October 13, 2025 • 55 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 24: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his cabinet behave?
If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his henchmen behave?
If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his Stephen Millers behave?
If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would HE behave?
Would he have a straight-up public delusion that 1448 days into his first presidency it was Joe Biden’s FBI even though Joe Biden hadn’t BEEN president yet? Ending with the panicked, plaintive cry to the universe: “DO SOMETHING?” Would he have hallucinations about Watergate being a hoax? Would he start accidentally posting private messages to his attorney general demanding prosecutions of those who prosecuted him? NOW NOW NOW! DO SOMETHING! Would he be unable to close his umbrella?
I’m not saying he’s DYING, I’m not saying he’s IRRETRIEVABLY SICK, I’m not saying he’s being raptured, I’m not saying he’s resigning, I’m not saying he’s fleeing… I’m not talking about cause, just EFFECT. If Trump didn’t have much time left as president… if he were getting a PROMOTION to something, how would they all BEHAVE?
I think the answer is they’d all behave as they are behaving now.
They’d panic.
And, they are panicking.
They’d panic because they know, there is NOBODY to take over for him. Junior? Eric? Bannon? Miller? Vance? WHAT? VANCE? After Stephanopoulos stuffed him in a locker yesterday? What do they think they know about Trump’s longevity, that we don’t? Why is Stephen Miller panicking? Why is Mike Johnson panicking over the Epstein Files and more importantly what could his end game be here? What? He's just never bringing the House back into session?
And this all ties in to the indefensible Charlie Kirk assassination because all of this could be explained if you recognize that the Right thought Kirk was a future president, maybe THE future president.
MEDIA OBEYING IN ADVANCE: Trump attacks Politico's Dasha Burns to her face and instead of accepting the Orange Badge of Courage she tells him Karolyin Leavitt will vouch for her. That's disqualifying. And I'd like to read you only about one fifth of one of the best media essays I've read this year, written by Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge. It completely changed my mind about Bari Weiss going to CBS. Weiss is no less evil, but Lopatto brilliantly argues she is not going to destroy CBS - CBS is going to destroy her. And they should televise it.
B-Block (35:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Milwaukee Brewers win, then humiliate themselves and their guiding light Bob Uecker, by taunting the losers. Governor Greg Abbott makes a joke about somebody else's physical incapacity. Trump's Beauty Pageant Miss Uncongeniality Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan makes another amazing typo. And a Kristi Noem twofer, performed with the Benny Hill Yakety Sax Theme playing in the background.
C-Block (46:22) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The ACTUAL writer of The Washington Post's first Watergate story, Bart Barnes, has died. He pulled together the first-day work of Woodward, Bernstein and the crime reporter the day the thing broke in June 1972 and had a 50-year career that probably hit its nadir a decade later when he wound up covering the same story as...me. For months he and I and a couple of others were the core beat reporters on the 1982 NFL Strike. He was wonderful, and he was the final straight man in an intricate, fantastic practical joke we played on the New York Times' guy. The story of Bart Barnes - and The Janofsky Maneuver.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
(00:25):
Trump didn't have much time left as president? How would
his cabinet behave? If Trump didn't have much time left
as president? How would his henchmen behave? If Trump didn't
have much time left as president? How would his Stephen
Millers behave? If Trump didn't have much time left as president?
(00:47):
How would he behave? Hallucinations about Watergate being a hoax?
The straight up delusion that one four and forty eight
days into his first presidency. It was Joe Biden's FBI
on January sixth, even though Joe Biden hadn't been president yet.
I'm not saying he's dying. I'm not saying he's irretrievably sick.
(01:11):
I'm not saying he's being raptured. I'm not saying he's resigning.
I'm not saying he's fleeing. I'm not talking about cause
just effect. If Trump didn't have much time left as
president because he was getting a promotion to something, how
would they all behave? I think the answer is they'd
(01:35):
all behave as they are behaving right now. They'd panic.
They'd panic because if Trump didn't have much time left
as president, None of them, None of them would have
much left time in power, because the dirty little secret
(01:55):
is that Trump and Maga and this administration and any
future for any of them depends on Trump, on Trump alone,
and on the weapon Trump alone has mastered, which keeps
Maga alive. The implicit and often explicit threat of violence,
the cherished fantasy of the authoritarians to be able to
(02:16):
physically hurt their perceived enemies by the millions, hurt and worse,
if Trump didn't have much time left as president, who
would become the embodiment of their evil? You think in
vance after George Stephanopolis stuffed him into a locker yesterday,
(02:41):
Vance JV, how many els in JD do you think
it's going to be? Junior eWiC Stephen Miller, who sometimes
looks like Doctor Evil's mini me and sometimes looks like Anasparatu,
and the rest of the time just looks like a
(03:01):
flaccid penis in a tie. Stephen Miller, who made the
fatal mistake of using the first person pronoun to claim
credit for something Trump did. Quote if I put federal
law enforcement on the National Guard into a nice, sleepy
Southern entire, if who did that mini me? So who
(03:22):
do you see as the next feure? Tim Scott? If
Trump didn't have much time left as president, how would
Stephen Miller be behaving? How often and how thoroughly? Is
Steven Miller panicking? How often and how thoroughlier Pam Bondi
(03:43):
and Christy Noman, Mike fake Calm, Johnson panicking, Johnson panicking
over Jeffrey Epstein. I'll get to the answer to that
question in a moment. Some of them, of course, are
not panicking. Some of them are just behaving desperately and chaotically.
The three hour and seventeen minute ultra fawning Cabinet meeting
of August twenty sixth. This whole nonsense about the Nobel
(04:07):
Peace Prize, as was pointed out in countless quarters, What
could be more nonsensical than demanding the Nobel Peace Prize
for a man who renamed the Department of Defense the
Department of War, the man who threatened to invade and
take over his nation's two geographically adjacent allies, who is
(04:28):
sending the army into his own cities. But a campaign
to get the Nobel Peace Prize for him, an international campaign,
and then a sour grapes campaign when he didn't get
another international campaign that's capped off with a commiserating video
from Vladimir Putin, You should have gotten the award, Donald
(04:49):
Love Vladdie, who's your daddy? A Vladimir Putin consolation prize
video like, Oh, we're sorry you didn't win, Donald, But
here's Johnny Olsen to tell you more about the home
version of the Nobel Peace Prize board game. No, the
others aren't panicking. They're just doing the usual fawning and
(05:11):
flattering and pellating only a much higher speed. Trump announcing
Friday that there are almost no stores still standing in Portland,
and those stores that are still there now being built
out of plywood, and RFK Junior standing behind him nodding
as if Trump weren't insane because I guess Kennedy thought, well, hell,
(05:32):
this makes me sound less crazy when I link autism
and circumcision when he says a woman carries her unborn
child in her placenta, Trump insisting he can bring down
drug prices five thousand percent, a literal numerical impossibility, and
mem at Oz nodding as he stood behind him as
(05:55):
if Trump weren't insane because I guess that makes sure
that nobody remembers Oz's s cruditay video, and maybe Oz
was promised there would be no math. Now there are
lots of them still out there demanding cuts and invasions
and insurrection declarations and indictments while they still can manipulate
Trump into doing them, because Trump declared quote the Biden
(06:16):
FBI placed two hundred and seventy four agents into the
crowd on January sixth. If this is so, which it is,
a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies.
What a scam? Do something, President DJT. Now there is
a lot to unpack, as the kids say in those
(06:36):
few sentences, because it's it's all all wrong. It's not
of this earth. There are only a couple of possible explanations.
It's got to be one or a couple of these things,
and they're all bad. He's forgotten who was president on
January sixth, twenty twenty one. He's trying to pretend he
wasn't president on January sixth, twenty twenty one. He's completely
(06:59):
mentally unbalanced. He is lying poorly. He believes his cult
will be believe that. One and forty eight days into
his presidency. It was somehow Biden's FBI, even though Biden
hadn't been president yet and he hadn't been vice president
in two week shy of four years. The the maybe the
Biden FBI sabotaged his umbrella yesterday. That's the cause of this.
(07:21):
And the last explanation is his cheese has slid fully
off his ritz cracker or eh, what if he's not
going to be president much longer? That's where Trump is.
Plus there was that signature President DJT thing yesterday, one
of the only other times he used that. It was
(07:42):
the message to Pam Bondy that he didn't realize he
was broadcasting. Maybe this was another message intended for Pam Bondy,
which would explain the panic. Do something help meet jeebus.
Even Trump is panicking. The others surely are panicking. You've
seen this, haven't you felt happier recently? Panicking? They're all
(08:07):
panicking as if somebody told them that Trump won't be
president much longer, or they told themselves that A judge
stops illegal use of military for law enforcement, and Steven
Miller calls it quote legal insurrection and quote relentless terrorst assault,
quote oralized terrorsts to tackle the federal government quote left
(08:29):
wing terrorism quote well organized and funded urar networks quote
a party that openly aids and encourages in full Van's
violence quote. I do not look like a flaccid penis,
all right. I made the last one up, but I
didn't make the other ones up. He wrote all those
in panic, where he goes and screeches it on television.
(08:51):
In panic, he insists that what he says is the
only truth. And if you disagree with him, you are
being willfully blind to what he can see. For all
of the bluster and the rage and the mental illness
that Steven Miller sprinkles, we're missing the biggest thing here.
(09:13):
He's out of control. Why well, what's likeliest? What if
he knew his meal ticket who not only enables him,
but is the only thing standing between him and a
series of prosecutions? What if he knew his meal ticket
was not going to be his meal ticket much longer?
(09:33):
So then there are these panicked indictments, prosecutions of Comy
James Bolton, the first indictments in American history, so thin
that they have been handed down printed on toilet paper.
But what does this matter? If the indictments suck if
those who indicted them only care about the indictments because
(09:56):
he wouldn't be president when each case got dismissed. And
now Adam Schiff should be indicted over Watergate, the Ukraine
impeachment of me, Oh my god, that sounds so bad.
Scam was a far bigger illegal hoax than Watergate. I
(10:17):
sincerely hope the necessary authorities, including Congress, are looking into this.
Congress is shut down, sir, you shut Congress down. Remember,
Adam Schiff was su dishonest. It's so with three o's
and corrupt. So many laws and protocols were violated, protocols
(10:41):
and just plain broken President DJT. As an aside, many
conservatives do think Watergate was some kind of scam. I
first heard this at ESPN in the nineties, and I
started laughing at the guy, thinking this conservative who otherwise
seemed to be a functioning human being, was kidding. And
then he wasn't laughing back because he really believed Watergate
(11:02):
was just a conspiracy to run a palace against Nixon
that gerald Ford had cooked up with the Democrats and
the Supreme Court and Woodward and Bernstein and and and
and and and but regardless, what does it have to
do with Adam Ship What does Watergate have to do
with Adam Schiff? What did this watergate have to do
(11:22):
with Ukraine? It's like he just remembered Ukraine and Watergate
on the same day and he put them together because
I don't know, like maybe because there wasn't enough blood
in his brain. Which brings us back to the most
important document of the Trump presidency thus far, that rarest
of glimpses. We saw what they all see. We saw
(11:47):
the Bondie direct message. The Bondy direct message, as confirmed
by a Murdoch newspaper, told you that once that was
what that was. Even Trump has never written a social
media post that starts with somebody's first name in a
(12:08):
comma and addresses that person directly throughout and puts what
was in essence an E signature at the bottom President
DJT never before that not ones the Bondi direct message
might be reasonably assumed to reflect how he is acting
when we don't see him. One of the frightening realities
about Trump that gets lost is that when you ask
(12:31):
why can't he control himself? This is him controlling himself.
This is him recognizing the cameras are rolling. This is
the best take. This is the sanest he gets, not
the craziest. The craziest is the private stuff he inadvertently
(12:54):
leaks after writing it to Pam Bondi, the private stuff
that indicates how crazy he really is. Oh good, they're
all gone. Now I can let my hair down, so
to speak. The mask is off here and it is
important to listen to what he wrote to her in
(13:16):
the paranoid urgent, threatening you are failing me. I am
losing because of you style that they must hear daily,
and something about it has changed, and they all act
like they believe he's not going to be president much
longer because it's coming off the rails. And there is
one word in this as we understand it now, private
(13:38):
memo to Pam Bondy that must have cut through Bondi's
rage and her hair dye and her botox and made
what's left of her blood run cold. Pam I have
reviewed over thirty statements and posts, say, oh god, he's
reading posts again. So let's say essentially same old story
(14:00):
as last time. All talk, no action, nothing is being done.
What about komy Adam shift? He shifted Letitia they're all
guilty as hell, but nothing's going to be done. Then
we almost put in a Democrat supported US attorney in
Virginia with a really bad Republican past, awoke rhino who
was never going to do his job. That's why two
(14:21):
of the worst dem senators pushed him so hard. He
even lied to the media and said he quit and
that we had no case. No I fired him, and
there's a great case, and many lawyers in legal pundit says,
and then comes the sudden emotional Oh that Cap Larry's
working again. CAPI Larry number three, four eight seven, two
(14:44):
six is working again. Blood frow has been increased. There's
this sudden switch from rage to Lindsey Halligan is a
really good lawyer and likes you a lot. Oh that
Cap Larry broke again. Send a crew over clean up
on Aisle three million, two hundred and seventy two thousand,
(15:04):
one hundred and sixteen. We can't delay any longer. It's
killing our reputation and credibility. They impeach me twice and
indicted me parentheses five times over. Nothing. Justice must be
served now. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. President DJT,
(15:27):
It's killing, our reputation, killing and now with three exclamation points,
the paranoia is evergreen. It's not the paranoia, it's the
panic as if he thinks he's not going to be
president much longer, which is of course what Speaker Johnson
(15:51):
is doing to suppress the Epstein files, seemingly recognizing maybe
that's that's the way out of this, because otherwise, what
kind of endgame does Johnson have here. He's never gonna
bring House back into session, he's never gonna end the
Trump shut down. He's never gonna have the vote. He's
never gonna swear in Adalitea Grijalva, so she can't be
(16:13):
the last vote to force the vote on the Epstein files.
So they can't release the Epstein files because Johnson knows
whatever there is about Trump in the Epstein files, it
is in the Epstein files. Just no more Congress ever, whatever,
No ever, Mike, to paraphrase my friend Bill Daniels in
(16:37):
the Graduate, Mike, this whole idea sounds pretty half baked. No,
it's not. It's completely baked. If Johnson thinks there's a
chance Trump won't be president much longer. Again, I'm not
saying something bad is going to happen. I'm just saying,
(16:58):
why are they behaving like this? So why might they
think Trump be president much longer? Well, sir, he has
disappeared twice for five day stretches since the end of
August and the trip to Walter read Friday. That was
originally dismissed as his annual physical, and they went for
that for days annual physical. Annual physical. Oh, it's just
(17:21):
his annual physical. And so somebody realized, oh, wait a minute,
and we already used that one six months ago when
he went in, or is annual physical. He can't have
an annual physical every six months. That would make it
something else. What's the word? And then they changed it
and insisted they never said annual physical. And then they
changed it again to pre trip vaccinations and semi annual physical.
(17:42):
And perhaps in a few weeks when he goes back
in for another time, it'll be the last of his
annual three part physical. What we always said, he did
it in three parts. And then when it becomes a
weekly physical, Oh no, no, he has a weekly physical,
a fifty two part annual physical. Weekly physicals of course.
(18:02):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, he liked Walter read hospital.
He just wants the Oval Office to be in Walter
Reid next question, Oh, who we have the stormer Ulfson.
There's one last and far more serious tentacle to this
(18:24):
tale of panic and succession and people acting like they
know the money printing machine is throwing out sparks and
they better grab all the twenties before it blows. And
this other part certainly would explain yet another element of
right wing panic that still goes full blazes every once
(18:45):
in a while, because well, the because has been a
mystery doesn't resonate with us normies, isn't apparent here in
the actual, you know, plane of human existence in this
sort of real world. But it was the undercurrent on
the far right, and I don't think many of us
knew unter Charlie Kirk was killed. I noted that in
(19:07):
a total shock to me anyway. They didn't think of
him as some kind of run of the mill lunatic
manipulating audiences with the traditional right wing mix of religious
bullshit and sadistic fantasies of executing Joe Biden in public,
maybe with a guillotine and forcing everybody over twelve to watch,
(19:27):
and selling the thing as a pay per view TV
event with sponsors mixed in with racism and white supremacists
and trying to undo every law in the book that
protects anybody against anything. They didn't see him for what
he was. They wilfully ignoring half of Charlie Kirk's comments,
half of Charlie Kirk's videos, half of Charlie Kirk's quotes,
(19:50):
the Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Stu Peters, pol Pot Hitler,
end of Charlie Kirk's comments. They didn't see him as
the danger to real American people that he was. They
saw him as a future president in a void. I'm
(20:13):
beginning to think that even that does not sufficiently explain
their rage and their panic in the wake of Charlie
Kirk's indefensible assassination and never added this up before. I mean,
you know, you graduated third grade. You have to be
thirty five to be sworn in as president, right. My
(20:36):
contention is there is nobody, nobody to take over for
Trump now or January twentieth, twenty twenty nine. And that's
why they're all panicking, because they all think that date
when a new fudor must rise is suddenly a lot sooner.
Than they were led to believe. And here's the thing
(20:59):
that ties it all together. Had he not been killed
on October fourteenth, twenty twenty eight, Charlie Kirk would have
turned thirty five years old. They didn't think he was
(21:20):
a future president. They thought he was the next president. Well,
(21:53):
Politico needs a new White House Bureau chief. Politico has
been periodically insightful and even brave in some of its
coverage of Trump, but it's day to day stuff has
been horrific, enabling, stenographic, and now a rubicon has been crossed.
Trump on Air Force one on the way to the
(22:15):
Middle East yesterday dissing the Politico White House Bureau Chief.
So what, that's the way it goes. He only dis
is people who ask actual questions. She asked about rolling
back Chinese tariffs after he crashed the market and his
friends made money off that. He only insults people who
get it right. That's the way it goes. If he
(22:37):
insults you and demeans you, especially in front of people,
it means you're a woman, probably, and he's terrified of
you certainly. And this is another part of that. Why
is he acting like he's not got much time left
as president? Thing, Dasha Burns, What you do not do
in response to that is plead with him while people
(23:00):
are recording it. And what you really do not do
while people are recording it is plead with him that
Caroline Levitt will vouch for you. Firstport Harris on China,
are you considering talking about a question? Who are you with? Political?
Dashah Burns, Sir, Political politico has gone mad. They've been
(23:22):
so wrong about everything. Political political has been so wrong
about everything. Let's get somebody else to ask us a
question you mind? Is that all right? This Politico's fake
is thank you very much, tell them to be honest
andous Hey, sir, talk to Caroline schilbouswor thank you. That
(23:43):
is called obeying in advance. It is disqualifying, It is
career ending. It is worst of all, not going to work. Eventually, somebody,
either carolinan or Trump, they will sell you out, dashah Burns.
They sell everybody out. ABC learned in time and swerved,
(24:04):
and now Tiger has ignored Trump, and Stephanopoulos has hung
up on vance Mit and Harvard learned Columbia did not.
Politico needs to learn, but not with somebody who claims
to be a reporter, but insists that the corrupt Secretary
of Propaganda, the bubble headed bleach Bond at the press podium,
will vouch for her. This is not quite Barry Weiss's territory.
(24:29):
More on her in a moment, But Dasha Burns has
got to quit or Politico has got to fire her now.
A second take, and a goddamned brilliant one from Elizabeth
Lopato of The Verge, a totally different viewpoint on the
appointment of Barry Weiss as the Lord High Executioner at
(24:51):
CBS News. You will have heard that Ms Weiss, upon
her appointment, wrote to every CBS News employee to ask
them to reply with a tell me what it is
you're doing here and are so proud of thing, which,
based on the Elon Musk experience, is in fact asking
every CBS News employee to give her enough rope with
(25:12):
which to hang themselves or have her hang them. Their
union has advised them not to reply. But Miss Lopato's
point of view on this is completely the opposite of mine,
and she's right and I'm wrong. Barry Weiss is not
there at CBS News to try to convert CBS News
(25:33):
into a right wing rag or to become a real
journalist for the first time in her life, or something
to please Trump, or she's there because good evening, and
welcome to the end of her career. The title of
miss Lopato's piece explains it all. Quote memo to Barry
(25:53):
Weiss Rea CBS News, You're doomed. That's the start. I'd
love to read the whole thing, but you know there
are limits copyrights. You should read the whole thing at
the verge. Here are a couple of highlights. I'll try
to limit myself to four hundred words to Barry Weiss Ree,
(26:15):
good luck, babe. Quote. I honestly cannot believe you've willingly
decided to go into the worst kind of job that exists,
management at a dying company. This is the glass cliff
to end all glass cliffs. Managing sucks. It sucks even
(26:36):
when you like the people you're managing. And it's a
low stress position. And I'm sure I don't have to
tell you running CBS News is not a low stress position.
You are going to get blamed by everyone above you
for decisions that are made by people below you, and
you're going to get blamed by people below you for
the decisions that are made by people above you. You're
also going to get blamed for your own decisions, just
(26:58):
for kicks. You have elected to take a job where
the primary purpose is for you to eat shit and
own the death of broadcast TV news, a thing that
is going to die no matter what you do. Nice work.
This is the glass cliff to end all glass cliffs.
(27:20):
You have been hired as a stop to a Trump
administration that is actively hostile to the actual free press,
and you will be made to oversee wave after wave
of layoffs until you quit or get fired, and the
entire news division is shut down in a final spasm
of cost cutting after the next inescapable media merger. No
(27:41):
one can save CBS News because it was made for
a media ecosystem that is now dead. Broadcast television is
slowly circling the drain, its aging audience, drifting towards the
great inevitable. Younger people are getting their news from TikTok
and Instagram and ever increasing numbers, and they trust institutional
media less than ever. CBS, in particular, that's your new company,
(28:06):
now has the oldest audience in primetime TV. These folks
aren't the free presses assiduously courted classical liberals. Either it's
normy grandparents, a bunch of whom are planning to appear
at the next No King's rally. I might invoke Edward Rmurow,
but they remember him. They don't have any goodwill towards you.
(28:31):
They don't know who you are at all, and they're
not going to defend you when you screw up. You
are now stuck claiming your goal is to win back
younger audiences, which you cannot do, while your real job
is to manage decline. There is no way to win here,
only slightly better ways to lose. It's actually even worse
(28:53):
than that, Miss Lopetto continues. You also have to manage talent,
famous TV talent, the people your audience actually knows and likes,
who will eat you all if they think you've screwed
them over. And there I will leave Miss Lopado's masterpiece
to the right owner herself and again implore you to
(29:16):
go to the Verge and read the whole thing. Try
reading it aloud. You'll get the flavor of it much
better that way, and you'll really enjoy thinking about what
Barry Weiss has assigned herself to which living hell she
has the choice among. The whole thing is five times
as long as the excerpt I just read, and it
(29:38):
gets better and better and better, which means for mis Weiss,
it gets worse and worse and worse. If I read
something like that about a job I had just taken,
I wouldn't just quit that new job. I would flee
the country. One last quote, one last sentence, one last dart,
(30:00):
sticking mis Weiss forever to the bull's eye. Miss Lapato's
final sentence quote, congrats on that one hundred and fifty
million dollars payout for the free press. Someone else owns
it now, Elizabeth Lapato at the verge on Barry Weiss
(30:22):
on the verge of the end at CBS. And also
remind me not to get on miss Lopato's bad side.
Also of interest here Christy Nomes double penetration of the
worst persons in the World Championship List, and speaking of
(30:42):
champions how the Milwaukee Brewers shamed themselves and made people
actually feel sorry for the Ricketts family of fascists owned
Chicago Cubs. The Milwaukee Brewers, who have never won a
World Series in fifty five years In existence, eliminate the Cubs,
then taunt them on social media. As the cliche goes,
(31:05):
act like you've been there before, even if, like the Brewers,
you haven't. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown
with Keith Elberman still ahead. On this all new episode
(31:42):
of Countdown, the death of the man who actually wrote
the first story, the first Washington Post story about what was,
at least till recently, the biggest scandal in American history
in nineteen seventy two. His name was Bart Barnes, and
I worked on another story with him for months a
(32:05):
decade later. First, believe it or not, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the mis grants, morons,
Undunn Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons
in the world. A tie at bronze. We start with
Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers. Yes, it's nice that they beat the
(32:27):
Tom Ricketts family of fascists owned Chicago Cubs in the
NL Championship Series, and the Cubs can pound sand So
also that means there's the chance that the Brewers, who
have never won the World Series, might play the Seattle Mariners,
who have never won the World Series in the World Series,
which also would mean that because the Brewers started history
(32:49):
as the infamous one year expansion team that my late
friend Jim Boughten immortalized in his book Ball four, the
World Series could pit the Seattle Mariners versus the Seattle Pilots. However,
the Brewers owe the Cubs and the baseball world before
any of that, and they owe their late guiding light
(33:11):
Bob Ucker, a big apology. The Cubs have this annoying
victory song, Hey hey, Chicago wonny thing times you going
to win, And they put up a flag on the
flagpole with a big W on it when they win,
which curly was not as often as they should have
this year. And they've been doing that for like a century,
(33:33):
during which they've won one World Series. But after the
Brewers eliminated the cub Saturday night, the Breweries posted on
social media an AI video of the cloud Gates statue,
that big shiny metallic thing. Listen to a giant computer
mouse in Millennium Park in Chicago with a flag with
a giant L on it. They show this mouse, well
(33:56):
a cloud Gate statue and this giant Cubs w kind
of flag, only it has a big l on it
and it lands and the Brewers captioned this video, Hey Chicago,
what do you say? Bob Bucher, though as fierce a
competitor as there was, and I know from a year
(34:17):
working with him, as salty a guy as there was,
he knew about the when and the wear of things.
And if you do that in public right after you won,
guess what Brewers you actually lost? Bob Buker would slap
you all silly. Come on, Brewers, act like you've been
there before, even though you haven't. The Brewers are tied
(34:41):
with Greg Abbott, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who was
on with Will Cain on Fox. Have I ever told
you about working with Will Cain at ESPN? We used
to wonder who guided him to the office every day,
or who tied his ties for him, or how he
got the left shoe on the left foot. God just
(35:04):
dumb azo rock. Anyway. Abbott says this to Governor JB.
Pritzker of Illinois, who like me, is a plus sized gentleman.
And you may remember some things about Greg Abbott that
apply physically here. No ridicule intended, just reality. However, Greg
(35:25):
Abbott said this Pritzker should quote, stop complaining and do
some push ups, governor really physical jokes. Governor push ups?
Do you think I'm going to say it? The hell
I'm going to say it. Shame on you. What an
(35:46):
embarrassment you are to humanity. I mean, seriously, at the
current rate. In about three months or so, if things
don't change in this country, something like this will be
responded to by a string of five hundred thousand jokes
about Greg Abbott, where all of us who would have
(36:07):
restraint in this situation will go now f him. I'll
just say the FM part, F Greg Abbott. He's an asshole.
He's a fascist asshole. Stop complaining and do some pushups.
Jesus Christ, Greg Abbott, stopped complaining and do some democracy.
The runner up Trump paralegal, Lindsay Halligan, the beauty pageant
(36:29):
Miss Uncongeniality winner, has screwed up yet again. Yes, we've learned.
She apparently indicted Letitia James independently of Pam Bondy just
because she's a big girl now or something and has
bigger hair and is trying to get Trump to fire
probably Pam Bondy and replace her with younger Pam Bondy
(36:51):
Lindsay Halligan beauty pageant contestant. Then I would think that
in the IRAQ. But in the filing against Letitia James,
she put in defendant information juvenile. Yes, no, she got no,
she marked no, she got that right. So the FBI
number place is left blank. Appropriately defendant named Letitia A.
(37:12):
James address, Brooklyn, New Jersey. Ma'am, I'm gonna need to
see your license. No no, no, no no, not your
driver's license. No no, that's your No, that's your dozen card.
At the hairstylists you get the thirteenth boufont free No, no,
(37:36):
the other the law license. But the winner, we've got
a Christie Nome twofer, a fountain of worst person material
turns out to be Christy Nome's destiny. There is a
video of Christy Nome blaming Democrats for the shutdown of
the government, which is playing at TSA security checkpoints at
(38:00):
airports across the country. Apparently it is the choice of
law officials at the local airports to run it. So
if you see it, don't complain to the TSA. Don't
complain to Christy Nome, don't complain to Corey Lewandowski, Complain
to the local airport, complained to the local governing authority,
complained to the local Democrats. I have one question about
(38:23):
this video. It's a video of Christy Nome. Is Lewandowski
in the video with her. Oh wait, there's more Christy
Nome in the twofer told the latest cabinet meeting, the
mayor said that Portland was perfectly safe. I'm you on
a fault, Fanny, and I said, why did you clear
the strength from me to yay and build out a
(38:46):
four block radius to make sure I can get in
and out of here? Well, clearly Portland was just protecting
its pets from you. Which secondly, so they built out
a four block radius and you were able to get
in and out of there in a hurry and nothing back.
So you're saying your experience in Portland was totally safe. Also,
(39:09):
as if we needed more Christy Nome material, there is
video of those violent Antifa protesters, the ones dressed up
in the various animal costumes, catching Christin Nome making one
of her fascist porn videos on the roof of the
Ice headquarters of the DHS headquarters in Portland or the
(39:30):
I don't know Discount Shoe Center in Portland or whatever,
and the protesters are in front of the building playing
over loud speakers the theme from the Benny Hill Show,
and I thank yakty sacks Boots Randolph, and she and
the other members of American Ices have no idea what
(39:53):
to do that. She keep walking around on the roof, like,
can anybody make that song stop? Because on top of
everything else, Christinome and Lewandowski and the others are bumbling
morons and this ends up with them in jail. So Gnome,
next time they play yackety sacks by Boots Randolph the
Beny Hill theme, we need to start calling it the
(40:15):
Christy Gnome theme. You know, there is a theory, by
the way, Christy, about injecting fluids like steroids or like
botox into a confined space in the body, something self contained,
like the hip or the skull, and eventually, if you
do it enough, you will squeeze out whatever is supposed
(40:37):
to be inside that closed space, inside the skull, inside
the hips, like veins or other blood vessels, or if
it's botox, eventually your skull will be empty of brains
and filled with nothing but botox. Christy, no brains, just botox.
Yacketty Sacks Gnome two days other worst person in that.
(41:37):
The Washington Post reports that Bart Barnes has died eight
days ago. He was eighty seven years old. Bart Barnes
worked for the Washington Post for fifty years, and it
is impossible to describe simply what he did there, but
the range of his career was such that he was
the rewrite man on the Post desk on Saturday, June seventeenth,
(41:58):
nineteen seventy two, the man who put together, who literally
cut and pasted and typed and re wrote an article
out of the various stuff that had been written by
three different reporters about an almost inexplicable break in the
night before the Friday the sixteenth at a local office complex.
One of the reporters who sent in his stuff was
(42:20):
named Woodward, another was called Bernstein. The third was the
Post's crime reporter, Alfred Lewis. The article was bylined Alfred Lewis,
and it carried a note of contribution at the bottom
by Bart Barnes. He, in fact, was the man who
wrote the first story, the first Washington Post story, and
(42:42):
the first story anywhere about the Watergate break in. That
was a high mark for bart Or when he broke
in in nineteen sixty three with the Post as part
of the Post's crew at Martin Luther King's I Have
a Dream Speech and the March on Washington. He contributed
to their coverage of that or later writing the obituaries.
(43:03):
And this is a legendary on the Post of Orson
Wells and Yule Brenner in nineteen eighty five on deadline
on the same day. From the Sublime to the Ridiculous. However,
he also once found himself somehow assigned to cover the
nineteen eighty two National Football League players strike. He was
an experienced sports writer, especially on the business of sports,
(43:25):
and they sent him to do this. At the start
of it early spring, there were four reporters, Bart, an
ap sports and business guy, somebody from the Times, and
a CNN rookie who was, as they say, expendable. Me.
We Bart, Barnes and I and the other two we
worked on the same story, if not every day, then
(43:46):
at least once a week until Thanksgiving of that year.
He was quiet, wry, supportive, delight, often suggesting things you
should follow up on, which was the way of him
slipping me information or commenting that I had correctly or
incorrectly emphasized something in one of my reports he had seen.
He also, as I will mention shortly in greater detail,
(44:09):
played a role in the greatest practical joke of our times,
well my times, well about the New York Times. It
was on a reporter from the New York Times whom
we didn't dislike. He was a nice enough guy when
not frantically on deadline, but when he was on deadline,
none of us could stand him. I only found out
(44:32):
later that Bart Barnes was the Sun and the grandson
of two publishers of the Bristol Press. He was from Bristol, Connecticut.
You know ESPN land before there was an ESPN, and
I knew him a decade before I was at ESPN
(44:52):
Small World. Only found that out in reading his obituary.
And I only found out that he eventually became the
Post's obituary factory. He wrote hundreds of them, and that
was a role I occasionally filled from my first at
UPI right through my last stint at ESPN. I noted
this line in Bart's obituary, something a lot of us
who have done this kind of work have wondered. Will
(45:14):
the obituary we just finished only be seen or read
after the guy we wrote about is dead, and after
we're dead too. Here's what The Post's obituary guy wrote
about The Post's former obituary guy quote his byline will
continue to appear in the Post long after his death.
(45:35):
Seventeen of his pre written obituaries are still waiting to
be published. You're all out there, right. I retired from
ESPN in twenty twenty. Literally, I'm a Disney retiree. I
think they have at least one of my baseball obituaries
left ready to go. No, I don't feel it's right
(45:57):
for me to tell you who it is. Yes, it
does feel really strange, but this is about Bart Barnes,
a great, helpful, all purpose held the Washington Post together
until it collapsed kind of guy and his role. And
he was the perfect legit, calm, straight laced guy who
(46:20):
helped sell the scam that we played on. The guy
from the Times, the last person, the guy from the Times,
the victim here, the mark, the target, the last person.
That guy would suspect, his last line of defense in
a world gone mad before his eyes, as you will
(46:42):
hear in March of nineteen eighty two, I went from
scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's national sports correspondent
based in New York. I have mentioned previously that they
rewarded me by offering me one thousand dollars less a
year than they were giving me freelance, which tells you
everything you need to know about working in televisionn It
(47:04):
also rewarded me by sending me to the first meeting
of the NFL Players Association and the NFL Management Council
to negotiate a new contract and avert a strike that year.
Kind of miss that target, But while I did lots
of other stories in my first full year at CNN,
I was the football strike guy until that strike was
(47:27):
settled and a new deal was approved at a mass
meeting in Washington. And the mass meeting in Washington curR
just before Thanksgiving like forty years ago today, and the
damn story had started forty years ago last March. There
are probably fifty seven hundred stories worth telling you of
covering this thing nearly every day one way or the
(47:48):
other for eight months, but this one might be my favorite.
There were I think three other reporters at that first
bargaining session in New York in March of nineteen eighty two,
and if these are not the three guys I'm thinking of,
they became the three guys in the subsequent meetings later
in March, and then in April when we had some
in Washington, and throughout the early summer. They were Bart
(48:10):
Barnes of the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld of the Associated Press,
and Michael Janofski of the New York Times. By October,
the four of us had been joined by whom maybe
one hundred other reporters two hundred. The problem with covering
any strike, inside sports or outside of it is you
don't have a lot of news to cover, and the
(48:32):
only news story your editors or producers or readers or
viewers want anyway is this one is the damn thing
over yet. So there was a lot of competition among
all of us for those few news nuggets and sources
available to an ever increasing supply of reporters. Though I
have to say the others, at least the originals were
all great to me and I to them, to the
(48:55):
point that when they moved the talks to the Hunt
Valley Resort Complex in Maryland, United Press International and the
networks like US called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland. But
there was such a dearth of news that the Associated
Press insisted there was no such place as Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and we were all really in Cockeysville, Maryland. The same
(49:15):
story would come across the UPI wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and the same story on the AP wire Cockysville, Maryland.
Then the Associated pressed to a story on the dispute
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline Cockysville, just
so there'd be a dispute, just so he had something
(49:36):
to write about. He started laughing and walked away anyway. Janofsky,
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janofski was a little abrasive, like literally
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
(49:58):
those gaggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, And the
only thing the owner and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Danovsky again. So one long night in the resort
they were using in Kackysville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of us media types and we started complaining
(50:20):
about Jenofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
swimming pool around a corner, down a one hundred foot
hallway into the lobby, which was the press room and
(50:41):
press conference venue. So we waited until we saw Jenofski
go down that hall away from the main lobby and
around the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, and then
at least a dozen of us waited like evil school
kids in the main part of that hallway between the
swimming pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to
(51:02):
stand near the pool to alert us. So as Michael
Janofski of The New York Times turned the corner one
hundred feet away, he saw the NFLPA press aide literally
pushing some of us, and everybody yelling and him saying fine,
it's true. It's true. It's over. Now I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
(51:23):
from us. There are arms flailing through the air, voices raised,
a lot of oaths and swear words. In short, we
have convinced mister Danofsky of the Times that he has
just missed the end of the football strike. Djanofsky sprints
the hundred feet, grabs the union guy and says, tell me,
(51:45):
it's settled, it's over. Tell me and this man. Dave
had also been a press staffer in the Kennedy administration,
and this was not his first prank against the reporter.
He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I don't work for the
NFLPA anymore. I just quit. If you want this story,
you better get it from the executive director Ed Garvey
(52:05):
or the president Gene Upshaw. So now Janofski grabs Bart
Barnes of the WAHPO, who had to have been I
don't know, ten years older than Janosky was, and he says,
you have to tell me, Bart, I'll pay you, at
which point all of us lose it. I mean me
and the AP guy, Ira. We broke character. We doubled
(52:28):
over with laughter. Now Janofsky froze, Dave from the Union
laughed so hard he turned red, and Jenofsky marched off,
announcing he would get us and get us soon. I
don't think he ever did. Though. If I had to
do a phoner for CNN when Jenofsky was around that
lobby or any other other places we did this story,
(52:49):
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was leaves sports all together for safer and
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
(53:26):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening,
and Rip Bart Barnes, thanks for everything. Most of our
Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Schanel. Our musical directors have Countdown. I
don't think. I don't think Bart Barnes wrote a no
bit of me. He's writing the until two thousand and
(53:48):
five or six, though? Am I one of the seventeen?
Are you you know what? We'll never know? Will we?
Our musical directors have Countdown Brian Ray and John Phillip
Shannel and the work produced by Tko Brothers with mister
Rand guitars, bass and drums, mister shaneil On handling the
(54:10):
orchestration and the keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
here 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 the sports music. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
MI anouncer today is my friend in continuing the Watergate theme,
(54:31):
John Dean, everything else was as always my fault. That's
countdown for today. Day two hundred and sixty seven of
America held hostage yet again, at just ninety six days
until the scheduled end of Trump's lane duck and lame
brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein, or the pavement on his hand, or a
(54:52):
stuck escalator or the psychopathy test, or the judge guy
doesn't like or the judge girl he doesn't like, or
by Joe Biden's FBI. They're still out there. I can
see them. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Till then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
(55:12):
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(55:36):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
(00:25):
Trump didn't have much time left as president? How would
his cabinet behave? If Trump didn't have much time left
as president? How would his henchmen behave? If Trump didn't
have much time left as president? How would his Stephen
Millers behave? If Trump didn't have much time left as president?
(00:47):
How would he behave? Hallucinations about Watergate being a hoax?
The straight up delusion that one four and forty eight
days into his first presidency. It was Joe Biden's FBI
on January sixth, even though Joe Biden hadn't been president yet.
I'm not saying he's dying. I'm not saying he's irretrievably sick.
(01:11):
I'm not saying he's being raptured. I'm not saying he's resigning.
I'm not saying he's fleeing. I'm not talking about cause
just effect. If Trump didn't have much time left as
president because he was getting a promotion to something, how
would they all behave? I think the answer is they'd
(01:35):
all behave as they are behaving right now. They'd panic.
They'd panic because if Trump didn't have much time left
as president, None of them, None of them would have
much left time in power, because the dirty little secret
(01:55):
is that Trump and Maga and this administration and any
future for any of them depends on Trump, on Trump alone,
and on the weapon Trump alone has mastered, which keeps
Maga alive. The implicit and often explicit threat of violence,
the cherished fantasy of the authoritarians to be able to
(02:16):
physically hurt their perceived enemies by the millions, hurt and worse,
if Trump didn't have much time left as president, who
would become the embodiment of their evil? You think in
vance after George Stephanopolis stuffed him into a locker yesterday,
(02:41):
Vance JV, how many els in JD do you think
it's going to be? Junior eWiC Stephen Miller, who sometimes
looks like Doctor Evil's mini me and sometimes looks like Anasparatu,
and the rest of the time just looks like a
(03:01):
flaccid penis in a tie. Stephen Miller, who made the
fatal mistake of using the first person pronoun to claim
credit for something Trump did. Quote if I put federal
law enforcement on the National Guard into a nice, sleepy
Southern entire, if who did that mini me? So who
(03:22):
do you see as the next feure? Tim Scott? If
Trump didn't have much time left as president, how would
Stephen Miller be behaving? How often and how thoroughly? Is
Steven Miller panicking? How often and how thoroughlier Pam Bondi
(03:43):
and Christy Noman, Mike fake Calm, Johnson panicking, Johnson panicking
over Jeffrey Epstein. I'll get to the answer to that
question in a moment. Some of them, of course, are
not panicking. Some of them are just behaving desperately and chaotically.
The three hour and seventeen minute ultra fawning Cabinet meeting
of August twenty sixth. This whole nonsense about the Nobel
(04:07):
Peace Prize, as was pointed out in countless quarters, What
could be more nonsensical than demanding the Nobel Peace Prize
for a man who renamed the Department of Defense the
Department of War, the man who threatened to invade and
take over his nation's two geographically adjacent allies, who is
(04:28):
sending the army into his own cities. But a campaign
to get the Nobel Peace Prize for him, an international campaign,
and then a sour grapes campaign when he didn't get
another international campaign that's capped off with a commiserating video
from Vladimir Putin, You should have gotten the award, Donald
(04:49):
Love Vladdie, who's your daddy? A Vladimir Putin consolation prize
video like, Oh, we're sorry you didn't win, Donald, But
here's Johnny Olsen to tell you more about the home
version of the Nobel Peace Prize board game. No, the
others aren't panicking. They're just doing the usual fawning and
(05:11):
flattering and pellating only a much higher speed. Trump announcing
Friday that there are almost no stores still standing in Portland,
and those stores that are still there now being built
out of plywood, and RFK Junior standing behind him nodding
as if Trump weren't insane because I guess Kennedy thought, well, hell,
(05:32):
this makes me sound less crazy when I link autism
and circumcision when he says a woman carries her unborn
child in her placenta, Trump insisting he can bring down
drug prices five thousand percent, a literal numerical impossibility, and
mem at Oz nodding as he stood behind him as
(05:55):
if Trump weren't insane because I guess that makes sure
that nobody remembers Oz's s cruditay video, and maybe Oz
was promised there would be no math. Now there are
lots of them still out there demanding cuts and invasions
and insurrection declarations and indictments while they still can manipulate
Trump into doing them, because Trump declared quote the Biden
(06:16):
FBI placed two hundred and seventy four agents into the
crowd on January sixth. If this is so, which it is,
a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies.
What a scam? Do something, President DJT. Now there is
a lot to unpack, as the kids say in those
(06:36):
few sentences, because it's it's all all wrong. It's not
of this earth. There are only a couple of possible explanations.
It's got to be one or a couple of these things,
and they're all bad. He's forgotten who was president on
January sixth, twenty twenty one. He's trying to pretend he
wasn't president on January sixth, twenty twenty one. He's completely
(06:59):
mentally unbalanced. He is lying poorly. He believes his cult
will be believe that. One and forty eight days into
his presidency. It was somehow Biden's FBI, even though Biden
hadn't been president yet and he hadn't been vice president
in two week shy of four years. The the maybe the
Biden FBI sabotaged his umbrella yesterday. That's the cause of this.
(07:21):
And the last explanation is his cheese has slid fully
off his ritz cracker or eh, what if he's not
going to be president much longer? That's where Trump is.
Plus there was that signature President DJT thing yesterday, one
of the only other times he used that. It was
(07:42):
the message to Pam Bondy that he didn't realize he
was broadcasting. Maybe this was another message intended for Pam Bondy,
which would explain the panic. Do something help meet jeebus.
Even Trump is panicking. The others surely are panicking. You've
seen this, haven't you felt happier recently? Panicking? They're all
(08:07):
panicking as if somebody told them that Trump won't be
president much longer, or they told themselves that A judge
stops illegal use of military for law enforcement, and Steven
Miller calls it quote legal insurrection and quote relentless terrorst assault,
quote oralized terrorsts to tackle the federal government quote left
(08:29):
wing terrorism quote well organized and funded urar networks quote
a party that openly aids and encourages in full Van's
violence quote. I do not look like a flaccid penis,
all right. I made the last one up, but I
didn't make the other ones up. He wrote all those
in panic, where he goes and screeches it on television.
(08:51):
In panic, he insists that what he says is the
only truth. And if you disagree with him, you are
being willfully blind to what he can see. For all
of the bluster and the rage and the mental illness
that Steven Miller sprinkles, we're missing the biggest thing here.
(09:13):
He's out of control. Why well, what's likeliest? What if
he knew his meal ticket who not only enables him,
but is the only thing standing between him and a
series of prosecutions? What if he knew his meal ticket
was not going to be his meal ticket much longer?
(09:33):
So then there are these panicked indictments, prosecutions of Comy
James Bolton, the first indictments in American history, so thin
that they have been handed down printed on toilet paper.
But what does this matter? If the indictments suck if
those who indicted them only care about the indictments because
(09:56):
he wouldn't be president when each case got dismissed. And
now Adam Schiff should be indicted over Watergate, the Ukraine
impeachment of me, Oh my god, that sounds so bad.
Scam was a far bigger illegal hoax than Watergate. I
(10:17):
sincerely hope the necessary authorities, including Congress, are looking into this.
Congress is shut down, sir, you shut Congress down. Remember,
Adam Schiff was su dishonest. It's so with three o's
and corrupt. So many laws and protocols were violated, protocols
(10:41):
and just plain broken President DJT. As an aside, many
conservatives do think Watergate was some kind of scam. I
first heard this at ESPN in the nineties, and I
started laughing at the guy, thinking this conservative who otherwise
seemed to be a functioning human being, was kidding. And
then he wasn't laughing back because he really believed Watergate
(11:02):
was just a conspiracy to run a palace against Nixon
that gerald Ford had cooked up with the Democrats and
the Supreme Court and Woodward and Bernstein and and and
and and and but regardless, what does it have to
do with Adam Ship What does Watergate have to do
with Adam Schiff? What did this watergate have to do
(11:22):
with Ukraine? It's like he just remembered Ukraine and Watergate
on the same day and he put them together because
I don't know, like maybe because there wasn't enough blood
in his brain. Which brings us back to the most
important document of the Trump presidency thus far, that rarest
of glimpses. We saw what they all see. We saw
(11:47):
the Bondie direct message. The Bondy direct message, as confirmed
by a Murdoch newspaper, told you that once that was
what that was. Even Trump has never written a social
media post that starts with somebody's first name in a
(12:08):
comma and addresses that person directly throughout and puts what
was in essence an E signature at the bottom President
DJT never before that not ones the Bondi direct message
might be reasonably assumed to reflect how he is acting
when we don't see him. One of the frightening realities
about Trump that gets lost is that when you ask
(12:31):
why can't he control himself? This is him controlling himself.
This is him recognizing the cameras are rolling. This is
the best take. This is the sanest he gets, not
the craziest. The craziest is the private stuff he inadvertently
(12:54):
leaks after writing it to Pam Bondi, the private stuff
that indicates how crazy he really is. Oh good, they're
all gone. Now I can let my hair down, so
to speak. The mask is off here and it is
important to listen to what he wrote to her in
(13:16):
the paranoid urgent, threatening you are failing me. I am
losing because of you style that they must hear daily,
and something about it has changed, and they all act
like they believe he's not going to be president much
longer because it's coming off the rails. And there is
one word in this as we understand it now, private
(13:38):
memo to Pam Bondy that must have cut through Bondi's
rage and her hair dye and her botox and made
what's left of her blood run cold. Pam I have
reviewed over thirty statements and posts, say, oh god, he's
reading posts again. So let's say essentially same old story
(14:00):
as last time. All talk, no action, nothing is being done.
What about komy Adam shift? He shifted Letitia they're all
guilty as hell, but nothing's going to be done. Then
we almost put in a Democrat supported US attorney in
Virginia with a really bad Republican past, awoke rhino who
was never going to do his job. That's why two
(14:21):
of the worst dem senators pushed him so hard. He
even lied to the media and said he quit and
that we had no case. No I fired him, and
there's a great case, and many lawyers in legal pundit says,
and then comes the sudden emotional Oh that Cap Larry's
working again. CAPI Larry number three, four eight seven, two
(14:44):
six is working again. Blood frow has been increased. There's
this sudden switch from rage to Lindsey Halligan is a
really good lawyer and likes you a lot. Oh that
Cap Larry broke again. Send a crew over clean up
on Aisle three million, two hundred and seventy two thousand,
(15:04):
one hundred and sixteen. We can't delay any longer. It's
killing our reputation and credibility. They impeach me twice and
indicted me parentheses five times over. Nothing. Justice must be
served now. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. President DJT,
(15:27):
It's killing, our reputation, killing and now with three exclamation points,
the paranoia is evergreen. It's not the paranoia, it's the
panic as if he thinks he's not going to be
president much longer, which is of course what Speaker Johnson
(15:51):
is doing to suppress the Epstein files, seemingly recognizing maybe
that's that's the way out of this, because otherwise, what
kind of endgame does Johnson have here. He's never gonna
bring House back into session, he's never gonna end the
Trump shut down. He's never gonna have the vote. He's
never gonna swear in Adalitea Grijalva, so she can't be
(16:13):
the last vote to force the vote on the Epstein files.
So they can't release the Epstein files because Johnson knows
whatever there is about Trump in the Epstein files, it
is in the Epstein files. Just no more Congress ever, whatever,
No ever, Mike, to paraphrase my friend Bill Daniels in
(16:37):
the Graduate, Mike, this whole idea sounds pretty half baked. No,
it's not. It's completely baked. If Johnson thinks there's a
chance Trump won't be president much longer. Again, I'm not
saying something bad is going to happen. I'm just saying,
(16:58):
why are they behaving like this? So why might they
think Trump be president much longer? Well, sir, he has
disappeared twice for five day stretches since the end of
August and the trip to Walter read Friday. That was
originally dismissed as his annual physical, and they went for
that for days annual physical. Annual physical. Oh, it's just
(17:21):
his annual physical. And so somebody realized, oh, wait a minute,
and we already used that one six months ago when
he went in, or is annual physical. He can't have
an annual physical every six months. That would make it
something else. What's the word? And then they changed it
and insisted they never said annual physical. And then they
changed it again to pre trip vaccinations and semi annual physical.
(17:42):
And perhaps in a few weeks when he goes back
in for another time, it'll be the last of his
annual three part physical. What we always said, he did
it in three parts. And then when it becomes a
weekly physical, Oh no, no, he has a weekly physical,
a fifty two part annual physical. Weekly physicals of course.
(18:02):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, he liked Walter read hospital.
He just wants the Oval Office to be in Walter
Reid next question, Oh, who we have the stormer Ulfson.
There's one last and far more serious tentacle to this
(18:24):
tale of panic and succession and people acting like they
know the money printing machine is throwing out sparks and
they better grab all the twenties before it blows. And
this other part certainly would explain yet another element of
right wing panic that still goes full blazes every once
(18:45):
in a while, because well, the because has been a
mystery doesn't resonate with us normies, isn't apparent here in
the actual, you know, plane of human existence in this
sort of real world. But it was the undercurrent on
the far right, and I don't think many of us
knew unter Charlie Kirk was killed. I noted that in
(19:07):
a total shock to me anyway. They didn't think of
him as some kind of run of the mill lunatic
manipulating audiences with the traditional right wing mix of religious
bullshit and sadistic fantasies of executing Joe Biden in public,
maybe with a guillotine and forcing everybody over twelve to watch,
(19:27):
and selling the thing as a pay per view TV
event with sponsors mixed in with racism and white supremacists
and trying to undo every law in the book that
protects anybody against anything. They didn't see him for what
he was. They wilfully ignoring half of Charlie Kirk's comments,
half of Charlie Kirk's videos, half of Charlie Kirk's quotes,
(19:50):
the Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Stu Peters, pol Pot Hitler,
end of Charlie Kirk's comments. They didn't see him as
the danger to real American people that he was. They
saw him as a future president in a void. I'm
(20:13):
beginning to think that even that does not sufficiently explain
their rage and their panic in the wake of Charlie
Kirk's indefensible assassination and never added this up before. I mean,
you know, you graduated third grade. You have to be
thirty five to be sworn in as president, right. My
(20:36):
contention is there is nobody, nobody to take over for
Trump now or January twentieth, twenty twenty nine. And that's
why they're all panicking, because they all think that date
when a new fudor must rise is suddenly a lot sooner.
Than they were led to believe. And here's the thing
(20:59):
that ties it all together. Had he not been killed
on October fourteenth, twenty twenty eight, Charlie Kirk would have
turned thirty five years old. They didn't think he was
(21:20):
a future president. They thought he was the next president. Well,
(21:53):
Politico needs a new White House Bureau chief. Politico has
been periodically insightful and even brave in some of its
coverage of Trump, but it's day to day stuff has
been horrific, enabling, stenographic, and now a rubicon has been crossed.
Trump on Air Force one on the way to the
(22:15):
Middle East yesterday dissing the Politico White House Bureau Chief.
So what, that's the way it goes. He only dis
is people who ask actual questions. She asked about rolling
back Chinese tariffs after he crashed the market and his
friends made money off that. He only insults people who
get it right. That's the way it goes. If he
(22:37):
insults you and demeans you, especially in front of people,
it means you're a woman, probably, and he's terrified of
you certainly. And this is another part of that. Why
is he acting like he's not got much time left
as president? Thing, Dasha Burns, What you do not do
in response to that is plead with him while people
(23:00):
are recording it. And what you really do not do
while people are recording it is plead with him that
Caroline Levitt will vouch for you. Firstport Harris on China,
are you considering talking about a question? Who are you with? Political?
Dashah Burns, Sir, Political politico has gone mad. They've been
(23:22):
so wrong about everything. Political political has been so wrong
about everything. Let's get somebody else to ask us a
question you mind? Is that all right? This Politico's fake
is thank you very much, tell them to be honest
andous Hey, sir, talk to Caroline schilbouswor thank you. That
(23:43):
is called obeying in advance. It is disqualifying, It is
career ending. It is worst of all, not going to work. Eventually, somebody,
either carolinan or Trump, they will sell you out, dashah Burns.
They sell everybody out. ABC learned in time and swerved,
(24:04):
and now Tiger has ignored Trump, and Stephanopoulos has hung
up on vance Mit and Harvard learned Columbia did not.
Politico needs to learn, but not with somebody who claims
to be a reporter, but insists that the corrupt Secretary
of Propaganda, the bubble headed bleach Bond at the press podium,
will vouch for her. This is not quite Barry Weiss's territory.
(24:29):
More on her in a moment, But Dasha Burns has
got to quit or Politico has got to fire her now.
A second take, and a goddamned brilliant one from Elizabeth
Lopato of The Verge, a totally different viewpoint on the
appointment of Barry Weiss as the Lord High Executioner at
(24:51):
CBS News. You will have heard that Ms Weiss, upon
her appointment, wrote to every CBS News employee to ask
them to reply with a tell me what it is
you're doing here and are so proud of thing, which,
based on the Elon Musk experience, is in fact asking
every CBS News employee to give her enough rope with
(25:12):
which to hang themselves or have her hang them. Their
union has advised them not to reply. But Miss Lopato's
point of view on this is completely the opposite of mine,
and she's right and I'm wrong. Barry Weiss is not
there at CBS News to try to convert CBS News
(25:33):
into a right wing rag or to become a real
journalist for the first time in her life, or something
to please Trump, or she's there because good evening, and
welcome to the end of her career. The title of
miss Lopato's piece explains it all. Quote memo to Barry
(25:53):
Weiss Rea CBS News, You're doomed. That's the start. I'd
love to read the whole thing, but you know there
are limits copyrights. You should read the whole thing at
the verge. Here are a couple of highlights. I'll try
to limit myself to four hundred words to Barry Weiss Ree,
(26:15):
good luck, babe. Quote. I honestly cannot believe you've willingly
decided to go into the worst kind of job that exists,
management at a dying company. This is the glass cliff
to end all glass cliffs. Managing sucks. It sucks even
(26:36):
when you like the people you're managing. And it's a
low stress position. And I'm sure I don't have to
tell you running CBS News is not a low stress position.
You are going to get blamed by everyone above you
for decisions that are made by people below you, and
you're going to get blamed by people below you for
the decisions that are made by people above you. You're
also going to get blamed for your own decisions, just
(26:58):
for kicks. You have elected to take a job where
the primary purpose is for you to eat shit and
own the death of broadcast TV news, a thing that
is going to die no matter what you do. Nice work.
This is the glass cliff to end all glass cliffs.
(27:20):
You have been hired as a stop to a Trump
administration that is actively hostile to the actual free press,
and you will be made to oversee wave after wave
of layoffs until you quit or get fired, and the
entire news division is shut down in a final spasm
of cost cutting after the next inescapable media merger. No
(27:41):
one can save CBS News because it was made for
a media ecosystem that is now dead. Broadcast television is
slowly circling the drain, its aging audience, drifting towards the
great inevitable. Younger people are getting their news from TikTok
and Instagram and ever increasing numbers, and they trust institutional
media less than ever. CBS, in particular, that's your new company,
(28:06):
now has the oldest audience in primetime TV. These folks
aren't the free presses assiduously courted classical liberals. Either it's
normy grandparents, a bunch of whom are planning to appear
at the next No King's rally. I might invoke Edward Rmurow,
but they remember him. They don't have any goodwill towards you.
(28:31):
They don't know who you are at all, and they're
not going to defend you when you screw up. You
are now stuck claiming your goal is to win back
younger audiences, which you cannot do, while your real job
is to manage decline. There is no way to win here,
only slightly better ways to lose. It's actually even worse
(28:53):
than that, Miss Lopetto continues. You also have to manage talent,
famous TV talent, the people your audience actually knows and likes,
who will eat you all if they think you've screwed
them over. And there I will leave Miss Lopado's masterpiece
to the right owner herself and again implore you to
(29:16):
go to the Verge and read the whole thing. Try
reading it aloud. You'll get the flavor of it much
better that way, and you'll really enjoy thinking about what
Barry Weiss has assigned herself to which living hell she
has the choice among. The whole thing is five times
as long as the excerpt I just read, and it
(29:38):
gets better and better and better, which means for mis Weiss,
it gets worse and worse and worse. If I read
something like that about a job I had just taken,
I wouldn't just quit that new job. I would flee
the country. One last quote, one last sentence, one last dart,
(30:00):
sticking mis Weiss forever to the bull's eye. Miss Lapato's
final sentence quote, congrats on that one hundred and fifty
million dollars payout for the free press. Someone else owns
it now, Elizabeth Lapato at the verge on Barry Weiss
(30:22):
on the verge of the end at CBS. And also
remind me not to get on miss Lopato's bad side.
Also of interest here Christy Nomes double penetration of the
worst persons in the World Championship List, and speaking of
(30:42):
champions how the Milwaukee Brewers shamed themselves and made people
actually feel sorry for the Ricketts family of fascists owned
Chicago Cubs. The Milwaukee Brewers, who have never won a
World Series in fifty five years In existence, eliminate the Cubs,
then taunt them on social media. As the cliche goes,
(31:05):
act like you've been there before, even if, like the Brewers,
you haven't. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown
with Keith Elberman still ahead. On this all new episode
(31:42):
of Countdown, the death of the man who actually wrote
the first story, the first Washington Post story about what was,
at least till recently, the biggest scandal in American history
in nineteen seventy two. His name was Bart Barnes, and
I worked on another story with him for months a
(32:05):
decade later. First, believe it or not, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the mis grants, morons,
Undunn Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons
in the world. A tie at bronze. We start with
Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers. Yes, it's nice that they beat the
(32:27):
Tom Ricketts family of fascists owned Chicago Cubs in the
NL Championship Series, and the Cubs can pound sand So
also that means there's the chance that the Brewers, who
have never won the World Series, might play the Seattle Mariners,
who have never won the World Series in the World Series,
which also would mean that because the Brewers started history
(32:49):
as the infamous one year expansion team that my late
friend Jim Boughten immortalized in his book Ball four, the
World Series could pit the Seattle Mariners versus the Seattle Pilots. However,
the Brewers owe the Cubs and the baseball world before
any of that, and they owe their late guiding light
(33:11):
Bob Ucker, a big apology. The Cubs have this annoying
victory song, Hey hey, Chicago wonny thing times you going
to win, And they put up a flag on the
flagpole with a big W on it when they win,
which curly was not as often as they should have
this year. And they've been doing that for like a century,
(33:33):
during which they've won one World Series. But after the
Brewers eliminated the cub Saturday night, the Breweries posted on
social media an AI video of the cloud Gates statue,
that big shiny metallic thing. Listen to a giant computer
mouse in Millennium Park in Chicago with a flag with
a giant L on it. They show this mouse, well
(33:56):
a cloud Gate statue and this giant Cubs w kind
of flag, only it has a big l on it
and it lands and the Brewers captioned this video, Hey Chicago,
what do you say? Bob Bucher, though as fierce a
competitor as there was, and I know from a year
(34:17):
working with him, as salty a guy as there was,
he knew about the when and the wear of things.
And if you do that in public right after you won,
guess what Brewers you actually lost? Bob Buker would slap
you all silly. Come on, Brewers, act like you've been
there before, even though you haven't. The Brewers are tied
(34:41):
with Greg Abbott, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who was
on with Will Cain on Fox. Have I ever told
you about working with Will Cain at ESPN? We used
to wonder who guided him to the office every day,
or who tied his ties for him, or how he
got the left shoe on the left foot. God just
(35:04):
dumb azo rock. Anyway. Abbott says this to Governor JB.
Pritzker of Illinois, who like me, is a plus sized gentleman.
And you may remember some things about Greg Abbott that
apply physically here. No ridicule intended, just reality. However, Greg
(35:25):
Abbott said this Pritzker should quote, stop complaining and do
some push ups, governor really physical jokes. Governor push ups?
Do you think I'm going to say it? The hell
I'm going to say it. Shame on you. What an
(35:46):
embarrassment you are to humanity. I mean, seriously, at the
current rate. In about three months or so, if things
don't change in this country, something like this will be
responded to by a string of five hundred thousand jokes
about Greg Abbott, where all of us who would have
(36:07):
restraint in this situation will go now f him. I'll
just say the FM part, F Greg Abbott. He's an asshole.
He's a fascist asshole. Stop complaining and do some pushups.
Jesus Christ, Greg Abbott, stopped complaining and do some democracy.
The runner up Trump paralegal, Lindsay Halligan, the beauty pageant
(36:29):
Miss Uncongeniality winner, has screwed up yet again. Yes, we've learned.
She apparently indicted Letitia James independently of Pam Bondy just
because she's a big girl now or something and has
bigger hair and is trying to get Trump to fire
probably Pam Bondy and replace her with younger Pam Bondy
(36:51):
Lindsay Halligan beauty pageant contestant. Then I would think that
in the IRAQ. But in the filing against Letitia James,
she put in defendant information juvenile. Yes, no, she got no,
she marked no, she got that right. So the FBI
number place is left blank. Appropriately defendant named Letitia A.
(37:12):
James address, Brooklyn, New Jersey. Ma'am, I'm gonna need to
see your license. No no, no, no no, not your
driver's license. No no, that's your No, that's your dozen card.
At the hairstylists you get the thirteenth boufont free No, no,
(37:36):
the other the law license. But the winner, we've got
a Christie Nome twofer, a fountain of worst person material
turns out to be Christy Nome's destiny. There is a
video of Christy Nome blaming Democrats for the shutdown of
the government, which is playing at TSA security checkpoints at
(38:00):
airports across the country. Apparently it is the choice of
law officials at the local airports to run it. So
if you see it, don't complain to the TSA. Don't
complain to Christy Nome, don't complain to Corey Lewandowski, Complain
to the local airport, complained to the local governing authority,
complained to the local Democrats. I have one question about
(38:23):
this video. It's a video of Christy Nome. Is Lewandowski
in the video with her. Oh wait, there's more Christy
Nome in the twofer told the latest cabinet meeting, the
mayor said that Portland was perfectly safe. I'm you on
a fault, Fanny, and I said, why did you clear
the strength from me to yay and build out a
(38:46):
four block radius to make sure I can get in
and out of here? Well, clearly Portland was just protecting
its pets from you. Which secondly, so they built out
a four block radius and you were able to get
in and out of there in a hurry and nothing back.
So you're saying your experience in Portland was totally safe. Also,
(39:09):
as if we needed more Christy Nome material, there is
video of those violent Antifa protesters, the ones dressed up
in the various animal costumes, catching Christin Nome making one
of her fascist porn videos on the roof of the
Ice headquarters of the DHS headquarters in Portland or the
(39:30):
I don't know Discount Shoe Center in Portland or whatever,
and the protesters are in front of the building playing
over loud speakers the theme from the Benny Hill Show,
and I thank yakty sacks Boots Randolph, and she and
the other members of American Ices have no idea what
(39:53):
to do that. She keep walking around on the roof, like,
can anybody make that song stop? Because on top of
everything else, Christinome and Lewandowski and the others are bumbling
morons and this ends up with them in jail. So Gnome,
next time they play yackety sacks by Boots Randolph the
Beny Hill theme, we need to start calling it the
(40:15):
Christy Gnome theme. You know, there is a theory, by
the way, Christy, about injecting fluids like steroids or like
botox into a confined space in the body, something self contained,
like the hip or the skull, and eventually, if you
do it enough, you will squeeze out whatever is supposed
(40:37):
to be inside that closed space, inside the skull, inside
the hips, like veins or other blood vessels, or if
it's botox, eventually your skull will be empty of brains
and filled with nothing but botox. Christy, no brains, just botox.
Yacketty Sacks Gnome two days other worst person in that.
(41:37):
The Washington Post reports that Bart Barnes has died eight
days ago. He was eighty seven years old. Bart Barnes
worked for the Washington Post for fifty years, and it
is impossible to describe simply what he did there, but
the range of his career was such that he was
the rewrite man on the Post desk on Saturday, June seventeenth,
(41:58):
nineteen seventy two, the man who put together, who literally
cut and pasted and typed and re wrote an article
out of the various stuff that had been written by
three different reporters about an almost inexplicable break in the
night before the Friday the sixteenth at a local office complex.
One of the reporters who sent in his stuff was
(42:20):
named Woodward, another was called Bernstein. The third was the
Post's crime reporter, Alfred Lewis. The article was bylined Alfred Lewis,
and it carried a note of contribution at the bottom
by Bart Barnes. He, in fact, was the man who
wrote the first story, the first Washington Post story, and
(42:42):
the first story anywhere about the Watergate break in. That
was a high mark for bart Or when he broke
in in nineteen sixty three with the Post as part
of the Post's crew at Martin Luther King's I Have
a Dream Speech and the March on Washington. He contributed
to their coverage of that or later writing the obituaries.
(43:03):
And this is a legendary on the Post of Orson
Wells and Yule Brenner in nineteen eighty five on deadline
on the same day. From the Sublime to the Ridiculous. However,
he also once found himself somehow assigned to cover the
nineteen eighty two National Football League players strike. He was
an experienced sports writer, especially on the business of sports,
(43:25):
and they sent him to do this. At the start
of it early spring, there were four reporters, Bart, an
ap sports and business guy, somebody from the Times, and
a CNN rookie who was, as they say, expendable. Me.
We Bart, Barnes and I and the other two we
worked on the same story, if not every day, then
(43:46):
at least once a week until Thanksgiving of that year.
He was quiet, wry, supportive, delight, often suggesting things you
should follow up on, which was the way of him
slipping me information or commenting that I had correctly or
incorrectly emphasized something in one of my reports he had seen.
He also, as I will mention shortly in greater detail,
(44:09):
played a role in the greatest practical joke of our times,
well my times, well about the New York Times. It
was on a reporter from the New York Times whom
we didn't dislike. He was a nice enough guy when
not frantically on deadline, but when he was on deadline,
none of us could stand him. I only found out
(44:32):
later that Bart Barnes was the Sun and the grandson
of two publishers of the Bristol Press. He was from Bristol, Connecticut.
You know ESPN land before there was an ESPN, and
I knew him a decade before I was at ESPN
(44:52):
Small World. Only found that out in reading his obituary.
And I only found out that he eventually became the
Post's obituary factory. He wrote hundreds of them, and that
was a role I occasionally filled from my first at
UPI right through my last stint at ESPN. I noted
this line in Bart's obituary, something a lot of us
who have done this kind of work have wondered. Will
(45:14):
the obituary we just finished only be seen or read
after the guy we wrote about is dead, and after
we're dead too. Here's what The Post's obituary guy wrote
about The Post's former obituary guy quote his byline will
continue to appear in the Post long after his death.
(45:35):
Seventeen of his pre written obituaries are still waiting to
be published. You're all out there, right. I retired from
ESPN in twenty twenty. Literally, I'm a Disney retiree. I
think they have at least one of my baseball obituaries
left ready to go. No, I don't feel it's right
(45:57):
for me to tell you who it is. Yes, it
does feel really strange, but this is about Bart Barnes,
a great, helpful, all purpose held the Washington Post together
until it collapsed kind of guy and his role. And
he was the perfect legit, calm, straight laced guy who
(46:20):
helped sell the scam that we played on. The guy
from the Times, the last person, the guy from the Times,
the victim here, the mark, the target, the last person.
That guy would suspect, his last line of defense in
a world gone mad before his eyes, as you will
(46:42):
hear in March of nineteen eighty two, I went from
scheduled freelancer to full time as CNN's national sports correspondent
based in New York. I have mentioned previously that they
rewarded me by offering me one thousand dollars less a
year than they were giving me freelance, which tells you
everything you need to know about working in televisionn It
(47:04):
also rewarded me by sending me to the first meeting
of the NFL Players Association and the NFL Management Council
to negotiate a new contract and avert a strike that year.
Kind of miss that target, But while I did lots
of other stories in my first full year at CNN,
I was the football strike guy until that strike was
(47:27):
settled and a new deal was approved at a mass
meeting in Washington. And the mass meeting in Washington curR
just before Thanksgiving like forty years ago today, and the
damn story had started forty years ago last March. There
are probably fifty seven hundred stories worth telling you of
covering this thing nearly every day one way or the
(47:48):
other for eight months, but this one might be my favorite.
There were I think three other reporters at that first
bargaining session in New York in March of nineteen eighty two,
and if these are not the three guys I'm thinking of,
they became the three guys in the subsequent meetings later
in March, and then in April when we had some
in Washington, and throughout the early summer. They were Bart
(48:10):
Barnes of the Washington Post, Ira Rosenfeld of the Associated Press,
and Michael Janofski of the New York Times. By October,
the four of us had been joined by whom maybe
one hundred other reporters two hundred. The problem with covering
any strike, inside sports or outside of it is you
don't have a lot of news to cover, and the
(48:32):
only news story your editors or producers or readers or
viewers want anyway is this one is the damn thing
over yet. So there was a lot of competition among
all of us for those few news nuggets and sources
available to an ever increasing supply of reporters. Though I
have to say the others, at least the originals were
all great to me and I to them, to the
(48:55):
point that when they moved the talks to the Hunt
Valley Resort Complex in Maryland, United Press International and the
networks like US called our location Hunt Valley, Maryland. But
there was such a dearth of news that the Associated
Press insisted there was no such place as Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and we were all really in Cockeysville, Maryland. The same
(49:15):
story would come across the UPI wire dateline Hunt Valley, Maryland,
and the same story on the AP wire Cockysville, Maryland.
Then the Associated pressed to a story on the dispute
over the location name. I remember asking Ira Rosenfeld of
the AP if they had used the dateline Cockysville, just
so there'd be a dispute, just so he had something
(49:36):
to write about. He started laughing and walked away anyway. Janofsky,
the guy from the Times, was the most anxious of
the bunch. Michael Janofski was a little abrasive, like literally
elbowing you out of the way in the scrums with
media spokesman, or trying to walk those spokesmen out of
(49:58):
those gaggles and scrums in order to get a one
on one. I'm from the New York Times, And the
only thing the owner and the players and the rest
of US reporters all agreed on was, oh God, here
comes Danovsky again. So one long night in the resort
they were using in Kackysville and or Hunt Valley, Maryland,
one of the Union guys was having a drink with
a bunch of us media types and we started complaining
(50:20):
about Jenofsky. And I don't think the prank that was
hatched was my idea, but I know I was the choreographer.
The area I had to work with in the hotel
in which we were permitted to roam ran from a
swimming pool around a corner, down a one hundred foot
hallway into the lobby, which was the press room and
(50:41):
press conference venue. So we waited until we saw Jenofski
go down that hall away from the main lobby and
around the corner towards the hotel rooms themselves, and then
at least a dozen of us waited like evil school
kids in the main part of that hallway between the
swimming pool and the lobby. We sent a spotter to
(51:02):
stand near the pool to alert us. So as Michael
Janofski of The New York Times turned the corner one
hundred feet away, he saw the NFLPA press aide literally
pushing some of us, and everybody yelling and him saying fine,
it's true. It's true. It's over. Now I can't say
another goddamn thing. I quit. He's trying to get away
(51:23):
from us. There are arms flailing through the air, voices raised,
a lot of oaths and swear words. In short, we
have convinced mister Danofsky of the Times that he has
just missed the end of the football strike. Djanofsky sprints
the hundred feet, grabs the union guy and says, tell me,
(51:45):
it's settled, it's over. Tell me and this man. Dave
had also been a press staffer in the Kennedy administration,
and this was not his first prank against the reporter.
He says, I'm sorry, Mike, I don't work for the
NFLPA anymore. I just quit. If you want this story,
you better get it from the executive director Ed Garvey
(52:05):
or the president Gene Upshaw. So now Janofski grabs Bart
Barnes of the WAHPO, who had to have been I
don't know, ten years older than Janosky was, and he says,
you have to tell me, Bart, I'll pay you, at
which point all of us lose it. I mean me
and the AP guy, Ira. We broke character. We doubled
(52:28):
over with laughter. Now Janofsky froze, Dave from the Union
laughed so hard he turned red, and Jenofsky marched off,
announcing he would get us and get us soon. I
don't think he ever did. Though. If I had to
do a phoner for CNN when Jenofsky was around that
lobby or any other other places we did this story,
(52:49):
I always made sure I guarded the phone disconnect button
with my free hand, just in case. But what he
did do was leaves sports all together for safer and
more fun topics like covering the Environmental Protection Agency and
getting writing stories about pesticides and recycling mercury. I've done
(53:26):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening,
and Rip Bart Barnes, thanks for everything. Most of our
Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Schanel. Our musical directors have Countdown. I
don't think. I don't think Bart Barnes wrote a no
bit of me. He's writing the until two thousand and
(53:48):
five or six, though? Am I one of the seventeen?
Are you you know what? We'll never know? Will we?
Our musical directors have Countdown Brian Ray and John Phillip
Shannel and the work produced by Tko Brothers with mister
Rand guitars, bass and drums, mister shaneil On handling the
(54:10):
orchestration and the keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
here 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 the sports music. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
MI anouncer today is my friend in continuing the Watergate theme,
(54:31):
John Dean, everything else was as always my fault. That's
countdown for today. Day two hundred and sixty seven of
America held hostage yet again, at just ninety six days
until the scheduled end of Trump's lane duck and lame
brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein, or the pavement on his hand, or a
(54:52):
stuck escalator or the psychopathy test, or the judge guy
doesn't like or the judge girl he doesn't like, or
by Joe Biden's FBI. They're still out there. I can
see them. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Till then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
(55:12):
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(55:36):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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