Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Manhattan
Speaker 1: District Attorney Alvin Bragg, one of only two American heroes
Speaker 1: to actually convict Trump, has a novel legal argument about
Speaker 1: how to handle sentencing him for his election interference hush
Speaker 1: money crimes here, since Mershan seems to be convinced that
Speaker 1: you can't act against Trump legally while he is the
Speaker 1: sitting president, and more practically, there is literally no way
Speaker 1: Trump's sentence could begin before he becomes sitting Dick. To President,
Speaker 1: Bragg's novel argument, pretend Trump is dead Merry Christmas. This
Speaker 1: is in Bragg's filing to Judge Wan Mershawan, who has
Speaker 1: to figure out something to do other than vacate the
Speaker 1: guilty verdict some way out of this legal morass. Mershan
Speaker 1: himself helped to create a morass unique even for what
Speaker 1: has proved to be a laughably useless American system of justice,
Speaker 1: the envy of the world until it turned out you
Speaker 1: can defeat its entire purpose if you can simply put
Speaker 1: a dozen utterly corrupt alitos and canons and others in
Speaker 1: just the right positions within that system. And the solution
Speaker 1: boils down to pretend Trump is dead. Not trying to
Speaker 1: make that happen, not wishing that happens, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: Just pretending Trump is dead, and it's in legal papers
Speaker 1: because bureaucracy abhors a vacuum. And if his conviction is
Speaker 1: not overturned or vacated, or his sentence can't be pronounced,
Speaker 1: or he can't be sent to Rikers Island, he's got
Speaker 1: to be something. And that's some would be legally pretend dead.
Speaker 1: The legalies itself actually isn't much more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: This Court could adopt a remedy that some courts have
Speaker 1: followed in the abatement by death context, to terminate proceedings
Speaker 1: without vacating the jury verdict or dismissing indictment. Even if
Speaker 1: this Court were to believe it the mere pendency of
Speaker 1: the criminal proceeding we are somehow inconsistent with defenders' future
Speaker 1: official duties as president, Dismissal and vacating would still not
Speaker 1: be warranted under the abatement doctrine. Courts have considered an
Speaker 1: analogous question of what to do with the jury verdict
Speaker 1: and indictment when further criminal proceedings are no longer possible
Speaker 1: because of the defendant's death, this court would likewise adopt
Speaker 1: one of the alternatives to abatement ab initio here in
Speaker 1: place of the extreme remedy of dismissal and vacatur that
Speaker 1: defendant has proposed. Specifically, under the so called Alabama rule,
Speaker 1: when a defendant dies after he is found guilty but
Speaker 1: before the conviction becomes final through the appellate process, the
Speaker 1: court places in the record of the case a notation
Speaker 1: to the effect that the conviction removed the presumption of innocence,
Speaker 1: but was neither affirmed nor reverse on appeal. Because the
Speaker 1: defendant died, it makes sense to borrow from the manner
Speaker 1: in which Court's address abatement, because many of defendant's arguments
Speaker 1: here parallel the arguments made in favor of dismissal and vacatur.
Speaker 1: Upon a defendant's death, he said it, I didn't. The
Speaker 1: essence of that is that you essentially freeze the case
Speaker 1: where it is trump convicted, appeal pending, and you let
Speaker 1: future events soart it out. You don't overturn the verdant,
Speaker 1: you don't expunge it. You don't wrongly clear this slimy
Speaker 1: bastard elect. You simply stuff it over here in a
Speaker 1: kind of legal purgatory, a suspended animation. You'll come back
Speaker 1: to it if and when circumstances change and he stops
Speaker 1: being legally dead. Bluntly, Wan mare Sean will go down
Speaker 1: in American history if any more of it is written
Speaker 1: or permitted in our schools, as one of our greatest
Speaker 1: fools and greatest cowards, and greatest both sides. This enablers
Speaker 1: the Merrick Garland of judges, if you will. So somebody
Speaker 1: here has to do something other than saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the corrupt Supreme Court says corrupt presidents are immune. So
Speaker 1: I'll just go at the corrupt flow and overturn the
Speaker 1: verdict of an American jury made up of American citizens
Speaker 1: who sat there and stared at the devil in his fat,
Speaker 1: orange makeuped face for weeks on end, and spoke for
Speaker 1: the rest of us in this country and said, this
Speaker 1: asshole paid off a porn star to keep her as
Speaker 1: part of his extraordinary exertions to deceive the public and
Speaker 1: get himself elected president of the United States. And we're
Speaker 1: mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.
Speaker 1: Trump is corrupt. The jury was not the prosecution was not,
Speaker 1: the system was not. The judge now has to decide
Speaker 1: if he's corrupt or he's not. He can't do anything
Speaker 1: about his own stupidity, and he can't do anything about
Speaker 1: the million lies Trump has told to get elected again.
Speaker 1: But he and we can do something legally meaningful and
Speaker 1: culturally symbolic, something like sticking an asterisk on a sports
Speaker 1: record obtained by cheating, something that Trump will always carry
Speaker 1: with him. Freeze the case exactly where it is, and
Speaker 1: do what Alvin Bragg suggests, Treat it like you would
Speaker 1: if Trump We're dead. Merry Christmas. Not advocating for that, obviously,
Speaker 1: as I am not and previously have stated, I was
Speaker 1: not advocating for Luigi or any other guy sharing the
Speaker 1: name of a famous video game character assassinating CEOs five
Speaker 1: goddamned blocks from my home. I am an indictem convictim,
Speaker 1: lock them up for life absolutist. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: as I said Monday, nothing about the assassination of the
Speaker 1: CEO of United Healthcare by Luigi McDreamy or whatever his
Speaker 1: name is is more startling than wide swaths of the
Speaker 1: media writing nearly hysterical pieces about how the support or
Speaker 1: passive approval for what he did indicates some kind of
Speaker 1: breakdown in American society and is inconceivable and cannot in
Speaker 1: any way be tolerated for a minute longer. There was
Speaker 1: a long magazine article yesterday blaming it on a communist
Speaker 1: philosopher from one hundred years ago as CEOs and those
Speaker 1: who worshiped them and cover them as if they were,
Speaker 1: you know, superstar human beings recoil from this as if
Speaker 1: it were another pope getting shot. I mean, sure, his
Speaker 1: company has done some bad things over the centuries, and
Speaker 1: millions have died as a result, but he's a good guy.
Speaker 1: It's not like that's all his fault. These glorifiers of
Speaker 1: greed have so disconnected from reality that they have forgotten
Speaker 1: the essence of the definition of a corporation of the
Speaker 1: thing Brian Thompson was the CEO of of the thing
Speaker 1: Luigi Mangione was shooting. A corporation exists so that a
Speaker 1: group of people can spend their money without any of
Speaker 1: them being liable for any real moral or legal responsibility.
Speaker 1: When people get killed or hurt or ripped off. If
Speaker 1: you are not at the Wall Street Journal or CNBC
Speaker 1: or any of the news organizations led by and run
Speaker 1: by and anchored by generations of people who have grown
Speaker 1: up in the era when the media has worshiped money
Speaker 1: and the people who make it for their own sake,
Speaker 1: it is impossible to conceive how corporations are viewed by
Speaker 1: people who don't own stocks. How many people have died
Speaker 1: as the direct result of corporate criminality? And a second question,
Speaker 1: how many corporate executives have been given the death penalty
Speaker 1: in a court of law. The answer to the first
Speaker 1: question is a whole lot. The answer to the second
Speaker 1: question is none. Nobody even went to jail after the Titanic.
Speaker 1: Nobody went to jail after the Johnstown flood. Nobody went
Speaker 1: to jail after the Deep Water Horizon BP spill in
Speaker 1: the Gulf. They charged two supervisors with manslaughter. End result,
Speaker 1: one of them pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.
Speaker 1: Corporations are designed to ensure irresponsibility. If, as a disastrous
Speaker 1: Supreme Court misruling from the nineteenth century suggests, corporations are persons.
Speaker 1: That person would be Trump, So please columnists, reporters, right wingers,
Speaker 1: business editors celebrating the guy who slowly choked a crazy
Speaker 1: man to death on the subway, spare me at least
Speaker 1: your shock that what might be a majority of Americans
Speaker 1: is not getting that worked up about Luigi. When the
Speaker 1: legal system has failed, When in the case of the
Speaker 1: concept of the corporation, it has been designed to fail
Speaker 1: as badly as ours has failed, people are not only
Speaker 1: going to cheer vigilantes, they will fear that they have
Speaker 1: nobody else to cheer. Four And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you also can't figure out why the serial murderer
Speaker 1: of women Ted Bundy got hundreds of marriage proposals while
Speaker 1: on trial and probably while they were walking into the
Speaker 1: electric chair in nineteen eighty nine, just read some of
Speaker 1: the stuff online about Luigi. This is obviously lost on me, ladies,
Speaker 1: But I'm not blaming you for our human biology. I
Speaker 1: am confident that if Luigi was Louise and was as
Speaker 1: apparently attractive, men of today would be writing the same things.
Speaker 1: But please, ladies, let's dial this down just a little,
Speaker 1: because anything you write that sounds like he's hot. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, he murdered a guy, but he's hot is
Speaker 1: not as they say the flex that.
Speaker 2: You think it is.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that construction sound you hear
Speaker 1: is the Trump ists trying to move the Overton window
Speaker 1: yet again. You heard Trump say Sunday that he thinks
Speaker 1: everybody on the January sixth Committee and every elected official
Speaker 1: who voted for the January sixth Committee should be in jail,
Speaker 1: but that no, he wouldn't order anybody to prosecute him.
Speaker 1: That would be decided by his FBI director. Prune face
Speaker 1: from Dick Tracy? Am I remembering that correctly decided by
Speaker 1: his FBI director and his Attorney general? Neon Noodle from
Speaker 1: the bugs? Bunny VERSI, Dick Tracy, if I have that right?
Speaker 1: This idea that he wouldn't order it is now being
Speaker 1: painted as some sort of concession by Trump. He won't
Speaker 1: order his law enforcement agencies to fabricate crimes and make
Speaker 1: up evidence against elected members of the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: who tried to expose his actual criminal and seditious attempt
Speaker 1: to overthrow the government. He'll just let others do it.
Speaker 1: Fox headlined this a kinder, gentler Trump president elect taking
Speaker 1: a more moderate stance. Jason Miller says the reactions from
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and others wasn't necessary because
Speaker 1: the January sixth, Committee threat was taken out of context.
Speaker 1: Quoting him, if you listen to the entire interview with
Speaker 1: President Trump, he said he's going to leave that up
Speaker 1: to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi
Speaker 1: and Cash Patel. Translation by way of current events analogy,
Speaker 1: Trump isn't going to shoot the CEO in the head.
Speaker 1: Some sick event working for Trump is going to shoot
Speaker 1: the CEO in the head, because that's all right. Then
Speaker 1: Pam Bondi and Cash Battel would never do something they
Speaker 1: thought would please the Furer just to please the Furer,
Speaker 1: and Pam Bondi and Cash Pateel would never tell Trump
Speaker 1: in advance which elected officials and former elected officials and
Speaker 1: political opponents they were planning to jail like this was Syria.
Speaker 1: Just to pick an example on the confirmations front, Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseeth met with Senator Susan Collins for an hour. Shockingly enough,
Speaker 1: she did not commit to anything. She says she wants
Speaker 1: to see a full FBI betting hag Seth has also
Speaker 1: gotten caught in a spectacular lie. Monday, he went on
Speaker 1: Hannity's Fascist Fallatio Hour and insisted that his comments had
Speaker 1: been misconstrued that quote, I somehow don't support women in
Speaker 1: the military. Some of our best warriors out there are women.
Speaker 1: That remark came literally forty eight hours after he'd gone
Speaker 1: on somebody's podcast and said, quote, I am straight up
Speaker 1: just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
Speaker 1: There's a little wiggle room in between those two statements.
Speaker 1: You could probably fit something tiny between them, like heg
Speaker 1: Seth's principles and morals. But honestly, whoever you are, if
Speaker 1: you say the one thing Saturday and then the other
Speaker 1: thing Monday, you are forcing us to circle back to
Speaker 1: that other question of how much you have been drinking
Speaker 1: and whether or not I need to calculate gallons into barrels.
Speaker 1: Murkowski's probably a no, Collins is a who knows. McConnell
Speaker 1: could vote no. Ernst was a no and might still
Speaker 1: be one and four nos. And Hegseth is meat still
Speaker 1: Trump thug. Mike Davis said he would be happy to
Speaker 1: pay private investigators to dig dirt up on hesitant Republican senators,
Speaker 1: And suddenly you had Ernst balancing on this tightrope sounding
Speaker 1: like she was supporting Hegseeth or supporting the process or
Speaker 1: supporting something without actually supporting him. Ernest is already being
Speaker 1: attacked as a rhino, already having questions raised about her divorce,
Speaker 1: and they've announced their primarying Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who
Speaker 1: once voted to impeach Trump, and before FBI Director Chris
Speaker 1: Ray said yesterday he would resign before the inauguration way
Speaker 1: to obey in advance Chris. When Mike Rounds of South
Speaker 1: Dakota said he had no complaints against Ray, Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: posted quote, Senator Rounds, you are up for reelection in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. If you vote against any of Trump's nominees,
Speaker 1: a primary challenge wouldn't be hard, just to remind her.
Speaker 1: Also a reminder that in a dictatorship, there's only one fewer.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of enforcers at a lot of
Speaker 1: bobblehead dolls nodding yes, but there's just the one feurer.
Speaker 1: And as he sets chances of confirmation seemingly increase. The
Speaker 1: one I think is in the most trouble is Telsey Gabbard,
Speaker 1: and not because, as a Republican Senate aide told the
Speaker 1: news site The Hill, quote, behind closed doors, people think
Speaker 1: she might be compromised. Like it's not hyperbole. There are
Speaker 1: members of our conference who think she's a Russian asset unquote,
Speaker 1: as published by the Hill. But Gabbard's got another problem,
Speaker 1: which is there are Republicans who are worried that she
Speaker 1: is not a Russian asset. The Wall Street Journal editorial
Speaker 1: Board and honest to God, if they all turned out
Speaker 1: to work in a bunker twenty eight feet under the
Speaker 1: Reich Chancellory in Berlin, I wouldn't be the least goddamned surprised.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes quote the ugly
Speaker 1: criticism of Telsey Gabbard as a quote likely Russian asset.
Speaker 1: Representative W. Wasserman Schultz might convince Trump supporters that she's
Speaker 1: been maligned as President Trump was because she's on board
Speaker 1: with his agenda. The truth, which has Republican senators concerned
Speaker 1: is the opposite. Miss Gabbart is on ample record as
Speaker 1: a dogmatic opponent of the policies that made mister Trump's
Speaker 1: first term foreign policy a success and that Democrats resisted.
Speaker 1: The former Democrat would be a risky fit as Director
Speaker 1: of National Intelligence. So the fascist right is trying to
Speaker 1: sink Gabbard, and so are some Republican senators, and of course,
Speaker 1: our friends at the Daily Coasts published a cartoon about her,
Speaker 1: in which she is depicted as go and look at this.
Speaker 1: Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle last had lines. Just because
Speaker 1: his brains aren't leaking out his ears at a rally
Speaker 1: every Saturday lin during the campaign doesn't mean they're not
Speaker 1: still leaking out his ears. Trump posted this, The Democrats
Speaker 1: are fighting hard to get rid of the popular vote
Speaker 1: in future elections. They want all future presidential elections to
Speaker 1: be based exclusively on the electoral college exclamation point. All
Speaker 1: previous presidential elections have been based exclusively on the electoral college,
Speaker 1: and six weeks ago, Trump's henchmen were working to get
Speaker 1: around the popular vote if he lost in the swing states.
Speaker 1: But now that he's won the popular vote by one
Speaker 1: point four percent, he has to try to remain the victim.
Speaker 1: And to remain the victim, he has to make the
Speaker 1: popular vote the subject of some imaginary democratic conspiracy, which
Speaker 1: brings us back to twenty twelve when Trump wanted to
Speaker 1: eliminate the electoral college. And if he will get that
Speaker 1: amendment passed, I might actually help him on that. Finally,
Speaker 1: if you have not heard Junior's fiance or ex fiance
Speaker 1: or whatever, screaming Kim Gilfoyle has been nominated as ambassador
Speaker 1: to Greece gr e e Ce or time with Trump
Speaker 1: Junior would have made her an ambassador to Greece gr
Speaker 1: e a se. So the role of screaming Kim Gilfoyle
Speaker 1: is now being played by a woman named Bettina Anderson
Speaker 1: and now on with the show. Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: a development in local politics in Fun City has just
Speaker 1: made me realize something I had completely forgotten about and
Speaker 1: not really tied together. But it just made me realize
Speaker 1: that between us, one of my exes and I may
Speaker 1: have inadvertently led to first Bill de Blasio and then
Speaker 1: Eric Adams becoming Mayor of New York City. Firstly, to
Speaker 1: everyone in the universe, I express my most sincere apologies. Secondly,
Speaker 1: I know that the phrase one of my exes gives
Speaker 1: you no clue as to who I am talking about.
Speaker 2: That's called a tease. And thirdly, that's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2: This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1: Album stell Ahead Worse Persons. Elon Musk makes an appearance,
Speaker 1: and there's a woman who went to Australia carrying a
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars gold plated gun, but she swears she
Speaker 1: wasn't planning to shoot anybody with it. She was just
Speaker 1: taking it with her to Clown College. But now postscripts
Speaker 1: to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark. This
Speaker 1: is the Countdown podcast and these are the places where
Speaker 1: there's new Dateline Zurich. The Soccer World Cup for twenty
Speaker 1: thirty was awarded to six nations, for most of them Spain,
Speaker 1: but the twenty thirty four to one has been awarded
Speaker 1: to the nation with the greatest soccer playing tradition in
Speaker 1: the world, Saudi Arabia. Because everything is for sale, ask Trump.
Speaker 1: The good news is by then climate change could be
Speaker 1: bad enough for them to have to abandon the project
Speaker 1: and maybe all of Saudi Arabia. Dateline New York rather
Speaker 1: remarkable development here in fun City where Anthony Wiener, the
Speaker 1: former congressman, and well he was RFK junior with the
Speaker 1: phones and the sex before there was an RFK junior
Speaker 1: with the phones and the sex. AnyWho, Anthony Wiener is
Speaker 1: again running for office. This time it is the New
Speaker 1: York City Council where he began his political career in
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. This is Wiener's second comeback attempt.
Speaker 1: Eleven years ago, he was not only running for mayor
Speaker 1: of New York, but he might have been the unlikely
Speaker 1: favorite for the Democratic nomination and thus almost automatic election.
Speaker 1: Then my girlfriend came home from her internship at the
Speaker 1: Wiener campaign and described to me, with extraordinary frustration the
Speaker 1: total chaos there, with Wiener saying he knew the names
Speaker 1: of all the interns, and saying that all of the
Speaker 1: girl interns were named Monica. He called the first one Monica,
Speaker 1: the second one Monica. Then he called my girlfriend Monica,
Speaker 1: and how most of the volunteers and many of the
Speaker 1: staffers were only there just to get in good with
Speaker 1: Wiener's wife, Juma Abadin, in hopes of getting onto Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton's upcoming presidential campaign. How did that workout for you? Anyway?
Speaker 1: My girlfriend said she was going to write this up
Speaker 1: as a guest post for the blog run by one
Speaker 1: of her friends. I looked at her gently but patronized,
Speaker 1: and said, you are a witness to the best political
Speaker 1: New York story of the year, and you're going to
Speaker 1: put it on a blog you should be putting it
Speaker 1: in the Daily News or in the Post. Even She
Speaker 1: then asked, hell on earth she could actually put it
Speaker 1: in the Daily News or the Post? And I said,
Speaker 1: I knew writers at the papers. Certainly they wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: contacting their editors with a story like that, But you
Speaker 1: have to write this up yourself first, so they don't
Speaker 1: just try to take your story and write it themselves
Speaker 1: and leave you out of it. You should use this
Speaker 1: as a career lever. Next thing, she knew the New
Speaker 1: York Daily News had bought her story written by her.
Speaker 1: I helped a little, nothing more really than moving a
Speaker 1: few paragraphs around and sharpening some of her already really sharp,
Speaker 1: wonderfully bitter humor. But the editors insisted they needed a
Speaker 1: photo of her to go with it and find She said,
Speaker 1: just as long as you don't put it on the
Speaker 1: front page of the paper. Well, of course, she glammed
Speaker 1: up for the photo shoot, and after she got packed
Speaker 1: from it, I said, did you get it in writing
Speaker 1: that it won't be on the front page? Up at
Speaker 1: four am to take our dog to the we wi pad.
Speaker 1: I hopped onto my iPad and went to the Daily
Speaker 1: News website that had just updated, and I promptly woke
Speaker 1: my girlfriend up. Guess what's on the front page of
Speaker 1: the Daily News. She responded to her photo with a
Speaker 1: mixture of horror and almost maniacal egotism. That sounds bad,
Speaker 1: It is, in fact the average response from the average
Speaker 1: reporter about almost anything big that happens to them. It
Speaker 1: is the fuel for all of them. Not long after
Speaker 1: the story and the photo and the front page, she
Speaker 1: got a job offer from the Daily Beast. Then it
Speaker 1: was New York Magazine, then TV hits mostly on CNN,
Speaker 1: and then a book with her fiance, and then well,
Speaker 1: she kind of came full circle, didn't she, Because of course,
Speaker 1: this is Olivia Newsy I'm talking about, whose career started
Speaker 1: with a phone sex and explicit photos guy in Anthony
Speaker 1: Weener and has stalled, if not ended, with another phone
Speaker 1: sex and explicit photo guy in RFK Junior. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, Anthony Wiener's twenty thirteen mayoral campaign, it didn't
Speaker 1: implode just because I said to Olivia, you're gonna put
Speaker 1: it in a blog. But we helped, and so the
Speaker 1: Democratic nomination for mayor that year went instead to Bill Deblasio.
Speaker 1: And he was such a bad mayor that New York
Speaker 1: voters didn't even recognize that the guy running to succeed
Speaker 1: him as the Democratic nominee was even worse. And his
Speaker 1: name is Eric Adams. And bluntly, we'd be better off
Speaker 1: if New York's mayor were Anthony Wiener or any Wiener.
Speaker 1: So I can assure you without fear of contradiction, and
Speaker 1: for many different reasons, that is the last goddamn time
Speaker 1: I tamper with Olivia's blog posts, or that I tamper
Speaker 1: with who runs New York City.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Nancy Faust. Still ahead.
Speaker 1: My favorite Christmas story how I once, unintentionally at Christmas
Speaker 1: time mistook one of the stars of the greatest motion
Speaker 1: picture ever made for some older fan of mine, even
Speaker 1: though he was wearing a cape first. Believe it or not,
Speaker 1: there's still more new idiots to talk about, the daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute two days other worst persons in the world.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get more than one lesson, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: need more than one lesson. That's a line from Citizen
Speaker 1: Kane that I just screwed up the Bronze worse Liliana Goodson,
Speaker 1: who has been sentenced to a year in jail in
Speaker 1: Australia Sydney. To be precise, only four months in full
Speaker 1: time custody. But still, I'll just read the account of
Speaker 1: this from the local papers. A US will who flew
Speaker 1: to Australia with a gold plated pistol worth about three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in her luggage has been sentenced to a
Speaker 1: year in jail, despite claiming that she brought it with
Speaker 1: her for protection. When asked at the airport if she
Speaker 1: was carrying any prohibited items with her, Goodson claimed she
Speaker 1: was not. The court was told quote what about the
Speaker 1: gun in your bag? She was asked by a customs officer.
Speaker 1: Goodson replied, oh yeah, I forgot about that. A review
Speaker 1: of Goodson's phone revealed she had searched online can I
Speaker 1: have a gun in my suitcase? And set a calendar
Speaker 1: injury with a note reminding her to quote put gun
Speaker 1: in suitcase. This is not exactly Luigi in effect?
Speaker 2: Here is it.
Speaker 1: Goodson told police she was actually scared of shooting the
Speaker 1: gun and hoped simply producing it would be enough to
Speaker 1: deter potential threats. If that didn't do it I would
Speaker 1: probably just pistol whip. Goodson was quoted as having said,
Speaker 1: when asked where she planned to store the gun while
Speaker 1: she was in Australia, she indicated under a vehicle's passenger's seat.
Speaker 1: The court was also told in recent years Goodson was
Speaker 1: using psychedelic drugs, synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine. And we still
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to the punchline here. Miss Goodson, the court
Speaker 1: was previously told, had come to Australia to attend clown school. Well,
Speaker 1: at least she got that part accomplished. Magna cum laude
Speaker 1: the runners up worser Newsweek. Newsweek used to be a magazine,
Speaker 1: second in influence and journalistic standards in this country, to
Speaker 1: only like Time magazine among magazines. And well, it dawns
Speaker 1: on me, I'm going to have to explain to you
Speaker 1: what magazines were news magazines anyway. Later, Newsweek has gone
Speaker 1: decidedly crappy over the last two decades, and it is
Speaker 1: decidedly far right crappy, and it's mostly an aggregation site.
Speaker 1: But it has accomplished something. It has beaten the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times and its owner doctor bad Haircut, who said
Speaker 1: he plans to install some kind of fairness grades to
Speaker 1: all the articles on his screw up a two car funeral.
Speaker 1: Newspaper Newsweek has now unveiled its own fairness grades with
Speaker 1: a twist. We report, you decide the fairness meter. Newsweek
Speaker 1: is committed to journalism that is actual and fair. Our
Speaker 1: fairness meter allows readers to hold us accountable by rating
Speaker 1: an article's fairness in one of five ways. Unfair left
Speaker 1: cleaning the article presents a left cleaning perspective on the
Speaker 1: issue and does not include an opposing view. Mostly fair
Speaker 1: left leaning, which is the same thing, only it includes
Speaker 1: an opposing view. Fair the article presents a nonpartisan perspective
Speaker 1: on the issue and includes opposing views. By the way,
Speaker 1: if any getting, any article anywhere is rated fair under
Speaker 1: this grading system, it will be the first in human history.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna let readers vote on. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there are more possibilities. They said five. There's unfair right
Speaker 1: leaning and mostly fair right leaning, which is an oxymoron.
Speaker 1: But they're gonna let voters vote on. Readers become voters
Speaker 1: who vote on, in essence, what's true or not, depending
Speaker 1: on how much they agree with the political points of
Speaker 1: view of the article. Well, if anything is going to
Speaker 1: reflect America as we start twenty twenty five, that's pretty
Speaker 1: much it isn't it? But our winner speaking of letting
Speaker 1: them vote on it and leaning right. Elmo, somebody tweeted
Speaker 1: a report on homelessness, and he, of course being a fascist.
Speaker 1: Now who is involved in the trump Ocracy, the kleptocracy,
Speaker 1: the trump kleptocracy. He lets milk everything out of this government.
Speaker 1: I can get my grubby little fingers on because I
Speaker 1: can't possibly have enough money, because the hole in my
Speaker 1: soul is too big to ever fill with anything. Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: That guy, he had to insist there is no such
Speaker 1: thing as homelessness. Quote. In most cases, the word homeless
Speaker 1: is a lie. It's usually a propaganda word for violent
Speaker 1: drug addicts with severe mental illness. Actually, Elmo, the propaganda
Speaker 1: words we use for quote, violent drug addicts with severe
Speaker 1: mental illness, those propaganda words are members of the X
Speaker 1: management team, Elmo Leon. It only recently dawned on me.
Speaker 1: His skin is stretched so tight across his face. He
Speaker 1: looks like Jim Carrey in the movie The Mask. Musk
Speaker 1: two days other worse person at the world. Now to
Speaker 1: the number one story on the countdown and my favorite
Speaker 1: topic me and things I promised not to tell, and
Speaker 1: I swear I thought I heard her say Carleton. This
Speaker 1: was also December in nineteen eighty five in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and if you've never spent Christmas in a warm metropolitan
Speaker 1: area for the first time in your life, you do
Speaker 1: not know what disorientation really is. I had just completed
Speaker 1: three months in my new job as the sports director
Speaker 1: of Channel five in LA. I had spent most of
Speaker 1: November adjusting not only to it not getting cold, but
Speaker 1: to the fact that almost nobody else noticed that it
Speaker 1: was not getting cold, except one of our productions assistance
Speaker 1: who sprinted through the parking lot and up the stairs
Speaker 1: into the little bungalow on the KTLA lot in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: then housed our sports department. He shivered like a dog,
Speaker 1: shaking himself awake, and announced, my god, it's bitter out there.
Speaker 2: Bitter.
Speaker 1: I checked it was forty nine degrees. So December nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five was already weird enough. I was doing well
Speaker 1: in LA Being three thousand miles away from everyone and
Speaker 1: everything I knew had been surprisingly helpful, and there was
Speaker 1: no ramp up time for my work. I'd already won
Speaker 1: a couple of best Sportscaster awards, and then the top
Speaker 1: all news radio station was asking me to come over
Speaker 1: every afternoon and split the afternoon drive sportscasting shift with
Speaker 1: a guy who'd been on the air there literally for
Speaker 1: thirty years, who's one of the voices in the background
Speaker 1: and The Godfather Part two? And now somehow my producer,
Speaker 1: Ron Grelnick, and I were headed to the Beverly Wilshire
Speaker 1: Hotel to go interview Mickey Mantle. For the average LA sportscaster,
Speaker 1: there really was and much reason to interview Mickey Mantle,
Speaker 1: which is why all of them at the bigger three
Speaker 1: network stations had turned down the offer of a sit
Speaker 1: down interview. But I was a New Yorker and had
Speaker 1: been three months earlier, and thus Mickey Mantle was my idol.
Speaker 1: And moreover, when I became a baseball fan in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, my folks bought tickets specifically behind first base
Speaker 1: at Yankee Stadium because they had just moved Mantle there
Speaker 1: from the outfield. And as my dad said, when you
Speaker 1: are an old man, you will say the greatest thing
Speaker 1: you ever saw in baseball was Mickey Mantle. So you
Speaker 1: might as well see as much of him as you can. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm an old man now, and my dad was exactly right.
Speaker 1: Mantle was on a tour publicizing some kind of hitting
Speaker 1: video and he would do one exclusive interview with an
Speaker 1: LA station at like exactly five pm on that night
Speaker 1: in December nineteen eighty five. And to get it you
Speaker 1: had to agree to give the video exactly one plug
Speaker 1: and ask him one question about it. But otherwise you
Speaker 1: could ask whatever you want. Un he had fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Then he was going out to dinner. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was it dinner. So Ron and I pulled up to
Speaker 1: the Beverly Wilshire in his car, and I had never
Speaker 1: been in, but I had walked past it a dozen
Speaker 1: times and I knew there was a new wing and
Speaker 1: an old wing. And as Ron tried to park, I
Speaker 1: tried to find the room where Mantle would be waiting
Speaker 1: for us, so I could be there to meet the
Speaker 1: camera crew that was joining us from some other shoot somewhere.
Speaker 1: And also because he was Mickey Mantle. I had met
Speaker 1: him before, I had even interviewed him briefly for CNN,
Speaker 1: but nothing like this, nothing like a sit down interview,
Speaker 1: just me and him. The room number was something like
Speaker 1: eight ninety seven, could have been five ninety seven, could
Speaker 1: have been twelve ninety seven, but it was basically the
Speaker 1: highest number there could be on a given hotel floor.
Speaker 1: And I saw the elevator just pass the registration desk,
Speaker 1: and up. I went to the eighth floor, and it
Speaker 1: was a deserted labyrinth, turn after turn, and nobody there.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly I turned a corner, and walking towards
Speaker 1: me was the most elegantly dressed older couple I had
Speaker 1: ever seen to that point or since. She was wearing
Speaker 1: a mink stole atop a beautiful gown, and she had
Speaker 1: a diamond necklace big enough to induce cramps. She had
Speaker 1: a piercing, glistening set of deep brown eyes. She looked
Speaker 1: to be in her mid to late fifties, but might
Speaker 1: have been older. He was older, maybe eighty, but with
Speaker 1: a full head of thick and wiry hair. He was tall, thin,
Speaker 1: extraordinarily elegant in a perfect tuxedo. But all of this
Speaker 1: was overwhelmed, almost erased, by one fact that startles me
Speaker 1: still thirty seven years later. This man was wearing a cape.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident that I had never seen a man
Speaker 1: wearing a cape before, I know, I have not seen
Speaker 1: one since I have been looking. And yet it looked
Speaker 1: so good on him that I can recall briefly thinking, Keith,
Speaker 1: maybe you should buy a cape. This couple was perfect.
Speaker 1: We seem to be the only people on the floor.
Speaker 1: The hallway wasn't all that wide. I said, good evening
Speaker 1: as I passed. She said good evening, and in so
Speaker 1: doing revealed a British accent, and he mumbled evening and
Speaker 1: revealed what sounded like the lingering minor aftermaths of a
Speaker 1: minor stroke. They walked their way, I walked mine, and
Speaker 1: my focus returned to finding Mickey Mantle in room eight
Speaker 1: ninety seven. The numbers of the rooms I was passing
Speaker 1: were like eight eleven and eight fourteen, And after a
Speaker 1: few more turns of the labyrinth, that dawned on me
Speaker 1: that I must be in the old wing of the
Speaker 1: Beverly Wilshire, and the high numbers like eight ninety seven
Speaker 1: must have been in the new wing of the Beverly Wilshire.
Speaker 1: I also noticed that I had not passed a doorway
Speaker 1: or a vestibule or some kind of connecting bridge to
Speaker 1: the new wing, so I had better make it back
Speaker 1: to the elevator and the lobby before Ron or the
Speaker 1: camera crew made the same mistake I had. Because Mickey
Speaker 1: Mantle was waiting my reversed course, I began to trot.
Speaker 1: After three or four more of these labyrinthine turns, I found,
Speaker 1: to my shock that the perfectly elegant older couple he
Speaker 1: was wearing a cape, was standing exactly where I had
Speaker 1: left them.
Speaker 2: She laughed.
Speaker 1: She mentioned something about the higher numbers being in the
Speaker 1: new wing, and everybody made that mistake. I thanked her,
Speaker 1: and then she said, you're the young man who does
Speaker 1: the spots on the television, aren't you. And I had
Speaker 1: gotten pretty popular pretty fast there, but being recognized was
Speaker 1: still very surprising and pleasantly so. And I said that,
Speaker 1: and I introduced myself, so nice to meet you. She said,
Speaker 1: I'm Patricia Carlton, and this she pointed to the guy
Speaker 1: in the cape is my husband. He slowly extended a
Speaker 1: hand but shook mine vigorously. And I'm Joseph Carlton. Missus
Speaker 1: Carlton was very excited. I know Joe and I we
Speaker 1: really are not fans of the sports, but whenever we're
Speaker 1: at helme in Palm Springs. We make sure we stay
Speaker 1: up until the end of the ten o'clock news so
Speaker 1: we could watch you. Joe nodded and smiled in the cape.
Speaker 1: You know, so clearly enjoying yourself that we find ourselves
Speaker 1: enjoying it too. That's really quite remarkable. I was genuinely
Speaker 1: touched and remain so I explained my dilemma. I treated
Speaker 1: them as you were supposed to treat viewers, gratefully and solicitously,
Speaker 1: and I asked them if they were going to the lobby,
Speaker 1: and if I might walk with them so I didn't
Speaker 1: get any further lost. We'd be delighted. I must ask you,
Speaker 1: mister fishman, who does the news on your program? Is
Speaker 1: that his real hair? She saw my shock at the question.
Speaker 1: Joe and I have often worn wigs, and we can't
Speaker 1: be certain. That means if it is a wig, it's
Speaker 1: a good one. We reached the elevator bank and I
Speaker 1: pushed down. He was walking slowly. He must have had
Speaker 1: a stroke. Still, he was an imposing figure of a man,
Speaker 1: and not just because he was wearing a cape. As
Speaker 1: I steered them away from the subject of our anchorman's
Speaker 1: to pay and talked instead about my Mickey Mantle interview.
Speaker 1: I realized he looked extremely familiar, like I knew him.
Speaker 1: Joseph Carleton kept rolling the name over in my mind.
Speaker 1: And Patricia Carlton, who are they? The elevator light went
Speaker 1: off and a very loud bell sounded. The doors opened,
Speaker 1: and there was my producer, Ron and the two man
Speaker 1: camera crew, and the reporter who had been with them
Speaker 1: on the previous story, Sam chu Lynn, who had stayed
Speaker 1: with him because he wanted to meet Mickey Mantle. And
Speaker 1: as I joked to my new friends Joe and Patricia Carlton,
Speaker 1: oh look, here's my camera crew, it's four members made
Speaker 1: no motion to even leave the elevator. They all looked
Speaker 1: dumb struck. Sam chu Lynn's eyes looked like they were
Speaker 1: about to pop out of his head. I assumed this
Speaker 1: was because my new friend Joe was wearing a cape.
Speaker 1: Finally I got the crew to move. I held the
Speaker 1: door open so Joe and Patricia could get into the elevator.
Speaker 1: I actually said, such a pleasure to meet you, and
Speaker 1: of course, thank you so much for watching Channel five
Speaker 1: News at ten, and she smiled warmly, and he managed
Speaker 1: a quick wave and the doors closed, and only at
Speaker 1: that exact moment did it dawn on me where I
Speaker 1: knew him from the blood now drained from my face.
Speaker 1: As I turned to talk to the camera crew and
Speaker 1: Ron and Sam, Uh, you guys knew who those two
Speaker 1: people were, right, Sam laughed at me. Of course I did,
Speaker 1: didn't you? And I sighed, oh my god. She said
Speaker 1: her name was Patricia Carleton and that was her husband,
Speaker 1: Joseph Carleton. And she said it that way because she's British,
Speaker 1: and that's how if you're British, you would say the
Speaker 1: name Cotton. She's Patricia Cotton and he's Joseph Cotton, who
Speaker 1: was in Citizen Kane. I remember actually putting my hand
Speaker 1: on the wall, on my face in my other hand,
Speaker 1: I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him.
Speaker 1: And the cameraman, Martin Klancy, who also often said things
Speaker 1: like this, said pretty stupid of you, huh? And I said,
Speaker 1: you know you have no idea how stupid. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I know who Joseph Cotton is. And Sam Chulin said,
Speaker 1: are you sure about that? I gave him a dirty
Speaker 1: look and I said, no, it's worse than this. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. The president of the International Joseph Cotton
Speaker 1: Fan Club was my mother. There is a picture of
Speaker 1: that man with my mother from like thirty seven years
Speaker 1: ago at the Stork Club.
Speaker 2: They all laughed.
Speaker 1: Then Sam Chulin said, in that photo is he wearing
Speaker 1: that cape?
Speaker 2: My gaff.
Speaker 1: Did serve to relax me a little for the interview
Speaker 1: with Mantle. Gaff. When I get over it, i'll let
Speaker 1: you know. So anyway, we all reached room eight ninety
Speaker 1: seven or whatever it was in the new Wing the
Speaker 1: Beverly Wilshire, and as the crew set up, I managed
Speaker 1: to tell the story of the Cottons to Mickey Mantle
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I saw them in the lobby
Speaker 1: a couple hours ago. He's a great actor. I met
Speaker 1: him in New York, must be thirty years ago. Did
Speaker 1: you say hi? Oh right, you just told me you
Speaker 1: didn't recognize him. Mickey Mantle was busting my chops, as
Speaker 1: I said. I had met him before, even interviewed him before,
Speaker 1: but this was our first sit down and he was
Speaker 1: in a good mood, even expansive and playful, and at
Speaker 1: one point he stunned me. I said, I know you
Speaker 1: only have a couple of minutes left, So forgive me
Speaker 1: if I'm bringing up something that takes more than a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. And he interrupted, and he said, take
Speaker 1: as much time as you need. I'm enjoying us talking.
Speaker 1: So I asked him about this one subject, how he
Speaker 1: felt about what he did in his career, considering how
Speaker 1: injured he was. When he retired, Mickey Mantle was third
Speaker 1: all time in home he hit three hundred and ten times.
Speaker 1: He played in twelve World Series on one bad knee
Speaker 1: and one worse knee. Mantle got very reflective and self critical.
Speaker 1: We use this SoundBite at the end of his obituary
Speaker 1: that I would do for ESPN a decade later if
Speaker 1: I'd known I was going to live so long, he
Speaker 1: told me, I would have taken better care of myself
Speaker 1: and done better. I said, well, he'd done pretty good.
Speaker 1: I could have done better.
Speaker 2: I thanked him.
Speaker 1: Then, as the cameraman moved to get the shots of
Speaker 1: me nodding and repeating a question or two, Mickey Mantle said,
Speaker 1: that was really good.
Speaker 2: I flushed.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you something. Can you give me
Speaker 1: some pointers? I suddenly had no idea what the word
Speaker 1: pointers meant? Pointers? What are pointers? Mantle said he was
Speaker 1: going to do some Yankee games the next year on
Speaker 1: cable with Mel Allen. I'm doing interviews after games. I'm
Speaker 1: no damn good at interviews. Just now, you were moving
Speaker 1: from topics to topics, so smooth. How you keep all
Speaker 1: the questions in your head? Now? I laughed, I didn't
Speaker 1: keep them in my head. Didn't you see my cheat card?
Speaker 1: And he laughed and he said no, and I showed
Speaker 1: it to him. I said, it's just a business card
Speaker 1: with like seven key words written on the back. If
Speaker 1: I think I might freeze up because I'm nervous because
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing Mickey Mantle, or I just met Joseph Cotton
Speaker 1: and I didn't recognize him, I make one of these cards.
Speaker 1: I hide it in the palm of my hand, and
Speaker 1: if I get stuck, I could just look down quickly
Speaker 1: and see one of the words and I've got the question.
Speaker 1: I've got this card to remind me. Mickey Mantle's eyes glowed.
Speaker 1: But wait, he said, we're using these mics, and he
Speaker 1: pointed to the clip on on his shirt, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to hold mike. What do you do if
Speaker 1: you have to hold the mic like I'll have to
Speaker 1: in an interview after a ballgame, what if the card
Speaker 1: would fall out or you have to shake hands with
Speaker 1: the player. And I said, well, just write the words
Speaker 1: on your hand whichever hand is holding the mic, like
Speaker 1: below the thumb. Mickey Mantle looked at me as if
Speaker 1: I had just given him the secret of eternal life. Wow,
Speaker 1: he said, that's great, I'm going to write this down. Thanks,
Speaker 1: and we were packed up, and he actually walked me
Speaker 1: to the hotel room door and gave me a double
Speaker 1: handed handshake. So it had been a big day, even
Speaker 1: if I didn't realize it was Joseph Cotton. Mickey Mantle
Speaker 1: had asked me for advice about anything. Somehow I had
Speaker 1: thought of something to tell him, and he was really
Speaker 1: happy about the advice, and of course this provided a punchline.
Speaker 1: The following spring, we were in the studios at KTLA,
Speaker 1: watching on the satellite feed as the Yankees first cable
Speaker 1: telecast of the nineteen eighty six season ended, and sure
Speaker 1: enough they threw it down to Mickey Mantle on the
Speaker 1: field interviewing some player, and one of my producers said, oh,
Speaker 1: let's see if he remembers the lesson you gave him,
Speaker 1: and another one said, here's your student, Mickey Mantle. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, after the first answer, Mickey Mantle pauses, and
Speaker 1: I know he can't remember what he wanted to ask that,
Speaker 1: And sure enough I see him cheat his look down
Speaker 1: slightly towards the hand holding the microphone. And the next
Speaker 1: thing I see he's kind of tilted the microphone sideways
Speaker 1: and he's asking the question. But you can barely hear
Speaker 1: him because the mic is pointing off at a forty
Speaker 1: five degree angle, because he has written his key reminder
Speaker 1: words not below the thumb on the outside part of
Speaker 1: his hand, but on the palm side of his hand,
Speaker 1: and he's had to move the mic out of the
Speaker 1: way to read the words on the palm of his hand.
Speaker 1: And the producer says, ha ha, well, now Mickey Mantle
Speaker 1: hates you. It sounded like Carlton to me. Also, I've
Speaker 1: spent most of the last what now thirty nine years
Speaker 1: wondering what happened to that cape. They'd like to have
Speaker 1: it framed on my wall somewhere. I've done all the
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Ryan Ray
Speaker 1: and John Phillip shaneil the musical directors of Countdown Arrange
Speaker 1: produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled
Speaker 1: orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums.
Speaker 1: I don't believe they have warned capes. It was produced
Speaker 1: by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
Speaker 1: by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who
Speaker 1: may have worn a cape. The sports music is the
Speaker 1: Oulderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: courtesy of ESPN Inc. There are no capes Citty ESPN.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer was my friend Larry David. No cape, no fur.
Speaker 1: Everything else was as ever my fault. That' for today,
Speaker 1: just fifteen hundred days until the scheduled end of the
Speaker 1: lame duck presidency of Trump scheduled. The next scheduled countdown
Speaker 1: is Monday. As always, boltins as the news warrants until
Speaker 1: next time, I'm Keith Aldremman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman 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.