October 30, 2025 • 38 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 29: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: The correct question has been lying there, invisible in the forest, for the trees.
It was Mary Trump who finally saw it – and asked it: “Why the hell (do) they KEEP giving him cognitive tests?”
That’s IT - isn’t it? THAT'S the question.
None of the details, none of the giraffes versus elephants, none of his stupid boastful insults about it, none of the small stuff. It's the big picture. Why the hell DO they keep giving him cognitive tests?
And I’ll add a corollary to Mary Trump's burst of simple genius: Why the hell do they KEEP giving him cognitive tests almost exactly six months apart?
Friday October 10, 2015 at Walter Reed, which he boasted about on board Air Force One this week. And Friday April 11, 2015, which he had also boasted about on board Air Force One last spring. Those dates are almost six months apart. 182 days.
If they’re not giving him pre-scheduled cognitive tests every six months that’s a helluva coincidence.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
And I’ll add a second corollary to Mary Trump’s question: why did they give him an MRI? Is it the first MRI to accompany a cognitive test? What was it an MRI of? I mean it may be irrelevant (I once had an MRI to see how my sinuses were draining correctly). You really CAN get MRIs for almost trivial stuff.
But you don’t get cognitive tests for trivial stuff.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
PLUS: Trump says the Constitution prohibits him from running for president again. Again, mid-flight, after boasting about things that aren't real, he said: “If you read it it’s pretty clear. I’m not allowed to run." So that’s that, huh? That’s what all the experts say.
The same experts who said there was no Presidential Immunity.
So – what happens next? He just changes his mind? Or decides this term is eight years not four? Or he just cancels the 2028 election?
This isn't bluster and it isn't trolling. They might get away with it and they might not, but there are plans. And the more we're convinced they can never pull them off, the more likely we are to see another "presidential immunity" ruling from The Supreme Court. Or another Aileen Cannon. Or another January 6.
B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steve Bannon wants to expel Zohran Mamdani from this country. Hell, we should expel Bannon. If we can find a truck that can carry that much blubber. There's a media writer named Rich Greenfield who has extrapolated from the possibility that Comcast might buy CNN and merge it with MSNBC and he has the exact right person to run it: Charlie Kirk's widow (a bible student). And as ludicrous as that sounds, the guy now running CNN wasn't even home from his visit to the White House to try to butter up Trump and the Trumpists when one of the Trumpists mocked him on twitter for visiting. Today, appeasers not only lose, they get flamed on social media.
C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With the Dodgers in the World Series again it is time to hurry back to the greatest moment in their Los Angeles history: Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit homer even though three-quarters of his body was barely movable, to win Game One of the 1988 World Series and set them on the path to one of the greatest upsets in baseball history, over the vaunted Oakland A's. Gibson's homer was a surprise to everybody. Except me. Because I predicted it just before the first pitch of that final inning began. And there's a WITNESS.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
correct question has been lying there, hidden invisible in the
(00:28):
forest for the trees. Mary Trump finally saw it, and
she has asked it. Quote, why the hell do they
keep giving him cognitive tests? That's it, isn't it? I'll
add a corollary, why the hell do they keep giving
him cognitive tests? Almost exactly six months apart? He's boasting
(00:55):
again about having passed one. We believe it was three
weeks ago Friday, October tenth, that Walter Reid, but who knows,
during what they first called his annual physical until somebody
realized he'd already had his annual physical last spring when
he also boasted about having just taken one April eleventh.
That's two cognitive tests April eleventh and probably October tenth.
(01:19):
Those dates are six months apart, one hundred and eighty
two days. If they are not giving him pre scheduled
cognitive tests every six months, that's a hell of a coincidence.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
And I'll add a second carollary to Mary Trump's real question,
(01:40):
why did they give him an MRI this time? Is
this the first MRI. What was it of I mean,
it may be irrelevant. I once had an MRI to
see how my sinuses were draining into the back of
my throat. You really can get MRIs for almost trivial stuff,
but you do not get cognitive tests for trivial stuff
(02:01):
every six months. And we know all this because Trump
can't stop himself. He keeps talking about these tests. He
keeps thinking he's he's won some sort of game show
or scholarship or Nobell cognitive test prize. On board air
Force one this week he boasted reporters about acing the
(02:25):
MRI and about passing the cognition test three weeks ago.
Trump first tried to insist it was an IQ test
so he could insult representatives of Casio Cortes and Crockett.
Then he slipped and he admitted it was a cognitive test,
and then he described the test. This was this past Monday,
a board air Force one.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Have her passed. Like the exams that I decided to
take when I was at Walter Reine, I took that
was a very hard They really have to do tests,
I guess in a certain way. But the cognitive tests
let AOC go against Trump, Let Jasmin go against from
why do they get a jazz? And the first couple
of questions, there is a tiger an elephant that you have,
(03:08):
you know, when you get up to about five or six,
and then when you get up to ten and twenty
and twenty five, they couldn't come close to answering any
of those questions.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And this why do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
The audio a little less clear was also from onboard
Air Force one from April eleventh, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I wanted to be a little different than they took
a cocnitive tests.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, I don't know. I want to tell you whether.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That I got a reanswer, right as I've.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Done about lord times and I've taken I've taken the
cognitive tests.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Any four times.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I'm done.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I've got nothing wrong. That's when the American people want.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
That was during his twenty twenty five annual physical, his
first annual physical. Why the hell do they keep giving
him cognitive tests? And it's not like these are the
only two person woman man camera TV. That was now
five years and three months ago, Like.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
You'll go person, woman, man camera TV. So they say,
could you repeat that? So I said, yeah, so it's
person woman, man camera TV. Okay, that's very good. If
you get it in order, you get extra points.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He said he had taken that test recently at Walter
Reed recently in twenty twenty. Sometime after that, his own
White House physician said that Trump had taken the Montreal
Cognitive Assessment in twenty eighteen. Why the hell do they
keep giving him cognitive tests? A cognitive test and he
(04:54):
has used the word this time A dementia or other
brain impairment screening test simple triage on October tenth. That's one.
Then there's the one in April. That's two. He was
boasting in January of last year about having passed one,
kept boasting about it through the spring. Only the animals
(05:16):
they asked him about in that one were different than
the ones he just mentioned in the one he just took.
Was that a third test? Last year? Throughout Biden's presidency,
Trump talked about these tests. In twenty twenty, he repeatedly
challenged Biden to take one. He said in twenty twenty
he had recently taken one. That's three or four. We
(05:36):
know for sure. He took the Montreal Cognitive in twenty eighteen.
That was definitely at least the fourth, probably the fifth.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
That's two in the last six months, seemingly time to
be six months apart. That is certainly four in the
(05:57):
last six years. He has previously said he's taken four
of these tests, maybe five, he can't remember. It could
easily be five. In fact, it could easily be six.
Anybody remember when he disappeared way back when, around oh
decades a labor day after that three and a half
(06:18):
hour farewell roast of a cabinet meeting, where was he?
Did they test him then? Then he disappeared for another
five days at the end of September. Did they test
him then? Well, we are deep in the woods again.
Let us return to the simplicity of the Mary Trump question.
It is absolutely certain that they keep giving the President
(06:40):
of the United States tests to see if he can
pass the minimum standard for cognitive capacity, to pass the
minimum simplest threshold for not having some form of impairment,
maybe dementia. It certainly is a reasonable inference to suggest
that giving them on April eleventh and October tenth suggests
(07:03):
they are now scheduling for regular tests, and although he
slipped in his rush to try to explain how much
smarter he is than Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria or Casio
Cortes or whichever elected Democratic woman of color is next
on his shit list, it is clear that at some
point somebody convinced him, or he convinced himself, that this
(07:26):
was an IQ test and that he's, to quote his
own words again, a very stable genius. It says so
on the test with the picture of the giraffe on it.
Even though the only word in that description of very
stable genius that appears to apply is very. We can
all agree Donald Trump is very There are two little
(07:52):
side points I'd like to make before we drop this
for now. I often wonder where he conflated the concept
of political asylum and mental asylums. He can't shake it.
He says it every two weeks. He will never be
convinced that people were here because they were granted asylum
(08:12):
are therefore from asylums. This can be simple, good old
fashioned American stupidity. He deduced this when he was a kid,
the way a kid I knew at age thirteen insisted
the phrase was for all intensive purposes, and for whatever reason,
Trump would not and could not shake his mistake about
(08:34):
the word asylum or this asylum stuff is somehow wedged
into his mind because it's connected to his own experience
with psychological exams, which he must have taken as a kid, since,
as his own father euphemistically put it decades ago, Trump
was a rough kid who had to be taken out
of the public schools and sent to the New York
(08:55):
Military Academy NIMA because well, in my prep school days,
when our football and hockey and basketball and baseball teams
used to play against NIMA, all the kids at NeiMa
were supposedly there because some authority had given Dad a choice.
It's there or it's the reformatory. I just keep wondering
if the word asylum is stuck inside Trump because he
(09:19):
had to face that as a kid. Did the folks
threaten him with it? The second point is less speculative.
I hadn't heard this before that clip I played from April.
The last time he was boasting about the last cognitive
test he passed. He said that at Walter Reed they
gave him a thorough physical exam as well, and it
(09:41):
showed he had a good heart and a very good soul.
You heard me a good song. Your physical showed that
your soul is just fine. It's not an irregular soul,
(10:03):
and your soul is not hyper extended, and you don't
have Pyrone's soul disease. Why the hell do they keep
giving him cognitive tests? I think contained in that last
clip that might be our answer right there. Meanwhile, in
(10:47):
another endless topic, Trump has said something that sounds like
he's not going to try to stay in office past
January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and since it was preceded
by only one full minute of lies about how great
the economy is and how he got peace in the
Middle East, and how nobody's ever been as popular as
he is, Why the hell do they keep giving him
(11:08):
cognitive tests? The nation's most gullible people, the Washington Press Corps,
seems to have concluded that he's not trying to mislead, dissemble,
or you know, just lie to them again. The British kid,
it's always a goddamn British kid, who they supposedly had
fired as the editor of the playbook newsletter for Politico
(11:29):
months ago, but he's still there. Yesterday, wrote, So even
Trump says the Constitution is clear on this point. Can
we all now put this to bed? No, Sonny, we
can't because you didn't ask Trump what the word clear means,
did you? Huh?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Huh huh.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Persuading for Johnson says that he told you that there's
no time to amend the constitution to allow.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You to serve a third term.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Is that an accurate representation.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Of I don't want to even talk about that, because
you know, the sad thing is I have my highest
numbers I've ever had, and I would say that if
you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.
Stumid I missed him.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Dear listener, if you would please get out your meme
of the guy tapping his head to indicate how smart
he is. Can't be accused of trying to run for
a third term if you cancel the twenty twenty nine
election or make some other extra constitutional violence based attempt
to not leave the White House. Huh? There is still
(12:33):
something rattling around in that damaged brain of Trump's. Hi
the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests that
assumes there will be some sort of mass uprising by
others to keep him in power forever, one that he
may or may need to himself stoke or can happen organically.
(12:57):
And if you don't believe that, let me ask you
what was January sixth. Trump has specifically said he didn't
think he would want to run as vice president and
let somebody else occupy the presidency ceremonially while he runs
the country. But again, what part of that is a no?
I don't think I'd like to do it. Oh I
(13:17):
did it anyway. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,
taking time off from and acting the passive aggressive dissolving
of Congress and taking even more time off from his
busy schedule of not knowing anything about the latest news
or controversy or the rules of the House, he said
he didn't see a path for Trump to serve a
third term, quoting, Hey, and I have talked about the
(13:38):
constrictions of the Constitution. Again, where's the no. On the
other hand, the only escaped circus elephant in the Senate,
Tommy Tubberville, said, if Trump wanted to quote, go round
the constitution quote, don't ever close a book on him.
(13:59):
And of course, Steve Bannon told the economists that you
shouldn't listen to Trump that there is a plan in
place to keep Trump in place in office, and quote
at the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is.
It's easy to dismiss morons like Tubberville and mentally damaged
fascists like Bannon and presume this is all bluster. It
is not all bluster if it is not obvious that
(14:22):
while you and I and a vast majority of Americans
have been raised to believe the Constitution and the laws are,
if perhaps not, the sacred documents the Republicans like to
pretend they believe they are. We believe they are there
to keep chaos and evil in relative check. But Trump
and the snakes he has enabled and supported see them
(14:44):
merely as inconvenient impediments. For at least four years, they
have been building up the phony resume for the revisionists
drawn out of thin air. View of the twenty second
Amendment term limits, it's two terms. That's it. Plus you
can serve out up to two years of somebody else's
(15:06):
unexpired term and then get elected twice. That's it. Two elections.
An absolute hard time limit of nine years and one
hundred and eighty three days, not one hundred and eighty
two days, because there'd have to be a leap year
if you took the end of somebody else's unserved term.
The revisionist version of this, of course, is that this
(15:27):
only applies to someone being elected to two concective terms.
This useful bullshit rationalizes that from the twenty second Amendment
point of view, Trump is right now only in his
first term. As I've pointed out countless times, this bullshit
also has the invaluable benefit of keeping Obama or Bill
(15:51):
Clinton or George Bush, for whatever that's worth, from ever
running again. Only Trump. It's nonsense, of course. Presidential immunity
is nonsense. Of course, masked anonymous thug probably recruited from
right wing militia shooting ministers in the face with tear
gas while calling themselves ice is also nonsense. Actually, thanks
(16:14):
to Trump, and thanks to this corrupt decrepit soul is
Supreme Court, what sixty percent, seventy percent, one hundred percent
of American public life is now nonsense. Go to the
Supreme Court with the non consecutive terms fantasy and see
how quickly sam Alito can turn that into law. Still,
(16:36):
my gut has always told me that the extra constitutional
theft that Trump favors and really dreams about the most
is not some loophole shot into the twenty second Amendment
by Missus Alito and her flags, nor even a military takeover.
What he wants is for everybody to just agree with
him that a he deserves another term because those evil
(16:58):
Democrats wasted so much of his first term with the
investigation of the Russia Russia Russia truth about his conspiracies
with Putin, and that b he deserves another term, maybe
a fourth one, because the twenty twenty election was quote
stolen from him, even though he was president at the
time and all the institutions that supervised the elections and
(17:22):
investigated his nonsensical charges for the last five years were
under his control. Either way, Trump does not want to
have to be elected again in twenty twenty nine because
another election means another chance to lose an election. He
wants to remain president because everybody says he's so wonderful
that there's no need to even have a vote. He
(17:45):
could lose an election. He could lose a coup attempt.
Hell son of a bitch, did lose a coup attempt?
Didn't he a simple acclamation though, in which everybody names
him homecoming King and scored a perfect score on his
acuity IQ test and President again, simple acclamation. That's what
(18:12):
he wants. And if you have to do something with
that annoying constitution to make that happen, what you do
is simply find a way to say, of course he
only gets two terms, and of course he knows he
can't run for a third one. It says so in
the Constitution. He just said it on tape. But where
does it say we can't change how long his second
term is. Why don't we just amend that other part
(18:35):
of the Constitution that nobody looks at, Article two, Section one,
clause one, so that it says a president shall hold
his office during the term of four years, but this
president shall hold his office during the term of eight
years or twelve or eleveny billion. Also of interest here, Oh,
(19:00):
it's more Brits running American news operations into the ground,
the one they found to finally complete the destruction of CNN.
Went to the White House to kiss Trump's ass and
the ass of every Trump staffer, and before he got
to his home, there was a tweet from a Trump
spokesman mocking him for trying to appease Trump. Congratulations Neville Chamberlain.
(19:27):
But don't worry. CNN is going to be merged into MSNBC,
and the right wing has its candidate to run MSNBCNN.
It's a former Miss Arizona now studying for a doctorate
in Bible studies at Liberty University. Who reads the most
(19:48):
Bazooka Joe comic strips shall get the doctorate in Bible
Studies at Liberty. You know who this is. They want
to run a combined MSNBC CNN Charlie Kirk's widow. Because
this is hell, isn't it? That's next? This is Countdown.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, who can predict almost anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Still ahead on this all new episode of Countdown. All
this La Dodgers World Series stuff reminds me to remind
you that not only did I correctly predict the Kirk
Gibson home run that won Game one of the nineteen
eighty eight World Series and then sent them on their
way to their upset of the Oakland A's to win
(20:59):
that World series, but I did it as the innings
started in which he hit it, and I predicted it
as part of an answer to a question that my
friend Alexis Denny, who you just heard, asked me, and
she was a witness to this impossible prediction that was
not at all serious, the Kirk Gibson home run, and
(21:21):
I told you so. Next in things I promise not
to tell first believe it or not, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
worst persons in the world at the Bonds worse Steve Bannon.
(21:45):
Steve Bannon says Zoran Mom, Danny has quote got to
be sent out of the country, that they have to
denaturalize him. But think about what would happen if we
did this instead, to Steve Bannon, think of how much
affordable housing we could be filled in the space that
(22:06):
this fat, ugly slob now wastes and occupies. Runner up
Rich Greenfield, who is a conservative media pest, identifies as
a critic, as quoted by Max Tenney of Semaphore, this
is his genius idea. Let's take this a step further.
(22:31):
Merging NBC Universal with Warner Bros. Discovery would combine NBC, MSNBC,
and CNN. Under one roof, he writes, We've been thinking
about how NBC Universal could completely shift the perceived biased
narrative at NBC, MSN NOW and CNN, similar to what
(22:51):
Paramount is attempting with its acquisition of the Free Press
and appointing Barry Weiss as editor in chief of CBS
News enter Erica Kirk, who leads the nonprofit Turning Point
USA and is the widow of Charlie Kirk. What if
Comcast agreed to bring Kirk in as editor in chief
of the combined news unit upon closing Sure, at first,
(23:12):
blush it sounds crazy, by the way, sir, at four
three hundred and twenty second, blush, it sounds crazy. Err
But Trump loves a deal. F Trump f his deals,
and Brian Roberts needs to think big and differently. Yes,
kick Trump in the metaphorical nuts. That would be a
(23:33):
different thought. The combined NBC, MSNBCCNN could also add a
conservative ombudsman, as CBS News did with Kenneth R. Weinstein.
Ombudsman here is used metaphorically. What they have as a snitch,
what they have as a a collaborator, what they have
as a political officer inside CBS News, who is there
(23:55):
to turn in the liberals? Worth noting Comcast made a
sizable donation to Trump's White House ballroom renovation, which is
unsurprisingly harfy. NBC and MSNBC staff, Well that's because, mister
rich Greenfield, it's a bribe. News organization should not be
anywhere near something like this, especially if it's a bribe
(24:15):
of a corrupt president leading a corrupt movement full of
corrupt people who have no soul and are all going
to hell. Have a nice day, maggot, What a great idea.
Scowling angry, justifiably angry, mind you widow of an assassinated
right wing nutjob who all the members of the right
(24:36):
wing think was Jesus or Trump or Jesus Trump or something.
Put her in charge of NBC News slash MS now
slash CNN when she has no news experience and all
of their combined news organizations are bailing water as it is,
and incidentally, they're populated by people connected to me. The
anchor of the NBC Nightly News used to be my
(24:58):
production assistant. What could go wrong if you are hankering
for the day is when there were only three TV
networks doing only half an hour of news a night. Hey,
we may get back there and damned fast. But this
is the way they think. The presumption on the right
is that the left has been making up the news
(25:19):
because it contains things the right doesn't like. Therefore it
can't be real. It must be some sort of propaganda.
They really think this. If they wanted it to be
sunny and it turns out to be rain, they will
blame the liberal weather man rather than say, oh it's raining.
So necessarily, the solution to a combined NBC, MSNBC and
(25:43):
CNN under one roof would be to put a woman
with absolutely no experience and nothing but vendettas in charge
of the operation, because the Barry Weiss thing at CBS
is already going so well. The point is, as has
been pointed out here. I read the piece from what
was her name, Emily le Pato. I may be getting
(26:04):
that wrong, that all Barry Weiss is going to get
to do is preside over the end of CBS News
and the firing of everybody there. And if she has
a reputation, it will be destroyed. So if you want
to ruin Erica Kirk's life again, put her in charge
of NBC, CNN, MSNBC people are too stupid, but our winner,
(26:29):
speaking of ruining television news, Mark Thompson of CNN once again,
it's funny that the fascists are on this anti immigrant
kick when it's clear the most dangerous immigrants to this
country are pasty white guys from England or countries that
were English colonies, Australia and the Murdochs South Africa and
(26:53):
musk and the other guys the UK and people like
Mark Thompson. More impressively, why do so many submissive, loser
Trump appeasers from England get put in charge of America
news organizations and then promptly give in to Trump and
then immediately get humiliated by Trump. A story from our
(27:18):
friends at Oliver Darcy's newsletter status. During a trip to
DC last week, CNN CEO Mark Thompson made a visit
to the White House, where he promoted the network's new
streaming service. He wanted to get members of the Trump
administration up to speed on what the new CNN streaming operation.
(27:38):
I remember the last guy they put in charge of CNN.
His big deal was getting rid of the new CNN
streaming operation. Now we have a whole new approach, which
is another new CNN streaming operation, which the guy who
succeeds Mark Thompson can then turn down because that's what
works in management. What did the last guy do? He
invented an elixir that gives everyone eternal life, Let's burn
(28:02):
all of it. What don't we want? Who wants eternal life?
My policy is what shortened lives? Anyway, Mark Thompson went
into the White House and tried to sell the Trump
people on being nicer to CNN, on appearing on CNN more,
on promising that CNN would be nicer to Trump. After
(28:22):
every move they've made towards Trump since twenty twenty two,
when Chris licked my whatever began this process, every move
CNN has made has destroyed what was left of CNN.
Let's do more of that. Not only that. I will
buy CNN eternal life under the Trump administration, and all
(28:44):
of the MAGA will watch CNN and it's not a trap,
and it's not stupid, and you're not appeasing the Hitler
of America. No, you're not doing any of those things,
Mark Thompson. The tweet from Oliver Darcy's status with This
scoop about Mark Thompson's visit to the White House was
(29:07):
retweeted by Stephen Chung, the mincing Trump spokesman, who simply
retweeted it with the purple devil smile. In other words,
even Stephen Chung knows that Mark Thompson was brought in
so that he could obey in advance to Donald Trump,
(29:30):
and they immediately rewarded him by humiliating Mark Thompson online.
As George Conway put it, they're laughing at you, and
they are because Mark Thompson, pasty white guy thrown out
of England, now the head of CNN promoting the streaming service.
(29:51):
The last guy killed off is today's worst person. And
(30:14):
the exact anniversary anniversary number thirty seven of Kirk Gibson's
famous home run to win Game one of the nineteen
eighty eight World Series has long since passed. But before
we get too far away from the idea of Kirk
Gibson's La Dodgers in the World Series, I wanted to
tell this story once again. Only a couple of times
(30:35):
in my life have I been visited by the muse
of prediction. I once correctly predicted that Bucky Dent of
the New York Yankees would hit a home run to
win an American League playoff game between the Yankees and
the Red Sox in Fenway Park when my friends sitting
next to me, the Red Sox fan was expressing premature
(30:55):
jocularity that a Yankee had flied out to center field
with the tying runs on base and said, oh, thank
goodness that it's no home run threat. I then spent
five minutes explaining to him why Dent would necessarily now
hit a home run to win the game and the pennant,
which he then did. The other time was the Kirk
Gibson story in nineteen eighty eight, and this was in
(31:16):
direct response to a question asked to me by a
friend of mine then and now named Alexis Denny. So
just sit back and I say this and tell you
this story with the full awareness that these two predictions
of titanically important baseball events must be taken in the
context of the probability that the number of times I
(31:39):
had similar ecstatic visions of things that were about to
happen that did not happen, including say, the New York
Yankees winning the nineteen sixty eight World Series, when they
finished I think sixth. The number that did not happen
is one thousand or more. The number that did happen
(32:01):
is two. But Kirk Gibson was among them. Half of
the Dodgers starting lineup that had won the National League
Pennant was hurt and the other half was not that
impressive to begin with. National League Most Valuable Player Kirk
Gibson had nearly destroyed his left hamstring in Game two
of that playoff series that David Cohne had written about,
(32:24):
and Gibson had ripped up his right knee in Game seven.
He was assumed to be out of the World Series,
but he was still on the Dodger roster, and the
joke was that was only because the Dodgers literally did
not have any other healthy players under contract, and their
only other option was to activate sixty one year old
manager Tom Lesarda. Anyway, the Dodgers had actually led Game
(32:46):
one against the powerful Oakland A's to nothing after the
first inning, but by the ninth they were trailing four
to three, with literally three of the worst hitters in
the National League due up, and then the pitcher. I
was there covering the game for KCBS Channel two in
LA and my pal Alexis Denny, news and sports producer
for CBS Network News in Los Angeles, made our way
(33:09):
together down to the tiny alcove from the press box,
the alcove between the clubhouses, from which we could see
just a sliver of the field, pretty much just the
pitcher and the batter, framed by a hot dog stand
as the Oakland relief ace. Dennis Eckersley warmed up to
pitch the bottom of the ninth, and he had given
up exactly nine hits in his previous eighteen games, in
(33:33):
fourteen of which he had recorded saves. Alexis asked me,
simply and appropriately, so what are we going to ask
Eck after this game is over? And, matter of factly,
without any emotion, certainly without any sense of predicting anything,
I said, We're going to ask Eck about this game
(33:54):
losing home run he's about to give up to Kirk Gibson.
Alexis looked at me. Funny, I mean, funnier than usual.
What Gibson's not playing? He's hurt. I looked at her
with mild annoyance. Oh, come on, you know it has
to happen. I can only describe my feeling at that
(34:15):
time as being exactly what had been a decade before,
at another playoff game in Boston, with the Red Sox
leading the Yankees to nothing in the top of the seventh,
with two Yankees on and New York shortstop Bucky Dent
coming up, and my best friend, the Red Sox fan,
exhaling when the last batter had popped out and saying,
thank goodness, Dent is no home run threat. And I
(34:36):
began to speak in tongues, and what I was saying
was about how his hubristic remark about Dent would now
necessarily cause to happen next. What would happen next? A
three run home run by Bucky Dent, and it would
be all his fault, and then Dent hit the homer.
(34:59):
Neither the Dent nor the Gibson home run predictions were
really predictions. I felt no sense of investment in it.
I didn't race to put down a bet. I suppose
that at some other games I had made equally impossible
announcements of events that did not happen, but I have
never been given to that, so if I did do it,
(35:22):
it was only a couple of times. My batting average
is like four or five hundred on these and anyway,
these weren't calculations or analyzes on my part. I just
felt like I was running about five minutes ahead of
the rest of the world. And these things. Danse home
run in nineteen seventy eight, Gibson's home run in nineteen
eighty eight, these things had already happened. AnyWho, Mike Davis
(35:47):
of the Dodgers walked stole second base with two outs. Gibson,
to the shock of everybody except me, managed somehow to
climb up the three steps of the Dodger dugout and
waddle out to home plate, and then, on a three
to two pitch, hit the game winning home run. Like
(36:08):
I said, as Dodger Stadium shook and we prepared to
go into the clubhouses, Alexis Denny gave me a look
that I still can't really describe. But thirty five years later,
I know that since that night she has not been
fully convinced that I am of this earth. I got
(36:42):
it right. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips. Schanel
our musical directors of Countdown, and it was produced by
Tko Brothers, mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, mister
Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
(37:02):
comments are by the best baseball stadium Gonnest ever in
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN Inc. Some other music was arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
my friend Alexis Denny Witness. Everything else was, as always
(37:25):
my fault. That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and
eighty four of America held hostage again, just seventy nine
days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and
lame brained term unless he's removed sooner by Maga and Epstein,
or that pavement patch on his hand, or the tail
and hall or his jet made out of poop, or
(37:48):
the r K he's building, or the next cognitive test.
The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck Hit,
the post, hit, the post, oh Hit, the Post. Countdown
(38:26):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
correct question has been lying there, hidden invisible in the
(00:28):
forest for the trees. Mary Trump finally saw it, and
she has asked it. Quote, why the hell do they
keep giving him cognitive tests? That's it, isn't it? I'll
add a corollary, why the hell do they keep giving
him cognitive tests? Almost exactly six months apart? He's boasting
(00:55):
again about having passed one. We believe it was three
weeks ago Friday, October tenth, that Walter Reid, but who knows,
during what they first called his annual physical until somebody
realized he'd already had his annual physical last spring when
he also boasted about having just taken one April eleventh.
That's two cognitive tests April eleventh and probably October tenth.
(01:19):
Those dates are six months apart, one hundred and eighty
two days. If they are not giving him pre scheduled
cognitive tests every six months, that's a hell of a coincidence.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
And I'll add a second carollary to Mary Trump's real question,
(01:40):
why did they give him an MRI this time? Is
this the first MRI. What was it of I mean,
it may be irrelevant. I once had an MRI to
see how my sinuses were draining into the back of
my throat. You really can get MRIs for almost trivial stuff,
but you do not get cognitive tests for trivial stuff
(02:01):
every six months. And we know all this because Trump
can't stop himself. He keeps talking about these tests. He
keeps thinking he's he's won some sort of game show
or scholarship or Nobell cognitive test prize. On board air
Force one this week he boasted reporters about acing the
(02:25):
MRI and about passing the cognition test three weeks ago.
Trump first tried to insist it was an IQ test
so he could insult representatives of Casio Cortes and Crockett.
Then he slipped and he admitted it was a cognitive test,
and then he described the test. This was this past Monday,
a board air Force one.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Have her passed. Like the exams that I decided to
take when I was at Walter Reine, I took that
was a very hard They really have to do tests,
I guess in a certain way. But the cognitive tests
let AOC go against Trump, Let Jasmin go against from
why do they get a jazz? And the first couple
of questions, there is a tiger an elephant that you have,
(03:08):
you know, when you get up to about five or six,
and then when you get up to ten and twenty
and twenty five, they couldn't come close to answering any
of those questions.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And this why do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
The audio a little less clear was also from onboard
Air Force one from April eleventh, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I wanted to be a little different than they took
a cocnitive tests.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, I don't know. I want to tell you whether.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That I got a reanswer, right as I've.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Done about lord times and I've taken I've taken the
cognitive tests.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Any four times.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I'm done.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I've got nothing wrong. That's when the American people want.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
That was during his twenty twenty five annual physical, his
first annual physical. Why the hell do they keep giving
him cognitive tests? And it's not like these are the
only two person woman man camera TV. That was now
five years and three months ago, Like.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
You'll go person, woman, man camera TV. So they say,
could you repeat that? So I said, yeah, so it's
person woman, man camera TV. Okay, that's very good. If
you get it in order, you get extra points.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He said he had taken that test recently at Walter
Reed recently in twenty twenty. Sometime after that, his own
White House physician said that Trump had taken the Montreal
Cognitive Assessment in twenty eighteen. Why the hell do they
keep giving him cognitive tests? A cognitive test and he
(04:54):
has used the word this time A dementia or other
brain impairment screening test simple triage on October tenth. That's one.
Then there's the one in April. That's two. He was
boasting in January of last year about having passed one,
kept boasting about it through the spring. Only the animals
(05:16):
they asked him about in that one were different than
the ones he just mentioned in the one he just took.
Was that a third test? Last year? Throughout Biden's presidency,
Trump talked about these tests. In twenty twenty, he repeatedly
challenged Biden to take one. He said in twenty twenty
he had recently taken one. That's three or four. We
(05:36):
know for sure. He took the Montreal Cognitive in twenty eighteen.
That was definitely at least the fourth, probably the fifth.
Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
That's two in the last six months, seemingly time to
be six months apart. That is certainly four in the
(05:57):
last six years. He has previously said he's taken four
of these tests, maybe five, he can't remember. It could
easily be five. In fact, it could easily be six.
Anybody remember when he disappeared way back when, around oh
decades a labor day after that three and a half
(06:18):
hour farewell roast of a cabinet meeting, where was he?
Did they test him then? Then he disappeared for another
five days at the end of September. Did they test
him then? Well, we are deep in the woods again.
Let us return to the simplicity of the Mary Trump question.
It is absolutely certain that they keep giving the President
(06:40):
of the United States tests to see if he can
pass the minimum standard for cognitive capacity, to pass the
minimum simplest threshold for not having some form of impairment,
maybe dementia. It certainly is a reasonable inference to suggest
that giving them on April eleventh and October tenth suggests
(07:03):
they are now scheduling for regular tests, and although he
slipped in his rush to try to explain how much
smarter he is than Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria or Casio
Cortes or whichever elected Democratic woman of color is next
on his shit list, it is clear that at some
point somebody convinced him, or he convinced himself, that this
(07:26):
was an IQ test and that he's, to quote his
own words again, a very stable genius. It says so
on the test with the picture of the giraffe on it.
Even though the only word in that description of very
stable genius that appears to apply is very. We can
all agree Donald Trump is very There are two little
(07:52):
side points I'd like to make before we drop this
for now. I often wonder where he conflated the concept
of political asylum and mental asylums. He can't shake it.
He says it every two weeks. He will never be
convinced that people were here because they were granted asylum
(08:12):
are therefore from asylums. This can be simple, good old
fashioned American stupidity. He deduced this when he was a kid,
the way a kid I knew at age thirteen insisted
the phrase was for all intensive purposes, and for whatever reason,
Trump would not and could not shake his mistake about
(08:34):
the word asylum or this asylum stuff is somehow wedged
into his mind because it's connected to his own experience
with psychological exams, which he must have taken as a kid, since,
as his own father euphemistically put it decades ago, Trump
was a rough kid who had to be taken out
of the public schools and sent to the New York
(08:55):
Military Academy NIMA because well, in my prep school days,
when our football and hockey and basketball and baseball teams
used to play against NIMA, all the kids at NeiMa
were supposedly there because some authority had given Dad a choice.
It's there or it's the reformatory. I just keep wondering
if the word asylum is stuck inside Trump because he
(09:19):
had to face that as a kid. Did the folks
threaten him with it? The second point is less speculative.
I hadn't heard this before that clip I played from April.
The last time he was boasting about the last cognitive
test he passed. He said that at Walter Reed they
gave him a thorough physical exam as well, and it
(09:41):
showed he had a good heart and a very good soul.
You heard me a good song. Your physical showed that
your soul is just fine. It's not an irregular soul,
(10:03):
and your soul is not hyper extended, and you don't
have Pyrone's soul disease. Why the hell do they keep
giving him cognitive tests? I think contained in that last
clip that might be our answer right there. Meanwhile, in
(10:47):
another endless topic, Trump has said something that sounds like
he's not going to try to stay in office past
January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and since it was preceded
by only one full minute of lies about how great
the economy is and how he got peace in the
Middle East, and how nobody's ever been as popular as
he is, Why the hell do they keep giving him
(11:08):
cognitive tests? The nation's most gullible people, the Washington Press Corps,
seems to have concluded that he's not trying to mislead, dissemble,
or you know, just lie to them again. The British kid,
it's always a goddamn British kid, who they supposedly had
fired as the editor of the playbook newsletter for Politico
(11:29):
months ago, but he's still there. Yesterday, wrote, So even
Trump says the Constitution is clear on this point. Can
we all now put this to bed? No, Sonny, we
can't because you didn't ask Trump what the word clear means,
did you? Huh?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Huh huh.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Persuading for Johnson says that he told you that there's
no time to amend the constitution to allow.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You to serve a third term.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Is that an accurate representation.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Of I don't want to even talk about that, because
you know, the sad thing is I have my highest
numbers I've ever had, and I would say that if
you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.
Stumid I missed him.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Dear listener, if you would please get out your meme
of the guy tapping his head to indicate how smart
he is. Can't be accused of trying to run for
a third term if you cancel the twenty twenty nine
election or make some other extra constitutional violence based attempt
to not leave the White House. Huh? There is still
(12:33):
something rattling around in that damaged brain of Trump's. Hi
the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests that
assumes there will be some sort of mass uprising by
others to keep him in power forever, one that he
may or may need to himself stoke or can happen organically.
(12:57):
And if you don't believe that, let me ask you
what was January sixth. Trump has specifically said he didn't
think he would want to run as vice president and
let somebody else occupy the presidency ceremonially while he runs
the country. But again, what part of that is a no?
I don't think I'd like to do it. Oh I
(13:17):
did it anyway. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,
taking time off from and acting the passive aggressive dissolving
of Congress and taking even more time off from his
busy schedule of not knowing anything about the latest news
or controversy or the rules of the House, he said
he didn't see a path for Trump to serve a
third term, quoting, Hey, and I have talked about the
(13:38):
constrictions of the Constitution. Again, where's the no. On the
other hand, the only escaped circus elephant in the Senate,
Tommy Tubberville, said, if Trump wanted to quote, go round
the constitution quote, don't ever close a book on him.
(13:59):
And of course, Steve Bannon told the economists that you
shouldn't listen to Trump that there is a plan in
place to keep Trump in place in office, and quote
at the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is.
It's easy to dismiss morons like Tubberville and mentally damaged
fascists like Bannon and presume this is all bluster. It
is not all bluster if it is not obvious that
(14:22):
while you and I and a vast majority of Americans
have been raised to believe the Constitution and the laws are,
if perhaps not, the sacred documents the Republicans like to
pretend they believe they are. We believe they are there
to keep chaos and evil in relative check. But Trump
and the snakes he has enabled and supported see them
(14:44):
merely as inconvenient impediments. For at least four years, they
have been building up the phony resume for the revisionists
drawn out of thin air. View of the twenty second
Amendment term limits, it's two terms. That's it. Plus you
can serve out up to two years of somebody else's
(15:06):
unexpired term and then get elected twice. That's it. Two elections.
An absolute hard time limit of nine years and one
hundred and eighty three days, not one hundred and eighty
two days, because there'd have to be a leap year
if you took the end of somebody else's unserved term.
The revisionist version of this, of course, is that this
(15:27):
only applies to someone being elected to two concective terms.
This useful bullshit rationalizes that from the twenty second Amendment
point of view, Trump is right now only in his
first term. As I've pointed out countless times, this bullshit
also has the invaluable benefit of keeping Obama or Bill
(15:51):
Clinton or George Bush, for whatever that's worth, from ever
running again. Only Trump. It's nonsense, of course. Presidential immunity
is nonsense. Of course, masked anonymous thug probably recruited from
right wing militia shooting ministers in the face with tear
gas while calling themselves ice is also nonsense. Actually, thanks
(16:14):
to Trump, and thanks to this corrupt decrepit soul is
Supreme Court, what sixty percent, seventy percent, one hundred percent
of American public life is now nonsense. Go to the
Supreme Court with the non consecutive terms fantasy and see
how quickly sam Alito can turn that into law. Still,
(16:36):
my gut has always told me that the extra constitutional
theft that Trump favors and really dreams about the most
is not some loophole shot into the twenty second Amendment
by Missus Alito and her flags, nor even a military takeover.
What he wants is for everybody to just agree with
him that a he deserves another term because those evil
(16:58):
Democrats wasted so much of his first term with the
investigation of the Russia Russia Russia truth about his conspiracies
with Putin, and that b he deserves another term, maybe
a fourth one, because the twenty twenty election was quote
stolen from him, even though he was president at the
time and all the institutions that supervised the elections and
(17:22):
investigated his nonsensical charges for the last five years were
under his control. Either way, Trump does not want to
have to be elected again in twenty twenty nine because
another election means another chance to lose an election. He
wants to remain president because everybody says he's so wonderful
that there's no need to even have a vote. He
(17:45):
could lose an election. He could lose a coup attempt.
Hell son of a bitch, did lose a coup attempt?
Didn't he a simple acclamation though, in which everybody names
him homecoming King and scored a perfect score on his
acuity IQ test and President again, simple acclamation. That's what
(18:12):
he wants. And if you have to do something with
that annoying constitution to make that happen, what you do
is simply find a way to say, of course he
only gets two terms, and of course he knows he
can't run for a third one. It says so in
the Constitution. He just said it on tape. But where
does it say we can't change how long his second
term is. Why don't we just amend that other part
(18:35):
of the Constitution that nobody looks at, Article two, Section one,
clause one, so that it says a president shall hold
his office during the term of four years, but this
president shall hold his office during the term of eight
years or twelve or eleveny billion. Also of interest here, Oh,
(19:00):
it's more Brits running American news operations into the ground,
the one they found to finally complete the destruction of CNN.
Went to the White House to kiss Trump's ass and
the ass of every Trump staffer, and before he got
to his home, there was a tweet from a Trump
spokesman mocking him for trying to appease Trump. Congratulations Neville Chamberlain.
(19:27):
But don't worry. CNN is going to be merged into MSNBC,
and the right wing has its candidate to run MSNBCNN.
It's a former Miss Arizona now studying for a doctorate
in Bible studies at Liberty University. Who reads the most
(19:48):
Bazooka Joe comic strips shall get the doctorate in Bible
Studies at Liberty. You know who this is. They want
to run a combined MSNBC CNN Charlie Kirk's widow. Because
this is hell, isn't it? That's next? This is Countdown.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, who can predict almost anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Still ahead on this all new episode of Countdown. All
this La Dodgers World Series stuff reminds me to remind
you that not only did I correctly predict the Kirk
Gibson home run that won Game one of the nineteen
eighty eight World Series and then sent them on their
way to their upset of the Oakland A's to win
(20:59):
that World series, but I did it as the innings
started in which he hit it, and I predicted it
as part of an answer to a question that my
friend Alexis Denny, who you just heard, asked me, and
she was a witness to this impossible prediction that was
not at all serious, the Kirk Gibson home run, and
(21:21):
I told you so. Next in things I promise not
to tell first believe it or not, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
worst persons in the world at the Bonds worse Steve Bannon.
(21:45):
Steve Bannon says Zoran Mom, Danny has quote got to
be sent out of the country, that they have to
denaturalize him. But think about what would happen if we
did this instead, to Steve Bannon, think of how much
affordable housing we could be filled in the space that
(22:06):
this fat, ugly slob now wastes and occupies. Runner up
Rich Greenfield, who is a conservative media pest, identifies as
a critic, as quoted by Max Tenney of Semaphore, this
is his genius idea. Let's take this a step further.
(22:31):
Merging NBC Universal with Warner Bros. Discovery would combine NBC, MSNBC,
and CNN. Under one roof, he writes, We've been thinking
about how NBC Universal could completely shift the perceived biased
narrative at NBC, MSN NOW and CNN, similar to what
(22:51):
Paramount is attempting with its acquisition of the Free Press
and appointing Barry Weiss as editor in chief of CBS
News enter Erica Kirk, who leads the nonprofit Turning Point
USA and is the widow of Charlie Kirk. What if
Comcast agreed to bring Kirk in as editor in chief
of the combined news unit upon closing Sure, at first,
(23:12):
blush it sounds crazy, by the way, sir, at four
three hundred and twenty second, blush, it sounds crazy. Err
But Trump loves a deal. F Trump f his deals,
and Brian Roberts needs to think big and differently. Yes,
kick Trump in the metaphorical nuts. That would be a
(23:33):
different thought. The combined NBC, MSNBCCNN could also add a
conservative ombudsman, as CBS News did with Kenneth R. Weinstein.
Ombudsman here is used metaphorically. What they have as a snitch,
what they have as a a collaborator, what they have
as a political officer inside CBS News, who is there
(23:55):
to turn in the liberals? Worth noting Comcast made a
sizable donation to Trump's White House ballroom renovation, which is
unsurprisingly harfy. NBC and MSNBC staff, Well that's because, mister
rich Greenfield, it's a bribe. News organization should not be
anywhere near something like this, especially if it's a bribe
(24:15):
of a corrupt president leading a corrupt movement full of
corrupt people who have no soul and are all going
to hell. Have a nice day, maggot, What a great idea.
Scowling angry, justifiably angry, mind you widow of an assassinated
right wing nutjob who all the members of the right
(24:36):
wing think was Jesus or Trump or Jesus Trump or something.
Put her in charge of NBC News slash MS now
slash CNN when she has no news experience and all
of their combined news organizations are bailing water as it is,
and incidentally, they're populated by people connected to me. The
anchor of the NBC Nightly News used to be my
(24:58):
production assistant. What could go wrong if you are hankering
for the day is when there were only three TV
networks doing only half an hour of news a night. Hey,
we may get back there and damned fast. But this
is the way they think. The presumption on the right
is that the left has been making up the news
(25:19):
because it contains things the right doesn't like. Therefore it
can't be real. It must be some sort of propaganda.
They really think this. If they wanted it to be
sunny and it turns out to be rain, they will
blame the liberal weather man rather than say, oh it's raining.
So necessarily, the solution to a combined NBC, MSNBC and
(25:43):
CNN under one roof would be to put a woman
with absolutely no experience and nothing but vendettas in charge
of the operation, because the Barry Weiss thing at CBS
is already going so well. The point is, as has
been pointed out here. I read the piece from what
was her name, Emily le Pato. I may be getting
(26:04):
that wrong, that all Barry Weiss is going to get
to do is preside over the end of CBS News
and the firing of everybody there. And if she has
a reputation, it will be destroyed. So if you want
to ruin Erica Kirk's life again, put her in charge
of NBC, CNN, MSNBC people are too stupid, but our winner,
(26:29):
speaking of ruining television news, Mark Thompson of CNN once again,
it's funny that the fascists are on this anti immigrant
kick when it's clear the most dangerous immigrants to this
country are pasty white guys from England or countries that
were English colonies, Australia and the Murdochs South Africa and
(26:53):
musk and the other guys the UK and people like
Mark Thompson. More impressively, why do so many submissive, loser
Trump appeasers from England get put in charge of America
news organizations and then promptly give in to Trump and
then immediately get humiliated by Trump. A story from our
(27:18):
friends at Oliver Darcy's newsletter status. During a trip to
DC last week, CNN CEO Mark Thompson made a visit
to the White House, where he promoted the network's new
streaming service. He wanted to get members of the Trump
administration up to speed on what the new CNN streaming operation.
(27:38):
I remember the last guy they put in charge of CNN.
His big deal was getting rid of the new CNN
streaming operation. Now we have a whole new approach, which
is another new CNN streaming operation, which the guy who
succeeds Mark Thompson can then turn down because that's what
works in management. What did the last guy do? He
invented an elixir that gives everyone eternal life, Let's burn
(28:02):
all of it. What don't we want? Who wants eternal life?
My policy is what shortened lives? Anyway, Mark Thompson went
into the White House and tried to sell the Trump
people on being nicer to CNN, on appearing on CNN more,
on promising that CNN would be nicer to Trump. After
(28:22):
every move they've made towards Trump since twenty twenty two,
when Chris licked my whatever began this process, every move
CNN has made has destroyed what was left of CNN.
Let's do more of that. Not only that. I will
buy CNN eternal life under the Trump administration, and all
(28:44):
of the MAGA will watch CNN and it's not a trap,
and it's not stupid, and you're not appeasing the Hitler
of America. No, you're not doing any of those things,
Mark Thompson. The tweet from Oliver Darcy's status with This
scoop about Mark Thompson's visit to the White House was
(29:07):
retweeted by Stephen Chung, the mincing Trump spokesman, who simply
retweeted it with the purple devil smile. In other words,
even Stephen Chung knows that Mark Thompson was brought in
so that he could obey in advance to Donald Trump,
(29:30):
and they immediately rewarded him by humiliating Mark Thompson online.
As George Conway put it, they're laughing at you, and
they are because Mark Thompson, pasty white guy thrown out
of England, now the head of CNN promoting the streaming service.
(29:51):
The last guy killed off is today's worst person. And
(30:14):
the exact anniversary anniversary number thirty seven of Kirk Gibson's
famous home run to win Game one of the nineteen
eighty eight World Series has long since passed. But before
we get too far away from the idea of Kirk
Gibson's La Dodgers in the World Series, I wanted to
tell this story once again. Only a couple of times
(30:35):
in my life have I been visited by the muse
of prediction. I once correctly predicted that Bucky Dent of
the New York Yankees would hit a home run to
win an American League playoff game between the Yankees and
the Red Sox in Fenway Park when my friends sitting
next to me, the Red Sox fan was expressing premature
(30:55):
jocularity that a Yankee had flied out to center field
with the tying runs on base and said, oh, thank
goodness that it's no home run threat. I then spent
five minutes explaining to him why Dent would necessarily now
hit a home run to win the game and the pennant,
which he then did. The other time was the Kirk
Gibson story in nineteen eighty eight, and this was in
(31:16):
direct response to a question asked to me by a
friend of mine then and now named Alexis Denny. So
just sit back and I say this and tell you
this story with the full awareness that these two predictions
of titanically important baseball events must be taken in the
context of the probability that the number of times I
(31:39):
had similar ecstatic visions of things that were about to
happen that did not happen, including say, the New York
Yankees winning the nineteen sixty eight World Series, when they
finished I think sixth. The number that did not happen
is one thousand or more. The number that did happen
(32:01):
is two. But Kirk Gibson was among them. Half of
the Dodgers starting lineup that had won the National League
Pennant was hurt and the other half was not that
impressive to begin with. National League Most Valuable Player Kirk
Gibson had nearly destroyed his left hamstring in Game two
of that playoff series that David Cohne had written about,
(32:24):
and Gibson had ripped up his right knee in Game seven.
He was assumed to be out of the World Series,
but he was still on the Dodger roster, and the
joke was that was only because the Dodgers literally did
not have any other healthy players under contract, and their
only other option was to activate sixty one year old
manager Tom Lesarda. Anyway, the Dodgers had actually led Game
(32:46):
one against the powerful Oakland A's to nothing after the
first inning, but by the ninth they were trailing four
to three, with literally three of the worst hitters in
the National League due up, and then the pitcher. I
was there covering the game for KCBS Channel two in
LA and my pal Alexis Denny, news and sports producer
for CBS Network News in Los Angeles, made our way
(33:09):
together down to the tiny alcove from the press box,
the alcove between the clubhouses, from which we could see
just a sliver of the field, pretty much just the
pitcher and the batter, framed by a hot dog stand
as the Oakland relief ace. Dennis Eckersley warmed up to
pitch the bottom of the ninth, and he had given
up exactly nine hits in his previous eighteen games, in
(33:33):
fourteen of which he had recorded saves. Alexis asked me,
simply and appropriately, so what are we going to ask
Eck after this game is over? And, matter of factly,
without any emotion, certainly without any sense of predicting anything,
I said, We're going to ask Eck about this game
(33:54):
losing home run he's about to give up to Kirk Gibson.
Alexis looked at me. Funny, I mean, funnier than usual.
What Gibson's not playing? He's hurt. I looked at her
with mild annoyance. Oh, come on, you know it has
to happen. I can only describe my feeling at that
(34:15):
time as being exactly what had been a decade before,
at another playoff game in Boston, with the Red Sox
leading the Yankees to nothing in the top of the seventh,
with two Yankees on and New York shortstop Bucky Dent
coming up, and my best friend, the Red Sox fan,
exhaling when the last batter had popped out and saying,
thank goodness, Dent is no home run threat. And I
(34:36):
began to speak in tongues, and what I was saying
was about how his hubristic remark about Dent would now
necessarily cause to happen next. What would happen next? A
three run home run by Bucky Dent, and it would
be all his fault, and then Dent hit the homer.
(34:59):
Neither the Dent nor the Gibson home run predictions were
really predictions. I felt no sense of investment in it.
I didn't race to put down a bet. I suppose
that at some other games I had made equally impossible
announcements of events that did not happen, but I have
never been given to that, so if I did do it,
(35:22):
it was only a couple of times. My batting average
is like four or five hundred on these and anyway,
these weren't calculations or analyzes on my part. I just
felt like I was running about five minutes ahead of
the rest of the world. And these things. Danse home
run in nineteen seventy eight, Gibson's home run in nineteen
eighty eight, these things had already happened. AnyWho, Mike Davis
(35:47):
of the Dodgers walked stole second base with two outs. Gibson,
to the shock of everybody except me, managed somehow to
climb up the three steps of the Dodger dugout and
waddle out to home plate, and then, on a three
to two pitch, hit the game winning home run. Like
(36:08):
I said, as Dodger Stadium shook and we prepared to
go into the clubhouses, Alexis Denny gave me a look
that I still can't really describe. But thirty five years later,
I know that since that night she has not been
fully convinced that I am of this earth. I got
(36:42):
it right. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips. Schanel
our musical directors of Countdown, and it was produced by
Tko Brothers, mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, mister
Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
(37:02):
comments are by the best baseball stadium Gonnest ever in
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN Inc. Some other music was arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
my friend Alexis Denny Witness. Everything else was, as always
(37:25):
my fault. That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and
eighty four of America held hostage again, just seventy nine
days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and
lame brained term unless he's removed sooner by Maga and Epstein,
or that pavement patch on his hand, or the tail
and hall or his jet made out of poop, or
(37:48):
the r K he's building, or the next cognitive test.
The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck Hit,
the post, hit, the post, oh Hit, the Post. Countdown
(38:26):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.