Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Cancel
Speaker 1: the Vice presidential debate tonight. CBS News should cancel it,
Speaker 1: or Tim Walls should cancel it, or the Harris campaign
Speaker 1: should cancel it because journalistic principles have been so thoroughly
Speaker 1: removed from it that it is going to amount to
Speaker 1: nothing more than an ad for Trump and Vance and
Speaker 1: fascism and lying. To Wendy McMahon, the new president of
Speaker 1: CBS News, I urge you, before it is too late,
Speaker 1: fact check jd Vance or get your company out of
Speaker 1: the news business, because if you let this proceed as planned,
Speaker 1: you will burn the reputation of CBS News to the ground.
Speaker 1: Murrow gone, Cronkite gone see it now devotes its entire
Speaker 1: half hour to a report on Senator McCarthy gone the
Speaker 1: news apparently official gone Nixon to rather, are you running
Speaker 1: for something, no, sir, mister President, or you gone? Don Hollenbeck,
Speaker 1: gone Heywood fing hail brun gone ashes. You are putting
Speaker 1: on a professional liar in order to let him lie
Speaker 1: to America for ninety minutes in primetime. This is the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of news. You are now actively contributing to
Speaker 1: the gaslighting of this country and its potential destruction. This time,
Speaker 1: CBS News is siding with the McCarthy in the equation.
Speaker 1: This time you are lying alongside Nixon. This time you
Speaker 1: are selling out the truth for the sake of the
Speaker 1: revenue from two four minute commercial breaks. And if in
Speaker 1: your negotiations with the Trump campaign to get Advance to attend,
Speaker 1: if they included either an offer from you to exclude
Speaker 1: fact checking or the acceptance of their demand to exclude
Speaker 1: fact checking, you have gone further into the morass. Still.
Speaker 1: You have deliberately frauded the American public for ratings, and
Speaker 1: you have prostituted yourselves. Find somebody in the building with
Speaker 1: a moral or journalistic compass and put them in charge
Speaker 1: of CBS News. Right now, because guess who is going
Speaker 1: to quote fact check unquote your CBS News Vice president
Speaker 1: cidential debate on this the last day of CBS News quote.
Speaker 1: I will be doing the personal play by play of
Speaker 1: the debate between the brilliant jd Vance and the highly
Speaker 1: inarticulate tampon Tim Walls. I hope that cognitively challenged lion
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris will be listening so that she can again
Speaker 1: show the world how she will make up false facts
Speaker 1: and stories in order to change around an administrative failure. Unquote,
Speaker 1: that is the side you are on, CBS. That is
Speaker 1: the side Desmond Tutuo ment when he wrote, if you
Speaker 1: are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the
Speaker 1: side of the oppressor. CBS News will, of course, not
Speaker 1: cancel the debate. Its masters, President McMahon included, will not
Speaker 1: tell Vance that the rules have changed. He can accept
Speaker 1: live fact checking or it's off. I've worked for CBS News.
Speaker 1: The retrenchment in news spending in television began with them
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six. Now, if they have already spent
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars, they're not writing that off. That's serious money.
Speaker 1: They're not canceling nothing. Besides, they have doubled down on
Speaker 1: their secret weapon of truth here and in so doing,
Speaker 1: hung this poor chief of the CBS News confirmed unit
Speaker 1: Claudia Milne out to dry. We quote will provide fact
Speaker 1: checking and analysis on our live blog during the debate.
Speaker 1: As pathetic as that sounds, honest to god, I'm surprised
Speaker 1: Trump and Vance are still letting them do that. No,
Speaker 1: CBS is not going to cancel the debate. It will
Speaker 1: be neutral in this situation of injustice, and it has
Speaker 1: chosen the oppressor. So plan b Tim Walls. Tim Walls,
Speaker 1: I need you to take the debate over. Forgive me Nora.
Speaker 1: I'll always love you, politely and metaphorically. Governor you have
Speaker 1: to push Nora and Margaret Brennan out of the way
Speaker 1: and take the debate over. Acknowledge Norah's first question, and
Speaker 1: then let it rip. Tell the television audience that JD.
Speaker 1: Vance is a compulsive and pathological liar. Tell them that
Speaker 1: there is no side of any debate or issue that
Speaker 1: he has not already taken, then rejected, then taken again.
Speaker 1: Tell them that he is Trump's deputy liar. Tell them,
Speaker 1: and tell them as forcefully and as non midwesternly as possible,
Speaker 1: that this man, this individual over here, is personally and
Speaker 1: indelibly responsible for death threats against white Republican small businessmen
Speaker 1: in Springfield, Ohio, because it is he JD Vance who
Speaker 1: personally and completely fabricated the Haitian immigrant story. And then
Speaker 1: Governor Walls tell that audience about Jamie McGregor of McGregor Metal.
Speaker 1: Tell them about this Trump supporter, this man who voted
Speaker 1: for Trump in twenty sixteen, this man who again voted
Speaker 1: for Trump in twenty twenty. Tell them about the tractor
Speaker 1: parts that Jamie McGregor makes in Springfield, Ohio. Tell them
Speaker 1: that all Jamie McGregor did was say that his thirty
Speaker 1: odd Haitian born employees come to work every day, they
Speaker 1: don't cause drama, they're on time, and within hours the
Speaker 1: death threats against Jamie McGregor began. Tell them that Jamie
Speaker 1: McGregor got so many death threats that they had to
Speaker 1: have a lockdown a factory. Tell them that there are
Speaker 1: Maga posters around town calling him a Maga guy, a traitor.
Speaker 1: Tell them that Jamie McGregor had vowed to never have
Speaker 1: guns in his own home, and now his family is
Speaker 1: taking firearms training and he just bought a glock and
Speaker 1: it's for his daughter. Tell them Governor that Jamie McGregor's
Speaker 1: daughter is fourteen fing years old. Tell them tim Tell
Speaker 1: them that Maga isn't just a threat to immigrants or
Speaker 1: a threat to people of color, or a threat to Democrats.
Speaker 1: Tell them that Maga is a threat to the people
Speaker 1: in Maga because Trump and Maga. It's not about making
Speaker 1: anything great, it's about hatred and violence and cruelty. Tell
Speaker 1: them that Jamie McGregor's wife said, we are being hunted
Speaker 1: like animals. Tell them that the latest person to be
Speaker 1: threatened in Springfield, Ohio with death is Jamie McGregor's eighty
Speaker 1: year old mother. And tell them that this is all,
Speaker 1: all of it, the fault of the personal responsibility, of
Speaker 1: the creation, of the goal of the point of this
Speaker 1: scum bag j. D. Vance. Point at him and tell
Speaker 1: him to get down on his goddamn knees and to
Speaker 1: start praying to his creator for forgiveness because he's not
Speaker 1: going to get any from Jamie McGregor or from America Governor.
Speaker 1: CBS News said, it is your job to fact check
Speaker 1: this lying son of a bitch. They just provide the
Speaker 1: Mike's and the coffee. Do it. Start the debate by
Speaker 1: doing it. Put Vance on the floor in a pool
Speaker 1: of his own urine, and then then you can do
Speaker 1: a little Midwestern not him. Then you can metaphorically gut
Speaker 1: him like.
Speaker 2: A fish like a fish, or we could do the
Speaker 2: fact checking thing, but no, CBS, you know what you're
Speaker 2: doing because when you don't fact check Vance's lies and
Speaker 2: for that matter.
Speaker 1: When you don't fact check anything Governor Walls gets wrong,
Speaker 1: what you'll get from Trump will be silence, blessed silence,
Speaker 1: no complaints for a day, or a week, or a month,
Speaker 1: there may be a year, and then someday, sooner or late,
Speaker 1: he will forget about that, and he will circle back
Speaker 1: to you at CBS and you will get the Google
Speaker 1: treatment from last week. Well, instead of where it said Google,
Speaker 1: it'll say CBS News, where he announces. It has been
Speaker 1: determined that CBS News has illegally used a system of
Speaker 1: only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 1: some made up for this purpose, while at the same
Speaker 1: time only revealing good stories about whoever he doesn't like
Speaker 1: that day. This is an illegal activity and the Justice
Speaker 1: Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant interference of elections.
Speaker 1: If not, and subject to the laws of our country,
Speaker 1: I will request their prosecution. But don't worry about it, CBS.
Speaker 1: There's always the chance that despite the fact that you
Speaker 1: are on the wrong side of the famous quote that
Speaker 1: the famous eighteenth entry British politician Edmund Burke famously did
Speaker 1: not say that the only thing necessary for the triumph
Speaker 1: of evil is for good men to do nothing. Maybe
Speaker 1: what you are not doing, the nothing you are doing,
Speaker 1: maybe it won't help Trump regain power and put all
Speaker 1: of you in prison. Anyway, were there any doubt, it
Speaker 1: is now official. Trump's campaign is about lying. That it
Speaker 1: is only about lying. In the wake of Hurricane Helene,
Speaker 1: Trump goes to Valdosta, Georgia. They built him a little
Speaker 1: stage out of bricks that fell off a building there.
Speaker 1: Franklin Graham, an asshole, dragged some of his cultists out
Speaker 1: to stand there and bark like seals. There were as
Speaker 1: many of them, and as many of the first responders
Speaker 1: present diverted to protect him as there were residents, a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen of each. Maybe Trump then existed. Nobody
Speaker 1: saw this coming because it's past hurricane season, which actually
Speaker 1: goes to November, same as every year. And this all
Speaker 1: took some of us back to twenty nineteen and the
Speaker 1: Hurricane Dorian map, and the madness inside his brain so
Speaker 1: complete and insanity so untreatable that when he lied and
Speaker 1: said that the hurricane had been projected to hit Alabama,
Speaker 1: instead of just replacing that lie with a milder lie
Speaker 1: like I was given bad info, he actually drew on
Speaker 1: the map with a sharpie to extend the path of
Speaker 1: the hurricane, to make it look like he was right
Speaker 1: and everybody else in the world was wrong. And he
Speaker 1: got to Georgia and he lied. But it was a
Speaker 1: triple saturation lie. He began by posting lies online about
Speaker 1: supposed non response from the Biden administration and a Katrina
Speaker 1: like situation in the wake of the storm, and then
Speaker 1: he added to the lie a second dimension by telling
Speaker 1: that news conference quote, as you know, our country is
Speaker 1: in the final weeks of a hard fought national election.
Speaker 1: At a time like this, when a crisis hits, when
Speaker 1: our fellow citizens cry out and need, none of that matters.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about politics now. We have to all
Speaker 1: get together and get this solved. And then he proceeded
Speaker 1: to lie about the response, lie about the president, lie
Speaker 1: about the governor of Georgia, and reduce this tragedy to
Speaker 1: yet another Trump lies like other people's sweat moment, and
Speaker 1: a Trump will turn anything into a photo op moment,
Speaker 1: And having just said he's not talking about politics now,
Speaker 1: he will turn any photo op into an opportunity to
Speaker 1: lie about politics.
Speaker 3: Now moment, the governor needs to he's been trying to
Speaker 3: get them, and I'm sure they're going to come through.
Speaker 3: But he's been calling the President, hasn't been able to
Speaker 3: get him, hasn't this called.
Speaker 4: Me yesterday afternoon. I missed him and I called him
Speaker 4: right back and he just said, hey, what do you need?
Speaker 4: And I told him, you know, we got what we need.
Speaker 4: We'll work through the federal process. He offered that if
Speaker 4: there's other things we need, just to call him directly.
Speaker 1: That second voice you heard was Governor Kemp saying, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't call President Biden for help because
Speaker 1: Biden had called him first. And how did this most
Speaker 1: obvious and appalling of Trump's exploitations of American suffering in
Speaker 1: the last few weeks at least go over exactly as
Speaker 1: it always does. Some idiot on television news bought it completely.
Speaker 1: Yesterday's idiot turned out to be Kristin Holmes, National correspondent
Speaker 1: of CNN, and to the Trump lie about oh, I'm
Speaker 1: not here to talk politics, she actually said Trump was
Speaker 1: quote on the ground, tried to show he is there
Speaker 1: in support of the people on the ground in Georgia.
Speaker 1: And of course this comes as he is again offering
Speaker 1: a message of unity. He has spent the last several
Speaker 1: days slamming Kamala Harris's rival for not being on the ground,
Speaker 1: for not helping with this storm. Surprisingly enough, despite what
Speaker 1: has to be to some degree her shame, Kristin Holmes
Speaker 1: is expected to show up for work today at CNN
Speaker 1: rather than retire to the Andes on a religious retreat.
Speaker 1: The good news is Kristin Holmes was one of CNN's
Speaker 1: voter integrity correspondents during the twenty twenty election. Not reporter integrity.
Speaker 1: Voter integrity again. From the Yale historian Tim Snyder via
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Trump is in the classic dictatorial position.
Speaker 1: He needs to i in bed holding all executive power
Speaker 1: to stay out of prison. This means that he will
Speaker 1: do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power,
Speaker 1: will do all that he can to never let it go.
Speaker 1: This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else.
Speaker 1: It is entirely inconsistent with democracy. Timothy Snyder of Yale
Speaker 1: in that context, cancel the debate or Governor Walls metaphorically
Speaker 1: gut him like a fish. I'll leave you leavened with
Speaker 1: two kickers. Clarity campaign polling, which works for various Democratic
Speaker 1: groups has produced this rather startling national poll result. Ready
Speaker 1: Kala Harris fifty eight percent, JD Vance thirty seven percent.
Speaker 1: Wait what Harris fifty eight Vance thirty seven After hours
Speaker 1: of searching, I cannot find any other explanation for this.
Speaker 1: It's not a personal approval disapproval rating comparison between the
Speaker 1: presidential candidate of one party and the vice presidential candidate
Speaker 1: of the other. It does not seem to be some
Speaker 1: sort of typo. I can only conclude that they took
Speaker 1: a poll actually asking people. It says more than a
Speaker 1: thousand likely voters who they would vote for for president
Speaker 1: Harris or Vance, and then in that matchup, she's ahead
Speaker 1: by twenty one goddamn points, which is nice to know
Speaker 1: in case in the next five weeks Trump really does
Speaker 1: what I've suggested to him constantly since twenty sixteen, Trump
Speaker 1: really does in the next five weeks flee to Moscow
Speaker 1: and to circle back to the vice presidential debate. I'll
Speaker 1: confess I only saw this in a clip online. I
Speaker 1: cannot recall the last time I actually watched the network
Speaker 1: in question. It might have been twenty twenty one, But
Speaker 1: there is a promo box in the corner on MSNBC
Speaker 1: and technical jargon. It's called a bug promoting the network's
Speaker 1: preview show for the debate tonight. And it's got Rachel
Speaker 1: Meadow's face on it and a flag and a big
Speaker 1: MSNBC logo and vance versus Walls and the time and
Speaker 1: then the title of the show she is hosting before
Speaker 1: the debate, and the title of the show is Debate Countdown,
Speaker 1: and under that it says MSNBC. So it says countdown
Speaker 1: on MSNBC. Wait a minute, I've seen this part of
Speaker 1: this movie already. This is where I came in, Meadow
Speaker 1: filling in on Countdown on MSNBC. Yeah, put that on
Speaker 1: the list of deja vus. Also of interest here. I
Speaker 1: will have to wait until tomorrow so I can gather
Speaker 1: my thoughts because they are multilayered on the death of
Speaker 1: baseball's Pete Rose, the only athlete I know of who
Speaker 1: managed to fully embrace the words famous and infamous simultaneously
Speaker 1: for decades. As for today, Hey Republican candidate for the
Speaker 1: House from the Virginia seventh in your campaign photos, that's
Speaker 1: a lovely wife and kids you've got there. Who's are they?
Speaker 1: That's next? This is Countdown. This is Countdown, with Keith
Speaker 1: Olberman still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: The Braves led the Mets three nothing in the top
Speaker 1: of the eighth, then the Mets led the Braves six
Speaker 1: to three in the bottom of the eighth, Then the
Speaker 1: Braves led the Mets seven to six in the top
Speaker 1: of the ninth. Then the Mets led the Braves eight
Speaker 1: to seven in the bottom of the ninth, then won
Speaker 1: the game to reach the playoffs. And it was rightly
Speaker 1: considered one of the all time most exciting baseball games.
Speaker 1: And it still doesn't reflect that games like that just
Speaker 1: thirty years ago meant you were four wins away from
Speaker 1: playing for its championship, playing in the World Series. Now
Speaker 1: it's like a month from now. Is the thrill of
Speaker 1: one game, the sort of artificial environment that creates a
Speaker 1: game like that worth the continuing downsizing of what used
Speaker 1: to be a stretch in which it felt like they
Speaker 1: were playing the Super Bowl every day for ten days.
Speaker 1: A reminiscence about going to see the Mets, the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine Mets in the World Series ahead in things
Speaker 1: I promised not to tell first, there are still more
Speaker 1: new idiots talk about the daily roundup of the Miss
Speaker 1: Grant's morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens, who constitute today's
Speaker 1: worse persons in the world. Worse Derek Anderson, former Green Beret,
Speaker 1: now running for the House from the Virginia seventh. How
Speaker 1: Annie Carney and Katie Edmondson the reporters got this through
Speaker 1: The New York Times, deflavorizing and both sizzing machines. I
Speaker 1: will never know. Maybe they deliberately wrote this boring opening line.
Speaker 1: Wives are hitting the airwaves across the country. Three quarters
Speaker 1: of readers were asleep before the second the in that sentence,
Speaker 1: lives are hitting the airwaves across the But what the
Speaker 1: Times reporters revealed in the story is that Republican candidate
Speaker 1: Anderson in the Virginia seventh well quote, has posted footage
Speaker 1: of him posing with a woman and her three daughters
Speaker 1: in what looks like a photo that might be used
Speaker 1: for an annual holiday card. In another scene filmed for
Speaker 1: potential use in a campaign ad, mister Anderson is seated
Speaker 1: around the dining room table with the same woman and
Speaker 1: three girls, chatting and smiling. But the people are not relatives.
Speaker 1: They are the wife and children of a longtime friend.
Speaker 1: Mister Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged,
Speaker 1: does not have any children of his own. His campaign
Speaker 1: website says he lives with his dog and does not
Speaker 1: display any of the photos. Are you saying there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with displaying photos of a man and his dog.
Speaker 1: A spokesman for mister Anderson criticized the New York Times
Speaker 1: decision to focus on the footage and said that Derek's
Speaker 1: opponent and every other candidate in America are in similar
Speaker 1: pictures and video with supporters of all kinds. The spokesman
Speaker 1: said the video simply showed mister Anderson quote with female
Speaker 1: supporters and their kids rent to kids. The guy got
Speaker 1: rent to kids for a commercial like JV Vance got
Speaker 1: to rent a dog like Trump got to rent a
Speaker 1: third wife. Is there anybody anybody at all in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party who is on the level anybody? Is it
Speaker 1: just hucksters? Now? Is there anybody with any self respect? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll stop. We knew it the day Mitt Romney went
Speaker 1: to dinner to beg Trump for a job. The answers
Speaker 1: to my questions are no, no, no, no, and new
Speaker 1: the runner up worser annie Lynskey. Hey, it's Annie Day.
Speaker 1: Annie Lynskey works for the Wall Street Journal. They call
Speaker 1: her a reporter. I would, but she's not. She's just
Speaker 1: a bitter employee. Her job there is to take shots
Speaker 1: at Joe Biden whenever she can, gratuitous, irrelevant, invariably quickly
Speaker 1: disproven shots at Joe Biden. She was one of the
Speaker 1: authors of the hit piece last spring about his health,
Speaker 1: the one that only quoted Republicans and even then didn't
Speaker 1: quote Kevin McCarthy of all people, saying he never saw
Speaker 1: any slowness in the president, the one that the media
Speaker 1: thinks they got right because Yeah, Biden withdrew from the
Speaker 1: race because he was having trouble making public appearances. He
Speaker 1: didn't slow down, hasn't slowed down as president. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with his presidency anyway. This Annie Lynskey is back
Speaker 1: back before the Washington Post report, or the Washington Post
Speaker 1: rather got rid of her. She was the reporter there
Speaker 1: who mocked Biden. Quote walking through a graveyard, That was
Speaker 1: Annie Lynsky quote. Biden goes to a church and walks
Speaker 1: through a graveyard in Wilmington, as his legislative agenda is
Speaker 1: dying in Washington. That was October third, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: That was three years ago. At face value, it was
Speaker 1: tasteless as it was, but annie Lynskey either didn't know
Speaker 1: enough about her own job, or didn't care enough, or
Speaker 1: did it deliberately one way or the other. She evinced
Speaker 1: no knowledge that the graveyard in Wilmington was the one
Speaker 1: in which the president's late son, and his late daughter
Speaker 1: and his first wife are all buried. Well, yes, annie
Speaker 1: Lynsky's back. Yesterday, Biden, suffering from a cold, became testy
Speaker 1: when asked why he was in Delaware over the weekend
Speaker 1: amid the storm. I understand she now works for a
Speaker 1: fascist Murdock propaganda sheet. But what I will never understand
Speaker 1: is and all the right wingers picked this up too,
Speaker 1: thanks to people like annie Lynsky. How at her age,
Speaker 1: she has not yet figured out that people record audio
Speaker 1: and video of these things. I mean, I know that's new.
Speaker 1: The handheld cassette tape recorder just came onto the market
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, and they didn't have walk bands
Speaker 1: that you could hold in your hand and record anything
Speaker 1: until like nineteen seventy nine, and that iPhone at brand
Speaker 1: you can still have your new iPhone from two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. Here is the President of the United States
Speaker 1: not becoming testy, even though Annie Lynsky lied that he
Speaker 1: became testy.
Speaker 3: Why byn't she and Vice President Harris Sharon Washington commanding
Speaker 3: this just be had I was getting it.
Speaker 4: I was on the phone for at least two hours
Speaker 4: yesterday in the day before as well.
Speaker 1: I commend this all the telephone. It's all my security.
Speaker 2: It's an order for the country to see.
Speaker 1: That's the President of the United States exit stage right,
Speaker 1: closing the door on that idiot reporter. And I tried it.
Speaker 1: I've been unable to reveal who that is. I'll get
Speaker 1: it eventually. That is called Joe Biden calling out a
Speaker 1: lie from a liar posing as a reporter. He didn't swear,
Speaker 1: he didn't mock, he didn't become testy, he didn't shoot
Speaker 1: the guy a dirty look. But what he also didn't
Speaker 1: do was bow and curtsey to the guy or the
Speaker 1: annie Lynskys of this world. And what you saw in
Speaker 1: this story Biden became testy is half of the essence
Speaker 1: of the problem with our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying news media.
Speaker 1: The only things most of them really pay attention to
Speaker 1: are when somebody in power makes them feel good, or
Speaker 1: when they can make somebody in power feel bad. Say
Speaker 1: something snotty and factually erroneous to the President of the
Speaker 1: United States, as the reporter who asked that question did,
Speaker 1: and if he's Biden and he doesn't defer to you,
Speaker 1: and I know him a long time, he doesn't defer
Speaker 1: to you, and so you then after he leaves, you
Speaker 1: go take the opportunity to scurry back into your rat
Speaker 1: hole and you tweet something mean about how testy he is.
Speaker 1: You know who's testy here, Annie Lynsky, you're testy. Now.
Speaker 1: If you say something like that about Trump, you'll get fired,
Speaker 1: or if he's reelected, you'll have your new Trump journalism
Speaker 1: license revoked. Annie, first offense, second offense, you go to
Speaker 1: Trump journalistic re education camp. I hate people like this.
Speaker 1: I hate them all. We could fire all the reporters
Speaker 1: except for like the top three percent in this country
Speaker 1: tomorrow and replace them either with the average sports reporter
Speaker 1: or the average college senior or post grad student in
Speaker 1: journalism in this country, and the quality ofjournalism in this
Speaker 1: nation tomorrow first day would improve by five to ten percent. Immediately,
Speaker 1: but the winner the worst. John Roberts, Chief Justice of
Speaker 1: the United States of America. Oh, you want to tales right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The anniversary is Thursday. It's forty
Speaker 1: one years now. But the leaf Lever News podcast master
Speaker 1: Plan mentioned this the other day. It's a memo to
Speaker 1: Reagan advisor Fred Fielding. We used to work for a
Speaker 1: friend of mine in the Nixon White House, Dean somebody.
Speaker 1: It was from one of the young in this case,
Speaker 1: twenty eight year old lawyers, one of the associates in
Speaker 1: the Office of White House Counsel Under Reagan. There is
Speaker 1: a proposal in the Senate in nineteen eighty three, as
Speaker 1: this is written, a bill that would launch a constitutional
Speaker 1: amendment to end lifetime appointments for federal judges and limit
Speaker 1: them to ten years on the bench. Fielding is asked
Speaker 1: for an analysis and advice because Reagan wants the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice to publicly oppose the proposed amendment, because of
Speaker 1: course he's coming up for election and the idea of
Speaker 1: term limits or age limits was going to be really
Speaker 1: bad for Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty four. Yes, we
Speaker 1: need somebody's less than two hundred and six or unf
Speaker 1: President Reagan, I need to see you. But this kid
Speaker 1: in the Council's office who's writing to Fred Fielding, he's
Speaker 1: not so sure that this is that bad an idea.
Speaker 1: This is what he wrote. The Justice report is similar
Speaker 1: to other reports it has filed in recent years, and
Speaker 1: I do not propose to object to it. I would
Speaker 1: point out, however, that there is much to be said
Speaker 1: for changing life tenure to a term of years without
Speaker 1: possibility of reappointment. The Framers adopted life tenure at a
Speaker 1: time when people simply did not live as long as
Speaker 1: they do now. A judge insulated from the normal currents
Speaker 1: of life for twenty five or thirty years was a
Speaker 1: rarity then, but is becoming commonplace today. Setting a term
Speaker 1: of say, fifteen years, would ensure that federal judges would
Speaker 1: not lose all touch with reality through decades of Ivory
Speaker 1: Tower existence. It would also provide a more regular and
Speaker 1: greater degree of turnover among the judges. Both developments would,
Speaker 1: in my view, be healthy ones. Denying reappointment would eliminate
Speaker 1: any significant threat to judicial independence. The memos suggesting hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, the federal judges and the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justices just aren't dying as fast as they used to.
Speaker 1: Was sent to Reagan advisor Fred Fielding forty one years
Speaker 1: ago Thursday by John Roberts, who, if it had been adopted,
Speaker 1: would have retired this week as Chief Justice this week
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, like Thomas would have retired from the
Speaker 1: bench of the Supreme Court in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: Alito in twenty twenty one. Hell, if this had been
Speaker 1: passed nine years from next week, we'd be having the
Speaker 1: farewell party for Brett f and Kavanaugh. Don't bother to
Speaker 1: b Yob, John, Always go with your first idea, Roberts
Speaker 1: two days worst person. Hello, the number one story on
Speaker 1: the Countdown now and it's my favorite topic. Me and
Speaker 1: things I promised not to tell. I was ten years old,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that this was the last week
Speaker 1: that baseball was more important than nearly everything else in
Speaker 1: this country. But if not, the chronology is pretty close
Speaker 1: by legend in my hometown, Miss Barton had been standing
Speaker 1: on Farragut Parkway when they decided to put the school
Speaker 1: there in nineteen oh five, so they just built it
Speaker 1: around her. In fact, she had only been at the
Speaker 1: head of her homeroom since nineteen forty two, but for
Speaker 1: us seventh graders of the year nineteen sixty nine, the
Speaker 1: year nineteen forty two might as well have been a
Speaker 1: date from the reign of Julius Caesar. Miss Barton was
Speaker 1: friendly but formidable, and what if any connection she had
Speaker 1: to the world outside school eluded us In retrospect, it
Speaker 1: took a good deal of courage for me to have
Speaker 1: handed her the note my mother had scribbled asking her
Speaker 1: permission for me to miss school on October fifteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. She read it, and she looked up at
Speaker 1: me with unalloyed shock, and I knew my plans were doomed.
Speaker 1: And then she smiled broadly and warmly. It was not
Speaker 1: the last time any of us sought, but it probably
Speaker 1: was the first time we had seen her smile. You're
Speaker 1: going to the World Series? Have you got an extra ticket?
Speaker 1: They were all like that. Mister Madolinski, the science teacher,
Speaker 1: who looked like nothing less than a proto Nathan Lane,
Speaker 1: had not only accepted my carrying a transistor, radio and
Speaker 1: an earphone into class, but he had periodically called on
Speaker 1: me during science class for the score. Mister bub the
Speaker 1: hard assed phized teacher who once fended off twenty seven
Speaker 1: kids who tried to force him into the showers on
Speaker 1: the last day of school, suggested that when I went
Speaker 1: to Game four, I should bring a movie camera with
Speaker 1: me and we could watch the highlights instead of Jim
Speaker 1: whenever the film got back from the developers. The social
Speaker 1: studies teacher, my favorite missus Rice, the first love of
Speaker 1: my life, out did them all. She moved my chair
Speaker 1: up next to the blackboard and turned a corner of
Speaker 1: that blackboard into a makeshift scoreboard. Every half inning, and
Speaker 1: in those days you could cram a lot of half
Speaker 1: into your average seventh grade social studies class, not just
Speaker 1: like one or two half innings. I would add a
Speaker 1: digit to the line score Baltimore zero zero three, Mets
Speaker 1: zero zero zero. My dad got somewhere two tickets for
Speaker 1: Game four. It turned out to be the Tom Seaverer game.
Speaker 1: It ended in JC Martin's bunt thrown away down the
Speaker 1: first baseline by relief fitcher Pete Rickord of Baltimore, with
Speaker 1: pinch runner Rod Gasbar of the Mets scoring the winning
Speaker 1: run in the tenth I got to know all those
Speaker 1: guys I sent Rod Gasbar some previously unseen photos of
Speaker 1: him crossing the plate. He sent one back, autographed, inscribed Keith,
Speaker 1: thanks for attending Game four of the nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: World Series, Please drive home safely. My dad and I
Speaker 1: in fact took the train in from Westchester. I think
Speaker 1: we went first, at his insistence, to Barney's, which was
Speaker 1: then exclusively a men's clothing store in Union's Square. That's
Speaker 1: where I got my first adult style suit with a
Speaker 1: tailor and everything. And then up to Times Square to
Speaker 1: change trains, where we were nearly run over by the
Speaker 1: Moratorium Day protesters. That was Moratorium Day, the first big
Speaker 1: nationwide protest against the Vietnam War, October fifteenth, nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: We changed trains and then out to Chase Stadium by
Speaker 1: the number seven. The seats on that perfect crystal day
Speaker 1: were in distant left field, but I had brought my binoculars,
Speaker 1: really my dad's, and they brought me into the game.
Speaker 1: I could see the Commissioner of Baseball clearly, and stand
Speaker 1: Musials sitting next to him, and sitting next to the
Speaker 1: Mets dugout, and I could see the sweat on Tom
Speaker 1: Seever's face as he delivered strike after strike and the
Speaker 1: emotion I had when I got home that night, a
Speaker 1: temporary Mets fan because the Orioles always beat up my Yankees,
Speaker 1: that emotion was simple. Whatever else would happen in my life,
Speaker 1: I had done it. I had been to a World
Speaker 1: Series game. I was the envy of my classmates for months.
Speaker 1: The previous school year, they had herded us all into
Speaker 1: the vast Cobwebby auditorium at the top of the school
Speaker 1: to watch Richard Nixon's first inauguration. Several times. They had
Speaker 1: done the same thing for Gemini and the Pollo space launches,
Speaker 1: but those had tangible, albeit to us vague connections to
Speaker 1: you know, actual school work. The World Series, however, was
Speaker 1: apparently more important than school work. It was more important
Speaker 1: than school. I don't remember anything else that adults would
Speaker 1: admit was more important than school all these years later,
Speaker 1: and hearing those words world and Series still sends a
Speaker 1: chill through me as reflexively as the loudest Pavlovian bell.
Speaker 1: I could not have known then I was part of
Speaker 1: the last generation to be so indoctrinated. I assumed it
Speaker 1: had always been that way, and it always would be,
Speaker 1: and it no longer is the twenty twenty two World
Speaker 1: Series was the third worst rated in television history, not
Speaker 1: quite as bad as twenty twenty one, which itself was
Speaker 1: not quite as bad as twenty twenty. There's a myriad
Speaker 1: of causes. I have about five hundred and seventeen more
Speaker 1: television and streaming channels to choose from than I did
Speaker 1: in October nineteen sixty nine. I mean, we didn't even
Speaker 1: have the color TV yet in October nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: at least not an our house. I have at least
Speaker 1: five times more TV channels than I did in October
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. And similarly, baseball no longer dwarfs
Speaker 1: the sports landscape, even just for the World Series. The
Speaker 1: de nationalizing of baseball was symbolized by the presence of
Speaker 1: two geographically homogeneous teams. Formerly a boon ratings now a curse.
Speaker 1: This was the two thousand World Series, the Mets and
Speaker 1: the Yankees, the dream of every New York sports fan,
Speaker 1: and nobody cared outside of New York the beginning of
Speaker 1: the end. Yet the underlying cost of baseball's malaise is that,
Speaker 1: like me, the owners just assumed it would always be
Speaker 1: the way it was in nineteen sixty nine. I had
Speaker 1: an excuse for believing that I was ten. Their excuse
Speaker 1: that mentally they're all ten is insufficient. All but a
Speaker 1: few of the owners have failed to understand television in
Speaker 1: any way other than as a revenue source. They have
Speaker 1: never recognized its function as merchandising, even as a mechanism
Speaker 1: for proselytizing. They didn't know about miss Barton and mister
Speaker 1: Madolinsky and missus Rice, and they did not care about them.
Speaker 1: They didn't know about the kids with their cheesy white
Speaker 1: plastic earplugs and their scratchy transistor radios. They didn't cultivate
Speaker 1: the tradition they had been given by their forebears in
Speaker 1: the first half of the twentieth century. They let the
Speaker 1: World Series become less important than schools, and less important
Speaker 1: than the NBA, and less important than Taylor Swift. That's
Speaker 1: what they needed. They needed to get Taylor Swift to
Speaker 1: go with Travis Kelcey to that playoff game. It takes
Speaker 1: a certain foresight to say to a television executive, no,
Speaker 1: we can't play the whole World Series at night because
Speaker 1: the kids won't be able to watch. We can't bend
Speaker 1: to society and prime time and the other sports and demographics.
Speaker 1: Because to do that is to lessen the obligation to
Speaker 1: watch the World Series. We have to play some day games.
Speaker 1: Here's some of the money back. It would take a
Speaker 1: certain foresight and reproductive organs the size of I don't know,
Speaker 1: fill in the analogy yourself. As evidenced by well everything.
Speaker 1: Baseball owners don't have them or the foresight to plan
Speaker 1: for the twelve inning of a game, let alone twelve
Speaker 1: years from now. They did not write off the few
Speaker 1: million less NBC would have paid them as seed money
Speaker 1: for this. Instead, it's the World Series that has gone
Speaker 1: to seed, sometimes being reduced to being the symbolic filler
Speaker 1: between Fox's next two promos for this year's implausible sitcom.
Speaker 1: As I've discussed here previously, Baseball's owners never noticed that
Speaker 1: the separation and isolation of the two leagues had assured
Speaker 1: that while the audience might be divided among the fans
Speaker 1: of sixteen, then twenty, then twenty four then twenty six
Speaker 1: different teams, it also meant that nearly all of them
Speaker 1: also divided into two groups, American League fans and National
Speaker 1: League fans, so that even if their quote own team
Speaker 1: unquote was not in the World Series, they still had
Speaker 1: a rooting interest in the World Series and a re
Speaker 1: to watch to see their league win or, as in
Speaker 1: my case as an American League fan when I was
Speaker 1: ten years old, to see their league lose because it
Speaker 1: was the Baltimore Orioles and they beat the crap out
Speaker 1: of my Yankees. I was not rooting for the Mets
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty nine World Series. I was rooting
Speaker 1: against the hated Baltimore Orioles. TV usually takes the sole
Speaker 1: blame when this subject is introduced, but I know from
Speaker 1: my own experience when the executives who make the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts decisions about televising baseball seeing them actually do it,
Speaker 1: that they have done everything but beg the owners to
Speaker 1: return daylight to the series, and not just when the
Speaker 1: games have to start at five pm Pacific for the
Speaker 1: sake of the East Coast audience. One of my bosses,
Speaker 1: Dick eversaw, the head of NBC Sports, sat there rejiggering
Speaker 1: the first pitch times for one series. No, no tell, buddy,
Speaker 1: he has to start Wednesday at eight thirty seven and
Speaker 1: not eight o seven. He knows that we've got a
Speaker 1: sitcom premiering on Wednesday. He told me about offering to
Speaker 1: split the difference in the revenue lost because of a
Speaker 1: late afternoon start on a Saturday. I told Buddy, think
Speaker 1: of the future. He kept saying, think of the money.
Speaker 1: It isn't just the sizzle, of course, there are now
Speaker 1: severe problems with the stake as well. In Bob Costas's
Speaker 1: memorable phrase, as my friend put it, the wild card
Speaker 1: has indeed turned the series into the MLB Finals. The
Speaker 1: viewers were way ahead of the Cognizani on this celebration
Speaker 1: of mediocrity. Amid all the explanations for the ever plummeting ratings,
Speaker 1: the simplest one inevitably gets bypassed. If you're scoring at home,
Speaker 1: or even if you're just by yourself. This just isn't
Speaker 1: very good baseball played by not really that good baseball teams.
Speaker 1: Five hundred foot homers and no hitters with multiple pitchers
Speaker 1: in them and seventeen strikeout games. They are impressed, But
Speaker 1: if they happen every night, they take on the falsity
Speaker 1: of the plot twists in pro wrestling, and in a
Speaker 1: sports world full to overflowing with last second touchdowns, buzzer
Speaker 1: beaters from the popcorn stand. All offense, all the time
Speaker 1: is no longer enough to hide the fact that to
Speaker 1: be watchable baseball has to be a balance of hitting
Speaker 1: and pitching. In one year, the number of World Series
Speaker 1: starting pitchers who lasted seven innings or more dropped from
Speaker 1: nine to none. One day, all the runs in the
Speaker 1: world next day, a no hitter. Same two teams, same
Speaker 1: two lineups. In the old days, the pretenders, one dimensional
Speaker 1: teams like last year's Phillies, were eliminated in the slow
Speaker 1: but fair crucible of the regular season. If the best
Speaker 1: team in baseball occasionally had a bad week and undeservedly
Speaker 1: lost the World Series, that merely served to create endless
Speaker 1: spodder for the off season, something for people to talk
Speaker 1: about until March. Now the candidates for best team in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. That was the Braves, the Dodgers, even
Speaker 1: the Mets. They can be eliminated almost by chance at
Speaker 1: two levels, even before they stagger into a sometimes anti
Speaker 1: climactic World Series. There are now two nightmare scenarios for
Speaker 1: the television ratings. If they had continued to decline at
Speaker 1: the rate they did in the ten years after nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, ratings for the World Series of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five would be about a tenth of what they were
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. The collapse slowed, however, great news
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two ratings were one quarter what they had
Speaker 1: been in nineteen ninety one. That they weren't one tenth
Speaker 1: is the good news. It is no coincidence that the
Speaker 1: three worst rated World Series of all times have all
Speaker 1: occurred since twenty twenty. The regular season has already been
Speaker 1: new to even the teams given new free stadiums are
Speaker 1: beginning to fail. The owners know this, and they floated
Speaker 1: an obvious solution. They added more wildcard teams. Throughout the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, the nascent World Series it was called the
Speaker 1: World's Championship Series. It was the World Series was mismanaged
Speaker 1: completely from an instant attention grabber in eighteen eighty four
Speaker 1: where the winners of the American Association and the National
Speaker 1: League said, hey, we should have a series to determine
Speaker 1: which of US's best. From that explosive big bang berth,
Speaker 1: it was turned into an endless traveling freak show by
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven. In eighteen eighty seven, they played best
Speaker 1: eight out of fifteen, and they kept playing it in
Speaker 1: different cities. It wasn't just the two cities of the
Speaker 1: two teams in it, Detroit and Saint Louis. The eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven World Series was played in ten different cities,
Speaker 1: and the denumont of labor wars and over expansion came
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety. The eighteen ninety World Series pitted the
Speaker 1: Louisville Cyclones, who had risen from worst to first in
Speaker 1: the American Association, which was a major League, against the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridegrooms, who had won the American Association pennant the
Speaker 1: year before eighteen eighty nine, and then the franchise just
Speaker 1: jumped into the National League for eighteen ninety and won
Speaker 1: that pennant. There were storylines of plenty, but so full
Speaker 1: of rancor and devoid of talent was the eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: World Series that, even though the host Brooklyn Bridegrooms entered
Speaker 1: Game seven leading Louisville three games to two, Game three
Speaker 1: had been a tie, they needed just two more wins
Speaker 1: for the title. The crowd the crowd for that game
Speaker 1: Game seven of the World Series in Brooklyn three hundred fans.
Speaker 1: Louisville then tied the series in that game three wins
Speaker 1: apiece and a tie, and they would need a decisive
Speaker 1: eighth game and the rest of the series, and they
Speaker 1: never played it. They abandoned the World Series tied three
Speaker 1: and three and one quote. There is scarcely enough interest
Speaker 1: in the series, noted a writer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Speaker 1: To induce the people to read the scores. The most
Speaker 1: frightening part about that quote that's from eighteen ninety. I
Speaker 1: felt that way the last three octobers during the World Series.
Speaker 1: The world has made itself over a thousand times. Since
Speaker 1: that sobering revolt by the board against the boring baseball's
Speaker 1: resiliency reminds us that the World Series broadcast might still
Speaker 1: inspire another generation wearing not transistor plugs but buds hooked
Speaker 1: up to a live stream. Or like that unhappy eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety classic, the whole thing could wind up getting canceled,
Speaker 1: and this time it'll be canceled by TV executives. I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
Speaker 1: posting nightly just after midnight Easter. Once again, there is
Speaker 1: a Monday countdown and tell the others. Please send this
Speaker 1: podcast to somebody who does not listen yet but could
Speaker 1: benefit from my analysis of stuff. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Schanale handled orchestration and keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments
Speaker 1: are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faus.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
Speaker 1: was as usual, pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today.
Speaker 1: Five weeks until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the
Speaker 1: one three hundred and sixty fifth day since convicted felon
Speaker 1: drooling Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the election, use the
Speaker 1: mental health system, use presidential immunity if we have to
Speaker 1: to keep him from doing it again. Wow, we still can.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires.
Speaker 1: Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.