Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Don't
Speaker 1: look now, But I think a certain Russian dictator has
Speaker 1: stopped betting on Trump. In fact, he started humiliating Trump.
Speaker 1: I hate to reduce the freeing of the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whalen and the others
Speaker 1: to yet another mad platform plank in our political insanity,
Speaker 1: and thus more fodder for me as I continue to
Speaker 1: think I'd like to be an angry profit denouncing the
Speaker 1: hypocrisies of our time. But I can offer in my defense.
Speaker 1: Trump started this hell for the month before the debate.
Speaker 1: It was almost the entirety of his campaign. I will
Speaker 1: free Evan Gershkovidhich, and we can speculate about what jd
Speaker 1: Vance is doing to the Trump campaign and who only
Speaker 1: now realizes Trump is a Hitlarian racist because of his
Speaker 1: attacks on Kamala Harris Wednesday. But if Vladimir Putin has
Speaker 1: just sent Evan Gershkovich home, Trump has just lost the
Speaker 1: support of his biggest supporter, Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2: The reporter for the Wall Street Journal who is being
Speaker 2: held by Russia will be released almost immediately after the election,
Speaker 2: but definitely before I assume office, he.
Speaker 1: Will be home.
Speaker 2: He'll be safe. Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, will do
Speaker 2: that for me, and I don't believe he'll do it
Speaker 2: for anyone else.
Speaker 1: Trump on June fifth, oops, whatever the deal was between
Speaker 1: Trump and Putin about Gershkovich, and there is every chance
Speaker 1: it existed only in that great amorphous, bug filled attic
Speaker 1: that is Trump's mind. The deal is gone now only
Speaker 1: he could get him home, only he would be the
Speaker 1: recipient of Putin's trust and agreement. Trump even put a
Speaker 1: date on it, not when he was back in the
Speaker 1: White House, but as soon as he was president elect.
Speaker 1: Vote for me and he comes home instead. Putin just
Speaker 1: kicked Trump in the balls again. I think it is
Speaker 1: a reasonable inference that Trump talked to Putin or intermediaries talked,
Speaker 1: because even Trump isn't stupid enough to go so far
Speaker 1: out on that limb that he was in a different
Speaker 1: forest without some agreement in advance, some deal on Gershkovich, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: Russian election support for Trump. And clearly Putin didn't even
Speaker 1: warn Trump this was coming, didn't even bother to give
Speaker 1: Trump a chance to get out in front of this
Speaker 1: and claim he Trump had been working behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: or he Trump was hopeful, or even that he had
Speaker 1: now decided that today was the time to use his
Speaker 1: influence with Putin to get Geshkovic released immediately and not
Speaker 1: wait till November. No, none of that happened. Whatever did happen,
Speaker 1: Trump was no longer worth enough to Putin for Putin
Speaker 1: to let Trump lie just to cover his own useless ass.
Speaker 1: He just let Trump step on that rake. He just
Speaker 1: left Trump to post impotently on social media about whether
Speaker 1: we got more prisoners than they did in this deal,
Speaker 1: like he was talking about getting thirteen burgers for five
Speaker 1: bucks at McDonald's instead of just a dozen. In fact,
Speaker 1: whatever happened, Trump was left less angry than scared. The
Speaker 1: post is whiny and covetchy, and Trump's old man yells
Speaker 1: at cloud normal way. But he's clearly surprised by this.
Speaker 1: He's clearly confused more than usual. He's clearly in the dark.
Speaker 1: Putin made a deal, all right, He made a deal
Speaker 1: with Joe Biden. Trump can't process that. The posts that
Speaker 1: Trump made doesn't mention Gershkovich by name. It doesn't mention
Speaker 1: Putin by name. It only references Russia once. Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: even take the only avenue left open to him to
Speaker 1: not look like a fool whom Putin played like the
Speaker 1: proverbial two dollars banjo. He doesn't simply say, I am
Speaker 1: glad Gershkovich is home. And maybe most notably of all,
Speaker 1: Trump didn't dare right, I am glad Gershkovich's home because
Speaker 1: Putin did the humane thing, or I am glad Gershkovich
Speaker 1: is home because Putin listened to my advice. Biden's advisors
Speaker 1: are leaking play by play of the deal, right down
Speaker 1: to timing the president's phone calls to foreign leaders about
Speaker 1: it to one hour before he dropped out of the
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential race. Trump he didn't even get Putin's permission
Speaker 1: to mention Putin's name on his own social media site.
Speaker 1: All he got was everybody else posting the name of
Speaker 1: poor Otto Warmbierre, the man Trump ransomed from Kim Jong
Speaker 1: un for two million dollars who died six days after
Speaker 1: his return, died of his injuries at Kim's hands. Trump
Speaker 1: just got royally screwed by Putin at It's terrific. Oh,
Speaker 1: and there is collateral damage. Biden is Mia. One of
Speaker 1: the dumber members of the House of Representatives posted yesterday morning,
Speaker 1: why is no one talking about it? Now? I know
Speaker 1: the phrase one of the dumber members of the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives only narrows it down to about one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six or one hundred and thirty seven Republicans.
Speaker 1: But this particular moron posted what I just read to
Speaker 1: you at nine to twenty nine am Eastern, nearly two
Speaker 1: hours after Bloomberg had broken the news that the Gershkovich
Speaker 1: deal was done. Hours later, the White House retweeted it,
Speaker 1: adding a photo of President Biden and the families of
Speaker 1: the rescued hostages in the Oval Office on the phone
Speaker 1: to their love once with the caption He's been busy.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green is a moron, but like Trump, she
Speaker 1: has a kind of set of cockroach like survival skills.
Speaker 1: Bobert is too sludge to pay attention to the world
Speaker 1: beyond whoever is sitting next to her in the theater.
Speaker 1: There was only one congress idiot who could have ignored
Speaker 1: news that for at least ninety minutes contained a red
Speaker 1: sign flashing look out for rakes on lawn. Look out
Speaker 1: for rakes on lawn and could basically walk up to
Speaker 1: the President and say, please make sure I step on this.
Speaker 1: And that is the one and only Congresswoman Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: and God bless her. She is a continuing gift to
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. That tweet that she put out asking
Speaker 1: where Biden is and how he's am she still has
Speaker 1: it pinned to her account. The Putin thing is so
Speaker 1: bad it may have even registered with Trump. But of
Speaker 1: course for him, everything is transient, and he knows he
Speaker 1: has just landed on the winning strategy in the new
Speaker 1: Look presidential campaign, so he's doubling down on it. That
Speaker 1: new Look is of course that Kamala Harris can't be
Speaker 1: black because she's also of Indian heritage, and he's convinced.
Speaker 1: He proved it Wednesday at the National Association of Black
Speaker 1: Journalists and everybody loves him because his campaigns black media
Speaker 1: director went on Fox yesterday and directly addressed the controversy.
Speaker 1: They brought up the controversy over why the NABJ didn't
Speaker 1: like Trump do the thing by zoom. Trump believes this
Speaker 1: because Trump is a moron, but he's convinced this is
Speaker 1: a winner. He posted about it at least four times yesterday,
Speaker 1: including posting the copy of the Kamala Harris birth certificate
Speaker 1: that indicates Jamaican heritage. And everybody knows Jamaicans aren't black.
Speaker 1: They're from Jamaica in Queens in New York, near the
Speaker 1: carvel on Union Tonpike. I know how stupid that sounds,
Speaker 1: but you have to understand how stupid Trump is. I
Speaker 1: just picked that out of thin air. I don't have
Speaker 1: any evidence of this directly, but he may really think
Speaker 1: Jamaica means the part of the New York City borough
Speaker 1: in which he was raised. I mentioned previously the theory
Speaker 1: that Trump believes other countries are emptying their mental asylums
Speaker 1: and sending their patients here because the word asylum is
Speaker 1: used all the time about immigration, and he cannot process
Speaker 1: the idea that a word has two meanings, and thus
Speaker 1: if you identify as black, you're not allowed to identify
Speaker 1: as anything else. And Jamaica is in Queen's. This is
Speaker 1: how his mind works, or more correctly, how it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: More importantly, Trump thinks this is his led Pipe cinch
Speaker 1: winning strategy. Because the nation's top two newspapers failed again,
Speaker 1: Mother Jones headline white Man tells black journalists his black
Speaker 1: opponent is not black. True and witty. Washington Post headline,
Speaker 1: Trump's attack on Harris's racial identity moves contest into new phase.
Speaker 1: New York Times headline, Trump says Harris became a black
Speaker 1: person only recently. Again, this is as if Trump got
Speaker 1: up and in a speech threatened to burn the Post
Speaker 1: and the Times to the ground, and the Post headline
Speaker 1: about it was Trump criticizes Post, Times, and the Times
Speaker 1: headline was Trump remarks make publishers contemplate building renovations. Now,
Speaker 1: each of these papers suddenly changed their headlines, something that
Speaker 1: has happened so often because of their pusillanimous conduct these
Speaker 1: last few years that you wonder if they have one
Speaker 1: editor just in charge of changing headlines. But the Times
Speaker 1: was back last night with a new dilly. Trump escalates
Speaker 1: race attacks on Harris, worrying some Republicans. And again, this
Speaker 1: is the most openly racist presidential candidate since at least
Speaker 1: George Wallace, and probably if you grade against the curve
Speaker 1: of their own time, the most racist presidential candidates since
Speaker 1: at least Woodrow Wilson, or maybe even since Jefferson Davis.
Speaker 1: But go on, New York Times tell me about how
Speaker 1: he would be president. Trying to ignite a race war
Speaker 1: in this country is worrying some Republicans because that's who
Speaker 1: should be worried, right, Republicans, They're the true victims here.
Speaker 1: Has anybody checked to make sure the Republicans are okay?
Speaker 1: After Trump? What he said, what he said about and Black,
Speaker 1: and he asked, what you said? She's not. The happy
Speaker 1: part of this, which again is a vibe as opposed
Speaker 1: to a poll, is that yesterday, twenty four hours later,
Speaker 1: thirty six hours after Trump's KKK level performance in Chicago,
Speaker 1: they were still talking about this at length on all
Speaker 1: news radio in New York, which is basically now only
Speaker 1: about subway mugging and traffic reports. And guess what, they
Speaker 1: were not exactly defending Trump in this People were really
Speaker 1: pissed off. I believe Trump can now pretty much kill
Speaker 1: off his campaign chances by just grabbing this third rail
Speaker 1: in his next three four five speeches. I mean, he
Speaker 1: didn't grab it, not really. Thursday night, they put up
Speaker 1: some graphics on the screens at the rally in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: but as the remarkably obtuced CNN commentator Scott Jennings put
Speaker 1: it in an equally remarkable moment of clarity, and it
Speaker 1: was just a moment. Trump did crap the bed today.
Speaker 1: The only question is if he's going to roll around
Speaker 1: in it or change the sheets. Huh. Great, now we're
Speaker 1: back to the goddamned pe tape. Hey, I didn't bring
Speaker 1: it up happily for Vice President Harris and the future
Speaker 1: of democracy. We all know the answer to the Scott
Speaker 1: Jennings rhetorical question. I mean, look, he's not even dumping JD. Vance,
Speaker 1: let alone this. She can't be African, She's Jamaican. Bit
Speaker 1: Vance was nice enough to call Harris quote a total
Speaker 1: phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her,
Speaker 1: which is pretty funny even before you remember that JD.
Speaker 1: Vance used to be named Jimmy Hammill, and before that
Speaker 1: he was named J. D. Bowman, and before that he
Speaker 1: was named James Donald Bowman. Whoever the hell he is,
Speaker 1: he has a remarkable facility for saying the absolute worst
Speaker 1: thing possible and never ever realizing it. In an interview
Speaker 1: with the supposedly neutral news site Notice, he insisted there
Speaker 1: is no backroom chatter about replacing him on the ticket,
Speaker 1: quoting I think that any Republican who comes out of
Speaker 1: the gate as the new VP nominee is going to
Speaker 1: get attacked, and he was confident that he has Trump's support.
Speaker 1: It's quoting again the same thing they did to Mike Pence. Yeah, JD.
Speaker 1: Let me let me just put my arm around you here, bud.
Speaker 1: Take you over here, away from where all the reporters
Speaker 1: and cameras are, and explain to you what Trump actually
Speaker 1: did do to Mike Pence. You need a moment to
Speaker 1: start screaming. Just go out through this door so nobody
Speaker 1: sees you. Thanks, Jimmy. So Vance is a continuing gift
Speaker 1: to the Democrats, and now the gift is mutating into
Speaker 1: a different kind of gift because the Republicans want to
Speaker 1: know who has been spreading the story that they are
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of this idiot. The answer, according
Speaker 1: to a dozen different Trump campaign staffers and allies and
Speaker 1: fellow travelers speaking anonymously to the website The Bulwark, the
Speaker 1: answer as to who is trashing JD. Vance is unanimously
Speaker 1: Kelly Ann Conway. Now Kelly and con Job insists she's
Speaker 1: not making any calls about Vance, She's getting calls about Vans.
Speaker 1: The Bulwark quotes a confidant of Junior Trump saying, Daddy
Speaker 1: is quote pissed off about it. He knows it's her.
Speaker 1: I will repeat something I learned during the twenty sixteen campaign,
Speaker 1: and then the events of the following few years confirmed
Speaker 1: the source on everything at the beginning of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: The source for the mainstream media, especially the television network
Speaker 1: news divisions, the source was Kelly An Conway. I have
Speaker 1: explained here before about the start of the rifts between
Speaker 1: me and my accent my much longer truly good friend,
Speaker 1: Katie Turr. The start of that was about her inexplicable,
Speaker 1: angry defense of Kelly and Conway, to the point of
Speaker 1: selling me out a couple of times in a book.
Speaker 1: Another reporter who covered Trump on the stump and then
Speaker 1: in Washington explained to me, duh, Kelly Ann is everybody's source.
Speaker 1: The most important part of the Kellyan Conway story, though,
Speaker 1: is what she says about Trump and Vance. She says
Speaker 1: he will never dump Vance because, quote, he's loyal. He
Speaker 1: was loyal to me. He's a loyal guy. He sticks
Speaker 1: with things. Yeah, they were all loyal to Fredo too.
Speaker 1: As to the other vice presidential candidate, we will have
Speaker 1: an answer Monday or Tuesday. Since the new ticket hits
Speaker 1: the trail, then you have no doubt heard that. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania canceled a weekend of fundraisers
Speaker 1: in suburban New York that were for his own campaign committee.
Speaker 1: There was also a meeting among Harris's team and Shapiro
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, possibly by zoom and possibly meaning no more
Speaker 1: than that they've now met with every name you heard, Pierro,
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly, Tim Walls, and of course JD. Vance, justin
Speaker 1: Casey loses the vice presidential nomination he already has. And lastly,
Speaker 1: if you are having trouble fathoming the impact of that
Speaker 1: one really ordinary word past, which nearly all of us
Speaker 1: assessing Trump drove years or decades ago, or in my case,
Speaker 1: in a previous century, if you're wondering why weird bothers them, so,
Speaker 1: here's the one weird trick that explains everything about weird.
Speaker 1: Trump does not know he's weird. Well, they're the weird ones.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever seen her with a laugh and
Speaker 2: everything else, that's a weird deal going on there. They're
Speaker 2: the weird ones.
Speaker 1: And nobody's ever called me weird.
Speaker 2: I'm a lot of things, but weird, I'm not, and
Speaker 2: I'm up front and he's not either.
Speaker 1: I will tell you it is not at all. They are.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is weird, and the way they do
Speaker 2: elections is weird.
Speaker 1: And no, they're the weird ones. Trump not at all weird.
Speaker 1: On the Bunk Sex Bump Clay Always Wrong podcast, Imagine
Speaker 1: for a moment, being born in the year nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: living through Korea and the Cold War and JFK and
Speaker 1: Vietnam and the Swing in sixties and color television and
Speaker 1: Watergate and Reagan and the tech boom and the Internet
Speaker 1: and nine to eleven and Obama and every day of
Speaker 1: your life since you learned how to talk, somebody has
Speaker 1: called you weird. And apparently you had never heard this
Speaker 1: until last week. There's a North Dakota happily for him. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Trump has the perfect response to this. You heard him,
Speaker 1: I'm not weird, You're weird, And history, of course tells
Speaker 1: us the one reply that always gets the guy calling
Speaker 1: you names is to yell at him to stop calling
Speaker 1: you names, and then yell at him that they're the
Speaker 1: ones who are weird. Not you. Nobody's ever called me weird,
Speaker 1: not just the just the last. I don't know seventy
Speaker 1: five eighty million Americans who've been born. Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the Venezuelan dictator Maduro are apparently going
Speaker 1: to have a boxing match. At least that's what Musk says.
Speaker 1: And as we know, everything Musk has ever said turned
Speaker 1: out to be true. No, I'm sorry, I read that wrong.
Speaker 1: Everything Musk has ever said turned out to be false.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is countdown. This is count down with
Speaker 1: Keith Olberman Stella ahead of us on this ediative countdown.
Speaker 1: Since I started reading Thurber to an audience that would
Speaker 1: have been in twenty ten, it was my late father's idea.
Speaker 1: We wound up doing a live show and an audio book.
Speaker 1: I thought he was nuts. Anyway, I have frequently been
Speaker 1: asked since twenty ten if Thurber wrote a novel, No,
Speaker 1: I think are truly great humorists pretty much uniformly did
Speaker 1: not write novels. Ring Lardner did not. Mankin, though not
Speaker 1: a humorist per se, certainly traded in laughs. He didn't.
Speaker 1: But at least Thurber came close a book of short stories,
Speaker 1: hyperbolic recollections of his youth, mostly in Columbus, Ohio, including
Speaker 1: two of his longer, greater short stories, including his signature work,
Speaker 1: The Night the Bed Fell. The book was called My
Speaker 1: Life and Hard Times, and I have the third best
Speaker 1: story from it to read to you this week, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty damn good, all about the timeless travails of
Speaker 1: somebody trying to get through college. University days coming up first,
Speaker 1: there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruegriffet specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute two days worst persons in the world. The
Speaker 1: brons artie moreno owner of your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,
Speaker 1: Azusa and Cucamonga. This statement was released yesterday by Mike Trout,
Speaker 1: the superstar the Angels, once compared to Mickey Mantle and
Speaker 1: once considered pretty much unanimously as the best baseball player
Speaker 1: of the century. Since my initial surgery on May third
Speaker 1: to repair my meniscus, my rehabilitation proved longer and more
Speaker 1: difficult than anticipated. After months of hard work, I was
Speaker 1: devastated yesterday when an MRI showed a tear in my
Speaker 1: meniscus that will require surgery again, ending my hopes of
Speaker 1: returning this season. I will do everything I can to
Speaker 1: come back even stronger. I'll continue to help my team
Speaker 1: and teammates from the dugout as we press forward into
Speaker 1: the second half of the season. Thank you for your support.
Speaker 1: Mike Trout reached the majors with the Los Angeles Angels
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. Since then, his team has made the
Speaker 1: postseason once. He has played in three playoff games in
Speaker 1: his life. Twenty fourteen, his Angels were swept by the
Speaker 1: Kansas City Royals, three games during which Trout went one
Speaker 1: for twelve. His team led Game three one to nothing
Speaker 1: after the top of the first inning, then Kansas City
Speaker 1: scored three in the bottom of the first inning. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: he has never been in a playoff game in which
Speaker 1: his team was ahead, let alone a game in which
Speaker 1: he contributed in some way. Perhaps still a man with
Speaker 1: a chance to be the greatest player of his time
Speaker 1: has never played in the playoffs. Mike turns thirty three
Speaker 1: next Wednesday, and you wonder if perhaps this is one
Speaker 1: of those Twilight Zone episodes where you ask the genie
Speaker 1: in the bottle to make you the greatest player of
Speaker 1: all time and he does. And then make sure that
Speaker 1: your team around you never ever competes for anything. The
Speaker 1: Angels just sold off their stars again against the August
Speaker 1: first trading deadline. This is like I forget six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight years in a row. They've done that a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. This Artie Moreno, who owns the Angels
Speaker 1: and has never invested in them properly. He said he
Speaker 1: was going to sell the team. Then he changed his mind.
Speaker 1: So he's part of this twilight Zone episode two only
Speaker 1: he may be the evil genie in the bottle. Sell
Speaker 1: the team or sell Mike Trout to a major league team.
Speaker 1: Mister Moreno the runner up worser. Amy Walter of Cook
Speaker 1: Political Report. We'll start with a tweet from Garrett Hag
Speaker 1: of NBC News, thinking of the Trump supporter I interviewed
Speaker 1: in downtown Harrisburg, who, when I asked what Trump needed
Speaker 1: to do to win this election, answered simply button his lip.
Speaker 1: Amy Walter retweeted this, and she is the publisher and
Speaker 1: editor in chief of Cook Political Report, which is not
Speaker 1: only taken seriously, but is taken seriously as a kind
Speaker 1: of nonpartisan or at least bipartisan political assess those people
Speaker 1: who don't understand the implications of what they're covering, but
Speaker 1: deliberately take the implications of what they're covering out of
Speaker 1: their equation to be as neutral as possible. And this
Speaker 1: is what she responded to Garrett Hake of NBC News
Speaker 1: with if this election is about policy like inflation slash immigration,
Speaker 1: Trump wins. If it is about Trump, well there's the
Speaker 1: opening for Harris. This appears not to be a parody account.
Speaker 1: This is Amy Walter's opinion, and being publisher and editor
Speaker 1: in chief of something like the Cook Political Report, you
Speaker 1: would have to hope it was a considered opinion that
Speaker 1: the election is policy inflation, immigration, meaning Trump would win.
Speaker 1: If it's about Trump, that would mean Harris would win.
Speaker 1: Amy Walter, we'd like to welcome you to the United
Speaker 1: States of America. I don't know where you've been working,
Speaker 1: perhaps it was a different planet, but here we know
Speaker 1: that there are no issues for Trump, or policies for Trump,
Speaker 1: or real interest in things like inflation or immigration. There
Speaker 1: is only for Trump. Trump and the thought that you
Speaker 1: go into an office someome where every day and decide
Speaker 1: how your website will analyze and forecast the upcoming elections
Speaker 1: at the Cook Political Report is astonishing. It's like discovering
Speaker 1: the school bus driver is sightless. It's just astonishing. Policy, Trump, inflation, immigration,
Speaker 1: if it's about Trump. In the world of Trump, everything
Speaker 1: is about Trump. Good God. I wonder what the original
Speaker 1: language was for. This can't have been in American English.
Speaker 1: The woman could never have been here before. But our winners.
Speaker 1: Once again that pair you've loved to hate for many decades,
Speaker 1: Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and Elon Musk, who is president
Speaker 1: of the country in his own mind. The headline a
Speaker 1: screen shot was tweeted out Venezuelan President Maduro challenges Elon
Speaker 1: Musk to fight on national television, and all we see
Speaker 1: here is a picture of Maduro, the thug dictator who
Speaker 1: just stole the election in Venezuela, and the closed captioning
Speaker 1: over his face as he sits in front of a microphone,
Speaker 1: reading you went off the rails. Obviously that was addressed
Speaker 1: to Musk, but here's Musk's response to this. I accept yes, Elon,
Speaker 1: training on a diet of ozembic and pharmaceuticals, is going
Speaker 1: to fight Nicholas Maduro on national television. Now, obviously this
Speaker 1: has various implications for the business world if Musk gets
Speaker 1: killed in the ring, and for the political world, and
Speaker 1: in fact for much of geopolitics, if say Maduro was
Speaker 1: to get killed in the ring. But I'd like to
Speaker 1: raise third possibility that a lot of people don't know about,
Speaker 1: because it has happened at least what four, five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 1: nine times before in the history of boxing, which is
Speaker 1: what essentially Maduro has challenged him to fight. I assume
Speaker 1: maybe it's UFC, but this sounds more like a boxing match.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a cage. Maybe they could just get in
Speaker 1: the cage that the UFC fighters get into and just
Speaker 1: stay there, both of them. I'd just like to point out, though,
Speaker 1: that at least nine times in history the following has happened.
Speaker 1: The best example probably dates to April twenty third of
Speaker 1: nineteen ten here in the wonderful city, fun city itself,
Speaker 1: New York, Gotham, a summer festival in the beautiful spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen ten at the Brooklyn Beach Athletic Club. Young
Speaker 1: Dutch a fighter faced Young Bets, another fighter. Everybody simply
Speaker 1: took the name of a more famous fighter and put
Speaker 1: Young in front of it. In those days. Young Dutch
Speaker 1: and Young Bets fought at the Brooklyn Beach ac on
Speaker 1: April twenty third, nineteen ten, and as they came out
Speaker 1: from their corners, they simultaneously threw punches and simultaneously hit
Speaker 1: each other on their respective jaws, and they both were
Speaker 1: knocked out, carried to their corners helpless, and the referee
Speaker 1: counted them both out a simultaneous knockout in which neither
Speaker 1: of them won. Young Dutch and Young Bets have much
Speaker 1: to teach Young Musk and Young Maduro about how to
Speaker 1: have a fight live on national television. Nicholas Maduro and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk dictators of their own tiny little worlds. Jess
Speaker 1: keep thinking about Young Dutch and Young Bets two days,
Speaker 1: worst persons in the clank world. The closest thing James
Speaker 1: Thurber ever wrote to a novel was the story of
Speaker 1: his childhood, somewhat exaggerated, or, according to his family, almost
Speaker 1: completely exaggerated. It was called My Life and hard Times.
Speaker 1: In it are stories like the night the bed fell
Speaker 1: and such as that. But my favorite, perhaps of all
Speaker 1: of his stories from his supposed youth, is called University Days.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Well you'll hear, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in University Days, and so I present it
Speaker 1: to you for the first time on Fridays with Thurber
Speaker 1: University Days by James Thurpert. I've passed all the other
Speaker 1: courses that I took at my university, but I could
Speaker 1: never pass botany. This was because all botany students had
Speaker 1: to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking
Speaker 1: through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never
Speaker 1: see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell
Speaker 1: through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He
Speaker 1: would wander around the laboratory, pleased with the progress all
Speaker 1: the students were making and drawing the involved and so
Speaker 1: I am told interesting structure of flower cells. Until he
Speaker 1: came to me. I would just be standing there. I
Speaker 1: can't see anything, I would say. He would begin patiently
Speaker 1: enough explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but
Speaker 1: he would always end up in a fury, claiming that
Speaker 1: I could too see through a microscope, but just pretended
Speaker 1: that I couldn't takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway.
Speaker 1: I used to tell him, we are not concerned with
Speaker 1: the beauty in this course, he would say, we are
Speaker 1: concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flowers. Well,
Speaker 1: i'd say, I can't see anything. Try it just once again,
Speaker 1: he'd say, And I would put my eye to the
Speaker 1: microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again,
Speaker 1: a nebulous milky substance, a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were
Speaker 1: supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined
Speaker 1: plant cells. I see what looks like a lot of milk.
Speaker 1: I would tell him. This, he claimed was the result
Speaker 1: of my not having adjusted the microscope properly. So he
Speaker 1: would readjust it for me, or rather for himself, and
Speaker 1: I would look again and see milk. I finally took
Speaker 1: a deferred pass, as they called it, and waited a
Speaker 1: year and tried again. You had to pass one of
Speaker 1: the biological sciences or you couldn't graduate. The professor had
Speaker 1: come back from vacation brown as a berry, bright eyed
Speaker 1: and eager to explain cell structure again to his classes. Well,
Speaker 1: he said to me cheerily, when we met in the
Speaker 1: laboratory first hour of the semester. We're going to see
Speaker 1: cells this time, aren't we? Yes, sir, I said, students
Speaker 1: to right of me, and to left of me, and
Speaker 1: in front of me were seeing cells. What's more, they
Speaker 1: were quietly drawing pictures of them in their notebooks. Of course,
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything. We'll try it, the professor said
Speaker 1: to me gently, with every adjustment of the microscope known
Speaker 1: to man. As God is my witness, I'll arrange this
Speaker 1: glass so that you see cells through it, or I'll
Speaker 1: give up teaching. In twenty two years of botany I
Speaker 1: he cut off abruptly, for he was beginning to quiver
Speaker 1: all over, like Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to
Speaker 1: hold on to his temper. His scenes with me had
Speaker 1: taken a great deal out of him. As an editor's
Speaker 1: note here, if you don't recognize the name Lionel Barrymore,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life,
Speaker 1: mister Potter, the evil financier in the wheelchair that was
Speaker 1: played by Lionel Barrymore, who used to quiver all over.
Speaker 1: Back to Thurber. So we tried it with every adjustment
Speaker 1: of the microscope known to man. With only one of them,
Speaker 1: did I see anything but blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity,
Speaker 1: and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement,
Speaker 1: a variegated constellation of flex specks and dots. These I
Speaker 1: hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came back from
Speaker 1: an adjoining desk a smile, aile on his lips, his
Speaker 1: eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell drawing.
Speaker 1: What's that, he demanded, with a hint of squeal in
Speaker 1: his voice. That's what I saw, I said, You didn't,
Speaker 1: You didn't, You didn't, he screamed, losing control of his
Speaker 1: temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted into the microscope.
Speaker 1: His head snapped up. That's your eye, he shouted. You
Speaker 1: fix the lens so that it reflects you've drawn your eye.
Speaker 1: Another course that I didn't like but somehow managed to
Speaker 1: pass was Economics. I went to that class straight from
Speaker 1: the botany class, which didn't help me any in understanding
Speaker 1: either subject. I used to get them mixed up, but
Speaker 1: not as mixed up as another student in my economics
Speaker 1: class who came there direct from a physics laboratory. He
Speaker 1: was a tackle on the football team named Balensuwitz. At
Speaker 1: the time, Ohio State university had one of the best
Speaker 1: football teams in the country, and Balentsuwitz was one of
Speaker 1: its outstanding stars. In order to be eligible to play,
Speaker 1: it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies,
Speaker 1: a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber
Speaker 1: than an ox, he was not any smarter. Most of
Speaker 1: his professors were lenient and helped him along. None gave
Speaker 1: him more hints in answering questions or asked him simpler
Speaker 1: ones than the economics professor, a thin, timid man named Bassum.
Speaker 1: One day, when when we were on the subject of
Speaker 1: transportation and distribution, it became Balentsowitz's turn to answer a question.
Speaker 1: Name one means of transportation, the professor said to him.
Speaker 1: No light came into the big tackle's eyes. Just any
Speaker 1: means of transportation, said the professor. Balentsuwitz sat staring at him.
Speaker 1: That is, pursued the professor, any medium, agency, or method
Speaker 1: of going from one place to another. Balentuwitz had the
Speaker 1: look of a man who is being led into a trap.
Speaker 1: You may choose among steam, horse drawn, or electrically propelled vehicles,
Speaker 1: said the instructor. I might suggest the one which we
Speaker 1: commonly take in making long journeys across land. There was
Speaker 1: a profound silence in which everybody stirred uneasily, including Balentsuwitz
Speaker 1: and mister Bassum. Mister Bassom abruptly broke this silence in
Speaker 1: an amazing manner. Chew, Chew, chew, he said in a
Speaker 1: low voice, and turned instantly scarlet. He glanced appealingly around
Speaker 1: the room. All of us, of course, shared mister Bassom's
Speaker 1: desire that Balentsuwitz would stay abreast of the class in
Speaker 1: economics for the Illinois game, one of the hardest and
Speaker 1: most important the season, was only a week off. Too, too, too,
Speaker 1: Some student with a deep voice moaned, and we all
Speaker 1: looked encouragingly at Balentsuwitz. Somebody else gave a fine imitation
Speaker 1: of a locomotive letting off steam. Mister Bassom himself rounded
Speaker 1: off the little shell. Ding Dong, ding dong, ding dong,
Speaker 1: he said hopefully. Balentsowitz was staring at the floor now
Speaker 1: trying to think. His great brow furrowed, his huge hands
Speaker 1: rubbing together his face red. How did you come to
Speaker 1: college this year, mister Balentowitz asked the professor. Chuff of chuff, chuff, chuff,
Speaker 1: chuff with chuff my father sent me, said the football player.
Speaker 1: What on, asked bassm A get loans, said the tackle
Speaker 1: in a low husky voice, obviously embarrassed. No, no, said bassim.
Speaker 1: Name a means of transportation? What did you ride here
Speaker 1: on train? Said Bealensuitz. Quite right, said the professor. Now,
Speaker 1: mister Nugent, will you tell us if I went through
Speaker 1: anguish in botany and economics for different reasons. Gymnasium work
Speaker 1: was even worse. I don't even like to think about it.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't let you play games or join in the
Speaker 1: exercises with your glasses on, and I couldn't see with
Speaker 1: mine off. I bumped into professors, horizontal bars, agricultural students
Speaker 1: swinging iron rings, not being able to see. I could
Speaker 1: take it, but I couldn't dish it out. Also, in
Speaker 1: order to pass gymnasium, and you had to pass it
Speaker 1: to graduate, you had to learn to swim if you
Speaker 1: didn't know how. I didn't like the swimming pool. I
Speaker 1: didn't like swimming, and I didn't like the swimming instructor.
Speaker 1: And after all these years, I still don't. I never swam,
Speaker 1: but I passed my gym work anyway by having another
Speaker 1: student give my gymnasium number nine seven eight and swim
Speaker 1: across the pool in my place. He was a quiet,
Speaker 1: amiable blonde youth number four seventy three, and he would
Speaker 1: have seen through a microscope before me if we could
Speaker 1: have gotten away with that. But we couldn't get away
Speaker 1: with that. Another thing I didn't like about gymnasium work
Speaker 1: was that they made you strip the day you registered.
Speaker 1: It is impossible for me to be happy when I
Speaker 1: am stripped and being asked a lot of questions. Still,
Speaker 1: I did better than a lanky agricultural student who was
Speaker 1: cross examined just before I was. They asked each student
Speaker 1: what college he was in, that is, whether art, engineering, commerce,
Speaker 1: or agriculture. What college are you in? The instructor snapped
Speaker 1: at the youth in front of me, Ohio State University.
Speaker 1: He said promptly, it wasn't that agricultural student, but it
Speaker 1: was another a whole lot like him, who decided to
Speaker 1: take up journalism, possibly on the ground that when farming
Speaker 1: went to hell, he could fall back on newspaper work.
Speaker 1: He didn't realize, of course, that that would be very
Speaker 1: much like falling back full length on a kit of
Speaker 1: Carpenter's tools. Haskins didn't seem cut out for journalism, being
Speaker 1: too embarrassed to talk to anybody and unable to use
Speaker 1: a typewriter, but the editor of the college paper assigned
Speaker 1: him to the cow barns, the sheep house, the horse pavilion,
Speaker 1: and the animal husbandry department. Generally, this was a genuinely
Speaker 1: big beat, for took up five times as much ground
Speaker 1: and got ten times as great a legislative appropriation as
Speaker 1: the College of Liberal Arts. The agricultural student knew animals,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, his stories were dull and colorlessly written. He
Speaker 1: took all afternoon on each of them on account of
Speaker 1: having to hunt for each letter on the typewriter. Once
Speaker 1: in a while he had to ask somebody to help
Speaker 1: him hunt. C and L in particular, were hard letters
Speaker 1: for him to find. His editor finally got pretty much
Speaker 1: annoyed at the farmer journalists because his pieces were so
Speaker 1: uninteresting see here, Haskins. He snapped at him one day,
Speaker 1: why is it we never have anything hot from you
Speaker 1: on the horse pavilion Here we have two hundred head
Speaker 1: of horses on this campus, more than any other university
Speaker 1: in the Western Conference except Purdue, and yet you never
Speaker 1: get any real low down on them. Now shoot over
Speaker 1: to the horse barns and dig up something lively. Haskins
Speaker 1: shambled out and came back in about an hour. He
Speaker 1: said he had something. Well tart it off, snappily, said
Speaker 1: the editor, something people will read. Sent to work, and
Speaker 1: in a couple of hours brought a sheet of typewritten
Speaker 1: paper to the desk. It was a two hundred word
Speaker 1: story about some disease that had broken out among the horses.
Speaker 1: Its opening sentence was simple but arresting. It read, who
Speaker 1: has noticed the sores on the tops of the horses
Speaker 1: in the animal husbandry building. Ohio State was a land
Speaker 1: grant university, and therefore two years of military drill was compulsory.
Speaker 1: We drilled with old Springfield rifles and studied the tactics
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, even though the World War was
Speaker 1: going on at the time. At eleven o'clock each morning,
Speaker 1: thousands of freshmen and sophomores used to deploy over the campus,
Speaker 1: moodily creeping up on the old chemistry building. It was
Speaker 1: good training for the kind of warfare that was waged
Speaker 1: at Shiloh, but it had no connection with what was
Speaker 1: going on in Europe. Some people used to think that
Speaker 1: there was German money behind it, but they didn't dare
Speaker 1: say that, or they would have been thrown in as
Speaker 1: German spies. It was a period of muddy thought and marked,
Speaker 1: I believe, the decline of higher education in the Middle West.
Speaker 1: As a soldier, I was never any good at all.
Speaker 1: Most of the cadets were glumly indifferent soldiers, but I
Speaker 1: was no good at all. Once General Littlefield, who was
Speaker 1: commandant of the Cadet Corps, popped up in front of
Speaker 1: me during regimental drill and snapped, you are the main
Speaker 1: trouble with this university. I think he meant that my
Speaker 1: type was the main trouble with the university, but he
Speaker 1: may have met me individually. I was mediocre at drill, certainly,
Speaker 1: that is until my senior year. By that time I
Speaker 1: had drilled longer than anybody else in the Western Conference,
Speaker 1: having failed at military at the end of each preceding year,
Speaker 1: so that I had to do it all over again.
Speaker 1: I was the only seniors still in uniform. The uniform,
Speaker 1: which when new had it made me look like an
Speaker 1: interurban railway conductor. Now that it had become faded and
Speaker 1: too tight, made me look like Bert Williams in his
Speaker 1: Bellboy Act. This had a definitely bad effect on my morale.
Speaker 1: Even so, I had become, by sheer practice little short
Speaker 1: of wonderful at squad maneuvers. One day, General Littlefield picked
Speaker 1: our company out of the whole regiment, tried to get
Speaker 1: it mixed up by putting it through one movement after
Speaker 1: another as fast as we could execute them. Squad's right,
Speaker 1: squad's left, squad's on right into line, squad's right, about
Speaker 1: squad's left, front into line, et cetera. In about three minutes,
Speaker 1: one hundred and nine men were marching in one direction,
Speaker 1: and I was marching away from them at an angle
Speaker 1: of forty degrees, all alone. Company halt, shouted General Littlefield,
Speaker 1: that man is the only man who has it right.
Speaker 1: I was made a corporal for my achievement. The next day,
Speaker 1: General Littlefield summoned me to his office. He was swatting
Speaker 1: flies when I came in. I was silent, and he
Speaker 1: was silent too. For a long time. I don't think
Speaker 1: he remembered me or why he had sent for me,
Speaker 1: But he didn't want to admit that. He swatted some
Speaker 1: more flies, keeping his eyes on them. Narrowly before he
Speaker 1: let go with the swatter. But not up your coat,
Speaker 1: he snapped. Looking back on it. Now I can see
Speaker 1: that he meant me, although he was looking at a fly.
Speaker 1: But I just stood there. Another fly came to rest
Speaker 1: on a paper in front of the General and began
Speaker 1: rubbing its hind legs together. The General lifted the swatter cautiously.
Speaker 1: I moved restlessly, and the fly flew away. You startle them,
Speaker 1: barked General Littlefield, looking at me severely. I said I
Speaker 1: was sorry. That won't help the situation, snapped the General
Speaker 1: with cold military logic. I didn't see what I could do,
Speaker 1: except offered to chase some more flies toward his desk,
Speaker 1: but I didn't say anything. He stared out the window
Speaker 1: at the far away figures of co ed's crossing the
Speaker 1: campus towards the library. Finally he told me I could go,
Speaker 1: so I went. He either didn't know which cadet I was,
Speaker 1: or else he forgot what he wanted to see me about.
Speaker 1: It may have been that he wished to apologize for
Speaker 1: having called me the main trouble with the university, or
Speaker 1: maybe he had decided to compliment me on my brilliant
Speaker 1: drilling of the day before, and then at the last
Speaker 1: minute decided not to. I don't know, I don't think
Speaker 1: about it much anymore. What was the last time you
Speaker 1: heard of anybody having spirits of camphor their room at night? Eh?
Speaker 1: I have some camphor over here, and I got a
Speaker 1: big box of Frankenson's and a few leeches. I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
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 was the
Speaker 1: one handling orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitar,
Speaker 1: bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by
Speaker 1: Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music was
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. The Thurber, of course,
Speaker 1: was by Thurber, James Thurber, and everything else was pretty
Speaker 1: much as usual my fault. That's countdown for this the
Speaker 1: ninety sixth day until the two thousand and twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential election, the three d and third day since convicted
Speaker 1: felon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing.
Speaker 1: Use the mental health system. You've got it, mister president.
Speaker 1: Use presidential immunity to stop him from doing it again.
Speaker 1: While waste doll can and also anti semitic, anti immigration Republicans,
Speaker 1: please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown and
Speaker 1: yes we are in year three of this series, that'll
Speaker 1: be Tuesday bulletins as always as the news requires until
Speaker 1: the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
Speaker 1: a reduction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.