Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is a bulletin edition of the Countdown podcast. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: Justice Samuel Alito has not only now confirmed that the
Speaker 1: upside down American flag flown in front of his home
Speaker 1: three days before President Biden's inauguration was meant to support
Speaker 1: the Trump Stop the Steel plot, but in blaming his
Speaker 1: wife and his neighbors for it, Alito has also blatantly
Speaker 1: and transparently lied in his excuse quote, I spoke directly
Speaker 1: with Justice Alito about the flag story in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, posts Shannon Bream, a host on Fox News.
Speaker 1: In addition to what's in the story, he told me
Speaker 1: a neighbor on their street had a quote F Trump
Speaker 1: sign that was within fifty feet of where children await
Speaker 1: the school bus in January twe twenty one. That's the lie.
Speaker 1: Local schools City of Alexandria, Virginia and Fairfax County, Virginia
Speaker 1: had resumed remote learning a month earlier. There were no
Speaker 1: school buses in January twenty twenty one. There were no
Speaker 1: kids waiting at bus stops waiting for the school buses
Speaker 1: that never were there. Alito seems to have forgotten that
Speaker 1: anybody could check this. Continuing from Shannon Breem, Alito confronted
Speaker 1: the neighbor who had the sign so offensive to school
Speaker 1: kids who weren't there waiting for buses that weren't coming. Quote.
Speaker 1: According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put
Speaker 1: up a sign personally addressing Missus Alito and blaming her
Speaker 1: for the January sixth attacks. Justice Alito says he and
Speaker 1: his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were
Speaker 1: words between Missus Alito and a mail at the home
Speaker 1: with the sign. Unquote. Again, this sign could not have
Speaker 1: been seen by any kids at any bus stop. Quote
Speaker 1: Alito says, the man engaged in vulgar language quote, including
Speaker 1: the C word unquote. Following that exchange, Missus Alito was
Speaker 1: distraught and hung the flag upside down quote for a
Speaker 1: short time unquote. Justice Alito says some neighbors on his
Speaker 1: street are very political and acknowledges it was a very
Speaker 1: heated time in January twenty twenty one. End quote Shannon Bream.
Speaker 1: Except that last contention from Alito seems also to be
Speaker 1: a lie or at best some classic paranoia. CNN reporter
Speaker 1: Holmes librand went gumshoe quoting him. I spoke with some
Speaker 1: of Justice Alito's neighbors who said they remember the American
Speaker 1: flag being flown upside down at his home, but did
Speaker 1: not recall any neighborhood drama surrounding it. Each neighbor I
Speaker 1: spoke with reiterated multiple times how kind and well liked
Speaker 1: the Alitos are. Granting that Alito has a hair trigger
Speaker 1: for any criticism about anything, and has constructed for himself
Speaker 1: a world in which his religion is under assault in
Speaker 1: this country, and that Missus Martha Ann Alito has a
Speaker 1: widespread reputation for exaggerated personal behavior, and that they could
Speaker 1: have interpreted the tone behind the word hello as an
Speaker 1: indicator of a neighbor being quote very political. The state
Speaker 1: of political discourse in Alexandria Virginia obscures a larger issue
Speaker 1: about Alito and how politically corrupt he had become by
Speaker 1: this point, and what this flag represented. Glenn Thrush of
Speaker 1: The New York Times hit that nail on the head
Speaker 1: to quote him. This appears to be a confirmation that
Speaker 1: won the Jodie Canter story in The New York Times
Speaker 1: is accurate. Two he had a general awareness that an
Speaker 1: upside down flag was an emblem of Trump's rejection of
Speaker 1: a free and fair un quote. Thrush does not note it,
Speaker 1: but Alito's comments to Fox also contradict his response when
Speaker 1: The New York Times broke the original story quoting him,
Speaker 1: quoting them quoting him, I had no involvement whatsoever in
Speaker 1: the flying of the flag, just as Alito said in
Speaker 1: an emailed statement to The Times, it was briefly placed
Speaker 1: by Missus Alito in response to a neighbor's use of
Speaker 1: objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs. Alito had
Speaker 1: no involvement whatsoever, he says there in the flying of
Speaker 1: the flag when contacted by The Times on Wednesday or Thursday.
Speaker 1: But by Friday he suddenly had an involved and intricate
Speaker 1: story of an increasingly bitter and intense series of confrontations
Speaker 1: with his neighbors, including his wife, becoming quote distraught, including
Speaker 1: exact language used, including himself, and especially this vivid and
Speaker 1: enraging detail about the flow with the F word being
Speaker 1: visible to neighborhood children at the school bus stop that
Speaker 1: had not been used in at least a month. There
Speaker 1: were not any children at that bus stop for at
Speaker 1: least a month, as Congressional aid Aaron Fritchner was the
Speaker 1: first to note, citing Washington Post headlines from that time,
Speaker 1: there were no school buses in much of December twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and all of January twenty twenty one in that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: On November twenty third, twenty twenty, Alexandria, Virginia City Schools
Speaker 1: announced they would be going back to remote learning because
Speaker 1: of COVID surges. On December fourteenth, twenty twenty, Fairfax and
Speaker 1: other county schools the only others that would have had
Speaker 1: school buses in the area near the Alitos Alexandria home,
Speaker 1: The counties announced they would also close the school buildings.
Speaker 1: Fairfax classrooms did not reopen until February fifteenth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: Alexandria's a few days earlier. Alito's truthfulness in claiming his
Speaker 1: American flag was flown upside down for a short time
Speaker 1: is also in serious doubt. A photograph showing it is
Speaker 1: timestamped January seventeenth. The Times has posted it at its website.
Speaker 1: As The Times noted in an email from January eighteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, reviewed by The Times. A neighbor wrote
Speaker 1: to a relative that the flag had been upside down
Speaker 1: for several days at that point. When did it get
Speaker 1: that way? January sixteenth, fifteenth, fourteenth? Should we go all
Speaker 1: the way back to January sixth? Also lost in Alito's
Speaker 1: apparent dissembling about the granular details of his stop the
Speaker 1: steel protest is the idea that whoever hung that flag
Speaker 1: upside down, or how many ever days or weeks it
Speaker 1: hung that way, How on earth a man who has
Speaker 1: now been on the Supreme Court for eighteen years could
Speaker 1: have possibly thought that any form of in public political
Speaker 1: protest hanging outside his own home was acceptable conduct for
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice. That remains unanswered. Ledo now tells
Speaker 1: Fox News this entire backstory of how the flag got there,
Speaker 1: and not once does he address when it finally dawned
Speaker 1: on him that it was utterly inappropriate and that it
Speaker 1: damaged the neutrality and legitimacy not just of his own
Speaker 1: tenure on the Court, but of the Supreme Court itself
Speaker 1: and of the entirety of the American judicial system. Alito
Speaker 1: was also on the US Court of Appeals for sixteen years.
Speaker 1: He probably can still remember that, because ethical guidelines actually
Speaker 1: applied to justices on that court. Had he or his wife,
Speaker 1: or just some neighborhood prankster or perhaps a ghost hung
Speaker 1: a political protest flag outside his house in the time
Speaker 1: between an attempted coup and the inauguration of the legitimate president,
Speaker 1: not only would he have come under formal review for that,
Speaker 1: but all of his court's decisions, even remotely connected to
Speaker 1: politics or protests or candidates, would have come under formal
Speaker 1: review and possibly have been overturned. Clearly, at some point,
Speaker 1: Justice Alito must have determined, Hey, this is a mistake.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he do it earlier? There is also a
Speaker 1: real reason to investigate this particular one of the many
Speaker 1: disqualifying incidents involving Sam Alito. The exact date when his
Speaker 1: American flag at his home was turned upside down to
Speaker 1: represent the stop the Steel movement turned upside down by
Speaker 1: him or his wife or the goddamned wind. The exact
Speaker 1: date is vital information. Several years ago, the then Trump
Speaker 1: Kraken lawyer turned Plea deal taker, Sidney Powell, revealed that
Speaker 1: the backup plan if Mike Pence did not illegally overturn
Speaker 1: the election and the mob did not stop the certification.
Speaker 1: On January sixth, was to get a Supreme Court justice
Speaker 1: to stop the certification for them. Guess which one.
Speaker 2: We were following a Twelfth Amendment constitutional challenge to the
Speaker 2: process that the Congress was about to use under the
Speaker 2: Electoral Act provisions that simply don't job with the Twelfth
Speaker 2: Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Justice Alito was
Speaker 2: our Circuit justice for that. Louis Gohmert was the plaintiff
Speaker 2: in our lawsuit, and we were suing the Vice President
Speaker 2: to follow the Twelfth Amendment as opposed to the Electoral
Speaker 2: count Act Electoral College Act. So that was the main point,
Speaker 2: and Nancy Pelosi had finagled to file an amicas brief
Speaker 2: in it. There'd been inside goings on in Congress whereby
Speaker 2: I believe it was Steve Scale and McCarthy kept her
Speaker 2: from being an actual party. She wanted to work her
Speaker 2: way into the case as a party, but somehow politically
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. So she got noticed when we made
Speaker 2: her filing because she wanted to file on amigas brief
Speaker 2: or head filed an amigas breef and then you know,
Speaker 2: everything for a clues, and she had to really speed
Speaker 2: up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice
Speaker 2: Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all,
Speaker 2: which is what should have.
Speaker 1: Happened in short while Missus Alito was flying her freak
Speaker 1: flag or preparing to, and Congress was literally under attack.
Speaker 1: Trump lawyers expected that at minimum the certification would be
Speaker 1: postponed until January seventh by the Speaker of the House,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi. But before it could happen, then Sam Alito
Speaker 1: would issue a stay preventing the peaceful transfer of power
Speaker 1: to President ille Joe Biden. While I stop the steel
Speaker 1: flag was hanging from or was soon to be hanging
Speaker 1: from his home. That is the core of this extraordinarily
Speaker 1: important story that got less attention from the media than
Speaker 1: did the high school graduation of Trump's son, whose name
Speaker 1: he barely remembers. And by the way, Sidney Powell, the
Speaker 1: word is jibe jibe jive. What you said is what
Speaker 1: your logical rationalizations of treason are. Lastly, pathetically and predictably,
Speaker 1: the Democratic response to Alito and stop the steal has
Speaker 1: been terrified and mouse like. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick
Speaker 1: Durbin says that this is proof that Congress needs to
Speaker 1: pass ethics reform for the Supreme Court. Nothing about forcing
Speaker 1: Alito off the court, or hearings or sanctions or getting
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice involved, just a milk toast request
Speaker 1: that Alito recuse himself from upcoming Trump related decisions about
Speaker 1: January sixth cases and this farcical, fabricated presidential immunity that
Speaker 1: could overturn the democracy itself. The Democrats should be calling
Speaker 1: for Alito's immediate resignation or a boycott of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or at least hearings into this. Instead, they are hoping
Speaker 1: that John Roberts does something. John Roberts would not be
Speaker 1: willing to take Martha and Alito's flag away from her.
Speaker 1: What would the Republicans be doing if to merge two
Speaker 1: current Supreme Court scandals involving them and their wives, If, say,
Speaker 1: Justice Katanji Brown Jackson had hung an Antifa related flag
Speaker 1: or sign from her home for several days and taken
Speaker 1: cash and gifts directly from George Soros. Chairman Durbin needs
Speaker 1: to think about the end answer to that question, or
Speaker 1: somebody needs to think about it for him, and then
Speaker 1: he should do that thing. The rest of this edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown is a repeat of Friday's regular edition, including
Speaker 1: James Thurber's short story how to Relax while Broadcasting, and
Speaker 1: next a translation of the amazingly self unaware mission statement
Speaker 1: issued by the amazingly self unaware Chris Solissa. If you
Speaker 1: have heard this previously and you hit stop now, I
Speaker 1: will not take offense post scripts to the news, some headlines,
Speaker 1: some updates, some stark, some predictions. Dateline, Washington, d of C.
Speaker 1: That's just in. Chris Solissa has issued a mission statement.
Speaker 1: No no, no, mission, not emission. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times I've talked about Chris Solisza, who used to
Speaker 1: be when he worked for the Washington Post, a semi
Speaker 1: regular on Countdown on MSNBC, and then he developed an
Speaker 1: unfortunate habit of both sidesing everything except stuff that didn't
Speaker 1: really matter. No one reporter is responsible for but her emails.
Speaker 1: The obsession with the story, which we think of is
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, but actually started in twenty fifteen and went
Speaker 1: on for more than a year. That moment of obsession,
Speaker 1: which may yet be the official start of the day
Speaker 1: that American democracy caught its fatal illness. That doesn't owe
Speaker 1: to one guy being a bad reporter, just not understanding
Speaker 1: what it was he was supposed to do or how
Speaker 1: he was supposed to evaluate truth from falsehood. Simply because
Speaker 1: both of those things was said by people wearing tie
Speaker 1: didn't mean you had to give equal balance to them.
Speaker 1: It owes in a larger sense to a combination of
Speaker 1: decreasing training and decreasing intelligence among reporters, because I don't
Speaker 1: know how many more good reporters there are now than
Speaker 1: there were in nineteen seventy, but the number of outlets
Speaker 1: that can give them prominence is about ten times as large.
Speaker 1: For all of the contractions in the news industry, and
Speaker 1: there have been so many, so many great news organizations
Speaker 1: that have gone right out the window and under the
Speaker 1: bus and into the toilet and all the other cliches
Speaker 1: you want to use for everyone that's gone out of business.
Speaker 1: There's been one hundred new ones and they've all been crap,
Speaker 1: but they do give jobs or at least platforms to people,
Speaker 1: and one of them was Chris Silizza. And in addition
Speaker 1: to sort of overall stupidity in the news media that's
Speaker 1: gradually taken over in the last fifty years. The second
Speaker 1: part is fomo fear of missing out on somebody else's story.
Speaker 1: If you look at someone else's newspaper, newscasts, podcasts, twitter
Speaker 1: feed and there's something on there that you have not emphasized,
Speaker 1: and they have and they're all excited about it, your
Speaker 1: instant reaction is to get excited about it too. I
Speaker 1: look at it and go, this is not interesting. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's unfortunately not what most of them do. And when
Speaker 1: they write the history, if after butt her emails there
Speaker 1: is any history, and anybody is allowed to write it,
Speaker 1: the book that comes out about but her emails may
Speaker 1: very well have Chrys Sillizz's picture on it. Just in
Speaker 1: the middle six months of the year twenty fifteen, just
Speaker 1: in those six months, he wrote fifty different pieces and
Speaker 1: blog entries and articles for The Washington Post on her emails,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's emails and the headlines. And again he may
Speaker 1: or may not have composed These blog posts are different
Speaker 1: than newspaper articles. You can always depend on the idea
Speaker 1: that a newspaper article headline was not written by the
Speaker 1: person who wrote the article, but that's not necessarily true
Speaker 1: on a blog post. Every blog post I ever wrote
Speaker 1: I wrote my own headlines, and these were just some
Speaker 1: of the headlines in that segment that he did for
Speaker 1: The Washington Post called the Fix Between March and I
Speaker 1: guess September of twenty fifteen, you ready. March third, The Fix,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's private email address at State reinforces everything people
Speaker 1: don't like about her. March fourth, The Hillary Clinton email
Speaker 1: story just keeps getting worse for her. August twelfth, This
Speaker 1: email story just keeps getting worse for Hillary Clinton. And
Speaker 1: you'll notice that's the same thing he said the previous time,
Speaker 1: only with the words in different order. Then let's see
Speaker 1: this is August ninth. Hillary Clinton's email problem isn't going away.
Speaker 1: August eleventh, Hillary clinton email issue is not going away
Speaker 1: anytime soon. September fourteenth, Hillary Clinton's email issues have become
Speaker 1: a massive political problem. July thirtieth, Hillary Clinton as honest
Speaker 1: and trustworthy as Donald Trump. April twenty eighth, Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: has answered seven questions as a candidate. Here are seven
Speaker 1: more she should answer. But of course I'm only scratching
Speaker 1: the surface here because it's a podcast, and the amount
Speaker 1: of time I have available to me is infinity. It's
Speaker 1: kind of majestic. When you read the headlines together like that,
Speaker 1: when you look at the big picture, It's like that
Speaker 1: scene in the movie The Right Stuff about the founding
Speaker 1: of the American space program where they set up and
Speaker 1: lift off trial rocket after trial rocket, and they all collapse.
Speaker 1: Some of them get like three feet off the pad
Speaker 1: and then implode upon themselves, and they show the reflections
Speaker 1: of everything going up in flames, and the eyeglasses of
Speaker 1: the scientists behind it, and Verner von Brown looks very unhappy,
Speaker 1: and machine after machine blows up in the air on
Speaker 1: the launch pad while they're carrying it out, while they're
Speaker 1: drawing it, the drawing blows up. It's like that looking
Speaker 1: at those emails, especially ones like the Hillary Clinton email
Speaker 1: story just keeps getting worse for her, followed by this
Speaker 1: email story just keeps getting worse for Hillary Clinton, followed
Speaker 1: by Hillary Clinton's email problem isn't going away anyway. The
Speaker 1: man who was behind all that, Chris Salizza, who eventually
Speaker 1: left the Washington Post to go to work for CNN
Speaker 1: only did he get fired there and has been independent
Speaker 1: ever since, has now issued a mission statement. And this
Speaker 1: is the crux of what I want to talk about here.
Speaker 1: He wrote this apparently about a week ago. I only
Speaker 1: saw it yesterday, so it's news to me because this
Speaker 1: Chris Sili is a mission statement story isn't going away.
Speaker 1: I watched Jerry McGuire over the weekend. That's another movie.
Speaker 1: And I know I make too many movie references, but
Speaker 1: at least the ones that I refer to don't suck.
Speaker 1: I refer to the right stuff. He's watching Jerry McGuire
Speaker 1: over the weekend with my wife and kids. It's a
Speaker 1: little cheesier than I remember. Okay, a lot cheesier, something
Speaker 1: that's often said about Chris's work. But one thing stuck
Speaker 1: with me. Jerry's mission statement, a vision of what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do and why, how he could be different
Speaker 1: and better. So I wrote my own on journalism. Now,
Speaker 1: before you say this must be fiction, let me read
Speaker 1: it to you. Bullet point. I will hold politicians to
Speaker 1: account when they lie, when they obfuscate, or when they
Speaker 1: try to play too cute with their words or their actions.
Speaker 1: I will be tough but fair on Donald Trump. I
Speaker 1: will be tough but fair on Joe Biden. I will
Speaker 1: not conclude that something is good solely because Democrats do it,
Speaker 1: or something is bad solely because Republicans do it, or
Speaker 1: vice versa. I will never write things for clicks or
Speaker 1: to add subscribers who want red meat thrown at them.
Speaker 1: I will always show my work and how I got
Speaker 1: to my conclusions. I will admit when I got it
Speaker 1: wrong and explain how and why it happened. I will
Speaker 1: never talk down to you or assume I know better.
Speaker 1: I will always work to foster kindness and civility in
Speaker 1: our community. No, no, no, no, no, None of this
Speaker 1: is meant ironically anyway. That's the short version. Well, I've
Speaker 1: gotten a hold of the long version. It has all that,
Speaker 1: and then it goes on to say I will not
Speaker 1: hold politicians to account when they lie. I will not
Speaker 1: be tough or fair with Donald Trump, be tough for
Speaker 1: fair with Joe Biden. I will conclude that something is
Speaker 1: good solely because Democrats do it. I will always write
Speaker 1: things for clicks. I will never admit when I got
Speaker 1: it wrong. I will always talk down to you and
Speaker 1: assume I know better. You see what I did there?
Speaker 1: He's both scientists, So the first half of his mission
Speaker 1: statement would consist of all those noble statements, but my
Speaker 1: satirical second half in that he would contradict all those
Speaker 1: noble statements. See what I did there. This caused me
Speaker 1: to text a couple of my old MSNBC colleagues with
Speaker 1: a variation of this basic message. Remind me why we
Speaker 1: used to book this guy on the show? Did he
Speaker 1: drive himself into the office? Did he bring the crew
Speaker 1: food instead? I was reminded that the stuff from I
Speaker 1: remember in two thousand and six, seven eight, As I
Speaker 1: said here once when we used to have real trouble
Speaker 1: getting guests on MSNBC, Chrystalizza was already. He's always ready
Speaker 1: to go. Probably brought food to the crew. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just then or with the email stuff. It's keeping gun
Speaker 1: in pace to this day. I was reminded by somebody
Speaker 1: that during the Super Bowl, remember the RFK Junior ad
Speaker 1: where they stole his uncle's nineteen sixty presidential campaign ad
Speaker 1: word for word and had him voice it. Oh the class.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a frog that's been kidnapped and being
Speaker 1: held for ransom. They spent fifteen million dollars on it.
Speaker 1: But of course he had nothing to do with it. It
Speaker 1: was done by an outside group. There was no coordination.
Speaker 1: He put it at the head of his Twitter feed.
Speaker 1: He pinned it, so the FCC got involved or FEC
Speaker 1: got involved, and the family, the Kennedys denounced him. Right
Speaker 1: after it aired during the Super Bowl, somebody had tweeted
Speaker 1: the Robert F. Kennedy Junior ad was brilliant, and Chris
Speaker 1: Salizzis saw that about this commercial that the world would
Speaker 1: condemn within minutes, and he got there first and retweeted
Speaker 1: it and added quote, totally agree Hillary Clinton as honest
Speaker 1: and trustworthy as Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton has answered seven
Speaker 1: questions as a candidate. Here are seven more she should answer.
Speaker 1: There is nothing out there that Chris Siliza cannot get
Speaker 1: wrong or get right and then correct himself, so he
Speaker 1: remains wrong, or get wrong and right, or get right
Speaker 1: and then correct it and then correct the correction, so
Speaker 1: he winds up being wrong seventy five percent of the time.
Speaker 1: He insisted that the models said Trump had not even
Speaker 1: the slightest chance of reelection. He wrote this at the
Speaker 1: end of September twenty twenty. The models must have been
Speaker 1: Zulander and Giselle Bunchin. He predicted a Republican red wave
Speaker 1: weeks before the twenty twenty two mid terms. He said
Speaker 1: that when she would not put Jim Jordan and Jim
Speaker 1: Banks on it. Nancy Pelosi, let me get the exact quote.
Speaker 1: Doomed the already tiny chances of the January sixth committee
Speaker 1: actually mattering. And then the first time we mentioned him
Speaker 1: here in this podcast November of twenty twenty two, the
Speaker 1: House Majority whip Jim Clyburn, south Carolina history degree from
Speaker 1: South Carolina State history teacher in high school, said on
Speaker 1: Fox the facts are very clear. I've studied history all
Speaker 1: of my life. I've taught history, and I'm telling you
Speaker 1: what I see here are parallels to what the history
Speaker 1: was in this world back in the nineteen thirties, in
Speaker 1: Germany and in Italy. And Chris Saliza knew better than
Speaker 1: Jim Clyburn because Christalia is a very serious political reporter.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at all the extensive coverage he did
Speaker 1: of the Hillary Clinton email story and how decisive that
Speaker 1: was in the election. That proves he was right right. Also,
Speaker 1: he hosts Political Trivia Night, and he went to Georgetown.
Speaker 1: Christaliza wrote after Jim Cliburn said, Hey, this looks like
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany, like in nineteen thirty two, So pre Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany or Italy before Mussolini started wearing the uniform and
Speaker 1: killing people. Krystalizer wrote less than a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago. I guess about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: Rule number one of politics goes like this, don't compare
Speaker 1: anything to Nazi Germany. Just don't. Before we go any further,
Speaker 1: it's worth voting here that comparing anything to the Nazi regime,
Speaker 1: which led to the systemic murder of more than six
Speaker 1: million Jews, is a mistake. It just is. There is
Speaker 1: nothing in our current moment that suggests we are anywhere
Speaker 1: close to that. Well, of course, the whole point of
Speaker 1: what Cliburn was saying was he was not comparing Hitler
Speaker 1: to the current moment of November twenty twenty two. He
Speaker 1: was comparing it to our immediate future. He was comparing
Speaker 1: the Hitler of nineteen thirty to our America of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, and thus of twenty twenty four, what is
Speaker 1: ahead for us? What I see here are parallels to
Speaker 1: what the history was in this world back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties in Germany. In Italy, he didn't mention the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Chris Eliza did then. At about the same time, there
Speaker 1: was this tweet that went out, America needs a total
Speaker 1: cleansing only Trump can do with the help of true patriots.
Speaker 1: Herschel Walker sent that. It was in response to the
Speaker 1: nutjob lawyer Lynn Wood, who had tweeted calling for the
Speaker 1: execution of Mike Pants by a firing squad in November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. The response for Chrystalizit of that was
Speaker 1: the election deniers like Herschel total cleansing of America Walker quote,
Speaker 1: represent a serious threat to our way of life. After all,
Speaker 1: if we can't accept that our leaders were fairly elected
Speaker 1: and have faith in the system, it's very hard to
Speaker 1: imagine how we can expect anyone to effectively govern. That's see,
Speaker 1: that's what would be wrong with a fascist coup to
Speaker 1: overturn democratic election and install a loser as winner and
Speaker 1: do heaven knows what to the actual elected president. That's
Speaker 1: the problem there. It would interfere with governance. The lines
Speaker 1: at the Department of Motor Vehicles would quadruple if there
Speaker 1: were a civil war going on or a coup, or
Speaker 1: if there were tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and Chris
Speaker 1: Salissa was at the DMZ. Imagine the inconvenience for Americans
Speaker 1: trying to report for jury duty. Now, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say ignored the idea that there might be a
Speaker 1: fascist coup. He did address this another fascist coup, which
Speaker 1: is bad. Exclamation point very bad. See. You know it's
Speaker 1: more important because he used it very on the second reference.
Speaker 1: But it's also remembering that democracy held in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: even while it was under active assault from Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and his minions. Again, the man who helped bring you
Speaker 1: but her emails is saying, what do you mean attempted murder?
Speaker 1: He's not dead, is he? Quote. We absolutely should be
Speaker 1: vigilant about the potential rise of authoritarian politicians who would
Speaker 1: wipe out things like the rule of law to further
Speaker 1: their own political ambitions. But let's stop making the Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany comparisons for all of our sakes, politicians who would
Speaker 1: wipe out things like the rule of law, because there's
Speaker 1: lots of other things they could do that would have
Speaker 1: as much damage as wiping out the rule of law. Again,
Speaker 1: tanks blocking Chris's way into the DMV, that would really
Speaker 1: be a tragedy. I mean, what would happen? What would
Speaker 1: happen if he was going back to the world's only
Speaker 1: remaining blockbuster with that copy of Jerry Maguire that he'd
Speaker 1: watched with his wife and kids and found it a
Speaker 1: little bit cornerer. What if he was trying to return
Speaker 1: it and they were cooping out there in the street
Speaker 1: and he couldn't return the VHS. I mean, it's probably
Speaker 1: the only VHS copy. What if it got damaged. What
Speaker 1: if they shot up his car and you know, nobody
Speaker 1: was hurt, but the VHS copy, the videotape of Jerry
Speaker 1: maguire were the last living copy of Jerry McGuire. I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't anybody going to think of Tom Cruise? Won't somebody
Speaker 1: think about Tom Cruise's work gone forever because of this coup?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what we have to worry about,
Speaker 1: politicians who would wipe out things like the last copy
Speaker 1: of Jerry McGuire. But let's stop making the Nazi Germany
Speaker 1: comparison for all of our sakes. Even though Trump keeps
Speaker 1: quoting Hitler, even though Trump kept a copy of Hitler's
Speaker 1: speeches by his bed. The next day, after Solisa wrote
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk told his one hundred and fifteen million
Speaker 1: followers to vote Republican and then responded to a quote
Speaker 1: that was falsely attributed to Voltaire that was actually spoken
Speaker 1: by an American neo Nazi pedophile, And the day after that,
Speaker 1: Musk tweeted a photo of a Nazi soldier from nineteen
Speaker 1: forty Chris Solissa Mission statement. Hillary Clinton finally apologizes for
Speaker 1: her private email server. What took so long? September eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Hillary Clinton's apology interview annotated September ninth, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's worst week in Washington August twenty first, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Now you know what the whole fifty two fifty six
Speaker 1: sixty weeks stretch from about that headline through November of
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Those are all tied for Hillary Clinton's worst
Speaker 1: week in Washington, and in fact, those are all tied
Speaker 1: for to that point America's worst week in Washington, and
Speaker 1: people like chrystal As are responsible for it, and never
Speaker 1: in their lives will they ever understand this. If you
Speaker 1: could actually claim that your mission statement should include I
Speaker 1: will never write things for clicks or to add subscribers
Speaker 1: who want red meat thrown at them. I will always
Speaker 1: show my work and how I got to my conclusions.
Speaker 1: I will admit when I got it wrong and explain
Speaker 1: how and why it happened. Chrystal is a literally nine
Speaker 1: years after he was as wrong as anybody in American
Speaker 1: journalism could be wrong. Doesn't he even know that this
Speaker 1: is where he was wrong and will not admit that
Speaker 1: he got it wrong and cannot explain how and why
Speaker 1: it happened because he doesn't believe he got it wrong.
Speaker 1: I will never talk down to you or assume I
Speaker 1: know better. Except for these fifty articles about Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: emails in just that six month period, that's not even
Speaker 1: the whole list. So reading all this, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about asking Chrys Saliza for a comment to put in
Speaker 1: this podcast about how these stories Hillary Culton finally apologizes
Speaker 1: for a private email server, what took so long? And
Speaker 1: the upcoming looking back at the ten year anniversary of
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's email servers, my best fifty seven articles on
Speaker 1: Hillary clinton emails. I thought, you know, I could ask
Speaker 1: him about that. I was thinking of sending him an email.
Speaker 1: What do you think? Here? The number one story on
Speaker 1: the Countdown and it's Friday and the weekend edition, so
Speaker 1: that means a little more. James Thurber for you. James
Speaker 1: Thurber had many full time jobs. He was a street
Speaker 1: reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and later the New York Post,
Speaker 1: and he was an editor of The New Yorker long
Speaker 1: before he was a writer or cartoonist there, and people
Speaker 1: kept trying to make him into a radio star, leading
Speaker 1: to a short story which is understandably one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: A lot of it speaks of broadcasting in another world
Speaker 1: and of course another century. But it is amazing how
Speaker 1: much of what you will hear now is still true today.
Speaker 1: From the May fifth, nineteen thirty four edition of The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, How to Relax while Broadcasting by James Thurber.
Speaker 1: The evening I went up to the studios for my
Speaker 1: first radio broadcast. I got off by mistake, at the
Speaker 1: sixteenth floor instead of the seventeenth. I decided not to
Speaker 1: wait for the elevator, but just run up the stairs
Speaker 1: to the seventeenth floor, because elevators in broadcasting buildings are
Speaker 1: always crowded with small Italian musicians carrying cellos. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: when the upsign above the elevators in these buildings lights,
Speaker 1: the operator of the car that stops where he usually
Speaker 1: says down, and before you can think, you find yourself
Speaker 1: on the first floor again, without any way of getting
Speaker 1: back up, because you surrendered your pass to the man
Speaker 1: at the desk in the lobby the first time you
Speaker 1: went up. I walked to a door on the sixteenth floor,
Speaker 1: marked stairs, and stepped out into a cold, dark staircase
Speaker 1: shaft and walked up one flight. I found that the
Speaker 1: door on that floor wouldn't open. It was after seven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the evening and the door had been officially locked.
Speaker 1: I hurried back down to the sixteenth floor and discovered
Speaker 1: that the door there had locked behind me too. I
Speaker 1: began to beat on it and kick it from far off.
Speaker 1: A faint voice came to me, finally saying, cut that out.
Speaker 1: The only thing to do was walk down fifteen flights
Speaker 1: to the main floor, which I did, but the door
Speaker 1: out into the lobby was also locked, and nobody answered
Speaker 1: my screams and poundings. Screaming and pounding is not radio,
Speaker 1: as the broadcasting people say. I went down into the basement,
Speaker 1: which was dark and gloomy, and hunted for the elevator shaft.
Speaker 1: I found it, but there was no bell to push,
Speaker 1: so I sat on an old chair until the car
Speaker 1: came down. The operator was surprised to see me and
Speaker 1: asked me for my pass. I told him I didn't
Speaker 1: have a pass. He thought awhile, and then asked if
Speaker 1: mister Hayman knew I was down there. I said I
Speaker 1: didn't think so. He was pretty much alarmed by that,
Speaker 1: but he took me up to the seventeenth floor after
Speaker 1: warning me never to come down to the basement again
Speaker 1: without a pass. There was nobody on the seventeenth floor
Speaker 1: who understood my case, although the people I talked to
Speaker 1: were patient and courteous. They said the seventeenth floor was
Speaker 1: entirely given over to the business department and had no
Speaker 1: studios or microphones. What I probably wanted was the twenty
Speaker 1: seventh floor. Up there, I found some people I had
Speaker 1: met before, but they were pretty busy and seemed to
Speaker 1: think it was the wrong night. I sat down in
Speaker 1: a chair, and presently a man came up to me
Speaker 1: and asked me if I was mister Ttherer. I said
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure, and he said to follow him. I
Speaker 1: was shown into an office where there were some officials
Speaker 1: I knew and some friends of mine. One of the
Speaker 1: officials was denying a story somebody had been telling about
Speaker 1: a man who fell dead in front of the microphone.
Speaker 1: It seems he had merely had a stroke. In a
Speaker 1: little while, I was led in a solemn march to
Speaker 1: a small and lonely studio, heavily raped and silent. I
Speaker 1: took out a cigarette, but saw a sign saying no smoking,
Speaker 1: so I put the cigarette away again. Some men in
Speaker 1: the glass in control room began to look at me.
Speaker 1: I could see their lips move, but I couldn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: A man tiptoed into the room where I was and
Speaker 1: shook hands with me, and tiptoed out again. He never
Speaker 1: came back. I walked over to a regular microphone, such
Speaker 1: as I had talked over once or twice before and
Speaker 1: had got used to. But somebody led me away from
Speaker 1: that said I was to talk over a table microphone
Speaker 1: because it would help me to relax. This turned out
Speaker 1: to be a table about the size of a card
Speaker 1: table with a microphone set innocently in its center, face up,
Speaker 1: more or less like an ash tray. It studied simplicity
Speaker 1: caused me to tighten up slightly, and I mentioned this
Speaker 1: to a man be it your ease, he said. I
Speaker 1: stood over the table, asped its edges firmly, and leaned
Speaker 1: down toward the microphone. Someone grasped me. No, no, he said,
Speaker 1: you just sit down at the table, as if you
Speaker 1: were sitting in a chair at any table and talk.
Speaker 1: I sat down, trying to remember how I sit in
Speaker 1: a chair at a table, especially at a card table
Speaker 1: at which nobody else is sitting. Relax, said someone with
Speaker 1: a note of command. I slumped back in the chair
Speaker 1: and placed on the table the papers I was going
Speaker 1: to use, and began fussing with them. Sh. Somebody hissed,
Speaker 1: don't rustle them. This is a very highly sensitized mic
Speaker 1: which picks up every slightest sound. It would sound like
Speaker 1: a waterfall sh if you rustled them. I began to
Speaker 1: drum my fingers on the tabletop, but a courteous official
Speaker 1: put his hand on mine and stop that tapping would
Speaker 1: sound like cavalry crossing a bridge to your listeners, he explained,
Speaker 1: Just take it easy. I leaned back in my chair
Speaker 1: and adjusted my tie, doubts, giving the effect of someone
Speaker 1: trying to take a leather belt away from a bulldog.
Speaker 1: In a moment, an announcer came in and said we
Speaker 1: were all ready to go. Okay, I said, standing up,
Speaker 1: let's get out. He smiled with calm assurance and said no.
Speaker 1: He meant that we were about to start the program.
Speaker 1: Everybody but him tiptoed out of the room. I sat
Speaker 1: down at the table again. I could see them all
Speaker 1: watching me from the control room. Somebody in there raised
Speaker 1: his hand sharply and let it drop sharply. I expected
Speaker 1: to hear the faint hiss of lethal gas escaping into
Speaker 1: the chamber, but instead the announcer started to talk. I
Speaker 1: creaked nervously in the chair at this, and the listeners heard,
Speaker 1: along with his calm announcement, the sound of a buckboard
Speaker 1: falling over a cliff. Finally, he pointed a finger at me.
Speaker 1: I sat bolt up and began to talk to the
Speaker 1: ash tray. When it was all over, everybody tiptoed whisperingly
Speaker 1: into the room and congratulated me on being only five
Speaker 1: seconds too slow. Not bad for a beginner. The record
Speaker 1: is one five hundredth of a second. I got up
Speaker 1: and started it out of the room, but a man
Speaker 1: followed me and took me by the arm. Where are
Speaker 1: you going? He asked, let's all go out and get
Speaker 1: a drink. I said, But you haven't got time, he said,
Speaker 1: All this has just been the rehearsal. I must have
Speaker 1: tightened up horribly at that, for he said, soothingly, take
Speaker 1: it easy. You got plenty of time to relax in
Speaker 1: he looked at his wristwatch. You got four minutes how
Speaker 1: to relax While broadcasting by James Thurber. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Speaker 1: Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Schanel arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and
Speaker 1: the keyboards, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music,
Speaker 1: including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by
Speaker 1: the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the
Speaker 1: Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: courtesy of ESPN Inc. ESPN ESPN. How could you misspell
Speaker 1: ESPN or mispronounce it? It's spelled very similarly to the
Speaker 1: way it sounds. ESPN ESPN our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Speaker 1: At our announcer today was my friend Nancy Faust. Everything
Speaker 1: else pretty much my fault as usual. That's countdown for
Speaker 1: this the one hundred and seventy third day until the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four presidential election, and twenty eighth day since
Speaker 1: Dictator Jay Trump's first attempt at coup against the democratically
Speaker 1: elected government of the United States. Use the legal system,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court makes it up. Use the not regularly given
Speaker 1: elector objection option to stop him from doing it again
Speaker 1: while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday.
Speaker 1: The throat may be on the mend, the sinus infection
Speaker 1: may be on the run. Hopefully I'll be at seventy
Speaker 1: five percent by then. Whenever the next one is till
Speaker 1: the next one, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and what about her emails? Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.