Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. He
Speaker 1: who saves his country does not violate any law? Trump Saturday,
Speaker 1: And what about if you believe this country must be
Speaker 1: saved from Trump? It will never occur to Trump, it
Speaker 1: will never occur to a vast majority of his culture,
Speaker 1: will never occur even to a vast majority of commentators
Speaker 1: on both sides, American and Trumpist. But in posting that
Speaker 1: misquote of a probably apocryphal Napoleon quote, Trump has provided
Speaker 1: an excuse to ignore the law. For anybody who hates
Speaker 1: sim there can be no doubt Trump only thought, he
Speaker 1: who saves his country does not violate any law would
Speaker 1: apply to him, would inspire those who wish to act
Speaker 1: on his behalf. That is how crazy Trump really is.
Speaker 1: That's how far he has traveled from reality, traveled further
Speaker 1: from reality since the election. Because implicit in Trump's statement
Speaker 1: is the simple reality that you can never prove the
Speaker 1: negative here, that you can never prove you saved your country.
Speaker 1: You just have to really really believe it, or have
Speaker 1: others believe it. And for every single person who thinks
Speaker 1: Trump saved or is saving or will save this country,
Speaker 1: there is at least one other American who thinks this
Speaker 1: country has been saved, or is being saved or will
Speaker 1: be saved from Trump, and to tell all of them
Speaker 1: that they are not violating any law because they all
Speaker 1: believe they are saving this country. That way lies the
Speaker 1: wild West. Certainly, the media has exclusively treated Trump's post
Speaker 1: as if it applies, even in his warped, dead mind,
Speaker 1: only to him and to his supporters. The New York
Speaker 1: Times actually wrote the story up yesterday and came as
Speaker 1: close as ever it has to saying that might have
Speaker 1: been a stochastic call to terrorism on Trump's behalf, but
Speaker 1: the Times didn't, and nobody else is considering the broader context.
Speaker 1: What if you believe this country must be saved from Trump?
Speaker 1: What if you believe you must save this country from Trump? Well,
Speaker 1: apparently Trump just gave you the thumbs up. He who
Speaker 1: saves his country does not violate any law. I never
Speaker 1: done in that. Trump has now gone from the reality
Speaker 1: of November fifth. He got forty nine point eight percent
Speaker 1: of the vote. Everybody else got a combined fifty point
Speaker 1: two percent of the vote. He is a minority president.
Speaker 1: He went from that reality to this state of madness
Speaker 1: in which he can rationalize breaking any law and quoting
Speaker 1: Napoleon by merely claiming he has saved or is saving
Speaker 1: or will save the country, whichever suits him best at
Speaker 1: the current moment. It's like the wall. What does he
Speaker 1: need to be true right now? I built it already, No,
Speaker 1: I'm building it now, No I will build it. To
Speaker 1: say saving the country rationalizes and legalizes any act would
Speaker 1: be a stretch if you said it while you had, say,
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred percent support. Spoiler alert, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: one hundred percent support. His opinion poll approval numbers, which
Speaker 1: were higher than usual but still sucked, have since decreased,
Speaker 1: especially among young voters, and as they have decreased, his
Speaker 1: madness has increased. Still. If you need any indicator of
Speaker 1: what he intends to do next, he has just told
Speaker 1: you in that sentence everything attempt to stay in power
Speaker 1: past twenty twenty nine, stop elections if need be, arrest
Speaker 1: political opponents or worse, and most obviously ignore all laws.
Speaker 1: And in the last week he has somehow ratcheted this
Speaker 1: up because the now unambiguously declared lawlessness of he who
Speaker 1: uh what is the quote again? He who smelt it
Speaker 1: dealt it nah nah, sorry, He who saves his country
Speaker 1: does not violate any law that has been translated into
Speaker 1: other languages and offered up by Trump by a musk
Speaker 1: to Germany's new Nazis and to Russia's old dictator by
Speaker 1: Trump himself. And it has been shouted at our allies
Speaker 1: and our fellow democracies in Europe by the Vice President
Speaker 1: of I mister Vance and his functional IQ equivalent of
Speaker 1: that of a houseplant on a front porch in Fostoria, Ohio.
Speaker 1: So now it's not just as if Trump were trying
Speaker 1: to destroy America on behalf of another country. It is
Speaker 1: as if Trump were trying to destroy mankind on behalf
Speaker 1: of another planet. While Trump was destroying the Justice Department
Speaker 1: and turning Emil Beauve Beauvet Bloviator, whatever his name is,
Speaker 1: into the world's oldest legal prostitute in the Eric Adams case,
Speaker 1: while he and Eric Adams each wound up shackled to
Speaker 1: a corpse each other. While Trump was loosening the pestilence
Speaker 1: that is RFK Junior on health in this country and
Speaker 1: loosing this illiterate clown who used to be missus wrestling
Speaker 1: on the education system in this country, and while he
Speaker 1: was firing three hundred nuclear safety staffers because he was
Speaker 1: too stupid to realize they were the people who protected
Speaker 1: the national nuclear stockpile. And then he turned out to
Speaker 1: be even more too stupid, and he no longer had
Speaker 1: a way to contact them at home and on fire them.
Speaker 1: While Trump was showing just how majestically stupid he is,
Speaker 1: while he was proving he who saves time in a
Speaker 1: bottle does not have an opener nearby. While Trump was
Speaker 1: doing that himself, his gang of deputy Furres, Vance, Rubio
Speaker 1: and hegseeth, we're doing their impressions of Neville Chamberlain, actually
Speaker 1: doing their Nevil Chamberlain impressions in Munich, trying to set
Speaker 1: out Ukraine, trying to set out Europe, trying to serve Putin,
Speaker 1: trying to encourage China, and in the case of the
Speaker 1: desperately dysfunctional, cloudy brained Vance, try to make the world
Speaker 1: safe for men to wear eyeliner and have a beard.
Speaker 1: Who in the hell is JD Vance? To explain in
Speaker 1: Europe that Europe needs to be more fascist, and in
Speaker 1: being more fascist, to claim that it's free speech and
Speaker 1: it's trusting in the pillars of their own democracies. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, he's vice president of the United States. Spiro
Speaker 1: Agnew was vice president of the United States. John Calhoun
Speaker 1: was vice president of the United States. JD. Vance works
Speaker 1: for the world's leading purveyor of democracy destruction. JD Vance
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump's whore. And we don't know who Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is a whore for. But if you are now
Speaker 1: or if you have ever been agnostic, Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: the best evidence you have seen in your lifetime that
Speaker 1: there really is a satan. He who saves his country
Speaker 1: does not violate any law. Great, brilliant, very helpful. If
Speaker 1: it has ever crossed Trump's mind, it and its little
Speaker 1: feet echoing thunderously in that otherwise empty gold, rustolium covered space.
Speaker 1: Just how many million Americans currently think that they are
Speaker 1: supposed to save this country right now from him? Make
Speaker 1: sure they know the President of the United States just
Speaker 1: gave them a pass. You think you are in the
Speaker 1: process of saving the country? You follow your star kid,
Speaker 1: You do not violate any law. So what if you're
Speaker 1: just another nut job with a crazy dream. When they
Speaker 1: arrest you, you just say, but the President said, I
Speaker 1: does not violate any laws. Less explosively about this dumbest
Speaker 1: thing Trump has ever said, and maybe of more immediate
Speaker 1: importance about this dumbest thing Trump has ever said, you
Speaker 1: need to save the country from me, Go ahead, You're
Speaker 1: not violating any law. Maybe of more immediate importance about
Speaker 1: this moronic statement. The Democratic National Committee delegate David Atkins
Speaker 1: notes that Trump's post from Saturday, he who saves his
Speaker 1: country does not violate any law, should be used as
Speaker 1: evidence in every court filing against Trump and against the
Speaker 1: Doge scammers, and against Musk, and in the Eric Adams case,
Speaker 1: and in everything that he hasn't even done yet but will.
Speaker 1: In this context, it is the dumbest thing Trump has
Speaker 1: ever said, because it shows foreknowledge of intent to break
Speaker 1: the law. Because this sweeping madness doesn't just encourage assassins,
Speaker 1: it also encourages hacking by Musk employees who answer to
Speaker 1: names like Big Balls or the fop of the country,
Speaker 1: the father of the country. Oh that's Elon Musk. Twelve
Speaker 1: kids with four different women counting the newest claim by
Speaker 1: the fascist nitwit who calls herself Ashley Saint Clair. By
Speaker 1: the way, that appears to be her real name. Ashley
Speaker 1: Saint Clair says she just welcomed Musk's newest spawn five
Speaker 1: months ago. The update on this is now she's apparently
Speaker 1: hinting it was via IVF or, as the fertility experts
Speaker 1: call it, the driverless car of procreation. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure Musk will bring this child to the White House soon,
Speaker 1: because when he does it, it's cute, it's humanizing. If a
Speaker 1: woman did that, if Lauren Bobert did that, or if
Speaker 1: Nancy Mace had twelve kids with four different men, or
Speaker 1: if say, instead of Elon Musk doing that with the
Speaker 1: kid in the Oval office, Ben Carson had done that,
Speaker 1: or Ben Carson had had twelve kids with four different women,
Speaker 1: they would be run out of Maga by Maga. When
Speaker 1: Musk does it, they all bark like seals, like South
Speaker 1: African apartheid friendly seals, and they do features on the
Speaker 1: suit the kid was wearing, and they imply that the
Speaker 1: suit proves Musk is not just a reanimated skeleton with
Speaker 1: botox stretched over its skull. He who's saving all my
Speaker 1: love for you does not violate any law. Incidentally, the
Speaker 1: original version of he who saves his country does not
Speaker 1: violate any law. Was I'm not gonna pay a lot
Speaker 1: for this muffler or for this copy of the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: In the front runner for the twenty twenty five annual
Speaker 1: Hutzpa Award. This headline appeared in the Washington Post yesterday.
Speaker 1: Quote as Musk reshapes the government, some ask where are
Speaker 1: the guardrails? The White House has taken advantage of rules
Speaker 1: with weak enforcement and loopholes, or simply declared it can
Speaker 1: outweigh other laws. Lisa Rhyan then goes on at length
Speaker 1: about the guardrails, without ever mentioning the roles of Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos and Will Lewis and the other British ass hats
Speaker 1: brought in to neuter the Post in removing all the
Speaker 1: guardrails there and replacing them with ones made out of
Speaker 1: paper mache. Lisa Rhyne Lisa Rain Lisa R. E. I n,
Speaker 1: by the way, is identified in her Washington Post bio
Speaker 1: that the byline links to Lusie. She quote covers federal
Speaker 1: agencies and the management of government in the Biden administration unquote.
Speaker 1: And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to
Speaker 1: know about the Washington Post at the moment, I don't
Speaker 1: know what does covers federal agencies in the management of
Speaker 1: government in the Biden administration. How the hell should just
Speaker 1: get a byline? Then? I mean management failing to update
Speaker 1: you know what what president this is? That's one thing,
Speaker 1: it's the post. But the author herself never looks. Come on,
Speaker 1: not to be outdone. The New York Times offers this
Speaker 1: both sides, just headline. Still still they're doing this. Still,
Speaker 1: the evidence mounts that somebody is blackmailing Joe con Or
Speaker 1: the Selisburg News analysis. Trump officials attack a German consensus
Speaker 1: on Nazis and speech. Vice President J. D. Vance and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk have challenged decades long approaches to political extremism
Speaker 1: that were designed to prevent another Hitler. They won't even
Speaker 1: say in the headline that the Germans were posed to Nazis.
Speaker 1: The consensus on Nazis and speech. I wonder where they've
Speaker 1: they been four or against since the country was destroyed.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. The Times doesn't remember. Consensus challenged extremism
Speaker 1: prevent Vance and Musk on the same field trip as
Speaker 1: this Schlong covered in brill cream Hegseth. Vance and Musk
Speaker 1: sided publicly with Germany's new Nazis as critical elections loom
Speaker 1: in Germany. They didn't attack a consensus. They sided did
Speaker 1: with New Nazis. They're trying to influence the election in
Speaker 1: favor of the New Nazis, and nobody here is even
Speaker 1: publicly humiliating them for this. And I mean, just leave
Speaker 1: the politics of it out for a moment, leave the
Speaker 1: horrific pro fascism of it out for a moment, Just
Speaker 1: humiliate them. Musk and Dvance about their appearance starts simply
Speaker 1: with basic insults that everybody can understand. Pull off those Oh,
Speaker 1: we can't say terrible things about what they look like.
Speaker 1: This is war. You can throw out an insult about
Speaker 1: Musk's dead eyes and how Vance overcame his own dead
Speaker 1: eyes apparently by using Danessa Myrik's beauty line work paintbrush, fluid,
Speaker 1: liquid eyeliner. A little more materially on the subject of media,
Speaker 1: or what's left of it, we need a goddamned new
Speaker 1: use boycott of this White House until the Associated Press
Speaker 1: is fully reinstated. There I'll reuse this line from previous episodes.
Speaker 1: I have neither the time nor enough words to tell
Speaker 1: you how much this isn't going to happen. It could
Speaker 1: cost news organizations ten or twelve dollars each. They would
Speaker 1: never spend ten or twelve dollars each on a principle,
Speaker 1: but still in my dreams, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBCABCCBSNPR,
Speaker 1: all of them need to withdraw their reporters from covering
Speaker 1: Trump and to stop covering Trump on their broadcasts, to
Speaker 1: in fact use only the Associated Press coverage of Trump
Speaker 1: until the Gibbels division of the Trump administration backs off
Speaker 1: its attempts to crack the door open to controlling what
Speaker 1: all reporters say and write, and then ultimately what you
Speaker 1: say and write if you are unfamiliar. Trump insists the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico, which has been called that since at
Speaker 1: least fifteen point fifty, is now the Gulf of America,
Speaker 1: because Trump does not know that he who saves the
Speaker 1: cost of reprinting all the maps, does not violate any law.
Speaker 1: The Associated Press said, this is bullshit. The White House
Speaker 1: then said the Associated Press reporters were banned from the
Speaker 1: White House until it did change the name of the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico because Trump said so, and he is
Speaker 1: the law here. Now. The media solidarity the upside to
Speaker 1: that liberal monolith that rupert I was senile before senile
Speaker 1: was cool. Murdoch believes exists the media solidarity in defense
Speaker 1: of the AP. The Reuter's wire service says it quotes
Speaker 1: stands with the Associated Press in objecting to coverage restrictions
Speaker 1: imposed by the White House. Reuter stands with the AP,
Speaker 1: But of course not next to it is Reuters refusing
Speaker 1: to send a reporter to the White House. No. The
Speaker 1: White House Correspondence Association, its latest president is one of
Speaker 1: the conventional wisdom morons from Politico. It says this is
Speaker 1: unacceptable and its response is to resolutely do nothing about it.
Speaker 1: Axios did the most axios thing possible, showing absolutely no
Speaker 1: sense that if the White House can punish AP, it
Speaker 1: cansures how punish weaklings like Axios. Axios issued a statement saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the AP and all news organizations should be free to
Speaker 1: report as they see fit. And if that line in
Speaker 1: the sand isn't shallow enough, Axios found its own solution,
Speaker 1: quoting again, our standard is to use Gulf of America,
Speaker 1: renamed by US from Gulf of Mexico. Absolute clowns, possibly
Speaker 1: the greatest distance between how they are viewed in this
Speaker 1: country and in the media of this country. Axios, and
Speaker 1: how they think of themselves. The names are Van der
Speaker 1: Hie and Allan, They ares Fops, Fops, they think they
Speaker 1: are Pulitzer and Hearst. And still other news outlets have
Speaker 1: done worse than Axios. Other news outlets have said nothing.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I'll correct myself on that. The Atlantic has
Speaker 1: now published a piece with an amazing headline worse than nothing.
Speaker 1: The Gulf of America is the wrong fight to pick.
Speaker 1: Jelad Edelman writes that quote. It draws attention away from
Speaker 1: his more egregious affronts to the public interest and the
Speaker 1: rule of law. And it's a fight that the AP
Speaker 1: probably should never have picked in the first place. What
Speaker 1: you have just witnessed in one and one half sentences
Speaker 1: from mister Edelman is called the shifting of the Overton window.
Speaker 1: We are no longer arguing about whether psychotic bullies should
Speaker 1: be able to dictate what news organizations right and what
Speaker 1: terms and names they may use, but how often and
Speaker 1: under what circumstances. And more broadly, we are no longer
Speaker 1: arguing whether Trump should run rough shod over the laws
Speaker 1: and customs that have been the only thing holding this
Speaker 1: country together. For two and a half centuries. We're now
Speaker 1: arguing over which laws and customs he can run rough
Speaker 1: shod and which ones we should bother to defend. To
Speaker 1: quote Angela Lansbury as missus John Yerke's Iceland in the
Speaker 1: Manchurian Candidate, what are they saying? Are they saying are
Speaker 1: there any Communists in the Defense Department? No, of course not.
Speaker 1: They're saying how many Commune his star there in the
Speaker 1: Defense Department? And the Atlantic just helped the media continues
Speaker 1: to collapse like a poorly built house of cards. I
Speaker 1: like to think a house of cards made from the
Speaker 1: deck that they use in the Manchurian Candidate. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any question of it now. Whatever combination of
Speaker 1: blackmail and plain old fear of making only thirty seven
Speaker 1: billion this year, not forty seven billion that caused the
Speaker 1: Washington Post and Facebook and the others to fold under
Speaker 1: the slightest possible pressure. It's clearly at work at the
Speaker 1: New York Times too. That piece I mentioned before about Hitler. Oh,
Speaker 1: we've hurt the consensus about Hitler. We won't say what
Speaker 1: the consensus was. We might offend Hitler. He might be
Speaker 1: still reading somewhere somebody at the New York Times is
Speaker 1: being pressured. A Times guest op ed Trump might have
Speaker 1: a case on birthright citizenships the venue for the Peace,
Speaker 1: and that qualifier might makes you think, well, this must
Speaker 1: be something from a neutral writer or source. Of course
Speaker 1: it isn't. It's a piece that could have run on
Speaker 1: Fox News, or maybe it's stupid enough for Gateway Pundit.
Speaker 1: Two authors, both lawyers, One argued to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: that Obamacare was unconstitutional and the other one is worse,
Speaker 1: an anti COVID vaccine nut lawyer and Fourteenth Amendment originalist
Speaker 1: whose argument boils down to the belief that Trump expressed
Speaker 1: again yesterday, that the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to and
Speaker 1: thus should now only apply to X slaves, all those
Speaker 1: ex slaves in the country at the moment. That's who
Speaker 1: the Fourteenth Amendment applies to, not anybody else. This is
Speaker 1: in the New York Times. Trump might have a case
Speaker 1: on declaring himself emperor. I'm sorry I was reading ahead.
Speaker 1: Of course. Eventually, all of the spineless, weasel news outlets
Speaker 1: who act like this do get hoisted on their own petard.
Speaker 1: When ABC settled Trump's nuisance lawsuit. I said it was
Speaker 1: a legal bribe. When CBS reportedly began to debate settling
Speaker 1: Trump's nuisance suit against them, I said that would be
Speaker 1: a legal bribe too well. A Wall Street Journal now
Speaker 1: reports that the CBS owner, Paramount Quote, is wrestling with
Speaker 1: Weather to settle Trump's lawsuit against its CBS News unit,
Speaker 1: and how it might do so without exposing executives to
Speaker 1: future legal threats such as accusations of ribery. Told you so,
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. Paramount executives Quote in recent weeks
Speaker 1: have talked about the risk that paying such a settlement
Speaker 1: could expose directors and officers to liability in potential future
Speaker 1: shareholder litigation. Were criminal charges for bribing a public official
Speaker 1: and an additional concern that such litigation and here's the
Speaker 1: telling point, an additional concern that such litigation may not
Speaker 1: be protected by director and officer insurance. Oh how rich.
Speaker 1: It has only just occurred to them that by bribing
Speaker 1: a president they might be charged with bribery, and worse,
Speaker 1: that their insurance might not cover either the bribe or
Speaker 1: the resultant lawsuits from stockholders who don't want to pay
Speaker 1: the money. Wait until somebody reminds them that theoretically paying
Speaker 1: blackmail to Trump will only encourage him to blackmail them again.
Speaker 1: I can't leave you in this state of depression. There's
Speaker 1: actually a media note that is oddly an unexpectedly encouraging.
Speaker 1: The ex Republican strategist and comm's specialist, Sherry Jacobis, has
Speaker 1: a really really good idea low effort, low danger, high
Speaker 1: yield idea. She has been suggesting for a while that
Speaker 1: the Democrats should hold a daily press briefing on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: appoint a kind of shadow press secretary, giving an alternate
Speaker 1: White House press briefing the Democratic press briefing. Name a
Speaker 1: Democratic press secretary, give him a staff, and have him
Speaker 1: or her hold a daily news conference. Last week I
Speaker 1: said AOC should do this every Sunday morning, so she
Speaker 1: could own that news cycle Sunday and Monday and control
Speaker 1: the Sunday news shows. But this is better. Somebody suggested
Speaker 1: Pete Buddhajeedge as Democratic press secretary, and that's gold too.
Speaker 1: You could have guests show up at the press conference,
Speaker 1: but the week should be the work week for the
Speaker 1: press secretary, the Democratic press secretary. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the competition would be the actual White House Press Secretary,
Speaker 1: the former center fielder of Saint Anselm College softball. But
Speaker 1: the week for the Democratic Press Secretary should be not
Speaker 1: Monday through Friday, but Sunday through Thursday. It should start
Speaker 1: at eight am at Sunday. You would own the Sunday
Speaker 1: shows now and forever own the news cycle on Sundays.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here on this all new edition of
Speaker 1: Countdown a Confession, why I really killed the twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen GQ video commentary series The Resistance. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: what I told you previously. None of that was untrue,
Speaker 1: but there was more to it. More importantly, the explanation
Speaker 1: pertains to what it says now about exhaustion in the
Speaker 1: battle against the forces of President Pimp. He who saves
Speaker 1: his country does not violate any law. Okay, I got
Speaker 1: the message. Thanks, thanks, thanks for giving me immunity. He
Speaker 1: who saves his country does not violate any law. Well,
Speaker 1: I was going to do the rest of this podcast,
Speaker 1: but I'm off to save my country first. The confession
Speaker 1: that's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: old Woman just going ahead. In this all new edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown a Confession, the real reason I discontinued the
Speaker 1: GQ video series The Resistance in twenty seventeen. Actually it
Speaker 1: is four reasons and why this is relevant to the
Speaker 1: subtext to our current nightmare, the fact that everybody fighting
Speaker 1: these American fascists so goddamn tired. Next on things I
Speaker 1: promise not to tell first, believe it or not, there's
Speaker 1: still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
Speaker 1: of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
Speaker 1: constitute today's other worse persons in the world Brons worse residents,
Speaker 1: some not all, of Redding, Pennsylvania. This is from the
Speaker 1: New Republic reading Pennsylvania voters. There seventy percent Latino. They
Speaker 1: moved sixteen points towards Trump last year over twenty twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen points. The Democrats still won the town, nevertheless, as
Speaker 1: the Republic rights the New Republic. Indeed, that led some
Speaker 1: Dominicans to develop a particularly hopeful view of Trump. Some
Speaker 1: came to believe that when Trump talked about not wanting
Speaker 1: quote illegals in the country, he was really telegraphing that
Speaker 1: he might pursue some sort of amnesty for the undocumented
Speaker 1: who don't merit removal. Amnesty, the mayor of the town,
Speaker 1: mister Moron said, is something they fondly associate associate with
Speaker 1: a Republican president due to Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: immigration reform bill. A lot of Dominicans believed that could happen.
Speaker 1: Moron told me, speaking of hopes for Trump amnesty, I
Speaker 1: heard that one too many times. They thought the Leopards
Speaker 1: were going to grant them amnesty because Reagan did thirty
Speaker 1: eight years earlier. It's nice to know people are alike
Speaker 1: all over. The runner up wor Sir Mark Zuckerberg again
Speaker 1: said it before, I'll say it again. Whatever Trump has
Speaker 1: on him, it is a dilly Facebook refused to allow
Speaker 1: ads local ads boosted posts for the Invictus Games. You
Speaker 1: know what the Invictus Games are. You've seen this right.
Speaker 1: Everybody has an opinion about Prince Harry, I suppose except me,
Speaker 1: But whatever you think of him, one of the things
Speaker 1: he's done with his time over the years is to
Speaker 1: establish a kind of Olympics for injured athletes, many of them,
Speaker 1: perhaps a majority, wounded soldiers who wanted to continue continue
Speaker 1: in sports despite the most horrific of injuries and whose
Speaker 1: success comes in their decision not to stop. The Vancouver
Speaker 1: Ad Agency the Invictus Games this year were in Vancouver.
Speaker 1: Running these boosted posts on Facebook was told quote, these
Speaker 1: ads can't run because it is about social issues, elections,
Speaker 1: or politics. But you have not authorized your account to
Speaker 1: run ads with political content. You will either need to
Speaker 1: have an authorized page admin place this ad, or go
Speaker 1: through the authorization process yourself. As part of the authorization's process,
Speaker 1: all page admins and advertisers who want to run these
Speaker 1: ads must enable two factor authentication and verify their identity
Speaker 1: and location. The page admin must also link ad accounts
Speaker 1: used for political content to the page and create an
Speaker 1: approved disclaimer to show who is paying for ads. Once
Speaker 1: you have become authorized, you can go back to the
Speaker 1: ads creation interface and select social issues, elections, or politics
Speaker 1: from the special ad category section during campaign creation. In
Speaker 1: other words, you can't advertise Prince Harry's Invictus Games because
Speaker 1: that's politics and elections and social issues because apparently somebody
Speaker 1: somewhere thinks it's controversial to have injured ex servicemen competing
Speaker 1: in the one mile run. Facebook is no longer fact
Speaker 1: checking President Pimp, but it is requiring a line by
Speaker 1: line detailing of where the money is coming from to
Speaker 1: promote an international sporting event celebrating people who have achieved
Speaker 1: athletic greatness despite getting their limbs blown off. Delete your
Speaker 1: Facebook account today. It is as compromised as Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: but our winners Jim Van de High and Mike Allen
Speaker 1: of a This was written under their bylines. Trump and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, arguably the two most unorthodox and influential American
Speaker 1: leaders of the twenty first century, are practicing and fine
Speaker 1: tuning a fused theory of governing power masculine maximalism. I'll
Speaker 1: just read that again, masculine maximalism. Why it matters. Trump
Speaker 1: and Musk believe powerfully in maximalist action and language, which
Speaker 1: is being carried out by strong, mostly white men as blunt,
Speaker 1: uncompromising instruments to prove new limits both to power and
Speaker 1: what's possible. I'm still stuck back here on the idea
Speaker 1: that somebody in the world thinks that Trump and Musk
Speaker 1: are masculine, not only masculine, but define masculine maximalism. You
Speaker 1: mean weight Trump, masculine Musk, the Pillsbury dough boy, Trump
Speaker 1: three hundred pounds of shit in a two hundred pounds
Speaker 1: suit and hair and skin dyed with Restolium. Axios I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier has already sold out to Trump a thousand
Speaker 1: times thinks as the founders do Alan and vanda Hi
Speaker 1: that they are Pulitzer and Hurst. Just now they caved
Speaker 1: by renaming the Gulf of Mexico quote Gulf of America
Speaker 1: renamed by us from Gulf of Mexico, which just flows
Speaker 1: off the tongue and really makes an article sing, while
Speaker 1: insisting that by doing that they were maintaining journalism and independence.
Speaker 1: And Jim Vandahi and Mike Allen of Axios and by
Speaker 1: the way, masculine maximism them. Look, I will never claim
Speaker 1: ever to be Captain Beefcake over here, but have you
Speaker 1: ever seen Mike Allen in Jim van Hi masculine maximalism?
Speaker 1: This is as dumb as calling Musker Trump masculine band
Speaker 1: Hi and Alan today's other worst persons in the world. JD.
Speaker 1: Vans's mathles finally to the number one story on the
Speaker 1: Countdown and Things I Promised not to tell and a confession.
Speaker 1: This is about the video series I used to do
Speaker 1: for GQ dot com. First, it was called the Closer.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be the closer argument in the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen presidential election. We all know how ineptly named
Speaker 1: I named it. Then it became the Resistance, which kind
Speaker 1: of took off. One of the Resistance videos was interacted
Speaker 1: with fifty four million times on Facebook in late twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and early twenty seventeen, and an independent Internet kind
Speaker 1: of thing evaluating interactions between people and say Keith ol
Speaker 1: Ruman videos determined and was quoted by CBS News as
Speaker 1: indicating that that was the most interacted political thing on
Speaker 1: Facebook in the entire year after the election. So the
Speaker 1: GQ series, which was ultimately referred to as the Resistance
Speaker 1: and got I forget how many one hundred million views
Speaker 1: in total now, was something of a success until I
Speaker 1: suddenly canceled it. I have told truths about why it
Speaker 1: was canceled, but they have all been half truths. And
Speaker 1: in the spirit of there are no more f's left,
Speaker 1: let alone fs that I want to get, I think
Speaker 1: I ought to fill in the complete story because it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more complicated that I let on at
Speaker 1: the time, and it is apropos of the current moment
Speaker 1: as well. With so many of us struggling to fight back.
Speaker 1: Now that our worst realizations and dreams have come together,
Speaker 1: we are seeing all the things we said might happen,
Speaker 1: all happening all at once, and we have brilliant responses.
Speaker 1: Like the Washington Post, after a year of not being
Speaker 1: anything resembling the guardrail it was supposed to be, writing
Speaker 1: an article actually headlined what happened to the guardrails? You
Speaker 1: ate them, Jeff Bezos, or you turn them into plastic
Speaker 1: and use them on your girlfriend. Sorry for the analogy,
Speaker 1: and more importantly for the imagery, but here's the point.
Speaker 1: I was doing about three commentaries a week, usually for GQ,
Speaker 1: and we did them, recorded them Monday afternoons, took one
Speaker 1: trip down there. I got no money for it, except
Speaker 1: for some charitable donations to dog charities and carfare, and
Speaker 1: initially it was only carfare in one direction. I swear
Speaker 1: to God, the Conde Nast people were so cheap at
Speaker 1: the beginning. They only gave me carfare and uber in
Speaker 1: one direction. You didn't have to give me any money.
Speaker 1: There's no insurance required. Therefore, you don't have to send
Speaker 1: a car for somebody, which is why TV organizations and
Speaker 1: other video organizations and news organizations send cars for people
Speaker 1: because they are liable for them insurance wise. But of
Speaker 1: course if you're not paying the guy anything, if there's
Speaker 1: no real contract, there's no insurance. I digress. Eventually the
Speaker 1: thing began to make money, even though we were not
Speaker 1: doing it for money, and I'll give Conde Nass credit
Speaker 1: for this. They were not doing it for money either,
Speaker 1: but it did make money. Those pre roll ads on YouTube,
Speaker 1: just those generated something like a million dollars for Conde Nast,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have to do anything other than hire
Speaker 1: a teleprompter once a week so I could record three
Speaker 1: of them. One that was kind of news of the
Speaker 1: day for Monday release in the afternoon, something else that
Speaker 1: would go on Wednesday, and then a third one that
Speaker 1: would run Thursday or Friday that tended to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more philosophical or predictive towards events later in
Speaker 1: the week. The system worked fairly well, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it was going to The real benefit I got
Speaker 1: out of it, other than venting my spleen was the
Speaker 1: fact that I was dressed by the head of styling
Speaker 1: for men for GQ magazine, and I have never looked
Speaker 1: better in my life. And the suits that he gave
Speaker 1: me are still in fashion, and some of them were
Speaker 1: ahead of their time. And his advice about how I
Speaker 1: should dress was the first not only good advice I'd
Speaker 1: ever gotten, but the first definitive advice. I literally put
Speaker 1: on the suit that he suggested, and the narrow tie
Speaker 1: he suggested, and the narrow lapels, never having thought for
Speaker 1: a moment that these things mattered at all. And I
Speaker 1: looked at myself on the video and I went, hey,
Speaker 1: when did I lose twenty five pounds? Okay, so we'd
Speaker 1: go down there and record these and I believe they
Speaker 1: have had some value. I think they had value to me,
Speaker 1: and if that fifty four million number was accurate in
Speaker 1: any way, they had value to you. And then one
Speaker 1: day I stopped them. Well, there's a backstory to it.
Speaker 1: It was speculated at the time that I had been
Speaker 1: threatened or blackmailed, that I had been as Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: has been, or Mark Zuckerberg had been, likely the victim
Speaker 1: of somebody coming to me and saying, hey, remember that
Speaker 1: time that you did this, Well, we have pictures of it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in one respect, my life has largely been totally dull
Speaker 1: and has not included anything that pictures of them would
Speaker 1: make any difference, or anybody would go, that's appalling, We're
Speaker 1: going to put you in jail. We're going to sue you.
Speaker 1: People would go, that's it, that's what you spent your
Speaker 1: life doing. So it wasn't that. But there were other
Speaker 1: psychological components, and again they come to bear now on
Speaker 1: me as they did then, and as they are doing
Speaker 1: in an extraordinary almost epidemic level with those fighting back
Speaker 1: against trump fascism and Elonnodziism right now. There is a
Speaker 1: weariness abroad in the land on top of everything else.
Speaker 1: And you know it, and I do know it. We're
Speaker 1: not just afraid, mortified, depressed. We're tired. All I wanted
Speaker 1: to do after the election was retire from this, or
Speaker 1: maybe do one commentary a month or something like that,
Speaker 1: or I don't know, do a dog series of podcasts
Speaker 1: or a sports series of podcasts, or no podcasts at all.
Speaker 1: I've been on the air or online or on microphone
Speaker 1: pretty much every day since nineteen seventy five. I still
Speaker 1: have many things to say, but frankly, I'd rather not
Speaker 1: say most of them. And you've heard most of them already. Okay,
Speaker 1: One day in the summer, I think the early summer
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen, I was sitting with my two dogs,
Speaker 1: then the two dogs the two girls in a little
Speaker 1: part of Central Park near the mall, near the Bethesda Fountain,
Speaker 1: where we used to all congregate, all of us who
Speaker 1: had small dogs. And there were twelve or fifteen humans
Speaker 1: and twenty or twenty five dogs, and they'd mix and
Speaker 1: match at various times of the day, but always on
Speaker 1: the weekend there'd be a late crowd in the afternoon somewhere.
Speaker 1: And one day we had almost everybody in this little
Speaker 1: cleiku together, and we were sitting there minding our own business,
Speaker 1: and I was saying something to one of my dogs
Speaker 1: or one of my neighbors. And a guy, a creepy
Speaker 1: looking guy in his late twenties, early thirties, and this
Speaker 1: woman with him, with her head bowed like she was
Speaker 1: out of the handmaid's tail, only she'd left her hat
Speaker 1: at home, wouldn't look up, make eye contact with anybody.
Speaker 1: And this guy is just walking ten or twelve feet
Speaker 1: in front of this gaggle of ten or twelve people
Speaker 1: and then twenty or so dogs and he stops and
Speaker 1: he goes, wait, you're Keith Olderman, and I said yes,
Speaker 1: there's no point in denying it, and he went, kill
Speaker 1: yourself now. Several other people around me gasped when they
Speaker 1: heard this, and I went, here we go. And he
Speaker 1: went on about Trump this and Trump that. We got
Speaker 1: into a shouting match, and I told him I'd see
Speaker 1: him at the impeachments and he'd have a nice time
Speaker 1: in hell. And the woman got her head bowed further down.
Speaker 1: If it had been any lower, she would have been
Speaker 1: a contortionist with her head between her knees. But the
Speaker 1: guy kept saying, no, really, you should go home and
Speaker 1: kill yourself right now. And several of my friends who
Speaker 1: were not at all versed in the history of my
Speaker 1: experiences with listeners, viewers, people who sent me fake anthrax,
Speaker 1: Dodger fans who called into CANX radio in nineteen eight
Speaker 1: complaining that I referred to a Dodger player as a loafer,
Speaker 1: so they were going to come down to the studio
Speaker 1: and cut out my tongue. They didn't understand that, whereas
Speaker 1: this was always going to be a disturbing thing, it
Speaker 1: was not necessarily something I needed to call the cops about.
Speaker 1: I was prepared to have a fight with the guy
Speaker 1: if need be, and I was prepared to get at
Speaker 1: hell out of there if need be, and I was
Speaker 1: prepared to, if necessary, call the cops. But I didn't
Speaker 1: gauge this. This was a bully who was trying to
Speaker 1: impress himself that he was saying. So I gave as
Speaker 1: good as I got and he staggered off and the
Speaker 1: woman behind him, and I just thought, flee, madam, flee.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this on the way home
Speaker 1: with the dogs, not about me, but about the dogs,
Speaker 1: because these people, the Trump people, are the kind of
Speaker 1: people who would try to hurt somebody like me by
Speaker 1: hurting the dogs. Simply put, they're bullies. They have very
Speaker 1: little connection to reality, and they certainly have no empathy
Speaker 1: or human understanding. And as many dog lovers as there
Speaker 1: are inside the right wing, these are the same people
Speaker 1: who believe in taking care of their dogs and the
Speaker 1: dogs they rescue, as opposed to all dogs, regardless of
Speaker 1: the denomination of the humans connected to them. And I
Speaker 1: thought about that for a while, and I said, that's
Speaker 1: how bad this situation really is. Coincidentally, two or three
Speaker 1: league weeks later, after doing those two or three commentaries
Speaker 1: every week for GQ, I was in the Apple store
Speaker 1: nearest my home in Manhattan, and somehow or another, as
Speaker 1: I walked in, I walked into just the optimum moment
Speaker 1: where the floor manager, who was the oldest guy in
Speaker 1: the building somewhere in his forties, stopped me and said,
Speaker 1: mister Alderman, welcome, Can I help you? And it quickly
Speaker 1: was revealed that he had grown up on the West coast,
Speaker 1: San Francisco Bay area. If I remember correctly, this is
Speaker 1: after all, twenty seventeen. He's on the West Coast, and
Speaker 1: he might have been the youngest guy who I was
Speaker 1: likely to run into in the year twenty seventeen who
Speaker 1: had watched Sports Center religiously in the years that I
Speaker 1: anchored it from nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: because he was on the West Coast, and what I
Speaker 1: did with Dan Patrick as the eleven PM Sports Center
Speaker 1: was for him the eight PM Sports Center. He watched
Speaker 1: it when he was ten eleven years old before he
Speaker 1: went to bed at night, and he couldn't stop talking
Speaker 1: about it and how things had changed, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing has changed. We couldn't do that now,
Speaker 1: and he goes, no, you could do it now. I
Speaker 1: would watch it now. I know I would have all
Speaker 1: seen all the highlights in advance. It doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: a question of quality. What they put on the air
Speaker 1: now is terrible. It was the fact that you and
Speaker 1: Dan were doing. And I said, well, the little rosiness
Speaker 1: of nostalgia, all nostalgia is valuable because you were younger
Speaker 1: than and further away from death, among other things. And
Speaker 1: he laughed and I went, no, I'm serious, and he
Speaker 1: laughed again. I went no. We went on for a while,
Speaker 1: and then he brought in a colleague who was a
Speaker 1: little younger than himself, who was also from the West
Speaker 1: Coast and also watched. And these guys could not have
Speaker 1: been happier to have seen me and to have gotten
Speaker 1: all nostalgic and to insist to me that I should
Speaker 1: go back and do Sports Center again. And yes, they
Speaker 1: were arch liberals. They knew of the video series for GQ,
Speaker 1: they knew that the MSNBC show, and they said, this
Speaker 1: is what we need right now. First full year of
Speaker 1: the first Trump presidency or dictatorship. Dictatorship one, the Kingdom
Speaker 1: of Trump, Round one well, it took me an hour
Speaker 1: to get my phone fixed or whatever it is I
Speaker 1: was in there for. And I was walking home by myself,
Speaker 1: juxtaposing the incident in the park, with the guy who
Speaker 1: told me to kill myself, and with these guys who
Speaker 1: were so happy at the memory of SportsCenter, and I
Speaker 1: got all nostalgic about it, forgetting, of course, every negative
Speaker 1: that was associated with doing the show, or working there,
Speaker 1: or living there, or anything else that went on during
Speaker 1: that five and a half year span of my first
Speaker 1: tenure with ESPN. But remember I had just done another
Speaker 1: tenure with ESPN from twenty thirteen to fifteen on ESPN
Speaker 1: two every night, in a kind of kind of flashback
Speaker 1: to that style of Sports Center, only on ESPN two
Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock. Only they never ran at eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: because they bounced this around from network to networking timeslot
Speaker 1: to timeslot. That's another complaint for another time. Regardless, I
Speaker 1: got to thinking about SportsCenter nineteen ninety four and how
Speaker 1: much fun it was to have everybody like me. We're
Speaker 1: in television, we're in media. We want you to like us.
Speaker 1: If one person liking us were sufficient, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the mental problems that led us to work into television
Speaker 1: or radio or media of any kind. If you need
Speaker 1: a crowd of people to love you, something's wrong, and
Speaker 1: that is solved by television and also created by television.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about these two things where I
Speaker 1: would now have to run into for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. And I wasn't surprised by the guy who
Speaker 1: said kill yourself. But it was just sitting there opposite
Speaker 1: this glowing memory provided to me by two viewers who
Speaker 1: wished as adults that we did that show that they
Speaker 1: so loved when they were kids. By coincidence, I had
Speaker 1: been in touch about something else with several of the
Speaker 1: people I'd worked for at ESPN in twenty thirteen to fifteen,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about the possibility of my going
Speaker 1: back to work there again. Well, now, I escalated that,
Speaker 1: and suddenly we were having meetings every couple of weeks
Speaker 1: about my going back to work there and possibly doing
Speaker 1: the six PM Sports Center. The then president of ESPN,
Speaker 1: John Skipper, wanted me to do baseball play by play,
Speaker 1: and I said I've never done it before. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he'd be great at it. And he said,
Speaker 1: and by the way, I think you should do it
Speaker 1: by yourself with no color announcer. I can't get anybody
Speaker 1: to do that. If Vin Scully doesn't, and he's the
Speaker 1: most popular sports broadcaster of all time, why doesn't anybody
Speaker 1: else do it? You'd be second best. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: he's Ben Scully in any event. That's another argument again
Speaker 1: for another time. But we were talking about this, and
Speaker 1: we were talking about sports centers or a new show
Speaker 1: in New York, or maybe my moving back to Connecticut
Speaker 1: or something, and it just seemed well, I was then
Speaker 1: fifty eight years old, and I was thinking, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much longer I'm going to do this, but
Speaker 1: you know what I'd like to do. I'd like to
Speaker 1: do a job here before I retire and before I
Speaker 1: die that I simply enjoy at least the parts about
Speaker 1: being on the air that I don't WinCE and wake
Speaker 1: up sweating in the middle of the night over because
Speaker 1: I so hate the man I am talking about, and
Speaker 1: I so wish that the world that he has ruined
Speaker 1: could be fixed. And then I know that I might
Speaker 1: be able to stave some of this off, but I
Speaker 1: can't fix it no matter what I do. I can't
Speaker 1: fix it. I might be able to improve it for
Speaker 1: the ten minutes I'm on the air or in the video,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to fix it. He has powerful
Speaker 1: forces behind him in a time in which all you
Speaker 1: need is cash, and yet I thought, well, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: I want to make a decision here based on what
Speaker 1: I want to do. And so we neared a deal
Speaker 1: at ESPN, and it began to be in September and
Speaker 1: October of twenty seventeen evident that I would return to
Speaker 1: ESPN in twenty eighteen, probably anchoring the six PM Sports
Speaker 1: Center by myself in Bristol, Connecticut, with the goal towards
Speaker 1: moving it back to Manhattan within six months. That was
Speaker 1: the plan, and I'd be doing baseball play by play,
Speaker 1: although not by myself. So I knew I would have
Speaker 1: to wrap up the GQ series, and the announced reason
Speaker 1: that I gave for leaving that series was that I
Speaker 1: believed that the mainstream media had finally assessed the reality
Speaker 1: of Trump's threat to mankind, to continued human population of
Speaker 1: this planet, and in fact, any life form on this
Speaker 1: planet menaced every minute, and increasingly so by Trump, as
Speaker 1: we are now seeing again. I thought that the media
Speaker 1: had begun to pick this up. Finally, even the Chuck
Speaker 1: Todds of this world seemed to be understanding just what
Speaker 1: a dire situation we were in. I really did believe
Speaker 1: that was the case, and I also thought the Muller
Speaker 1: report was going to be of some value. And I
Speaker 1: also thought that the media, when Trump inevitably tried to
Speaker 1: bury it as he would and did, that they would
Speaker 1: fight back and read the actual report and do their
Speaker 1: reporting based on the report and not the summary from
Speaker 1: bar Are. Anyway, that was to some degree an excuse
Speaker 1: because there were a couple of other factors. I wrapped
Speaker 1: up the GQ series suddenly in a video saying Okay,
Speaker 1: my work here is done. And I needed to do
Speaker 1: that to clear a little space between the end of
Speaker 1: that series, and I needed perhaps a month until we
Speaker 1: were going to announce my third tenure at ESPN, possibly
Speaker 1: anchoring the six pm Sports Center, or at least going
Speaker 1: back into the Sports Center mix and baseball play by play,
Speaker 1: and a full time job again with ESPN for the
Speaker 1: third time, and the second time since it appeared that
Speaker 1: we had descended into a role of perpetual antagonists in
Speaker 1: a nuclear war. ESPN and me peace. Ain't it wonderful?
Speaker 1: So I needed something to say, Okay, I've decided that
Speaker 1: I can't do anything more here and I need to
Speaker 1: for my own life go and move back to ESPN.
Speaker 1: And then there was the precipitate event. In producing these commentaries,
Speaker 1: the Resistance ones and before that, the Closer ones for GQ,
Speaker 1: I had been in the good hands of a man
Speaker 1: named Jeff Gagnin, who was an editor at GQ, and
Speaker 1: who had suggested through somebody I didn't know who had
Speaker 1: called me for a quote on a story, had said,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you do get to talk to Olderhiman,
Speaker 1: ask him why he's not doing a video series somewhere
Speaker 1: about the upcoming election. And I said, who asked this question?
Speaker 1: And I got his number and I called, and the
Speaker 1: next thing I knew we were having a meeting. And
Speaker 1: the next thing I knew, he said, we can host these,
Speaker 1: we can put them on our platform, and we'll fact
Speaker 1: check them for you. We had a deal between the
Speaker 1: first mention that they might be interested in something or
Speaker 1: at least questioning why there was no series. Between that
Speaker 1: first mention and the first video was ten days and
Speaker 1: Jeff was involved in editing and producing these things, although
Speaker 1: he was more of a magazine editor and still is,
Speaker 1: and he assigned me to their video producer for GQ magazine,
Speaker 1: a woman named Derna Newton, who was from New Zealand,
Speaker 1: who had worked previously at arms distance from Michael Moore,
Speaker 1: but in that group of people, and mostly produced fashion videos.
Speaker 1: Because she worked for GQ, she wasn't in any way
Speaker 1: limited to that kind of material, but that was her world.
Speaker 1: And so when I presented the first script for the
Speaker 1: first Trump commentary for GQ, it was in my mind
Speaker 1: at my timing, seventeen minutes long. And she looked at
Speaker 1: it and she said, you think maybe you could cut
Speaker 1: this to two and a half, And I said, no,
Speaker 1: the point is it's seventeen minutes. You can't put out
Speaker 1: of seventeen minute video. That was the start of a
Speaker 1: very contentious relationship. She brought everything that she knew about video,
Speaker 1: which was celebrities, fashion, rock stars, people dressed in funny hats,
Speaker 1: all that. She brought, that short attention span audience. She
Speaker 1: brought that to the table, and I brought my experierience
Speaker 1: with political commentaries in which seventeen minutes was not the
Speaker 1: longest commentary I'd ever done. And we didn't butt heads.
Speaker 1: We ran from opposite ends of the earth at high
Speaker 1: speed for like an hour in each direction, and then
Speaker 1: hit head to head day after day after day. There
Speaker 1: was no week that passed where I did not say,
Speaker 1: you have got to get Durana off this series. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure there is no week that went by where
Speaker 1: she didn't say I've got to get off this series.
Speaker 1: And this went on for several months, and then something
Speaker 1: happened at a meeting before the recording of the three
Speaker 1: commentaries on Monday afternoon, where Dorenna said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about what you were doing here and
Speaker 1: what you said, and these are the areas where I
Speaker 1: think you're right. And I had been thinking on the
Speaker 1: way in, now that they were picking up the cost
Speaker 1: of the uber. On the way in, I had been
Speaker 1: thinking that she had been right about something that she
Speaker 1: had wanted to do in terms of production, how she
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot these things. She said, you move your
Speaker 1: hands a lot. I had wanted it tight on my face.
Speaker 1: She said, you move your hands very eloquently. We need
Speaker 1: to see your hands moving. And I thought this was
Speaker 1: the dumbest thing I ever saw until about six people
Speaker 1: in a row said, you know, by the way, the
Speaker 1: other thing I like about those commentaries, you're talking with
Speaker 1: your hands. Finally she had made a good point. I
Speaker 1: had made a good point. Well, that was the beginning
Speaker 1: of one of the great collaborative experiences of my life.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we found that there were vast amounts of material
Speaker 1: that the other one could use and improve upon, and
Speaker 1: then we smoothed out a lot of the rough edges
Speaker 1: of this series, both in terms of what it looked
Speaker 1: like and more importantly, how we produced it. We cut
Speaker 1: the production time in half so I could actually spend
Speaker 1: another two hours every Monday thinking about what I was
Speaker 1: going to say, rather than rushing to record it in time,
Speaker 1: and how to remove the bounce in the audio in
Speaker 1: the room. Because we worked together, and I was delighted
Speaker 1: to see her every week, and one day she came in,
Speaker 1: and I came in, and I was about to wrap
Speaker 1: the series up, and she said, you know, they're going
Speaker 1: to be more cutbacks here. There had already been so
Speaker 1: many cutbacks that during my time there, which was less
Speaker 1: than a year, they had gone from having Durna as
Speaker 1: the head of video for GQ magazine to the head
Speaker 1: of video for all the Conde Nas publications, and she said,
Speaker 1: more layoffs. I'll give you a call later as to
Speaker 1: who got laid off, and I said, oh, Christ, this
Speaker 1: is going to beat him or them or that. She
Speaker 1: called me after I got home that night and it
Speaker 1: turned out the person who they've laid off was her,
Speaker 1: and I said, this is outrageous, and she said, I know,
Speaker 1: I didn't see it coming. I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. And I said, well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be talking to these people about doing this and these
Speaker 1: people about doing that. Maybe we can work something else out,
Speaker 1: but for now, I don't know if I can do
Speaker 1: anything other than I quit. She said, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm quitting right now. I'll come in and
Speaker 1: do one more to wrap it up, and I'll put
Speaker 1: out some excuse me, bullshit story about why we're doing it.
Speaker 1: But I was going to end this anyway now. I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it right now, rather than a month
Speaker 1: from now, or rather than after I signed the new
Speaker 1: contract with ESPN, any of those things, because this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I haven't done this too many times in my life.
Speaker 1: Outright quit on the spot. Because somebody else had been mistreated.
Speaker 1: But that was, if not one hundred percent of the
Speaker 1: reasons that I stopped the GQ series. As I've mentioned before,
Speaker 1: the suicide guy, the event at the Apple Store, my
Speaker 1: own sense that I should try to do something I
Speaker 1: enjoyed rather than gave me pain every time, and then
Speaker 1: finally the last straw. So it wasn't the only reason
Speaker 1: I quit, but it was when I quit, and I
Speaker 1: called up the publisher's office and said, or sent him
Speaker 1: an email and said, I understand you've dismissed her and
Speaker 1: a Newton with whom I forged not just a great
Speaker 1: working relationship, but one in which, for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: my blank, unyielding, uncompromising confidence that I knew everything had
Speaker 1: grown from that into a sense of collabor with somebody
Speaker 1: from a totally different background. I worked very hard in
Speaker 1: this relationship, and you just fired her. I quit. So
Speaker 1: the relevance to today, obviously is this The motivating factor
Speaker 1: in all of it was when someone suggested, go back
Speaker 1: and enjoy yourself, have fun, go back and do sports again,
Speaker 1: have fun. The weariness of doing what I did then
Speaker 1: and what I am doing now took over again, and
Speaker 1: I know you know this weariness as well as I do,
Speaker 1: because whereas you don't do a commentary on this twice
Speaker 1: a week or hopefully more in the weeks to come,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it affects you. Nonetheless, it affects all of us.
Speaker 1: There is only one thing you can actually credit Trump for.
Speaker 1: He does have endless amounts of energy. He certainly doesn't
Speaker 1: spend any on anybody else but himself. None of the
Speaker 1: rest of us really exist, of course, he has boundless energy.
Speaker 1: He never thinks of anybody else or the consequences of
Speaker 1: what he's doing, only what it means for him, and
Speaker 1: feeling that infinite void in his soul. If you don't dream,
Speaker 1: if you don't aspire, if you don't need, if you
Speaker 1: don't exist in the same universe as everybody else, you
Speaker 1: don't need to sleep, and you have endless amounts of
Speaker 1: energy to devote to your animal needs. An animal that
Speaker 1: must eat will probably not take a nap. All he
Speaker 1: can do is eat for his ego, because that's all
Speaker 1: he has. So that's his advantage. We who have lives,
Speaker 1: and who have needs, and who have empathies, we tend
Speaker 1: to get exhausted by this, and that's the great advantage
Speaker 1: of being a fascist and a psychotic. They don't need that.
Speaker 1: They are virtual machines. So I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: a conclusion here. I will point out that I went
Speaker 1: through all these machinations, and if not, lies to the
Speaker 1: audience about why the series was stopping. I did think
Speaker 1: the media was picking it up. I did need to
Speaker 1: do something for my own health, But there were these
Speaker 1: other factors in there, including the suicide guy and the
Speaker 1: firing of my friend and Newton. Ah, the end result
Speaker 1: might be, and the lesson might be, and it might
Speaker 1: be pertinent here as I went through all of that
Speaker 1: and made all the arrangements of ESPN and told everybody there, Hey,
Speaker 1: good news, I've got I found the reason to stop
Speaker 1: the GQ series. And it's organic and it's valid, and
Speaker 1: it's true, and it'll give us like six weeks before
Speaker 1: you went ounce this. In the six weeks that I
Speaker 1: prepared the window between the GQ series and the resumption
Speaker 1: of my sports career, the president of ESPN stopped being
Speaker 1: the president of ESPN, and the whole deal went up
Speaker 1: in smoke. It was later revived in small portions by
Speaker 1: an executive. They just got rid of named Norby Williamson,
Speaker 1: who managed somehow in the disaster yearist period after the
Speaker 1: president of ESPN stopped being the president of ESPN to
Speaker 1: get this thing done where I went and worked for
Speaker 1: them part time and did ballgames and had a certain
Speaker 1: guarantee and a part time contract. But I never wound
Speaker 1: up doing the six o'clock Sports Center. I did not
Speaker 1: move back to Bristol, Connecticut. I did go back to Bristol,
Speaker 1: Connecticut three or four different times. And then that whole
Speaker 1: ESPN experience ended because COVID closed the New York studios
Speaker 1: that I largely worked from. So if you are flagging
Speaker 1: and tired in your fight, remember number one that even
Speaker 1: if you leave the fight, the problem is going to
Speaker 1: follow you. And number two, it may very well be
Speaker 1: that the thing that you run to to satisfy yourself
Speaker 1: or to give yourself a happier feeling in your life,
Speaker 1: or to focus on it may or may not still
Speaker 1: be there when you get there. I'd like to say
Speaker 1: I feel a lot better after that, but no, I
Speaker 1: just feel more tired. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thanks for listening. Listening, Brian Ray and
Speaker 1: John Phillip Shanelle and musical directors of count impt Sorry
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle. The musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had at
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
Speaker 1: and drums, and it was produced by TKO Brothers. That's
Speaker 1: the two of them and me, We're your brothers. Our
Speaker 1: satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the
Speaker 1: Old Woman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis and courtesy of ESPN. Other music arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. And my announcer today
Speaker 1: was my friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was as ever
Speaker 1: my fault. That's Countdown for today, Just one four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty four days until the scheduled end of his
Speaker 1: lame duck, lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner
Speaker 1: or the actuarial tables do. But just remember, he who
Speaker 1: saves his country does not violate any law. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean you trying to save your country. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: Countdown is Thursday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants.
Speaker 1: Remember impeach Trump. It won't work now, it will win
Speaker 1: the Democrats the midterms if there are midterms. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Ulruman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.