"WHAT DID YOU THINK EPSTEIN WAS STEALING THOSE WOMEN FOR?" - 7.31.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 150: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45): One shouted question to which Trump didn't even bother to reply reignites the entire Trumpstein scandal and cover-up: "What did you think Epstein was stealing those women FOR?"

It encapsulates the entirety of Trump's complicity: in the cover-up of Epstein's crimes, in his willingness to cut a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell, with his indifference to the suffering of the victims, to his belief the real victim here is him because Epstein "stole" Virginia Giuffre and other employees from him. 

It encapsulates Trump's worthless, despicable life.

The moral vacancy, the lack of humanity, summarized in one reporter's question. And it re-emphasizes that Trump now confesses he broke with Epstein not over the child rape but because Epstein hired rape victims away from him, was STEALING Virginia Giuffre away from him, Trump paints a picture OF Mar-a-Lago where the tragic Ms. Giuffre who just killed herself worked for Trump as not Epstein Island but the Recruiting Station and Waiting Room FOR Epstein Island, Trump calls going to the Island a quote “privilege” and keeps re-igniting Trumpsteen and finding new things to admit to, and after ten years of watching the fascists beat democracy to within an inch of its life using democracy’s own loopholes, Senate Democrats finally found a loophole which may FORCE the Justice Department to release the Trumpsteen files including whatever deal with the devil his man Todd made with the pedophile pimp Gulaine Maxwell last week, or at minimum take Trump and his inflatable rubber Attorney General and tie them up in court forever and thus keep the Trumpsteen Scandal ALIVE forever.

EVEN DEMOCRATS ARE DOING SOMETHING: Invoking federal law that says any executive branch agency SHALL supply any information to any group of five members of the Senate Government Oversight Committee. SHALL. 

Repeated daily, Trumpstein will end Trump's presidency.

B-Block (43:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MSNBC says it's getting great new offices (in fact, it's getting kicked out of 30 Rock by a parent that has disowned it). Analyze the polls any way you want to: Andrew Cuomo is losing to Zohran Mamdani in NYC by 20 to 30 points. The move to disbar the FCC fascist Brendan Carr. And at our expense Kristi Noem brings Corey Lewandowski with her to Argentina with her so she can spend all her time riding.

C-Block (54:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I surprised a new friend recently by mentioning the late Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner was my friend. In fact we were friends for more than 25 years and my exchanges with him were unexpectedly and always delightful. The blessing of only knowing George, never working for him.

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

(00:26):
did you think Epstein was stealing those women for? This
is how Trump's press briefing ended. What did you think

(00:47):
Epstein was stealing those women for? Trump then walks out
the open door and the feed cuts off. Sometimes there
is nothing like a great unanswered rhetorical question. One question
like that every day, just one, and Trump is as

(01:08):
the baseball announcers say, meet, what did you think Epstein
was stealing those women? Four? Trump now confesses he broke
with Epstein not over the child rape, but because Epstein
hired rape victims away from him, was stealing Virginia Giuffrey

(01:32):
away from him. Trump paints a picture of mary a
Lago where the tragic Miss Giuffrey, who just killed herself
worked for. Trump paints it not as Epstein Island, but
as the recruiting station and waiting room four Epstein Island.
Trump calls going to the island to quote privilege. He
keeps reigniting trump Stein and finding new things to admit

(01:53):
to involuntarily. And after ten years of watching the fascists
beat democracy to within an inch of its life using
democracy's own loopholes, Senate Democrats finally found a loop all
of their own, which may force the Justice Department to
release the trump Stein files, including whatever deal with the
devil Trump's man Todd made with the pedophile pimp Cleane

(02:16):
Maxwell last week, or at minimum, take Trump and his
inflatable rubber attorney general and tie them up in court
forever and thus keep the Trumpstein scandal alive forever. What
did you think Epstein was stealing those women for? Also,

(02:40):
the Republicans have begun their coup to try to fix
the twenty twenty six mid terms. I'll get to that,
but first I have now lost track of how many
times Trump has confessed to, at minimum covering up the
Epstein scandal, the Trumpstein scandal, but if somehow you missed it,
he has now confessed that he disavowed Jeffrey Epstein, not

(03:02):
because he was a child rapist, human traffick procure pimp.
That was apparently all fine with Trump. I know you're stunned,
not because of that, but because he had had the
nerve to steal some of Trump's employees at Mara e
Fing Logo.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously, but just curious were
some of the workers that were taken from you were
some of them young women, Some of them were some
of them young women.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the
people that would take it, and it was the concept
of taking people that.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Work for me as man.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
But that story has been pretty well out there and
the answers, yes, they.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Were, Yes, they were yet of it.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
In the spot, in the spot, yeah, people that work
in the spy a great spot, one of the best
spas in the world at Marlaca.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
And then, as they say, in certain circles with which
people like Epstein and Trump are familiar, the money shot.
Even though the reporter mispronounces the poor woman's.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Name one of those stolen you know, persons that include
from Virginia Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
I think she worked at the spam.

Speaker 5 (04:24):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
I think that was one of the people with him.
He stole her.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
And by the way, she had no complaints about us,
as you know, none whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
The late Virginia Giffrey always insisted she was recruited into
the Epstein pedophilia trafficking cartel from Trump's Mary Lago. Trump
has now confirmed that miss Giffrey one of the alleged
victims of Prince Andrew also always insisted she would fight

(04:56):
back to the end, and yet her stunning suicide three
months ago has not gotten nearly the attention or the
doubt that Epstein's suicide still does. Perhaps that needs to change.
Perhaps some Democratic leader will demand a full investigation of that,

(05:20):
or at least more commentators will, or at least more
commentators will ask why there's such a disparity in interest
when she said she would fight to the end and
never give up. And this does not in the least
dishonor her, It would only underscore that. Still, with rape

(05:42):
and pedophilia and death all on Donald Trump's table, even
if conceivably not among the accusations against him, he has
never expressed the slightest remorse about Virginia Giuffrey or any
other victim, nor promise to any of them justice. He's

(06:02):
just mad. He's still mad that Epstein hired away his employees,
stole them, stole her, stole Virginia Geffrey, stole her. He
even told them that in Scotland.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
For years, I wouldn't talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn't
talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired
help and I said, don't ever do that again. He
stole people that work for me. I said, don't ever
do that again. He did it again. I never had
the privilege of going to his island.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Going to epstein island was a quote privilege. What did
you think Epstein was stealing those women for you, scumbag?
Another reminder that people other people. That's you, me, Virginia, Geoffrey,

(07:01):
Trump's own daughter, his own support. They are not people
not to him, they are commodities. We are all commodities
to Trump, except those who become obstructions. Jeffrey Epstein was
not a monster to Trump. He was an obstruction because
Virginia Jeffrey, who was also not a person to Trump,
was to Trump a commodity. And oh, by the way,

(07:26):
this whole callous. This wasn't pedophilia or sex trafficking was
an HR issue bullshit from Trump. The timeline also doesn't work.
The impeccable Ryan Goodman of NYU Law recognized at first
this started in the nineties, when Epstein first hired people
away from marri Lago and raised Trump's ire than in

(07:51):
two thousand, Epstein and Maxwell quote took Virginia Giuffrey from
marri A Lago. In two thousand and two, Trump said
the most infamous thing he ever said, as Goodman notes
about Epstein being a terrific friend and liking younger ones.

(08:12):
In two thousand and four, Trump and Epstein broke Oops
hard to believe.

Speaker 5 (08:23):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Trump's lie contains another lie, contains another lie, contains another
lie within that. But there it is. He was so
outraged about Epstein hiring them away again, except he's now
lying about the timeline. Poor Virginia Giffrey was the again.
Four years later, he broke with Epstein. Anything to keep

(08:53):
this story in the news. Tragic, heartbreaking or uncomfortable as
that will be, will hasten the end of Trump and
MAGA and say our democracy, we have to do it.

Speaker 5 (09:09):
We have no choice.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
I think it is possible. Even Democrats have realized this,
I mean even Chuck Schumer. A month into this scandal,
the first Trump scandal to last a month, and somebody
finally issued a demand under Title five US Code two
nine five four information to Committees of Congress on Request,

(10:01):
which is a law that has been on the book
since nineteen twenty eight, which reads briefly, and starkly quote,
an executive agency on request of the Committee on Government
Operations of the House of Representatives, or of any seven
members thereof, or on request of the Committee on Governmental
Affairs of the Senate, or any five members thereof, shall

(10:25):
submit any information requested of it relating to any matter
within the jurisdiction of the committee. This is not particularly vague.
If just five members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
demands information from any executive agency, like say, the Department

(10:47):
of Justice, that department has to turn the information over
by law. Know if this or when that? Just give
it seven Democrats and that's forty percent more Senators than
needed if you're scoring at home, or even if you're alone.
Seven members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which is

(11:11):
now the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are now
demanding the DOJ turnover all the trump Stein files, indeed
all the Epstein files. There are two obstacles. Obviously, for
every legal nuance the Democrats find, the Republicans have been
storing up loopholes out of them since about nineteen eighty one.

(11:32):
So after they deny this request, it will go to court,
presumably eventually to the Supreme Court, where sam Alito will
invent something about Trump's right to declare anything a national
security risk and deny anybody, even in the Senate or
the House, the right to see anything, even if it
would exonerate him. As we all know, the stuff Trump
is desperately covering up would exonerate him. That's why he

(11:55):
won't release it. The second problem, of course, is that
we brought out the big guns to sell this, Chuck
Schumer and Dick Blumenthal and Gary Peters. I like Dick Blumenthal,
I've known him a long time. But wow, it's like

(12:19):
the rack pack is live again in Vegas now. I mean,
I understand these are the senators and they are doing
something finally to try to move the needle. And what
they're not gonna trot out Fetterman to announce this. To
Fetterman's credit, he signed the filing. But can we glow

(12:43):
up the stage craft maybe just a little. Schumer and
Blumenthal and Peters and the others referred to this as
a letter to the attorney general. How about a demand?
How about legal notice? How about an ultimatum? How about

(13:04):
eating the law out loud to the reporters and saying,
under this federal law. There is no negotiation and no
room for Trump to escape. And whatever Trump is hiding,
that ends now. PAMBONDI will shall turn over this material immediately,
or we will hold her in contempt of the Senate
and we will find a venue to prosecute her under

(13:27):
Title five US Code two nine five four. And she
damn well better contemplate what has happened to all the
other attorneys general who broke federal law. Maybe go home
and watch all the president's men tonight. Find out which
prison John Mitchell went to. No, we sent a letter.

(13:48):
You can see the thought bubble. Did you remember to
put on enough postage? Okay, I'll stop. They did something.
Let's see if they can get traction with this approach.
We are all members of the stern Letter Writers Hall
of Fame. In fact, in fact, Blumenthal was elected unanimously.

(14:15):
What's maddening the most about this is the Republicans continue
to flail at every turn on Trumpstein. The missing minute
from the Trumpstein tape. It's not missing, the DOJ says, no.
The machine just numbers things wrong, changes the time, except
there's one hundred newly discovered other things wrong with that tape.

(14:38):
According to a forensic exam by CBS, and a mysterious
orange blob has been seen near Epstein's cell on the
tape right before he died. The jokes are too easy,
write them yourselves. More practically, Maxwell has now demanded immunity

(14:58):
or clemency in exchange for her testimony to Congress. And
while on a human level, I am glad House Republicans
have refused, used, on a political level, I am stunned.
How else will they get her to lie for Trump
in public? Even now? If Trump says f this and
pardons her and she lies for him as part of
the pardon, the first reaction will become the House didn't

(15:19):
trust her enough to give her limited immunity. Trump just
pardoned her. Who can believe a thing she says?

Speaker 5 (15:25):
Now?

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Bad bad strategy fascists? Thanks. Meanwhile, Trump somehow managed to
not repeat his confession yesterday that he has a list
and could show it to you, or that he only
got mad at Epstein overproaching his employees, not you know,
raping them. He didn't mention that again. He just walked
out of the room while the rhetorical question was going.

(15:49):
He did manage to conflate his favorite conspiracy theory with
his clown Cash Betel's newest conspiracy theory, the one about
burn bags in his secret FBI room somewhere containing quote
Russia Gate unquote material. He was asked about the burn
bags and instead Trump answered about how the Democrats wrote

(16:10):
the Epstein files or something. Nobody knows what he's saying anymore,
at least of all him. I mentioned the Republicans have
begun coup twenty twenty six, filing to Jerrymander Texas only

(16:32):
the twenty first thousandth time since Tom DeLay's days there.
It would add five Republican seats. Gavin Newsom replying in
California to add five or more California seats. Jd Vance
reacting with Umbradge because he can't add single digits. The
relevant part the good news is from all places Politico,

(16:55):
the most wired in Republicans privately concede political rights that
they're not going to win the midterms through redistricting efforts alone.
If we are relying on redistricting to hold the majorities,
we have bigger issues. Set a Republican operative close to
the White House who works on Senate and House races Epstein.
That would be your bigger issue. What did you think

(17:17):
he was stealing them for? That should be the entire
banner at the Democratic convention in twenty twenty eight. If
we are relying on redistricting to hold the majorities, we
have bigger issues. Set a Republican operative close to the
White House who works on Senate and House races. Still,
this operative defended the push frankly Democrats to it, So

(17:39):
we are giving them a dose of their own medicine. That,
by the way, is the philosophy, the false philosophy under
which Republicans have worked for fifty years. Well, the Democrats
did it in eighteen twelve. The bad news on this
is from all places. Politico. House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries
will arrive in Austin and huddle with Texas Democratic legislators tonight.

(18:00):
That's last night. This is a moment that requires a
force full on the ground spots, and that is why
I am traveling to Texas to convene with members of
the Texas House and Senate delegations, as well as our
Democratic members representing Texas in Congress. The translation of a
Keem's statement there is we don't have a plan in
Texas Happily, the Republicans continued to screw things up back

(18:27):
at the ranch. When Trump is not out there digging
his own bottomless pit and now being able to do
so without saying a word, his faithful morons are helping
him do it. Congressman Eric Burlson, m Missouri, the m
is for moron was on CNN and even Wolf Blitzer
had a question. It's the same open ended, meaningless question

(18:52):
he's been asking since nineteen eighty one, but it was
a question. Quote Trump said that Epstein stole young women
who worked as employees at his marri Lago spa, including
Virginia Jeffrey, who died by suicide earlier this year. What's
your real action to Trump's comments, to which Burlson answered,
Trump did not visit Epstein Island. I take him at

(19:12):
his word for that. Well, Congressman, he didn't have to
go to Epstein Island, dummy. Epstein delivered. Plus, as I
said before, Mary Lago was the waiting room for Epstein Island.

(19:37):
It has now happened twice in the last forty eight
hours that I have been asked essentially the same question
by two entirely different people. The question is why have
almost no Trump's staffers, not supporters, not advocates in Congress
or in the Senate or around the country, or public
mouthpieces or the idiots you see on TV or other

(19:58):
people at Fox News. But why have staffers in the
Trump administration in key position not resigned in protest over
any of the last one hundred moral turpitudes perpetrated by Trump. Specifically,
this came up in the context of the comments about

(20:19):
hiring away that poor woman, Virginia Geoffrey and treating it
so offhandedly, like we were talking about Jeffrey Epstein taking
away his favorite chambermaid. Why has there not been umbrage?
Why have there not been people fleeing? Why has there

(20:42):
never been a realization that Donald Trump is, no matter
how long it's taken for the goddamn thing to sink
the captain of the Moral Titanic, that he is a
man who, if it is legal to mention his name,
fifty years from now, will be remembered very much the
way the Germans remember Hitler. And I am answered to

(21:05):
both people who asked this question in essentially the same way.
I'm reasonably good at explaining what I have seen and
how long I have seen it. And the number one
answer is these are people who have listened to the
Rush Limbaughs of this world, and the Carl Roves of
this world, and the George W. Bush people of this

(21:28):
world for the entirety of their lives. Mike Johnson Speaker
of the House of Representatives, not that he should be
resigning from the administration he is not in but Mike
Johnson as a representative. I've pointed out before the timeline
of Mike Johnson's life is he was just starting law
school when Fox News went on the air. There are
people in the Trump dictatorship whose parents were raised on

(21:51):
Rush Limbaugh. That has how long this has been going on.
I have been warning of this change in the fundamental
perception of what America is, of the two party system.
I have been warning about the Reportublicans intending to destroy
this and speaking of it as if it is something
that Republicans need to correct since nineteen ninety eight. That's

(22:13):
just me, and I was far from the first to
do so. This has been going on since the eighties.
Its precursors occurred during the McCarthy era in the fifties,
and the precursors to McCarthy occurred in the Palmer Raids
right after the First World War, and the precursors to
the Palmer Raids were in the anarchy raids of the
eighteen nineties. There has always been part of this country

(22:36):
ready to embrace autocracy one party rule, and it's almost
always been conservatives trying to snamp out liberals. You saw
the Ann Coulters before they became jokes, the Laura Ingram's
before they became unrecognizable, and I mean that literally, after
all that work. You saw what they were pitching in

(22:56):
the nineties, that being liberal was a disease, that liberals
were traders, that the natural party of government was the
Republican Party. According to Karl Rove, they have been trained
for this. They have been trained for autocracy and party
rule for decades upon decade. They have inherited it from

(23:20):
their parents and in now some cases grandparents. They do
not understand that this has been a two party country
since its founding, and more than two parties at times.
They do not understand that a minority is not permitted
to rule without the consent of the majority and the

(23:40):
cooperation of the majority, and they believe that it is
necessary for the minority because the minority is better than
the majority to stamp out any opportunity, the majority would
have to rule. Therefore, why would they leave Trump. They
believe he is right, no matter how it is achieved,
no matter if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue every day.

(24:05):
They don't care. They have been told that this is
about eliminating the choice. This is about making it impossible
for those schevee minorities to have any real say here.
And you can pick whatever minority they don't like this week,
and they're the targets. In twenty sixteen, Trump started with

(24:27):
the Hispanics and pivoted very quickly to anybody who is
Arabic in nature and to anyone who is Muslim in nature.
It doesn't matter who they are. It could be the
same people with different names. They are the guilty party,
and he is going to use them as the rationale
to take away the votes and the rule of anyone

(24:50):
who supports them, let alone of the members of those groups.
They are largely homeschooled, so the opportunity to go and
meet members of other groups and associate with them, and
you know the statistics if there is an other group
in your awareness of the world and you'd know nobody
from that group. The odds are ten to ninety that

(25:12):
you will accept them or like them. If you meet
somebody and interact with them, the odds become ninety ten
that you will like them and interact with them and
not brand them as some other group. You realize that
just as big assholes as everybody else, and just as
big nice guys as everybody else, and that all the
groupings you were raised on are artificial and meaningless. But

(25:35):
they're homeschooled. That's a way of indoctrinating people. It's not choice,
it's not even given the variety of life that a
private school gives you or a religious school gives you.
I used to wonder about the kids who would leave
every Wednesday afternoon for Catholic school. Then they came back

(25:58):
and went to regular school four and a half days
a week. They started to laugh at Catholic school. Well,
the ones who had Catholic school full time to go
a little longer for them to laugh at Catholic school,
and they did anyway. But just getting out of the house,
these are kids who've never been out of the house before.
These are people who will say they forced them into
the subways in New York. Ten years ago, Nut Gingrich

(26:20):
was saying, the elites right around in the subways of
New York. It's like pick one. There's also a considerable
opioid problem in all of the areas that have supported
Trump in twenty sixteen, twenty and twenty four. That was
a statistic that was absolutely valid and proven. The country's

(26:41):
fifty three top counties with opioid problems in twenty sixteen
all went for Trump. Do you think that's not a
factor in this? Do these people seem like they're a
little strung out. Not to pick on anybody or accuse anybody,
but have you ever looked at half of the members
of the Republican cohort in Congress? Have you ever wondered,

(27:02):
I wonder what she's on? Steroids, opioids, who knows what else. Homeschooled,
been in the military, taught to believe that there's always
an other outside waiting with a gun. These are the
people working for Donald Trump. Where is the moral courage

(27:24):
going to come from? Never mind that, where is the
moral disagreement going to come from? So somebody said, then, well,
what about the idea that you know he's eighty years old.
He's in terrible health. He's declining rapidly. He's declining physically.
He regained some mental power once or twice a week,

(27:44):
but the rest of the time it's pretty much a
straight slide down a mountain, and he's just wearing shoes,
not skis. Well, what do you think they think of that?
They think of that as opportunity. Somebody is going to
inherit this movement. It may not be the same movement
once Trump is gone. It probably will not go to

(28:06):
any of Trump's children because they're morons. And the people
in the MAGA movement understand they're morons. They've been out
there in front of every single Trump venture. And is
there any Eric Trump ground Swell? Is there a Donald
Trump junior ground Swell? Is there a Lara Trump brown Swell?
And I know she's just a in law, But none

(28:28):
of the Trump children have anything that would be needed
to rule this thing. So all the younger people inside
the Trump administration, they don't see this as a disaster,
or if they see it as something that's going to
claim Trump's presidency, if they're finally going to catch him,
if these Epstein files are going to come out, if
the Trumpstein record shows him and Epstein in bed with

(28:50):
children and Russian hookers. Well, that's just an opportunity for
the younger ones in the Trump administration to take over
next time, isn't it. And the last thing that I
raised with each of the people who have ask me
this question, where is the moral outrage? Where are people
fleeing to avoid being associated with this in the years

(29:12):
and decades to come. Where's the thirty five year old
staffer saying I got to get out of here because
you know someday this is going to come back to
haunt me. Well, first off, likely is not. Trump is
going to appoint him to a federal judgeship somewhere or
maybe the Supreme Court. I mean, what do you think
email Bove is going to walk out. He's going to say, nah,

(29:34):
I don't feel right about this. He doesn't know right
from wrong. He believes in Trump and he doesn't really
believe in Trump. He believes in power. They've achieved it.
Why would they ever give it back? They're just trying
to find ways to lock it in permanently. And the
last part of it is I've pointed out to a
couple of these people who asked me this question in

(29:54):
this context with that unbelievably harrowing remark about poor Virginia Giffrey,
What did we do to them as a nation or
just as the Democratic Party after George W. Bush? What
did we do to them? Before he even took office,

(30:14):
Obama said he would never prosecute for the violations of
the constitution that were the hallmark of the Bush administration.
George W. Bush, sho should have been in prison all
this time. Certainly, Dick Cheney should have been in prison
all this time. Certainly all the people who approved of torture,
and it was torture and waterboarding people and terrifying them

(30:37):
and the manipulation of terror alerts in this country, all
of those people should still be in prison where they
should have been sentenced in two thousand and nine and
twenty ten for the crimes they committed during the Bush administration.
What happened to them? We need to heal and we
can't have political prosecutions, to which the Republican said, oh good,

(30:57):
they're not going to prosecute that us. We can prosecute
them when it's our turn, and it'll be our turn,
and we'll never make the mistake they did and be
nice about it. And what did we do to Trump
after Trump won? I think we know the answer to
that all too frequently in a situation that required a

(31:18):
unprecedented and it wouldn't have been unprecedented if Obama had
prosecuted the Bushies, but an unprecedented response to an attempt
to overthrow the effing government of the United States, an
internal coup led by a psychopath who was president of
the United States and would not leave office peacefully, which

(31:39):
is what Donald Trump is and was in the response
to that. Instead of a vigorous prosecution with some kind
of confidence in an area of truth and reconciliation on
the one hand, and vigorous criminal prosecution on the other hand,
what did we give them? Instead? We gave them Rick Garland.

(32:07):
So the answer to boil it down to two words,
why aren't people resigning from the Trump administration in protest
over at Trump's bestiality? The easiest two word answer is
Merrick Garland. Also, Kamala Harris is not running for governor

(32:36):
of California?

Speaker 5 (32:38):
Would you?

Speaker 1 (32:40):
And I don't think this means she's in the presidential
mash pit either? I mean again, would you? One more
off topic note, Brian Bouler from Off Message, and if
I could hire five people to run strategy for the
Democratic Party, he'd be one of them. Has another brilliant
point about Columbia, or as it might better be known,

(33:02):
Capitulation University, is suggesting some Columbia students should right now
be demanding their money back. Suing. Maybe maybe class action suing.
I'll just read from his newsletter to which you should subscribe.

(33:23):
When you were applying to colleges a couple of years ago,
you received multiple acceptance letters, but chose Columbia because you
were impressed by the commitments to diversity and autonomy, the
way the university promoted and represented itself in its literature
and other public relations. Then over the summer, you learned
the Columbia has reached a settlement with the US government
prohibiting the university from preferencing applicants based on race, color,

(33:46):
or national origin and admissions throughout its programs, or using
proxy for racial admission, personal statements, diversity narratives, or any
applicant reference to racial identity in considering applicants. As you
work toward your degree, Columbia will have a minder called
a Resolution Monitor who will look over its shoulder and

(34:07):
police compliance with the settlement. The school will have to
provide the Resolution Monitor and the United States with admissions
data showing both rejected and admitted students, broken down by race, color,
grade point average, and performance on standardized tests in a
form permitting appropriate statistical analyzes by October one of each

(34:31):
year the agreement, As Brian Boiler writes, Columbia isn't becoming
wide enough for Donald Trump and Steven Miller's tastes back
into the barrel? Is this really the same autonomous and
diverse institution you were led to believe you'd attend so
long as you forked over tens of thousands of dollars

(34:52):
a year. If it's enforced in a way that infringes
on student and faculty speech, the settlement may ultimately give
rise to First Amendment, claims Brian Boiler writes. But simply
if by signing it Columbia falsified representations it made to
its students, it owed independence to every student who agreed

(35:13):
to matriculate there, and in a moral sense, if not
a legal one, it owed those students its best effort
to retain its reputation for excellence and integrity. Not every
Columbia student, he concludes, will feel swindled. But if I
were an undergrad there, I would. I'd want my money back.

(35:34):
I might even want damages for the opportunity cost. I
could have attended any number of prestigious universities that didn't
sign such an agreement. I'll never get my lost time back,
and my degree will now be tainted in the eyes
of many prospective employers. Unquote. But I could hire five

(35:58):
people to run strategy for the Democratic Party. Brian Boitler
would be one of them. Off message is his subscription
newsletter and worth twice what he charges Colombia and my
ex friend and colleague, Claire Shipman, they think they faced
consequences from Trump? How about from lawsuits by students they

(36:22):
have now bilked? How about when the Ivy League starts
unofficially claiming it now only has seven members. Also of
interest here, the podcast is three years old now tomorrow,

(36:47):
just six hundred and thirty two episodes and thirty six million,
four hundred thousand downloads and something like thirty seven million
YouTube views since we started that in the middle of
the second year. Towards the beginning of the second year,
Thank you. I'm expecting to be back Monday for the

(37:08):
start of season four and to soon be announcing an
enlarged footprint, and not just because my size fourteen feet
are still growing, which they are for some nightmarish reason,
but more immediately, on this all new edition of Countdown,
me and George Steinbrenner and separately Christin nom goes to

(37:28):
Argentina and takes Corey Lewandowski with her so she can
ride on top to her heart's content, ride on top
of Argentinian horses. What did you think I meant? That's next?
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman stell

(38:12):
ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. I was
talking to a relatively new friend about George Steinbrenner the
other day, the late owner of the New York Yankees,
the guy who was the owner of the New York
Yankees the last time they won the World Series, who
bought the team when I was fourteen for nine million
dollars from CBS, but agreed to pretend it was twelve

(38:35):
million dollars to makes CBS look better. Forbes says the
Yankees are now worth eight billion dollars. George said he
knew that was going to happen in advance, or he would.
My friend could not believe that George Steinbrenner and I
were cordial, let alone friends, or let alone that he

(38:59):
wrote fan letters and greeted me with hugs and used
to ask how my mom was my friend George next
in things I promised not to tell first. Believe it
or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Krugriffek specimens
who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Honorable

(39:22):
mention one of my many elm the Waters MSNBC I
read from Status by Oliver Darcy. In the coming weeks,
moving boxes will begin to arrive at thirty Rockefeller Plaza.
MSNBC staffers, long spread across multiple floors of the iconic

(39:43):
building will pack up decades of history and prepare for
a symbolic leap into the future. Well, they've only been
in thirty Rocks since two thousand and seven, it's not
decades yet. By mid September, the network will trade it's
longtime home thirty Rock, you know, where NBC has always
been except when MSNB was in secaucas because they didn't

(40:07):
want us to sort of, you know, possibly pee on
the carpet or something.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
At thirty Rock.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
It will trade its longtime home for new offices in
Times Square, a two floor setup in the former BuzzFeed headquarters,
connected by dual staircases. We are not going to some
closet in five die one, senior staff equipped, noting that
the modern space on floors will include new studios, a

(40:35):
central newsroom, and for the first time, a single contiguous
home base. Unquote translation, NBC kick them out of thirty Rock.
They're going to the disused former headquarters of BuzzFeed. Thank god.

(40:58):
It was like when MLB Network took over our old
studios in thirty Rock two thousand and nine. He hadn't
been there in two thousand and seven. Guy goes into
my old office who I knew, and I called him up,
or he called me up, and he said, what is
this in your old office that I've just taken over?
It was trash. I had left there the day we
moved out. They hadn't even cleaned the place. Now they're

(41:19):
going into the old BuzzFeed offices. What I mean, you
couldn't get the old New York Herald Tribune location. The
translation is NBC has kicked them out of thirty Rock,
and what's next is they'll start cutting staff and after
that they'll sell the place, maybe to Murdoch or to Trump.

(41:40):
And as MSNBC gradually disappears because it just couldn't be
bothered to fight for the people that were being laid off,
who were of color, or who had unpopular opinions, or
who would just not repeat democratic doctrinaire bullshit, all of
these failures when they all come together into one vanishing point,

(42:06):
when MSNBC gradually disappears, until like the cheshire Cat, there's
nothing left but the grin of Rachel Meadow fading in
the trees. You will not hear a peep from her
or Hayes or O'Donnell, or especially Scarborough, because they got

(42:26):
their money. Here are the actual nominees. Runner up is
worse Andrew Cuomo, who is still running for mayor of
New York because being humiliated seventeen times a day is
apparently insufficient. Zenith Poles and public progress out with the
latest New York City polling, as the nation, including misled

(42:48):
governors like Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, continue to view Zoran
Mamdani as some sort of alien force, when in point
of fact, he's a kid from the Bronx. Here's the
latest polling, So I go from the top down or
the bottom up. Adams the current mayor seven percent undecided,

(43:13):
five percent, Curtis Sliwa, who owns a beret, thirteen percent,
Cuomo twenty two percent, mam Dani fifty percent fifty percent.
The Democratic nominee is Mamdani. He is beating the Republican
fifty to thirteen, despite the presence of what is nominally

(43:34):
a Democratic mayor and the former Democratic disgraced governor of
New York, who are sucking up twenty nine percent of
the vote that would otherwise almost automatically go to the
Democratic nonee selected by the people of the city, who
Cuomo is trying to invalidate. So what would happen according

(43:57):
to this poll, if Adams were to drop out and
Sliwa and the other combinations, Okay, if Adams did not
run for mayor as an independent and these were the candidates,
who would you vote for? Ma'm Danny goes up a point. No, Adams,
It's now ma'mdanny fifty one to twenty five over Cuoto.
Sleewood gets two points. Cuomo only goes up three points.

(44:21):
If the race was just mamdanny versus Eric Adams, mamdanny
would win fifty nine to thirty two. This man would
get sixty percent of the vote in this city if
Cuomo did not run. Please Lord, Please Lord, who would
you vote for ma'm donnie fifty five percent? I guess

(44:43):
this proves that Adams is still more unpopular than Cuomo.
You got that going for you, Andrew, ma'm danny fifty five.
Slee was sixteen, Adams fourteen. So with no Cuomo, mam
donnie then beats the Republican nominee fifty five sixteen. Unbelievable.

(45:04):
But yeah, dude, all you Democrats who aren't sure like
Josh Shapiro, Oh, I don't know. He's got a scary name.
His name starts with the Z. Could he change his
name to Zeke? If he changed his name to Zeke,
ma'm donnie, maybe I could vote for him?

Speaker 5 (45:17):
Then?

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Why why don't you? Why don't you support John Fetterman again?
Mam donnie would win at least half the vote in
this city, despite the nation's efforts to unseat him. Led
by The New York Times, which can melt in the
hot sun as far as I'm concerned. You know the
shooting on Park Avenue here where the guy who apparently

(45:42):
believed he had CTE and it was the National Football
League's fault walked in with a long gun to a
Park Avenue building. The New York Times covered that. I
believe it was the first local news story the New
York Times covered about New York in maybe seventeen or
eighteen years. New York is just a brand name. That's

(46:03):
where their offices are. They could be the Altuona Times,
no offense, Altuon. I wouldn't wish the Times on you
under any circumstances. Speaking of bad media, the runner up
worser Brendan Carr, or as you may know him, Yusuf
goubus He, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of
the Press Foundation Seth Stern again. This is according to

(46:26):
Oliver Darcy has filed a disciplinary complaint against Brendan Carr,
saying that he has quote blurred the line between law
and politics, reviving baseless investigations into major news networks, threatening
companies over their diversity initiatives, and slow walking approval of
Paramount Global's merger with Skydance Media while Donald Trump pursued
an absurd sixty minutes lawsuit against the company. I'm sure

(46:51):
the response to this for mister Carr was, Yeah, that's
a why I got the job. The complaint does not
say this, but basically it's absolutely the case. The Paramount
Skydance CBS was approved by the FCC after CBS paid
Trump sixteen million and installed a Trump allegiant in house

(47:14):
monitor to make sure they don't do anything to offend Trump.
I understand they're hiring from Columbia University. Trump's shakedown, said
mister Stern, who has filed this complaint of Paramount could
not have worked without a credible threat that the administration
would not approve Paramount's merger with Skydance unless it paid up.

(47:34):
This is again to Oliver Darcy. Here's the punchline. It
seems obvious to us that a licensed attorney should not
be able to help his boss make a mockery of
the legal system by laundering bribes through the courts without consequence.
So he has written to the Office of Disciplinary Council
at the DC Court of Appeals asking the body to

(47:58):
investigate the head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, and potentially
disbar him. May him an on lawyer. That should be
the start. Then he should need to get several lawyers
to keep him out of prison. But the winner, speaking
of which, the Secretary of Homeland Security for her own dalliances,

(48:19):
Christie Nome, Christy Garden Gnome, she went to Argentina. She
went to Argentina and rode a big horsey there because well,
she has a cowboy hat. And what two people who
own cowboy hats do they ride horses. Little known thing

(48:43):
about this taxpayer funded that is, you paid for this
vacation horsey trip, during which, to her credit, Christy Nome
did not kill anybody's dog. Christy Nome was accompanied on
this taxpayer trip by her quote virtual chief of staff
and her ADVA Guyzor Cory lou and Dawski. No, she

(49:14):
only rode the horse that we know of, But this
was also a taxpayer expense. Now brought Lauren Lewandowski along
for the ride. Now, if you bring you know you're
going on a taxpayer funded trip, you might as well
bring the guy with you, because that way there's more
bang for the buck. Christy, It's not cheating if the

(49:38):
taxpayers are paying for it. No. Two Day's other worst Parson.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
In the.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
To the number one story and things I promised not
to tell and things I promised not to tell about
George Steinbrenner. George Steinbrenner, the late owner of the New
York Yankees, the last owner of the New York Yankees,
under which the New York Yankees won the World Series,
the New York Yankees being, despite all evidence and claims
to the contrary, the most underachieving franchise in all of

(50:19):
baseball and probably in all of sports, every last resource.
Number one on the list, and they haven't gotten it
done since George died in two thousand and nine. George
Steinbrenner was a professional friend of mine. It is still,
to this day so unlikely an outcome that I find

(50:40):
it hard to believe sometimes and I have to double
check myself and think, did I dream that? And the
answer is no. George Steinbrenner used to write fan letters
to my bosses. George Steinbrenner, who did not like television
people criticizing his team, but liked me, and who was
a rock ribbed Republican who used to give free tickets

(51:01):
to Donald Trump because Donald Trump's so rich. Of course
he's free tickets. And used to let Rudy Giuliani sit
there and go on the field because of course, the
one thing you want more than anything else is a
divisive fascist. As a fan of your team, loved my
political shows, loved them. We once sat in Cleveland in

(51:22):
the bowels of the stadium there during a playoff series
in which the Yankees were in some peril, and George
talked to me about how much he loved my show,
and I said, George, I'm a liberal, I know, but
it's a great show. That was George Steinbrenner. People who
worked for him would say they never heard anything that
nice from him in their lives. And that is if

(51:44):
you ever read Bill Madden's biography of George Steinbrenner, the
overarching theme, if you worked for George, kiss your life goodbye.
If you never worked for George or used to work
for George, he was your best friend. I met him
first when I was a teenager and my dad had
season tickets to the Yankee Stadium and there was some

(52:04):
sort of open house for season ticket holders and I
was I don't know, fourteen or fifteen, and we just
said hello.

Speaker 5 (52:10):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
The next time, in a story I have told here,
Charlie Steiner, my boss and my second job in radio
in nineteen eighty one, tasked me and the producer named
John Martin was trying to find out when a meeting
involving Steinbrenner would take place during the nineteen eighty one
baseball strike. And after a day of getting absolutely nowhere,
to the point that John and I called the same
executive we did not know looking for information at the

(52:34):
same time, to the point where the man had to
put one of us on hold to answer the call
from the other one. I gave up, said if Charlie
doesn't like it, he can fire me. Walked home, cross
the street, and as I crossed the street, opens a
door from a bar and outsteps George Steinbrenner in a
tucks walking to his limo, turns around, looks back at
the bar, and shouts all the information about the meeting

(52:57):
that we've been trying to get all day to the
owner of the Baltimore Orioles down to the point where
I said, jeez, he's given me everything but the cross street,
at which point George screams, Eddie, what's the cross Street?
And I knew there was a god that was nineteen
eighty one. Nineteen eighty two was the beginning of my
friendship with George Steinbrenner, and what a friendship it was.

(53:21):
If I really were in financial trouble, if I were
arrested at some point, I think I might have called
him for bail money, or at least a lawyer. So
in nineteen eighty two, George reached his pinnacle of firing managers.
The Yankees had not fired a manager in mid season
since nineteen ninety, which brought on all of these reminiscences

(53:42):
about George Steinbrenner. I believe the total was in my
first seven years in the business, he changed managers ten times,
six of those in mid season, and one year he
did it twice. So we're in nineteen eighty two. He's
already fired the starting manager, Bob Lemon once and replaced
him with Gene Michael, and now in August, I think
he's fired Geen Michael and he holds a new conference,

(54:05):
which is significant not for him having fired two managers
in one season, but for him not showing up. George
Steinbrenner did not attend the firing of Gene Michael. This
stunned everybody there. George loved to fire managers and loved
to be there because he put him on TV and
on the front pages of the newspapers. That was when

(54:27):
he began to tire of the whole process, and he
later changed into a man who never fired a manager
mid season again after about well after nineteen ninety, and
he was not actually running the ball club during that season.
So we're standing there just gawking at the idea that
we've got a George Steinbrenner fires another manager story, and

(54:48):
no George Steinbrenner. When the late Mike Shalen, who was
then writing for the New York Post and had been
one of my dear friends in my first job at
United pres International, saunters over to me as the rookie
CNN sports reporter in New York, and standing with me
is the aforementioned producer from the RCAO radio network, John Martin,
and Mike says with his little sibilant ss, you know,

(55:08):
if I was an enterprising reporter, I might wander up
to Yankee Stadium's press box and don't go into the office,
but go into the press box where the window is
to George Steinbrenner's hallway and office and just stand there
for a little while on some pretext and look in
to see if he's there, because he might have already

(55:29):
been there and talked to a reporter from the New
York Post. Well, they didn't have to tell us twice.
Then Mike says, don't two of you don't leave together?
So John and I left, and we went up separately,
and we went out into the press box under the
premise that John was working with me and I needed
the press box as a backdrop for my on camera
report about George Steinbrenner not being at the press conference.

(55:51):
And sure enough, while we're standing there setting up the camera,
George Steinberner wanders through a hallway visible through a glass,
very thin glass which he could speak through, and I
saw him tapped on the glass with my CNN microphone
and kind of waved optimistically with it, like you want
to come out and do an interview, and he gave
a very enthusiastic yes, and came out into the press

(56:13):
box and gave John Martin and I an exclusive. John
had the radio exclusive, I had the television exclusive, and
Mike Shanon, who had already interviewed him, had the newspaper exclusive,
and everybody else's story was Steinbrenner doesn't comment on the
firing of a manager, and we said, oh, yeah, he did.
He just didn't come into you outcome of this under
any other circumstances at Yankee Stadium. Now, if you tried that,

(56:34):
they would arrest you. You would be banished for life.
The Yankees are now very much a fascist organization. They
enforced the rules and don't really care about anything else,
obviously not about winning. Enough of that, I am now
a Yankee hater after forty two years of being a
season ticket holder. Okay, setting that aside for a point.

(56:57):
And by the way, that change also coincides with the
passing of George Steinbrenner at his succession by his not
two bright sons, Hank, who was smart enough to go,
I'm not smart enough to do this and turn it
over to his brother, Hal, who was so bad at
it and is so bad at it that I once
wrote an article on the MLB dot com website saying,
I'm going to need to see the paternity test before

(57:19):
I really believe that Hank Steinbrenner is George Steinbrenner's son.
He seems to have inherited nothing of his father's intelligence.
Yankees banned me for that all right back to the
story of nineteen eighty two. About a week after this interview,
which the CNN people were startled by, because in nineteen
eighty two, Ted Turner, who founded and owned the network,

(57:39):
could not get an exclusive interview with the America's cup
yacht captain for US. But I got an exclusive interview
with George Steinbrenner after he fired a manager and wouldn't
talk to anybody about it. I get a call from
the president of Cnnsports, one of the immortals of television
sports management, one of the great innovators, the man who

(57:59):
co invented Monday night football, and went to his bosses
at CBS and said, I have this great idan for
Monday night football, and they went, Who's gonna watch Monday
night football? Who's gonna watch primetime TV football. The last
network that tried that was Dumont and they went out
of business. You're fired. And so Pete Roselle, the commissioner
of the NFL with whom he co invented Monday night football,

(58:21):
took the idea instead to ABC, thus saving the ABC
Television network and creating the mess we have at ABC
and Disney and Bob Iger right now. If it hadn't
been for Monday Night Football, Bob Iger would be a
local weatherman in Binghamton, New York, because ABC probably would
have gone out of business. I'm meandering is always in
telling this story. Bill mcphil calls me. Bill mcvail, who

(58:45):
who invented not just Monday Night Football, but also the
entire system by which you watch football today, the show,
the local games and a network game back to back.
He invented that for CBS. NBC copied it, and that's
why every NFL game is broadcast by one organization at

(59:05):
a time. They do deals with many of them, but
it's sold by the league, not by the teams. And
that's why the NFL never had to really push to
put in salary caps or anything else, because the principal
source of income was automatically shared. Because Bill mcveil and
Pete Rosell figured this out in nineteen Flipping fifty six,
Bill mcvhil calls me in the office in New York,

(59:27):
and I can hear the startled in his voice. Keith
I just got a note from George Steinbrenner complimenting you
on your great work and complimenting me on having such
an enterprising young reporter in the New York office. And
I was reading it thinking, I wonder who he means,
and I went, thanks Bill, and he goes, no. I

(59:49):
was wondering what this could possibly be about, and then
he said he had the presence of mind to not
just follow the rules, but come up and without violating
any rules, solicit me for an interview, which I was
happy to give him. And he asked great question He
asked me philosophical questions about why I changed managers, rather

(01:00:09):
than why did you do this? And how dare you?
And doesn't He asked great questions and he showed pluck
and I said, well, yeah it was I didn't plan
it that way, it just worked out. Well, congratulations, we're
going to send you a bonus. The bonus turned out
to be twenty five dollars. On the other hand, my
salary was twenty six thousand dollars, so twenty five dollars

(01:00:30):
actually was like two meals worth in nineteen eighty two.
So that was my first experience with George. He wrote
a fan letter to my boss at CNN. Now I
go and leave CNN and go and work in local
news in Boston where he would not have seen me,
and going work in local news in Los Angeles where
he would not have seen me. But now when I
go to ESPN A decade later, in nineteen ninety two,
one of my first big assignments for them was to

(01:00:53):
anchor the Major League Baseball Expansion Draft that gave birth
to the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies. November seventeenth,
nineteen ninety two, and sure as hell a fan appears,
a copy of which has been sent to me by
the secretary to Steve Bornstein, the president of ESPN, who
did not really like talent, and who dreamed at night

(01:01:14):
of finding some way to make ESPN talent free, so
that there just be highlights, no announcers, just highlights and
games without announcers, hopefully having the players described themselves as
they ran down the field. Steve and I later became
okay friends because politically we were aligned, But when I

(01:01:34):
worked for him, Steve used to say things like that, oh,
if I could only get away with not having talent
and mean them well, Sure enough, his office sends me
a copy of a letter, a fan letter on Yankee
stationery from George Steinbrenner complimenting me and the rest of
the team. And the team included Peter Gammons and Ray

(01:01:55):
Knight and ten other announcers, including our play by play
men John Miller and Joe Morgan just sort of dismissed
as the team. But I was the anchor of this
hour broadcast, and George was just gushing about what a
great job I did. To the president of ESPN, there

(01:02:15):
was a post it to this and it basically said,
I don't necessarily believe any of this, but it's nice
to have SB Steve Bornstein. That's nineteen ninety two. The
next year, George Steinbrenner came back off suspension and he
was granting a few long form interviews to various news organizations,

(01:02:35):
and ESPN approached him and he said, I don't want
to really do a sit down TV for any length,
but is that guy Olderman still working for you? Is
he still with the radio network in addition to the
Sports center stuff? And they said, yes, why I'll sit
down with him for an hour if you want to
schedule something on a weekend sure enough. We do an
hour about the Yankees and about suspension and if it's

(01:02:58):
changed him, and what he thinks about baseball and the
expansion draft and politics and the Commissioners Office and getting
rid of Buie Kun and was what about bart Cham
I mean, and dozens and dozens of issues. And now
we're live and we're coming to the end of the hour,
and I said, well, we're out of time, and oh no, really,
I'm really enjoying this. I said, well, if you want

(01:03:18):
to wait ten minutes, we'll come back after the top
of the hour. We could do some more. I was kidding.
George said, sure, I'm just going to go out to
the bathroom. Call me back on that number. Your producer
has it. Ten minutes later, we come back from the
news break. I'm not even supposed to still be on
the air. Good evening, and Keith Olberman ESPN Radio Sports
Radio ESPN, and here's our second hour with George Steinbrenner,

(01:03:41):
who went for another twenty minutes. So now I leave
ESPN in nineteen ninety seven and go to MSNBC, And
by the beginning of nineteen ninety eight it becomes an
all political show. And at first people were not sure
if I was a liberal or I was a conservative,
because I tried to treat that story of Clinton and
Lewinsky right down the middle, and the more and more

(01:04:03):
it became obvious that it was in a Republican plot
to try to remove both the president and the vice
president and somehow install that idiot Knut Gingrich as the
Speaker of the House and the last man standing as
the acting president. Before that became evident, I seemed kind
of neutral, and a lot of conservatives thought that I
had given them a fair shake and they didn't care

(01:04:24):
what I said after I stopped giving them a fair shake.
And in the bowels of that stadium in Cleveland, George
Steinbrenner and I talked about my TV show with Bud Selig,
the Commissioner of Baseball and an equally conservative man and
an equally unlikely friend and fan, and the two of
them were gushing fanboys about my original MSNBC show, The

(01:04:45):
Big Show and The White House in Crisis. I got
a note from George when I left to go to
Fox Sports. I have previously told you about how I
got thrown out of a riotous game at Yankee Red
Sox playoffs at Fenway Park in nineteen ninety nine by
an angry head of security at Fenway Park, the van
started to throw bottles on the field, and I was

(01:05:07):
told by my boss to get out on the field
and stand in front of the camera and the security
people's gout the f off the field gets it right there.
I'm throwing you out of the park. And the place
he put me in was the chair right next to
George Steinbrener, who greeted me with Hi. So George and
I were in touch rather frequently, and in two thousand,
of course, my mother got hit by a throw from

(01:05:29):
the ailing Yankee second baseman Chuck Knobloch, and George sent
a note asking how she was. And when they won
the World Series that fall, I was anchoring for Fox
and I was the talking head and the presentation in
which he was handed the World Series trophy, and George
showed up a minute beforehand and started to weep in
my presence. I'm so happy for your mother. My mom

(01:05:51):
was a Yankee fan and she'd gotten hit by a
throw at Yankee Stadium, and he was happy for my mother.
Is she here to see this? And I went, George,
where it's Shay stadium. We had to come here in
the seventies when you played here for two years while
they were renovating Yankee Stadium. Mother hates Shay Stadium more
than you do. She wouldn't come here if you let
her play third base. And George's face crumbled like some

(01:06:13):
cartoon and he just burst into tears and went, I
love her more than ever. The next year, after I
had left Fox Sports, George approached me late in two
thousand and one and said, I want you to be
the voice of my new TV network. I want you
to be the face and the voice of my two
new TV network that carries the Yankee games and other

(01:06:35):
games in years to come, the Yes Network. And I said, George,
I adore you. I adore you too. You're a great,
great broadcaster and a good decent guy. And I said, George,
I would say exactly the same thing to you. Why
would we want to spoil this by me working for you?
And he looked at me shocked and then laughed and went,

(01:06:57):
you're right again. And we didn't ever work together, and
thus maintain the friendship for the rest of his life.
The pinnacle of this was one of two things. Later on,
I'm at a news conference in the bowels of Yankee
Stadium where the Yankees have just obtained a pitcher. I
believe it was Jeff Weaver. I believe it was from

(01:07:17):
the Detroit Tigers, and there was some doubt as to
whether or not he could handle the pressure in New York.
And in this crowded news conference the door. I'm standing
at the back by the door, hundreds of reporters crammed
into a space designed for about fifty people. The door
opened silently behind me, but I see out of the
corner of my eye George Steinbrenner comes in. Nobody turns
to greet him. I come over. We get a two

(01:07:39):
handed handshake, and he whispers, how's he doing? And I said, well,
so far, very good. But he hasn't thrown any pitches yet.
Suddenly George bursts into laughter, and now everybody turns around
and sees him, and Weaver has the presence of mind
to applaud or something like that, and George, oh, I'm
willing my cover give me a report on this afterwards,

(01:07:59):
and I'm ushered into his box later in that day,
and I said, I have some doubts. I think he'll
be okay. Well, he wasn't. He wasn't okay, And George
never accepted the idea that it wasn't my fault. I said,
I didn't trade for him. George came out once in
a game in which Weaver gave up like seven hits
in the first inning, and came out into the press box,

(01:08:19):
into the area with just the radio reporters which was
adjacent to his box, and started screaming. I said, George,
I don't mind this at all. It's a great story.
And the radio guys, I'm sure don't mind at all.
But you do know that the newspaper guys are just
like ten feet away. That's not a soundproof booth that
you're in here. They're going to see you doing this.

(01:08:40):
Oh once again, thanks Keith, And then he scurried back
into his office. It's not if it's not that the
great topping moment of this. In two thousand and what
was the year of the tsunami five, the tsunami in
the Indian Ocean. George Steinbrenner raised a million dollars or

(01:09:03):
so for the tsunami really fund headed by Bush and
Clinton and Bill Clinton for a million dollars went to
Yankee stadium to pick up the giant oversized check before
a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Pittsburgh Pirates whose
broadcasters brought all of their announcers to New York for
a special three day trip some sort of thing. So

(01:09:24):
the press box is filled with Pittsburgh Pirates producers. It
sounds like a tongue twister, but it was actually the case.
Pittsburgh Pirates producers with pretzels. So there's nowhere to sit
except in one seat for me in the radio press
box adjoining George Steinbrenner's private box, which is empty except

(01:09:44):
for George. And then in about the third inning in
walks President Bill Clinton to sit with George. About an
inning later, after President Clinton, who I had met once,
waved at me and Steinbrenner waved at me, he sent
Steinbrenner that is Randy Levine, who was the president of

(01:10:05):
the Yankees, or would be and still is and had
been Rudy Giuliani's deputy mayor. That's where that connection came from.
George sent Randy out into the radio press box, where
most of these radio guys who'd never seen him in
the flesh, were like, it's somebody important. And Randy said
mister Steinbrenner, who was wondering if you would like to

(01:10:27):
sit with him in President Clinton for a few innings,
And I made some sort of pretensive well, I'm not
sure if I have the time to do that. When
does he want to go now? It'd be good. Let
me just close my score book, and I was invited in,
and for several innings, I had the singular experience of
watching a Major League Baseball game in the owner's box
with the owner and the former president of the United States,

(01:10:52):
who I, as I said, barely knew and would not
have known me from my work at MSNBC yet, because
that really hadn't turned the corner yet. Instead, George Steinbrenner,
who had hit his head at some point and had
suffered some kind of cerebral event that they never ever diagnosed,
or at least did not make public. It eventually would

(01:11:14):
lead to his passing. He was beginning to have some
of the effects of this, and it was very, very complicated.
As I told you once. Head injuries are such that
when I had mine in nineteen eighty, I could remember
my father's name, Theodore, but could not, for the life
of me remember my middle name Theodore. That's how specific

(01:11:37):
a head injury can be. George was having trouble remembering
certain things but not others. President Clinton, let me tell
you about this young man. I met this young man
when he was fourteen was it fourteen or fifteen? And
I said, how do you remember that? I remember those things?
At an open season ticket holder. His father and mother

(01:11:59):
were devoted Yankee fast Remember that throw the other year
that hit the fan, and that was his mother and
his mother came back the next day. What a great fan.
I love her, And on and on and on, and
stories about how you know right in this very box.
He came up. And when I tried to avoid a
press conference where I changed managers, he found me and
game me and did a great interview with great questions

(01:12:20):
about the philosophy of firing man Everything from nineteen eighty
two rolled out as if it had happened the day
before yesterday, and this is two thousand and five, on
and on the story about the two thousand World Series
event my mom and the Chuck Knoblock throw that hit her,
other events. He once gave me advice on a trade,
and he did this, and he did that, and things

(01:12:42):
I had completely forgotten, and every time he referred to me,
he referred to me as this young man. And it
became evident. And Bill Clinton is barely containing his laughter
at the folsomeness of George Steinbrenner's affection for me. Every
time we go into another story, it becomes more and

(01:13:02):
more apparent that for all the things that George remembers
about me, he can't summon my name, and it can't
be because he doesn't remember it or know it. He's
telling stories about my mother, he's telling stories about me
as a teenager. I said, rookie TV reporter, he couldn't
remember my name the way I couldn't remember my middle
name right after I hit my head. It was tragic.

(01:13:24):
But after telling Bill Clinton twenty five minutes worth of
Keith Olberman stories, George Steinbrenner says, that's who this young
man is. And now he's in your field and you
get to deal with him. And Bill Clinton said, and
God bless him for saying this, and God blessed George
Steinbrenner wherever he is. Bill Clinton says, well, it's pretty

(01:13:48):
obvious that George, you really like this guy. I'd keep
my eye on you. Keith. The first time I really
knew George was a fan was when he interrupted my

(01:14:12):
sign off on a live shot for CNN outside Yankee
Stadium in the dark, in the freezing dark, in the
freezing dark, in the kind of dangerous Bronx of December sixteenth,
nineteen eighty three. He had just appointed his latest new
Yankee manager, Yogi Bearra, and they were both out there
with me doing the live shot for CNN Sports. I'll

(01:14:36):
never know why, but there they were. And as I
thanked them and I threw it back to Atlanta, George
knocked my microphone back towards him. He didn't grab the
mic out of my hands, he just sort of pushed
it towards him so we'd all hear what he said.
And what he said was sorry, Keith. First off, he
knew my name. Then secondly he stared into the camera
and said, hey, Ted Turner, stop trying to sign my

(01:14:59):
free agents. Thanks Keith, I still miss George. I've done
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Three years of this. I think we're set to continue
on Monday. We'll find out as I recorded this, the
deal is not done, but it's very close. And there

(01:15:22):
may be footprint enlargement which we will be able to
announce next week. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, our
musical directors of Countdown. I'm jinxing it by doing that,
by saying that about footprints. Never mind when I said
about footprints. Just remember what I said about Christy Nome.

(01:15:43):
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration on keyboards. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Is
our sports music. Other music arranged and performed the group

(01:16:05):
No Horns Allowed. My announswer today is my friend Larry David.
Everything else was, as always my fault. If you hear
a rasp in my voice Canadian wildfires. We're not saying, oh,
how dare you send Canadian wildfires to New York. We're
not saying, oh, look, it must be a real problem now.
We're just saying this is how bad it is. We

(01:16:26):
never had Canadian wildfire smoke in the air here, thousands
of miles away until recently. I wonder why that's changed.
Oh is that why they call it change? That's countdown
for today, Day one hundred and ninety three of America
held hostage, and just one two hundred and seventy eight

(01:16:46):
days until the scheduled end of Trump's lane duck and
lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA
and Jeffrey Epstein and climate change. The next scheduled countdown
is Monday till then. I'm Keith Oldermman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck.

Speaker 4 (01:17:16):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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