November 9, 2022 • 36 mins
EPISODE 73: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT There WAS a Red Wave: A wave goodbye to your tsunami. Sanity got up off the mat. We beat the undead zombies with some well placed shovels. Fetterman defeated Oz. Free Crudites for EVERYONE. This could turn out to be the BEST midterms for any first-term president in decades. Joe Biden just went from nomination Dark Horse, to superhero Dark Brandon. And as a bonus, regardless of who ultimately gets the House and who gets the Senate, among Republicans, Trump will get much of the blame.
B-Block (15:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Princess Wiggles in New York (15:58) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: 1/6 Commish interviews Trump's driver, big countries may finally pony up at COP27, Zelenskyy softens stance on negotiations with Russia (18:15) IN SPORTS: Dusty Baker will return, invoking memories of Jesse Orosco and the poet Rolfe Humphries (21:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Peacock, with its upcoming Casey Anthony series, battles Tucker "One of the Largest Sources of Death Threats" Carlson and Brett "Another Day, Another Scandal" Favre for the dishonors.
C-Block (25:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 25 years since I met her and nearly as long since I went out on a date with Laura Ingraham. It was worse than you'd expect, and it was followed by a second date that was actually closer to me being kidnapped and held hostage. But I learned a valuable lesson about how - and how efficiently - "The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" actually works, that remains instructive to this day.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
So there was a red wave, a wave goodbye to
(00:28):
your tsunami. Am I right? Sanity got up off the match.
We beat the undead zombies with some well placed shovels.
Fetterman defeated Oz. Free crudities for everybody, mass Triano. The
election denier lost, Cox, the election denier lost, Zelden, Michael's Bailey,
Jensen and Crockett in Minnesota. Tutor Fricking Dixon bluntly this
(00:52):
could turn out to be the best mid terms for
any first term president in decades. Joe Biden goes in
one day from nomination Dark Horse two superhero Dark Brandon.
Even Lindsey Graham says it was definitely not a Republican wave.
(01:14):
The economy doomed the Democrats. No, everybody forgot about the
Supreme Court and abortion. No, election denial was more important
than democracy. No, And as a bonus, regardless of who
ultimately gets the House seems like the Republicans, and who
gets the Senate seems like the Democrats. Trump is already
(01:36):
getting skewered by his own people. John Fetterman is the
Senator elect from Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro is the Governor elect
of Pennsylvania. Westmore is the governor elect of Maryland. Moura
Healey wins in Massachusetts. Senator Hassan re elected in New Hampshire.
Senator Murray re elected in Washington. Brian Shots reelected in Hawaii.
(02:00):
Fox News was the first to call Michigan for Governor Whittmer,
Governor Pritzker, and Senator Duckworth reelected in Illinois. Senator Bennett
in Colorado. Governor hokel elected in New York. Governor McKee
re elected in Rhode Island. Governor Waltz re elected in Minnesota.
Governor Evers re elected in Wisconsin, defeating the Republican who
said no Republican would ever lose another election. There after,
(02:24):
he won by Felicia. Abortion rights confirmed by ballot measures
in California and Michigan and Vermont. Secretary of State in Michigan,
Jocelyn Benson beats that demonic sex Lady Karamo Representatives Abigail
span Berger and Jennifer Weston in Virginia one over lunatic Deniers,
(02:47):
though Elaine Luria lost. Marcy Captor Clock the military Liar
j R. Madjuski, Whiley Nickel edges Cawthorne Clone Bohines. In
North Carolina, gen Z Democrat Maxwell Atajandro Frost won a
House seat for more Orlando. He's twenty five. The Georgia
(03:08):
Senate will probably wind up in a runoff or a
recount or both. We'll see. Even Lauren Bobert, a prohibitive favorite,
was on the ropes against the Democrat Adam Frish in
Colorado with more than eighty five in votes being counted
like one per day, more like no bert Am I right,
they would have to escort her out of the Capitol.
(03:31):
But Matt Gates was reelected, won the youth vote. Also
Marjorie Trailer Park Green, Joe Uli Wilson, Virginia Fox, Governor's
abbot Kemp Gnome Scott Ivy, and the Oklahoma bone head
Kevin Stitt, all re elected. J De Vance won in Ohio,
Marco Rubio was reelected, Chuck Grassley was reelected, even though
(03:52):
we're not sure he's still alive, And Sarah Huckabee is
the governor elect of Arkansas so she can resume her
career as a serial liar in her home state. Still
no ad tsunami no red wave, and why not. There
was one nugget in the early exit polls that was
noted and then discarded. Suburban women nationwide went fifty seven Democrats.
(04:18):
Biden had won them by fifty six. So congratulations to
Politico and Yahoo and Reuter's congratulations on burying your own
polls that showed the Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot.
So you could tow the line with the corporate red
narrative the unresolved races. The Republicans are clearly softening everybody
(04:41):
up for more cheating charges and five will get you
ten that no mainstream reporter points out that claiming this
will catch them in an error of logic. The spiel
has been that only votes counted before sunrise Wednesday should
actually count like they were in the the good old
days from I don't know Trump's last adder all overdose,
(05:03):
but if the Democrat leading as of sunrise Wednesday, the
Republicans would say that is cheating. In Arizona, when of
the vote had been counted, Katie Hobbs was clocking carry
Lake by fourteen points and Mark Kelly was thumping Blake
Masters by eighteen. By the rule of Trump Hobbs and
(05:24):
Kelly are the winners. The Republican problem in Arizona was
evident and viewable in real time even before vote results
started to pile in early in the day. Tabulators at
around forty five of the voting locations in Maricopa County,
that's Phoenix broke. Those are not voting machines. You complete
your ballot, then you stick it in the tabulator. If
(05:45):
the tabulator is not working, you put the ballot in
a sealed ballot box and it is tabulated later when
the tabulator is working. It's not even a clerical error,
it's a machine that's not working right. But the Republicans
seized on this as if it had been an invasion
from Nicaragua. They demanded a judge extend voting hours there
(06:06):
by three hours, even though nobody was kept from voting
or even delayed from voting. The judge denied it, so
they immediately used that as an excuse for a loss
that had not happened yet. And then Fox Brett Bear,
who pretends to be a news anchor, said, quote, for
it to happen here, for it to happen now in
this way is kind of strange. Even though it was
(06:28):
not strange at all. And the real giveaway. Mark Fincham,
the psycho guy in the Cowboy had running to run
the elections and stop them, then tweeted, in cold panic,
while voting was still going on in Arizona, quote, we
need two hundred k more votes. Please text and call
your family and friends to check on them. We need
(06:50):
them to get to the polls. A sap. Well, I
don't have a lot of relatives, but I don't know
anybody who's got a family with more than two people
in it. And then Carrie Lake, the failed small market
local newscaster or for you, Harry Potter and the dolorous
umbrage of Arizona, blamed her early shellacking on the tabulators,
and she looked tiny and frail and small market as
(07:15):
she did so. And now finally, the bonus of all bonuses.
You know who's getting blamed. Trump is getting blamed. An
analyst said this last night. This is a searing indictment
of the Republican Party. The analyst was Mark Teesson on
(07:35):
Fox News. The Fox News White House corresponded tweeted, GOP
source tells me quote, if it wasn't clear before, it
should be now we have a Trump problem. Trump, of course,
did not bigfoot every Republican candidate by announcing Monday, but
he did try to make election day about himself mob boss,
(07:57):
threatening de Santis and McConnell and most importantly reporters. Again,
you will remember his rally promise to reporters or publishers
to reveal their sources by threatening to send them to
prison to be raped. There Rolling Stone reporting on Tuesday,
Trump actually asked one of his lawyers how to put
reporters in jail. But the big background story of the
(08:22):
mid terms. Trump gave an interview to the Network News Nation.
It was fawning and self congratulatory, but it has turned
out to be prophetic. Tonight, win or lose the results
for Republicans. Um how much of that will be because
of Donald Trump? Well, I think if they win, I
(08:42):
should get all the credit, and if they lose, I
should not be blamed at all. Okay, but it will
probably be just the opposite. When they win, I think
they're going to do very well. I'll probably be given
very little credit. Even though in many cases, right, you
are insane as that was Trump was not wrong about
that part. He endorsed three thirty candidates, and even if
(09:03):
the Republicans man narrow victories and take both the House
and the Senate, he will take a huge hit. And
the ones who will hit him fastest will be Kevin
McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, especially after the guy Trump did
not like in Colorado who got the GOP nomination. Anyway,
Joe O. Day lost the Senate race. Trump showed his
(09:24):
party what this all means to him. He posted, oh
Day lost big, make America great again, as if the
seat had not been won by the Democrats. They're blaming Trump.
But back to the main point. Call me a cock
eyed optimist. Of course, I am well known as Captain Positive.
(09:48):
But I look at the mid terms this way. Maybe,
just maybe more than fifty of our friends and neighbors
are still not crazy enough to give up democracy in
exchange for a dollar off a gallon of gas. Maybe
more than fifty of us would still not swap lower
prices for dessert for deciding who's president based on who
(10:09):
has the largest support from street gangs. Maybe more than
fifty of Americans would still not agree to seeing their
neighbors carted off to concentration camps. Even if it did
mean those who were left would get vouchers to send
their kids to religious schools. What a night. Thank you
for your attention. We hope you enjoyed the two mid terms,
(10:32):
or as they will forever be known from here on
in the Red Dribble. Still ahead, the newest witness interviewed
(10:53):
by the One six Commission is so important they're keeping
his name secret. But AOC names names. Well, she names
one name. Can you guess which right winger precipitates the
most death threats against her? And speaking of the right wing,
I have alluded to this many times, but I have
never told the important part of the story before. All Right,
(11:14):
nearly a quarter century ago, I went out on two
dates with Laura Ingram, though to be fair, the second
one was actually closer to me being kidnapped. What she
revealed about that vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton identified
remains with me to this day, as do the scars.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith
(11:42):
old Woman still ahead on countdown. Tucker Carlson versus Peacock
versus Brett Farve for worst person dishonors. That's a fight.
And everybody who has ever dated has made a mistake.
Mine was named Laura Ingram. But there's a little bit
more to that story, and it applies to today's tical scene. First,
(12:06):
in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day. You saved
Ace from the crisis at the New York Pound. Now
somebody needs to rescue Princess Wiggles. She's shy, uncertain around dogs,
but she could be adopted tomorrow maybe better. Pledges to
help a rescue outfit pull her out because she has
(12:27):
contracted pneumonia in the pound, and the pounds response to
that illness is, of course, to blame the dog and
kill it as quickly as possible. The sadness here the
pneumonia is really treatable. You don't want her around other
dogs for a while, but even that can change quickly.
Princess Wiggles is my pinned tweet at tom Jumbo Grumbo.
If you can foster or adopt her, or pledge to
help rescue, please respond to the tweet retweet If you can,
(12:50):
I thank you, and Princess Wiggles thanks you. Pot Scripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, stateline, Washington.
(13:13):
The January six Committee has interviewed the driver of the
suv in which Trump traveled on the day of the
coup attempt. He is the one Cassidy Hutchinson testified was
at the wheel when Trump tried to grab the wheel
and grab the driver and get himself to the capital
to lead the assault. He has not been named publicly.
It is an important bit of the narrative, but the
(13:35):
fixation on it, even to show Trump's for knowledge or
willing participation in the violence, seems a little overwrought. There
may be more to this than even we know from
Cassidy Hutchinson dateline, charmel shake at COP seven in Egypt.
You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? COP
is getting no coverage here it should. It is the
(13:58):
seven International Conference on Climate Change, and there's actually a
good development. The small countries are getting wiped out by
climate change effects. First, the large ones have been refusing
to help them financially. That may be changing at COPE.
Before this session only Scotland has offered any money two
million dollars. Now Australia has pledged fifty million, Denmark thirteen, Ireland, ten,
(14:23):
the Scots five point seven more. Of course, the money
needs to be in the billions. The United States pledge. Well,
we've offered the country's a laurel and hearty welcome and
dateline Kiev. Apparently, after gentle pressure from this country, Ukrainian
President Voladimir Zelenski has changed a vital position. He would,
(14:44):
he says, now negotiate with Russia even if Putin is
not deposed to end the war. He is to stick
though to his basic precepts, safeguards for Ukrainian territorial integrity,
justice for Russian war criminals, and compensation from the Kremlin.
(15:13):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith in Sports. Dusty Baker, at age
seventy three and newly crowned first time World Series winning manager,
the oldest manager ever to win the World Series, says
(15:33):
he will be back to run the Houston Astros again
next season. Dusty says nothing has been signed, but both
sides are agreed to it. Dusty Baker is beloved in
the game, but here is an inside tip about the
strength of his beloveditude and how it has grown over
the years. One thing that happens to all baseball reporters
and fans. Is this sequence of events. When you are
(15:54):
a kid, most managers are older than your parents, maybe
your grandparents. When you start reporting, there are now managers
that you remember seeing as a player. As you age,
suddenly all the managers were guys you covered as a player.
Later on you find out you are older than some
or most of the managers. If you're me, a guy
(16:15):
gets named manager of the Yankees, who you met when
he was thirteen years old. Finally, you get to the
point where you can count the managers who are older
than you on the fingers of one hand, so you
root for them desperately so they manage forever. That's Dusty
Brian Snicker of the Braves and Buck show Alter of
the Mets. For me, the others are all younger than
(16:38):
the poet Ralph Humphreys was the son of a major
leaguer who played briefly for the eight three New York Giants.
He wrote a magnificent poem about how baseball fans go
from infancy to old age while the damn players just
get younger. It's called polo grounds and it ends with
this time is of the essence the crowd and players
(16:59):
are the same age always, but the man in the
crowd is older every season. Come on, play ball. When
relief pitcher Jesse Roscoe joined the New York Yankees at
the age of forty six in his twenty fourth Major
League season, one of three teams he pitched for that year,
when I was only forty four and had known him
(17:21):
since he was twenty two and I was twenty, I
said to him, Jess, if you ever get to the
point where they're not offering you enough money so you
keep on pitching, I know like twenty guys my own
age who will throw in ten grand each to you
just so you can keep pitching. And Jesse, we can
keep saying, thank God, there's at least one ball player
who's still older than I am. A ball player who
(17:56):
is older than I am would have to be already
sixty four years old late six e four by opening
day ahead, we'll go backwards in time and talk about
the time I went out with Laura Ingram and then
(18:17):
the time that she tried to kidnap me. First, the
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effect
specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the World
le Bronze, the NBC Peacocks service, which has announced exactly
what you needed to see, a three part series premiering
at the end of the month called Casey Anthony, Where
(18:37):
the Truth Lies. If you don't know the name Casey Anthony,
lucky you. I'm not gonna say. She was the center
of the last tabloid case to get wall to wall
TV coverage, But when her daughter disappeared and was then
found dead, her trial was wall to wall. She was
found not guilty, and now NBC is doing a series
on her so everybody can make money. I mean, man,
(18:59):
why not a streaming series about Jeffrey Dahmer while you're
at wait what? There has been one? Oh for Christ
the runner up Everybody's Favorite Flailing football star X star
Brett Farve scandal, the scandal where he redirected state welfare
funds to build a volleyball stadium for his daughter to
play in that Mississippi state. Now this is a new scandal.
(19:23):
Farv is the largest outside investor in two companies claiming
they are developing a nasal spray to prevent concussions and
a cream to treat them. Just rub it in your brain.
A million dollars at least he invested in this ESPN
reporting that the company is both owned by Jake Van Landingham,
Prevacus and press all m d exaggerated the effectiveness of
(19:47):
the drugs and overstated their own connections to the NFL.
And this is all to be found in court documents.
Plus that Mississippi welfare money scandal with the volleyball court.
Van Landingham got two more than two million bucks out
of it. He says, I had no idea this was
welfare money. And I've always been an up standing person
when it comes to research. Speaking of upstanding, exaggeration and overstatement,
(20:10):
don't forget the time far sent pictures of his junk
to a fellow employee of the New York Jets. Exaggeration indeed.
But our winner the jimminy glick of Fox News Tucker Carlson.
We sometimes forget that behind the buffoonish appearance and girly
voice lies a well. What Congresswoman Alexandriacasio Cortez called him
(20:30):
on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, a stochastic terrorist.
Let me quote her. I can tell you a hundred
and ten percent one of the largest sources of death
threats I get is Tucker Carlson. Every time that dude
put my name in his mouth the next day. This
is like what stochastic terrorism is, when you use a
very large platform to turn up the temperature and target
(20:52):
an individual until something happens, and then when something happens,
because it's indirect, you say, oh, I had nothing to
do with that. Tucker Carlson, God forbid anything happens. He
plays a massive role in political violence, like it comes
on his doorsteps specifically exactly, congresswoman exactly. And I can
add he's also an identity thief and a megalomaniac and
(21:14):
a horrible human being. Tucker, don't forget. I also whitewashed
Kanye West the anti semite, the day before he destroyed himself.
Carlson two days worst Person and the World to the
(21:40):
number one story on the Countdown. In my favorite topic,
Me and Things, I promised not to tell my tattered
little diary from informs me the twenty five years ago.
This week, in the second month of my news career
at MSNBC, one of my guests for the first time
was one of the network's original contributor commentators. Original MSNBC
(22:03):
talent Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in
us going out on two dates, and something she told
me on the first of these dates has resonated with
me literally every month since and is relevant to politics today.
(22:24):
I know, I know, I did not so much date
her as survive her. Even then before nine eleven helped
to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a
diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was March.
Beware the odds of March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly,
(22:50):
and God helped me. Nearly forty eight years of dating,
I have not been a kiss and teller. I have dated.
I don't know dozens, and we're a couple of hundred,
actually thirteen seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know
any of their name. One of them, now a political writer,
basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence.
(23:13):
So why am I telling this story violating that? Because
not three months after that first date, when we were
still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could
look at a speech I was going to give it
Cornell's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago.
I literally facted it to her. Sure enough, a couple
(23:33):
of days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which
was televised by my network MSNBC, and they're on his desk.
In front of him is the fact copy of my speech,
and he is reading from my facts. I could recognize
the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap facts
(23:53):
machine used to streak all of my outgoing pages with
Laura used to go on his show a lot, so
to curry favor with Imus, she sent him the speech
without asking me. As I told her that day, all
bets are now off. So I've told parts of this
story before, like She had been a Supreme Court clerk
(24:16):
for Clarence Thomas, and our first date consisted of taking
me on an insider's tour of the court and having
me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I
did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked
me the largest steak I had ever seen that did
not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it, and we
watched a woman later discredited because she could not keep
(24:38):
her stories straight, go on sixty minutes and make allegations
against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told
me seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingram
story sitting there in the middle of all the debris.
I don't think I've ever told this. The first date
(24:59):
was only about six weeks after the then First Lady
Hillary Clinton got on the Today Show and blamed the
at best exaggerated scandal about her husband and Monica Lewinsky
on the quote vast right wing conspiracy. That is sound stupid,
Laura said that night, as she showed me her small
office upstairs, I expected that she was about to decry
(25:20):
the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and
the brand new Internet to try to bring down a
president from the other party. And I said, so naive
little boy that I was no, not that, of course
we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I
doubted the conspiracy part, I explained, I had only been
covering politics for two months. At the end of the day,
(25:44):
she said, end of the day, constantly, at the end
of the day, it's that vast part. It's not vast,
vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet there's not even
thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained that she was
essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature
right wing conspiracy. She showed me a tied page that
(26:05):
had the facts numbers of about two dozen people. There
at the top are the sources. She said. There was
Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas
Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen, a constant presence
as a talking head on cable news. She later died
on nine eleven. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers
(26:25):
in the office of Independent Council ken Starr. One of
them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said,
nobody impartant. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham,
who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they,
including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all
the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up,
(26:47):
and she distributed them to the other parts of the list.
That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another
Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh.
There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it.
He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most
(27:08):
important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge.
She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he
didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big
on not traceable, So I never facts it to him,
She said, I just give it to my brother. This
is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge
all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now
(27:30):
over here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons
to go out with her. At the time, I could
think only of an old cartoon I had once seen.
It was an octopus working in the post office, using
all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But
every couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then
(27:51):
I was actually a witness to one of the earliest
configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today
whether it is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery
that links the right wing politicians and those who are
supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices
and special prosecutors and people like that. They're with the
(28:11):
right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations
like Fox and Drudge and O. A. N. And Newsmax,
and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who
succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is, in fact, everything that your
typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist trumpist thinks is being run
(28:32):
by George Soros or Bill Gates or Dr Fauci or me.
You want to be able to say, there are reports
or accusations about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well,
somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery,
or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of
the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people.
(28:54):
They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports
then get fed back to Fox News or Bright Bart
or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or
they're just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want
to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the
(29:15):
Great Replacement, but you want it to come out washed
clean enough that soulless opportunists like at least Stephanic and
jd Vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail
without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery, and I
saw the machinery when it was just a list of
twenty and thirty people, And at that moment I barely
(29:37):
recognized the importance of what I saw. Then again, I
was still on that night, recovering from not just the
giant steak, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day,
as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had
boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going
(29:57):
back into what had been their house and putting up
exact copies of all the photos of the two of
them together that he had taken down from his walls.
And when he got smart and changed the locks, she
went back again to finish the job. Found her key
didn't work so naturally as you would. She stuffed his
(30:22):
garden hose through the mail slot of his front door
and turned on the outdoor Spiggott ten thousand. Now I
was wearing the hirn went Flora's ruined, she said proudly,
And part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now I didn't flee. Later,
(30:45):
as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake, snoring,
not my own, and Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking
in his sleep. I mean almost in syllables, yeah like that.
(31:05):
It was something like degrees out and I was on
the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her
dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables.
And it turned out her dog was the one telling
her what to do, I was simply going to leave
by the window without bothering to open it first. The
(31:27):
next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got
to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He
went and got it. She cocked her arm back again.
He took off, loving life as he did. She did
not throw it. He went forty fifty sixty feet, then
stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and
(31:48):
and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly,
without a trace of affection for him or anything else,
wait far at which is when I realized I was
being courted to be the next dog. A few weeks later,
(32:09):
back home in New York, I got home from working
in early morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul
Harvey at ABC Radio. I was just waking up from
a tortured nap when the phone rang. It's Laura. I'm downstairs.
We're going to my old law firms party at the museum.
I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just
stay here at this pay phone outside your planes calling
you all night. We went the next option opportunity probably
(32:36):
was going to be me on the wrong end of
the hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to
her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly,
it was a great party. I got to meet Hillary
Clinton's mother and her brother. And if you think the
fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and
(32:56):
their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and
Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to be friends. Later we
wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak bar
at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished.
After about her sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd
(33:17):
had at the party, she began to droop her head,
nodding like a bobble head doll. Her friends said, Okay,
that's it, we'll take care of the check. You take
care of her. She had not gotten a hotel room
or anything, and if you've ever heard of anybody who
needed to be poured into a cab because they were
so drunk. You don't really know what that means until
(33:38):
you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I
wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the
spectacle would have made the gossip pages. She basically could
not stand up, so I took her to my apartment,
put her into my bed, and I went and slept
on the couch at the far end of the apartment,
(33:59):
which is where I was hours later in the morning
when she woke me up because she came parading through
using my phone to call my assistant to get a
car sent to my address to take her to the airport,
and to make sure that everybody in my office knew
she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I
kept thinking was why didn't I follow my instincts. My
(34:22):
instincts said flee, I fleed. Not, of course, if I
had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree
of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I I've done
(34:52):
all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening.
Follow the podcast If you can tell a friend We're
number one among news and political podcast not produced by
a network. Here are the credits. Most of the music,
including our theme from Beethove and Ninth, was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Philip Shanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray
(35:15):
and produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
ever Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks, and everything else
(35:36):
is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this
the six hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now, why all we still can
a new episode tomorrow till Man Keith Olberman, good Morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(36:01):
is a production of i heart Radio. For more prod
cast from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
So there was a red wave, a wave goodbye to
(00:28):
your tsunami. Am I right? Sanity got up off the match.
We beat the undead zombies with some well placed shovels.
Fetterman defeated Oz. Free crudities for everybody, mass Triano. The
election denier lost, Cox, the election denier lost, Zelden, Michael's Bailey,
Jensen and Crockett in Minnesota. Tutor Fricking Dixon bluntly this
(00:52):
could turn out to be the best mid terms for
any first term president in decades. Joe Biden goes in
one day from nomination Dark Horse two superhero Dark Brandon.
Even Lindsey Graham says it was definitely not a Republican wave.
(01:14):
The economy doomed the Democrats. No, everybody forgot about the
Supreme Court and abortion. No, election denial was more important
than democracy. No, And as a bonus, regardless of who
ultimately gets the House seems like the Republicans, and who
gets the Senate seems like the Democrats. Trump is already
(01:36):
getting skewered by his own people. John Fetterman is the
Senator elect from Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro is the Governor elect
of Pennsylvania. Westmore is the governor elect of Maryland. Moura
Healey wins in Massachusetts. Senator Hassan re elected in New Hampshire.
Senator Murray re elected in Washington. Brian Shots reelected in Hawaii.
(02:00):
Fox News was the first to call Michigan for Governor Whittmer,
Governor Pritzker, and Senator Duckworth reelected in Illinois. Senator Bennett
in Colorado. Governor hokel elected in New York. Governor McKee
re elected in Rhode Island. Governor Waltz re elected in Minnesota.
Governor Evers re elected in Wisconsin, defeating the Republican who
said no Republican would ever lose another election. There after,
(02:24):
he won by Felicia. Abortion rights confirmed by ballot measures
in California and Michigan and Vermont. Secretary of State in Michigan,
Jocelyn Benson beats that demonic sex Lady Karamo Representatives Abigail
span Berger and Jennifer Weston in Virginia one over lunatic Deniers,
(02:47):
though Elaine Luria lost. Marcy Captor Clock the military Liar
j R. Madjuski, Whiley Nickel edges Cawthorne Clone Bohines. In
North Carolina, gen Z Democrat Maxwell Atajandro Frost won a
House seat for more Orlando. He's twenty five. The Georgia
(03:08):
Senate will probably wind up in a runoff or a
recount or both. We'll see. Even Lauren Bobert, a prohibitive favorite,
was on the ropes against the Democrat Adam Frish in
Colorado with more than eighty five in votes being counted
like one per day, more like no bert Am I right,
they would have to escort her out of the Capitol.
(03:31):
But Matt Gates was reelected, won the youth vote. Also
Marjorie Trailer Park Green, Joe Uli Wilson, Virginia Fox, Governor's
abbot Kemp Gnome Scott Ivy, and the Oklahoma bone head
Kevin Stitt, all re elected. J De Vance won in Ohio,
Marco Rubio was reelected, Chuck Grassley was reelected, even though
(03:52):
we're not sure he's still alive, And Sarah Huckabee is
the governor elect of Arkansas so she can resume her
career as a serial liar in her home state. Still
no ad tsunami no red wave, and why not. There
was one nugget in the early exit polls that was
noted and then discarded. Suburban women nationwide went fifty seven Democrats.
(04:18):
Biden had won them by fifty six. So congratulations to
Politico and Yahoo and Reuter's congratulations on burying your own
polls that showed the Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot.
So you could tow the line with the corporate red
narrative the unresolved races. The Republicans are clearly softening everybody
(04:41):
up for more cheating charges and five will get you
ten that no mainstream reporter points out that claiming this
will catch them in an error of logic. The spiel
has been that only votes counted before sunrise Wednesday should
actually count like they were in the the good old
days from I don't know Trump's last adder all overdose,
(05:03):
but if the Democrat leading as of sunrise Wednesday, the
Republicans would say that is cheating. In Arizona, when of
the vote had been counted, Katie Hobbs was clocking carry
Lake by fourteen points and Mark Kelly was thumping Blake
Masters by eighteen. By the rule of Trump Hobbs and
(05:24):
Kelly are the winners. The Republican problem in Arizona was
evident and viewable in real time even before vote results
started to pile in early in the day. Tabulators at
around forty five of the voting locations in Maricopa County,
that's Phoenix broke. Those are not voting machines. You complete
your ballot, then you stick it in the tabulator. If
(05:45):
the tabulator is not working, you put the ballot in
a sealed ballot box and it is tabulated later when
the tabulator is working. It's not even a clerical error,
it's a machine that's not working right. But the Republicans
seized on this as if it had been an invasion
from Nicaragua. They demanded a judge extend voting hours there
(06:06):
by three hours, even though nobody was kept from voting
or even delayed from voting. The judge denied it, so
they immediately used that as an excuse for a loss
that had not happened yet. And then Fox Brett Bear,
who pretends to be a news anchor, said, quote, for
it to happen here, for it to happen now in
this way is kind of strange. Even though it was
(06:28):
not strange at all. And the real giveaway. Mark Fincham,
the psycho guy in the Cowboy had running to run
the elections and stop them, then tweeted, in cold panic,
while voting was still going on in Arizona, quote, we
need two hundred k more votes. Please text and call
your family and friends to check on them. We need
(06:50):
them to get to the polls. A sap. Well, I
don't have a lot of relatives, but I don't know
anybody who's got a family with more than two people
in it. And then Carrie Lake, the failed small market
local newscaster or for you, Harry Potter and the dolorous
umbrage of Arizona, blamed her early shellacking on the tabulators,
and she looked tiny and frail and small market as
(07:15):
she did so. And now finally, the bonus of all bonuses.
You know who's getting blamed. Trump is getting blamed. An
analyst said this last night. This is a searing indictment
of the Republican Party. The analyst was Mark Teesson on
(07:35):
Fox News. The Fox News White House corresponded tweeted, GOP
source tells me quote, if it wasn't clear before, it
should be now we have a Trump problem. Trump, of course,
did not bigfoot every Republican candidate by announcing Monday, but
he did try to make election day about himself mob boss,
(07:57):
threatening de Santis and McConnell and most importantly reporters. Again,
you will remember his rally promise to reporters or publishers
to reveal their sources by threatening to send them to
prison to be raped. There Rolling Stone reporting on Tuesday,
Trump actually asked one of his lawyers how to put
reporters in jail. But the big background story of the
(08:22):
mid terms. Trump gave an interview to the Network News Nation.
It was fawning and self congratulatory, but it has turned
out to be prophetic. Tonight, win or lose the results
for Republicans. Um how much of that will be because
of Donald Trump? Well, I think if they win, I
(08:42):
should get all the credit, and if they lose, I
should not be blamed at all. Okay, but it will
probably be just the opposite. When they win, I think
they're going to do very well. I'll probably be given
very little credit. Even though in many cases, right, you
are insane as that was Trump was not wrong about
that part. He endorsed three thirty candidates, and even if
(09:03):
the Republicans man narrow victories and take both the House
and the Senate, he will take a huge hit. And
the ones who will hit him fastest will be Kevin
McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, especially after the guy Trump did
not like in Colorado who got the GOP nomination. Anyway,
Joe O. Day lost the Senate race. Trump showed his
(09:24):
party what this all means to him. He posted, oh
Day lost big, make America great again, as if the
seat had not been won by the Democrats. They're blaming Trump.
But back to the main point. Call me a cock
eyed optimist. Of course, I am well known as Captain Positive.
(09:48):
But I look at the mid terms this way. Maybe,
just maybe more than fifty of our friends and neighbors
are still not crazy enough to give up democracy in
exchange for a dollar off a gallon of gas. Maybe
more than fifty of us would still not swap lower
prices for dessert for deciding who's president based on who
(10:09):
has the largest support from street gangs. Maybe more than
fifty of Americans would still not agree to seeing their
neighbors carted off to concentration camps. Even if it did
mean those who were left would get vouchers to send
their kids to religious schools. What a night. Thank you
for your attention. We hope you enjoyed the two mid terms,
(10:32):
or as they will forever be known from here on
in the Red Dribble. Still ahead, the newest witness interviewed
(10:53):
by the One six Commission is so important they're keeping
his name secret. But AOC names names. Well, she names
one name. Can you guess which right winger precipitates the
most death threats against her? And speaking of the right wing,
I have alluded to this many times, but I have
never told the important part of the story before. All Right,
(11:14):
nearly a quarter century ago, I went out on two
dates with Laura Ingram, though to be fair, the second
one was actually closer to me being kidnapped. What she
revealed about that vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton identified
remains with me to this day, as do the scars.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith
(11:42):
old Woman still ahead on countdown. Tucker Carlson versus Peacock
versus Brett Farve for worst person dishonors. That's a fight.
And everybody who has ever dated has made a mistake.
Mine was named Laura Ingram. But there's a little bit
more to that story, and it applies to today's tical scene. First,
(12:06):
in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day. You saved
Ace from the crisis at the New York Pound. Now
somebody needs to rescue Princess Wiggles. She's shy, uncertain around dogs,
but she could be adopted tomorrow maybe better. Pledges to
help a rescue outfit pull her out because she has
(12:27):
contracted pneumonia in the pound, and the pounds response to
that illness is, of course, to blame the dog and
kill it as quickly as possible. The sadness here the
pneumonia is really treatable. You don't want her around other
dogs for a while, but even that can change quickly.
Princess Wiggles is my pinned tweet at tom Jumbo Grumbo.
If you can foster or adopt her, or pledge to
help rescue, please respond to the tweet retweet If you can,
(12:50):
I thank you, and Princess Wiggles thanks you. Pot Scripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, stateline, Washington.
(13:13):
The January six Committee has interviewed the driver of the
suv in which Trump traveled on the day of the
coup attempt. He is the one Cassidy Hutchinson testified was
at the wheel when Trump tried to grab the wheel
and grab the driver and get himself to the capital
to lead the assault. He has not been named publicly.
It is an important bit of the narrative, but the
(13:35):
fixation on it, even to show Trump's for knowledge or
willing participation in the violence, seems a little overwrought. There
may be more to this than even we know from
Cassidy Hutchinson dateline, charmel shake at COP seven in Egypt.
You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? COP
is getting no coverage here it should. It is the
(13:58):
seven International Conference on Climate Change, and there's actually a
good development. The small countries are getting wiped out by
climate change effects. First, the large ones have been refusing
to help them financially. That may be changing at COPE.
Before this session only Scotland has offered any money two
million dollars. Now Australia has pledged fifty million, Denmark thirteen, Ireland, ten,
(14:23):
the Scots five point seven more. Of course, the money
needs to be in the billions. The United States pledge. Well,
we've offered the country's a laurel and hearty welcome and
dateline Kiev. Apparently, after gentle pressure from this country, Ukrainian
President Voladimir Zelenski has changed a vital position. He would,
(14:44):
he says, now negotiate with Russia even if Putin is
not deposed to end the war. He is to stick
though to his basic precepts, safeguards for Ukrainian territorial integrity,
justice for Russian war criminals, and compensation from the Kremlin.
(15:13):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith in Sports. Dusty Baker, at age
seventy three and newly crowned first time World Series winning manager,
the oldest manager ever to win the World Series, says
(15:33):
he will be back to run the Houston Astros again
next season. Dusty says nothing has been signed, but both
sides are agreed to it. Dusty Baker is beloved in
the game, but here is an inside tip about the
strength of his beloveditude and how it has grown over
the years. One thing that happens to all baseball reporters
and fans. Is this sequence of events. When you are
(15:54):
a kid, most managers are older than your parents, maybe
your grandparents. When you start reporting, there are now managers
that you remember seeing as a player. As you age,
suddenly all the managers were guys you covered as a player.
Later on you find out you are older than some
or most of the managers. If you're me, a guy
(16:15):
gets named manager of the Yankees, who you met when
he was thirteen years old. Finally, you get to the
point where you can count the managers who are older
than you on the fingers of one hand, so you
root for them desperately so they manage forever. That's Dusty
Brian Snicker of the Braves and Buck show Alter of
the Mets. For me, the others are all younger than
(16:38):
the poet Ralph Humphreys was the son of a major
leaguer who played briefly for the eight three New York Giants.
He wrote a magnificent poem about how baseball fans go
from infancy to old age while the damn players just
get younger. It's called polo grounds and it ends with
this time is of the essence the crowd and players
(16:59):
are the same age always, but the man in the
crowd is older every season. Come on, play ball. When
relief pitcher Jesse Roscoe joined the New York Yankees at
the age of forty six in his twenty fourth Major
League season, one of three teams he pitched for that year,
when I was only forty four and had known him
(17:21):
since he was twenty two and I was twenty, I
said to him, Jess, if you ever get to the
point where they're not offering you enough money so you
keep on pitching, I know like twenty guys my own
age who will throw in ten grand each to you
just so you can keep pitching. And Jesse, we can
keep saying, thank God, there's at least one ball player
who's still older than I am. A ball player who
(17:56):
is older than I am would have to be already
sixty four years old late six e four by opening
day ahead, we'll go backwards in time and talk about
the time I went out with Laura Ingram and then
(18:17):
the time that she tried to kidnap me. First, the
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effect
specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the World
le Bronze, the NBC Peacocks service, which has announced exactly
what you needed to see, a three part series premiering
at the end of the month called Casey Anthony, Where
(18:37):
the Truth Lies. If you don't know the name Casey Anthony,
lucky you. I'm not gonna say. She was the center
of the last tabloid case to get wall to wall
TV coverage, But when her daughter disappeared and was then
found dead, her trial was wall to wall. She was
found not guilty, and now NBC is doing a series
on her so everybody can make money. I mean, man,
(18:59):
why not a streaming series about Jeffrey Dahmer while you're
at wait what? There has been one? Oh for Christ
the runner up Everybody's Favorite Flailing football star X star
Brett Farve scandal, the scandal where he redirected state welfare
funds to build a volleyball stadium for his daughter to
play in that Mississippi state. Now this is a new scandal.
(19:23):
Farv is the largest outside investor in two companies claiming
they are developing a nasal spray to prevent concussions and
a cream to treat them. Just rub it in your brain.
A million dollars at least he invested in this ESPN
reporting that the company is both owned by Jake Van Landingham,
Prevacus and press all m d exaggerated the effectiveness of
(19:47):
the drugs and overstated their own connections to the NFL.
And this is all to be found in court documents.
Plus that Mississippi welfare money scandal with the volleyball court.
Van Landingham got two more than two million bucks out
of it. He says, I had no idea this was
welfare money. And I've always been an up standing person
when it comes to research. Speaking of upstanding, exaggeration and overstatement,
(20:10):
don't forget the time far sent pictures of his junk
to a fellow employee of the New York Jets. Exaggeration indeed.
But our winner the jimminy glick of Fox News Tucker Carlson.
We sometimes forget that behind the buffoonish appearance and girly
voice lies a well. What Congresswoman Alexandriacasio Cortez called him
(20:30):
on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, a stochastic terrorist.
Let me quote her. I can tell you a hundred
and ten percent one of the largest sources of death
threats I get is Tucker Carlson. Every time that dude
put my name in his mouth the next day. This
is like what stochastic terrorism is, when you use a
very large platform to turn up the temperature and target
(20:52):
an individual until something happens, and then when something happens,
because it's indirect, you say, oh, I had nothing to
do with that. Tucker Carlson, God forbid anything happens. He
plays a massive role in political violence, like it comes
on his doorsteps specifically exactly, congresswoman exactly. And I can
add he's also an identity thief and a megalomaniac and
(21:14):
a horrible human being. Tucker, don't forget. I also whitewashed
Kanye West the anti semite, the day before he destroyed himself.
Carlson two days worst Person and the World to the
(21:40):
number one story on the Countdown. In my favorite topic,
Me and Things, I promised not to tell my tattered
little diary from informs me the twenty five years ago.
This week, in the second month of my news career
at MSNBC, one of my guests for the first time
was one of the network's original contributor commentators. Original MSNBC
(22:03):
talent Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in
us going out on two dates, and something she told
me on the first of these dates has resonated with
me literally every month since and is relevant to politics today.
(22:24):
I know, I know, I did not so much date
her as survive her. Even then before nine eleven helped
to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a
diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was March.
Beware the odds of March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly,
(22:50):
and God helped me. Nearly forty eight years of dating,
I have not been a kiss and teller. I have dated.
I don't know dozens, and we're a couple of hundred,
actually thirteen seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know
any of their name. One of them, now a political writer,
basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence.
(23:13):
So why am I telling this story violating that? Because
not three months after that first date, when we were
still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could
look at a speech I was going to give it
Cornell's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago.
I literally facted it to her. Sure enough, a couple
(23:33):
of days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which
was televised by my network MSNBC, and they're on his desk.
In front of him is the fact copy of my speech,
and he is reading from my facts. I could recognize
the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap facts
(23:53):
machine used to streak all of my outgoing pages with
Laura used to go on his show a lot, so
to curry favor with Imus, she sent him the speech
without asking me. As I told her that day, all
bets are now off. So I've told parts of this
story before, like She had been a Supreme Court clerk
(24:16):
for Clarence Thomas, and our first date consisted of taking
me on an insider's tour of the court and having
me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I
did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked
me the largest steak I had ever seen that did
not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it, and we
watched a woman later discredited because she could not keep
(24:38):
her stories straight, go on sixty minutes and make allegations
against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told
me seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingram
story sitting there in the middle of all the debris.
I don't think I've ever told this. The first date
(24:59):
was only about six weeks after the then First Lady
Hillary Clinton got on the Today Show and blamed the
at best exaggerated scandal about her husband and Monica Lewinsky
on the quote vast right wing conspiracy. That is sound stupid,
Laura said that night, as she showed me her small
office upstairs, I expected that she was about to decry
(25:20):
the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and
the brand new Internet to try to bring down a
president from the other party. And I said, so naive
little boy that I was no, not that, of course
we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I
doubted the conspiracy part, I explained, I had only been
covering politics for two months. At the end of the day,
(25:44):
she said, end of the day, constantly, at the end
of the day, it's that vast part. It's not vast,
vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet there's not even
thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained that she was
essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature
right wing conspiracy. She showed me a tied page that
(26:05):
had the facts numbers of about two dozen people. There
at the top are the sources. She said. There was
Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas
Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen, a constant presence
as a talking head on cable news. She later died
on nine eleven. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers
(26:25):
in the office of Independent Council ken Starr. One of
them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said,
nobody impartant. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham,
who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they,
including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all
the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up,
(26:47):
and she distributed them to the other parts of the list.
That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another
Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh.
There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it.
He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most
(27:08):
important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge.
She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he
didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big
on not traceable, So I never facts it to him,
She said, I just give it to my brother. This
is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge
all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now
(27:30):
over here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons
to go out with her. At the time, I could
think only of an old cartoon I had once seen.
It was an octopus working in the post office, using
all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But
every couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then
(27:51):
I was actually a witness to one of the earliest
configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today
whether it is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery
that links the right wing politicians and those who are
supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices
and special prosecutors and people like that. They're with the
(28:11):
right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations
like Fox and Drudge and O. A. N. And Newsmax,
and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who
succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is, in fact, everything that your
typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist trumpist thinks is being run
(28:32):
by George Soros or Bill Gates or Dr Fauci or me.
You want to be able to say, there are reports
or accusations about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well,
somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery,
or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of
the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people.
(28:54):
They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports
then get fed back to Fox News or Bright Bart
or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or
they're just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want
to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the
(29:15):
Great Replacement, but you want it to come out washed
clean enough that soulless opportunists like at least Stephanic and
jd Vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail
without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery, and I
saw the machinery when it was just a list of
twenty and thirty people, And at that moment I barely
(29:37):
recognized the importance of what I saw. Then again, I
was still on that night, recovering from not just the
giant steak, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day,
as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had
boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going
(29:57):
back into what had been their house and putting up
exact copies of all the photos of the two of
them together that he had taken down from his walls.
And when he got smart and changed the locks, she
went back again to finish the job. Found her key
didn't work so naturally as you would. She stuffed his
(30:22):
garden hose through the mail slot of his front door
and turned on the outdoor Spiggott ten thousand. Now I
was wearing the hirn went Flora's ruined, she said proudly,
And part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now I didn't flee. Later,
(30:45):
as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake, snoring,
not my own, and Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking
in his sleep. I mean almost in syllables, yeah like that.
(31:05):
It was something like degrees out and I was on
the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her
dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables.
And it turned out her dog was the one telling
her what to do, I was simply going to leave
by the window without bothering to open it first. The
(31:27):
next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got
to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He
went and got it. She cocked her arm back again.
He took off, loving life as he did. She did
not throw it. He went forty fifty sixty feet, then
stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and
(31:48):
and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly,
without a trace of affection for him or anything else,
wait far at which is when I realized I was
being courted to be the next dog. A few weeks later,
(32:09):
back home in New York, I got home from working
in early morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul
Harvey at ABC Radio. I was just waking up from
a tortured nap when the phone rang. It's Laura. I'm downstairs.
We're going to my old law firms party at the museum.
I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just
stay here at this pay phone outside your planes calling
you all night. We went the next option opportunity probably
(32:36):
was going to be me on the wrong end of
the hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to
her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly,
it was a great party. I got to meet Hillary
Clinton's mother and her brother. And if you think the
fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and
(32:56):
their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and
Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to be friends. Later we
wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak bar
at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished.
After about her sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd
(33:17):
had at the party, she began to droop her head,
nodding like a bobble head doll. Her friends said, Okay,
that's it, we'll take care of the check. You take
care of her. She had not gotten a hotel room
or anything, and if you've ever heard of anybody who
needed to be poured into a cab because they were
so drunk. You don't really know what that means until
(33:38):
you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I
wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the
spectacle would have made the gossip pages. She basically could
not stand up, so I took her to my apartment,
put her into my bed, and I went and slept
on the couch at the far end of the apartment,
(33:59):
which is where I was hours later in the morning
when she woke me up because she came parading through
using my phone to call my assistant to get a
car sent to my address to take her to the airport,
and to make sure that everybody in my office knew
she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I
kept thinking was why didn't I follow my instincts. My
(34:22):
instincts said flee, I fleed. Not, of course, if I
had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree
of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I I've done
(34:52):
all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening.
Follow the podcast If you can tell a friend We're
number one among news and political podcast not produced by
a network. Here are the credits. Most of the music,
including our theme from Beethove and Ninth, was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Philip Shanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray
(35:15):
and produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
ever Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks, and everything else
(35:36):
is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this
the six hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now, why all we still can
a new episode tomorrow till Man Keith Olberman, good Morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(36:01):
is a production of i heart Radio. For more prod
cast from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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