been
confirmed that he died, as so many hockey players whose
families donated their brains after their demise, obviously for study,
died of CTE, of the brain damage illness that leads

(51:25):
to madness, violence, hatred, all sorts of antisocial behavior, and
Bobby Hull will No one will ever say, oh, poor
Bobby Hull, because by the end of his life he
was largely disliked. I think that's a pleasant euphemism for
how he was believed in in sports and in hockey

(51:45):
in the waning years of his life, and in some
quarters much more than that. There were racist overtones and
sexism and violence towards women dating back to his early life.
But of course nobody can tell yet at this point
when CTE would have started. And this pertains to our
current situation, because, as I've mentioned many times before, there
is growing indication that some people are getting in the

(52:08):
military simply by handling the vibrations from these superpowered machine
guns and other weapons. They are getting certainly some brain damage,
and for all we know, it's going to wind up
being CTE later in life. I mean I hit my
head on a train in nineteen eighty, and every once
in a while I wonder if I'm going to have CTE,

(52:28):
or maybe if I have it already, or if I
had it in nineteen eighty. So we don't know when
Bobby Hall started to get sick with this brain injury,
how much of it was that, how much of it
was him just being maybe a racist, sexist, misogynist, violent jerk.
Who knows, But it was an eye opening thing that
somebody could have had that, and for all we know,

(52:49):
we got the first symptoms of it in nineteen fifty five,
not two thousand and five. It's a terrible thing, and
it's going to become a bigger and bigger thing in
sports and outside of it, particularly as it comes to
our veterans. Why we need more help for our veterans
and not less as the Trump administration seems to think
at the moment, because what would Donald Trump know about
the needs of veterans being a guy who evaded the

(53:12):
draft the way he did. Avoided the draft, evaded the draft.
It's a gray area, just like everything between his ears. Okay,
back to the Bobby Hall story. Anytime Bobby Hall's name
has come up since November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine.
I have flashedback too November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine,

(53:33):
and our other bit of humorous relief for this trying
week after last week's trying week and an advance of
next week's trying week in the real world. Sam Rosen,
my first boss at UPI Radio, the sports director now
retiring after forty plus years doing the New York Rangers
hockey games, assigned me on one of my non studio

(53:53):
days to take a tape recorder and go to the
Winnipeg Jets first game ever at Madison Square Garden to
play the New York Rangers after the merger of the
National Hockey League and the World Hockey Association. When the
World Hockey Association had gone into business in nineteen seventy two,
the first big get was Bobby Hall being named player
coach of the Winnipeg Jets. They stole him for some

(54:15):
phenomenal sum of money from the Chicago Blackhawks and announced
that the WHA the World Hockey Association, had arrived. It
never really got much further than that. Although Mark Messier
played in that league first and Wayne Gretzky played in
that league first, and a lot of other superstars played
there first, but the WHA was on fumes by the
time it quote unquote merged with the NHL in the

(54:38):
summer of nineteen seventy nine, and so Bobby Hall, who
was particularly voluminous in his scoring against the New York
Rangers in his days with the Chicago Blackhawks, was back
in Madison Square Garden for the first time since the
nineteen seventy one seventy two season, an old man playing
one last lap around the NHL, and his only game
as a Winnipeg Jet at Madison Square Garden was on

(55:00):
November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine, a Wednesday, and they
sent me there. Sam said, make sure you get Hull.
And I talked to the PR guy beforehand, and I said,
does Bobby give interviews after the game? Yes, he does.
There's not much else for him to do, He's not
playing a lot. And so I went in and I
interviewed Bobby Hall, and he gave me a great interview.
But he said the creepiest, weirdest thing any athlete has

(55:26):
ever said to me. Who wasn't trying to say something creepy,
I said about after talking about his career and coming
back to New York in many senses, and the World
Hockey Association in Chicago and Winnipeg and the whole arc
of his career, finally said, so, you're back in New York.

(55:47):
This has been a place for you of accomplishment, and
you scored your fifty first goal against the Rangers in Chicago,
and you're playing at Madison Square Garden. And the few
times you've been back here in the WHA there were
two or three thousand people here and now there were
seventeen thousand, and wasn't a particularly big game other than
they came to see you. I said, what is what

(56:07):
does it feel like? What sort of nostalgia? What sort
of And hopefully I don't have the tape of me
asking the question, but I hope it took less time
than it does for me to recount it. I like
to keep my questions to less than three and a
half minutes in length. In any event, I asked him,
how about coming back here? Does it bring back a
lot of memories? And he said, and somewhere I have
the tape, but I could not find it. Bobby Hall said, oh,

(56:34):
never mind the past. We're here in the future now.
That is the creepiest thing I have ever heard. And
I almost screamed then too, never mind the past. We're
here in the future now. Did we just jump here
from the past? We're in the po When are we talking?

(56:55):
We're here in the future now. I mean, it's a
science fiction line. You could create an entire short story. Hell,
these days, you could create an entire Netflix series based
on that one line. We're here in the future now,
time travel Bobby Hall, time traveler. Jeez, if you're a
time traveler, could you've gotten a better weave for your
thinning hair? All right, Well that's a cheap shot, and

(57:18):
he's dead too. But you know, in any event, I
have never in forty five and a half years, forty
five years and what two months now, November twenty first,
nineteen seventy nine, I've never shaken that it's up there
in those voices that still appear in my head periodically,

(57:41):
like asking Catfish Hunter how his arm was, and he answered,
marm feels real good. Marm feels real good. And for
weeks upon weeks, all of us who heard that tape
asked each other how our arms were, and we all answered,
marm feels real good. How's your marm today, Keith. It's
in there in the Hall of Fame. Marm feels real

(58:03):
good because we're here in the future now. Never mind

(58:25):
the past. We're here in the future now, and it
sucks my Bobby Hull impression. Done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. And on a
serious note, boy, oh boy, do we need an acknowledgment
from the National Hockey League that CTE is a real thing.
The NFL finally got around to saying something. The National

(58:46):
Hockey League, afraid of being sued by every X player,
is still denying that there could ever be a connection
between brain injuries, particularly CTE, and the deaths of their
players or their conduct and their remaining years of their
last years. It's unforgivable, Like much of what the NHL does.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thanks
for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle, musical directors

(59:08):
of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of the music.
Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and mister
Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our Satirical in fifthy.
Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust Nancy, how is your arm? The sports music
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch

(59:31):
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
with marm was my friend Larry David. Everything else was
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just four
hundred and thirty one days until the scheduled end of
his lame duck and lame brained term, unless Musk removes

(59:54):
him sooner. Donald Trump CTE. I never thought about it.
Is it's possible he's hit his head. Lord knows he's
made other people hit their head heads against walls. So
it's one four three one till he goes or the
actual aerial tables taken first. The next schedule countdown is Monday,

(01:00:14):
as always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember, impeach trumpet
will not work now. It will, however, win the Democrats
the midterms, if there are midterms. Never mind the past.
We're here in the future, till next time, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with

(01:00:52):
Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.