Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. And
Speaker 1: we're back from a week off, just in time for
Speaker 1: me to put this podcast on hiatus for my health. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was a bit of a dodge. I took the
Speaker 1: week off so I could go see some doctors. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: there's nothing life threatening. I don't even think there's anything
Speaker 1: that seriously threatens the long term future of this podcast,
Speaker 1: so you can turn it off now. I have to
Speaker 1: explain though, for at least two weeks, maybe a month
Speaker 1: more likely, I will not be doing this podcast because
Speaker 1: I have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a bad, bad thing to have
Speaker 1: if you have trouble saying the letter L, a true
Speaker 1: relation as I do, A FIB is the most common
Speaker 1: cause of arrhythmia in the heart. And what you don't
Speaker 1: want in the heart is arrhythmia. You like it to
Speaker 1: go thump thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, And mine is
Speaker 1: making a sound sometimes anyway, much more close to some
Speaker 1: jazz drummer going nuts with the symbols and just making
Speaker 1: this kind of sound in the background. This came up
Speaker 1: somewhat suddenly in retrospect, it's clear I've had many of
Speaker 1: the symptoms for a long time, possibly years, but there
Speaker 1: never was anything debilitating. And then during my physical three
Speaker 1: weeks ago, now I guess it is my GP, who
Speaker 1: is a cardiologist and a good one, was talking about
Speaker 1: how great my heart looked and how young it looked
Speaker 1: for an old guy like me. And then he said,
Speaker 1: and it's just for wait a minute, two words or
Speaker 1: three words you don't want to hear in the middle
Speaker 1: of an exam. Wait a minute, and it's a fib.
Speaker 1: So we are now exploring the non intervention kind of
Speaker 1: treatments for it, one of which involves reducing stress and
Speaker 1: no offense to you. You're the best part of this podcast,
Speaker 1: But the topic matter is for me like juggling flaming chainsaws.
Speaker 1: It's nothing but stress. What's alarming and what I now see,
Speaker 1: maybe in fact, a symptom of this aphib is the
Speaker 1: fact that the whole process of producing this, which normally
Speaker 1: I should be able to do in my sleep, because
Speaker 1: other than the improvement in the quality of the equipment,
Speaker 1: doing this is basically what I used to do in
Speaker 1: college radio with razor blades. Standing up. This is actually
Speaker 1: should be a simple process. There's only two of them
Speaker 1: a week, there are limited deadlines, and yet the whole
Speaker 1: thing seems daunting sometimes. So this is probably in fact
Speaker 1: the aphib because this sense of being exhausted and not
Speaker 1: having energy, and being artificially fearful or anxious about things,
Speaker 1: these are all symptoms of it. I urge you to
Speaker 1: get checked if you ever have anything that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: right about your heart, get it checked anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a standard rule. But look particularly for this aphib thing,
Speaker 1: because it can be treated in many different ways, the
Speaker 1: first of which is they give you medication that ensures
Speaker 1: that you will not have a stroke, because that's one
Speaker 1: of the great fears. If your heart beat is not
Speaker 1: going in the right way, your blood can coagulate in
Speaker 1: and around your heart and cause a clot, which could
Speaker 1: cause a stroke, and then you're in trouble. As my
Speaker 1: cardiologist said twenty twenty five years ago, when he would
Speaker 1: find this in somebody, the next thing would be to
Speaker 1: put them in a cab over to a major medical
Speaker 1: center where they'd have to stay at least the night. Now,
Speaker 1: he says, I give you this box of pills. I
Speaker 1: stick this monitor on your chest and you don't even
Speaker 1: have to take the pills for another four or five hours.
Speaker 1: So we're in the still in the pills stage, and
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little bit better actually, and then we
Speaker 1: go to the more invasive things, which include fude. One
Speaker 1: of the treatments includes probably the best. The best treatment
Speaker 1: for an irregular heart beat involves a mild shock to
Speaker 1: the heart to reset the rhythm and encourage the heart
Speaker 1: to go back to them bum bum bum bum bum
Speaker 1: love dub love dub. You know the rest. Now, perhaps
Speaker 1: like you or certainly like me, when I hear shock
Speaker 1: to the heart, I think, Claire. So what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do here was to do some headlines of the day.
Speaker 1: And also I have a great story about my dog
Speaker 1: Ted and his heart problems, which I have been keeping
Speaker 1: from you because I wanted to wait till there was
Speaker 1: an established story there, and it's a story. I'll save
Speaker 1: that for last. And I want to talk about my
Speaker 1: first TV boss of bosses, the late Ted Turner, and
Speaker 1: how basically what you see in TV everything including ESPN,
Speaker 1: Ted Turner created that, although he did not directly create it,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to do, since you know, the possibility
Speaker 1: is they're going to hit my heart with the electricity.
Speaker 1: Are you sure this is a good idea, since they're
Speaker 1: going to do something like that, or keep me on
Speaker 1: these medications for a long time. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: big picture here first, just in case I don't resume
Speaker 1: this podcast in a month or less or whatever, or
Speaker 1: I get so well and feel so good that I say,
Speaker 1: to hell of it, I'm not resuming this podcast. I
Speaker 1: wanted to just talk big picture for a change, not
Speaker 1: the day's headlines, but the big implications, the sort of
Speaker 1: things people leave out of this commentary world because we
Speaker 1: are so occupied with these trees in front of us,
Speaker 1: and the forests are full of nightmares. Besides being insane
Speaker 1: and capable of just the one emotion, what can I
Speaker 1: get away with besides being lost in Iran? And we
Speaker 1: are lucky that Iran has not already invaded Washington and
Speaker 1: taken over. I guess we're lucky. We have to remember
Speaker 1: something that is becoming increasingly evident but is not being
Speaker 1: set alout. Donald Trump is Boss Tweed. Boss Tweed is
Speaker 1: a man who, in today money probably stole several billion
Speaker 1: dollars from the city of New York in the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when there were no taxes, he was the all time
Speaker 1: financial crook, and Trump, I think, is going to exceed him. Also,
Speaker 1: whether he knows it or not, Trump is reducing us
Speaker 1: to a second rate power, threatening democracy here and around
Speaker 1: the world, as you know, elevating China and trying to
Speaker 1: although I don't think there's enough left in Russia to
Speaker 1: really make them a world power again, elevating Russia, or
Speaker 1: at least Prutin has managed to manipulate Trump for whatever
Speaker 1: reason and by whatever means those things, pee tapes and
Speaker 1: everything else that's almost incidental, I'm sorry to say. For
Speaker 1: those of you who like me just giggle over this
Speaker 1: because you're thirteen. The fact about Russia is that Putin
Speaker 1: has successfully and continues to successfully manipulate Trump into doing
Speaker 1: things that stave off, you know, a Russia that looks
Speaker 1: like nineteen oh five with mass starvation. I believe, truly. Still,
Speaker 1: I am still somewhat hopeful. I am not willing to
Speaker 1: say to hell with this America thing. I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1: I am still willing to believe that it will someday
Speaker 1: be illegal to use Trump's name anywhere or to say
Speaker 1: it out loud, unless it is preceded by popular Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon epithets, the way it was basically illegal to use
Speaker 1: Hitler's name in Germany in the recent past, for like
Speaker 1: the thirty years after the Second World War. I still
Speaker 1: think we are going to wind up there. I also
Speaker 1: still think this all ends with one of them, one
Speaker 1: of the Trumps or one of his lackeys in the cabinet,
Speaker 1: accidentally electrocuting everybody at a cabinet meeting every day. I
Speaker 1: have a different favorite as to who's likeliest to do that.
Speaker 1: I think with the revelations about cash Patel and his
Speaker 1: pictures of his bourbon with his name on it, his
Speaker 1: own branded bourbon, that it's not enough that he was
Speaker 1: accused of drinking bourbon more or less by IV drip
Speaker 1: by the Atlantic I guess it was. And then he
Speaker 1: threatened to sue, and then he started to investigate the leaks,
Speaker 1: and then they came back with the next story, which
Speaker 1: was he wasn't just drinking bourbon, he was drinking bourbon
Speaker 1: out of bottles with his name on it, that he
Speaker 1: gave out his gifts. If that were not bad enough,
Speaker 1: this is where we are you've heard of this character,
Speaker 1: Mark Burns, big fat guy who goes by the nickname pastor.
Speaker 1: I thought for a long time he was a past pastor.
Speaker 1: Mark Burns is how he identifies himself. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: a nickname because I'm confident that I have read much
Speaker 1: more of the Bible than he has, and it's not
Speaker 1: on my top one hundred reading list. He wrote the
Speaker 1: other day that he went to Trump National Durral in Miami,
Speaker 1: big words for a crappy golf course, and he made history.
Speaker 1: He led the dedication event for President Donald J. Trump
Speaker 1: and the unveiling. He wrote of the twenty two foot
Speaker 1: statue created in his honor, if you have not seen it,
Speaker 1: it's a giant statue of Trump, twenty two feet high
Speaker 1: at a golf course, and it is the color of urine.
Speaker 1: Big picture here. I think it's time to look at
Speaker 1: this and stop saying he makes everything look like gold,
Speaker 1: or he puts gold on the wall. Call it what
Speaker 1: it is. Donald Trump recognizes only one color. It's the
Speaker 1: color of pists. It symbolizes him. It is his life's work.
Speaker 1: But color of you urin the stuff on the White
Speaker 1: House walls, that's not gold. It's the color of urine.
Speaker 1: Stop calling it gold. It's urine colored. His hair is
Speaker 1: urine colored. He is urine colored. He's President Donald Urine Trump.
Speaker 1: The more we get that point across, the better we
Speaker 1: will all be. But back to Mark quote Pastor Burns. Now,
Speaker 1: you might think that a statue twenty two feet high
Speaker 1: gold of a living being, that they all stand around
Speaker 1: and talk about how much it's history and how deeply
Speaker 1: honored they are and dedicated, and all these religious leaders
Speaker 1: were there, you might think that was.
Speaker 2: What's that story in the Bible again.
Speaker 1: The golden calf? Worshiping the golden calf. No, Mark has
Speaker 1: reassurance for you. Let me say this plainly. He said,
Speaker 1: this is not a golden calf, worship the Lord Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ and him alone. The statue is not about worship.
Speaker 1: It is about honor. Mark, bullshit, it's a golden calf.
Speaker 1: You're worshiping a false idol. I don't care much about
Speaker 1: the rules of your religion, whatever it is. Apparently you
Speaker 1: are in sign trumpology. But honestly, you would think by
Speaker 1: now that any deity supervising any religion that we've heard
Speaker 1: of or haven't heard of, would have already thrown a
Speaker 1: bolt Mark's way and said, hey, some of an irony
Speaker 1: here about your name being Burns. So we have Patel
Speaker 1: brand bourbon and a giant twenty two foot tall golden
Speaker 1: calf statue of Donald Trump, and it's urine colored. Those
Speaker 1: are the big picture issues on the MAGA side of this.
Speaker 1: But more seriously, I'd like to mention here just in
Speaker 1: case this is the last one, and perhaps when I resume,
Speaker 1: and I'm using when when I resume these I can
Speaker 1: pick up on some of these individually, because I think
Speaker 1: they're actually quite interesting, and they're the kind of things
Speaker 1: you think of when somebody says, yeah, it's fine, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna throw some electricity through your heart. How does
Speaker 1: that feel? The leading threat to democracy in this country
Speaker 1: right now is not Donald Trump. He is obviously the
Speaker 1: precipitate for all of this. But the leading threat is
Speaker 1: a small time Democratic party worldview. To quote the late
Speaker 1: John Candy in the movie Splash with my friend Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: think big, be big, my friend. Right now, the big
Speaker 1: ideas on the left are, ooh uh, Kevin Newsom's gonna
Speaker 1: write mean tweets? Or should this candidate go on? Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan's podcast asked, these are not big thoughts. These are
Speaker 1: thoughts you have on the way home from work while
Speaker 1: you're going to go out and get drunk on Patel
Speaker 1: Brand Bourbon. Think big, be big. We need a party
Speaker 1: that is thinking in terms of what this country will
Speaker 1: look like if it still exists fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: and what we can do to save democracy, not just now,
Speaker 1: but after we defeat Trump and MAGA in this fall,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty eight and in twenty thirty two.
Speaker 1: And they have not gone away, because the biggest problem
Speaker 1: of the last fifteen years was and I understand why
Speaker 1: he did it, but Joe Biden and everybody at that
Speaker 1: stage of the liberal side of the equation of politics
Speaker 1: in this country who viewed the election of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and the successful inauguration after Trump led a coup attempt
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, who viewed that as some sort
Speaker 1: of thing that merited the two word phrase the end.
Speaker 1: Like I said, when Obama was elected and everybody said, oh,
Speaker 1: we can take a breath, And when are you crazy?
Speaker 1: You think these people are going to go away now?
Speaker 1: They're angrier than they were, They have been thwarted, They
Speaker 1: are three year old children, and you took away their
Speaker 1: dream of killing you. So let's think big and be big.
Speaker 1: And some of these things will never happen, but if
Speaker 1: we don't start thinking about how to achieve them, we
Speaker 1: will not also come up with other ideas about how
Speaker 1: to achieve lesser doable things and maybe maybe just pull
Speaker 1: off some of these things. Like the most important thing
Speaker 1: we could do to preserve this country going forward is
Speaker 1: eliminate senatorial balance. There is no reason anymore on God's
Speaker 1: green Earth for Wyoming to have as many senators as
Speaker 1: New York. I don't know what the actual formula needs
Speaker 1: to be, but there should not be as many votes
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma as in California, not in the Senate, not
Speaker 1: in the House. We recognize the wisdom of it. In
Speaker 1: the House, people vote not empty land. I like empty land.
Speaker 1: I like bison as I will discuss later with Ted
Speaker 1: Turner about Ted Turner. He's not my guest, obviously, but
Speaker 1: we can't keep this going much longer. Eventually we will
Speaker 1: be ruled by a minority of fifteen percent of the population.
Speaker 1: Here's something else that we should work towards. You want
Speaker 1: to reform voting in this country. Well, it's very simple.
Speaker 1: You want everybody to be registered an IDD. Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: do that with this caveat you get automatic registration at
Speaker 1: birth or naturalization, or I don't know, when you register
Speaker 1: your car or get a license. There are all these
Speaker 1: other things that they say, we have to show an
Speaker 1: ID to get a license or to buy a loaf
Speaker 1: of bread, even though nobody's ever had to show a
Speaker 1: loaf of bread or to get an ID, or show
Speaker 1: an ID to get a loaf of bread. I don't
Speaker 1: know where that one came from. They keep saying this,
Speaker 1: you can't buy a pizza with an ID. Where are
Speaker 1: you buying your pizzas Moscow? Maybe they are automatic registration
Speaker 1: to vote when you are born, when they take the
Speaker 1: baby's toe prints and they say eighteen years from now,
Speaker 1: this baby's eligible to vote. Done. And by the way,
Speaker 1: mandatory voting. I've been pushing this for thirty years, longer
Speaker 1: than that. They have it in Australia. And if you
Speaker 1: don't vote, you get fined. We could do it the
Speaker 1: other way, since it's America. We could reward people with
Speaker 1: fifty dollars off your income tax if you can prove
Speaker 1: you voted. We have to eliminate the electoral college. That's obvious,
Speaker 1: and that's not a project that's going to take the
Speaker 1: storm or take the entire campaign world by storm in
Speaker 1: the midterms or in twenty twenty eight. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're going to get that done in the next fifty years.
Speaker 1: But why are we not thinking long term about this?
Speaker 1: Ideas of immediate concern and consequence can be done if
Speaker 1: there is some measure of bold leadership. You saw the
Speaker 1: Virginia Supreme Court throw out redistricting. There after it was
Speaker 1: voted on. The voters of the state approved it, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court disapproved it. Well, the Supreme Court apparently did
Speaker 1: not know that there is absolute control of the mandatory
Speaker 1: retirement age for judges in Virginia given to the state legislatures.
Speaker 1: If you changed it today to fifty three, all of
Speaker 1: the members of the Virginia Supreme Court would have to
Speaker 1: retire two weeks from now, and then you just go
Speaker 1: back with your new Supreme Court and have that vote
Speaker 1: taken again and restore the redictory we're redistricting. We need
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking, and that has been proposed, and
Speaker 1: that has to be done, and anybody who gets in
Speaker 1: the way of this needs to be eliminated from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party and perhaps prosecuted, as we should do with
Speaker 1: John Fetterman. There must be a way to take John
Speaker 1: Fetterman and not let him get away with this the
Speaker 1: way Mansion did or Kristen Cinema did. My old bedfellow.
Speaker 1: Politics make strange ballot bedfellows, and none of them have
Speaker 1: ever been stranger than her. Why not if this is
Speaker 1: my last podcast, you can quote me on that. Put
Speaker 1: that on my tombstone. Got to be a way to
Speaker 1: force him out. Got to be a way to do something,
Speaker 1: because he's a liar. He lied all the way through
Speaker 1: the campaign. He has lied every moment. He has lied
Speaker 1: to every voter. He should be sued by everybody who
Speaker 1: voted for him. If everybody who voted for him sued
Speaker 1: him for a million dollars, he would flee the country
Speaker 1: within hours. Anyway, back to the more realistic ones. Eliminating
Speaker 1: the sanatorial balance, automatic registration at birth or naturalization, mandatory voting,
Speaker 1: eliminate the electoral college. And there's more to come, but
Speaker 1: just as a pause before I get to the rest
Speaker 1: of my list, and you probably have your own list.
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five was it's a crazy wish list.
Speaker 1: But the fascists had the vision that they would someday
Speaker 1: change everything. They started to create things on that list
Speaker 1: when Barry Goldwater led that party. We have spent sixty
Speaker 1: years staving off the Barry Goldwaters of this land, successfully
Speaker 1: sometimes obviously more recently not so much. We have been
Speaker 1: staving them off. They have been planning to unroll abortion rights,
Speaker 1: women's rights, voting rights, everything that we call America, everything
Speaker 1: that has changed since the New Deal. They're still angry
Speaker 1: about FDR, and they are finally doing something about it.
Speaker 1: And the actual anger that has motivated them and Trump
Speaker 1: and the support for Trump dates to nineteen thirty fing
Speaker 1: two and the election of nineteen thirty two when a
Speaker 1: good man named Herbert Hoover was garrotted by this class
Speaker 1: trader FDR. The anger has been building there for more
Speaker 1: than nine decades. And we what do we get? We
Speaker 1: get moderates, we get Gavin Newsom going on Joe Rugan's podcast,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's have a conference about it. Think
Speaker 1: big B, big my friend, commit to the prosecution and
Speaker 1: the restitution demands of the Trump family and his family
Speaker 1: of crooks and inside traders for all the money they've stolen.
Speaker 1: Commit to removing tax breaks for churches that are now
Speaker 1: just political organizations or fronts for political organizations dressed up
Speaker 1: in clerical robes that they bought on eBay. Pastor Mark
Speaker 1: burns he's worshiping a golden calf, but because he says
Speaker 1: it's not a golden calf, they all go, oh, two gates. Fine,
Speaker 1: God wants Trump. That's not God you're talking to. The
Speaker 1: red tail should have been a hint. Commit to investigating
Speaker 1: and prosecuting the foreign bankrolling of conservative influencers and organizations
Speaker 1: like Seapack. You have an admission from the new rulers
Speaker 1: of Hungary. The new leader, Peter Madjar says, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way we've been bankrolling Seapack, it shouldn't be that difficult.
Speaker 1: We start with Hungary and then all those match laps
Speaker 1: and such, they will flee the country too. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: so much to do with the Supreme Court. We need
Speaker 1: ninety one Supreme Court justices. We need to eliminate lifetime
Speaker 1: membership on skotis. Perhaps we want to go even bigger
Speaker 1: than that, and think about the president nominates ten candidates
Speaker 1: the Senate nominates four candidates and you put them in
Speaker 1: a bubble machine. You put them in a plastic ping
Speaker 1: pong ball machine like the National Hockey League draft lottery,
Speaker 1: and one of them becomes the Supreme Court justice. Take
Speaker 1: a little of the politics out of it the only
Speaker 1: way we can do it now, which is by random chance.
Speaker 1: Although that somebody would try to fix the lottery. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying the National Hockey League lottery was fixed, but
Speaker 1: just because they keep letting the bad teams making bad
Speaker 1: choices have the number one draft choice because they're in
Speaker 1: the big markets, that's not That's okay. Never mind, Commit
Speaker 1: to prosecuting Scalia and Clarence Thomas for the corruption we've
Speaker 1: detailed here and has been detailed in a thousand places,
Speaker 1: and commit to candidates, Democratic leaders, people who want to
Speaker 1: be president twenty twenty nine need to commit now to
Speaker 1: prosecuting Barrett and Kavanaugh and Gorsich for lying to the
Speaker 1: Senate during their confirmation about Roe v. Wade. They lied.
Speaker 1: Think big b big make home schooling illegal. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, perhaps it's more convenient for some of you,
Speaker 1: but I mean, if you want to teach your kids
Speaker 1: how to live your life and do yours. That's fine,
Speaker 1: but get them out of the house so they can
Speaker 1: meet people who were not identical to you and them.
Speaker 1: When states put in racist ap history classes like the
Speaker 1: one Florida announced in the last week, like the entire
Speaker 1: program in Oklahoma, we need candidates who will say, by
Speaker 1: the way, we're not going to let you use those
Speaker 1: for college credit outside of your own states. Does your
Speaker 1: son want to go to Yale, soony purchase cal Davis,
Speaker 1: no offense to any of those schools. You can't get
Speaker 1: in with your Florida degree. Sorry that history thing. You're
Speaker 1: sixteen credits short. Spent another couple of years in a
Speaker 1: real high school somewhere. Go back to the FCC and
Speaker 1: have the fairness doctrine or equal time restored. I know dying,
Speaker 1: television is dying, but there should be some sort of
Speaker 1: FCC intervention in cable and streaming and the internet. Not
Speaker 1: that they would rule, but some sort of avenue so
Speaker 1: there can be appeal and so monopolies can be attacked.
Speaker 1: And on the subject of monopolies, think big B Big
Speaker 1: my friend, corral the tech moguls while there's still a
Speaker 1: chance to stop them, because, as has been noted, many times.
Speaker 1: Every goddamn science fiction movie from nineteen forty to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety featured a billionaire who had his own island and
Speaker 1: his own rockets. The goal should be to take all
Speaker 1: of the money from Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, the Ellisons,
Speaker 1: and the other robber barons and use it for public good.
Speaker 1: Our forefathers did exactly that, and not all of the money.
Speaker 1: They didn't bankrupt Rockefeller, but they just took the bite
Speaker 1: out of him and Morgan and all of the others,
Speaker 1: and Jay Gould Republicans led the way doing that one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, one hundred and twenty years ago, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago. We can too, and we
Speaker 1: have to, because ultimately it is either the robber barons
Speaker 1: or democracy. They are not mutually coexistent. Think big, be big,
Speaker 1: my friends, unify with the small liberal parties and go
Speaker 1: governments worldwide to encircle and shut down the fascist operations
Speaker 1: in Europe and elsewhere, like Reform UK and here like
Speaker 1: MAGA because MAGA and Reform UK want elections, but only
Speaker 1: until they win decisively, then there'll be no more elections. Also,
Speaker 1: particularly to Reform UK as it's grown again in last
Speaker 1: week's elections there in the local elections, the council elections.
Speaker 1: Nigel Farage personally consists about seventy five percent of the
Speaker 1: actual evidence that the old UFO conspiracy theory that many
Speaker 1: world leaders are in fact lizard people. He is seventy
Speaker 1: five percent of the evidence that that might be ture.
Speaker 1: You ever seen him smile where his mouth extends back
Speaker 1: to each ear. Here we need to remove Chuck Schumer
Speaker 1: and the other dead weights and the moderates. Amy Klobershar
Speaker 1: has now come out against redistricting in Minnesota, and now
Speaker 1: I think I should mention I believe she was a
Speaker 1: little worse for wear once at the White House correspondence
Speaker 1: dinner and she got a little too close. That came
Speaker 1: up a little bit too close to me like this,
Speaker 1: can you see in your earphones what I'm trying to demonstrate?
Speaker 1: And I think she was. I think she might have
Speaker 1: been saying she liked me. It's just a little close.
Speaker 1: We want a democratic party in which the declaration that
Speaker 1: you're against redistricting on behalf of democracy is the immediate
Speaker 1: end of your career. Amy Klobashar should have been forced
Speaker 1: out of office, and Tim Waltz should have been able
Speaker 1: to appoint a successor already this morning. And remember on
Speaker 1: broad projects like the filibuster, like mandatory voting, like reforming
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, all the big ticket items. Just because
Speaker 1: the Republicans would do it does not mean it's a
Speaker 1: bad idea for the Democrats.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking that it's a reason for the good guys
Speaker 1: not to do something. The best time to hit the
Speaker 1: man with the knife is when he is having trouble
Speaker 1: getting it out of his pocket. Stop thinking of reform
Speaker 1: or progress or improvement or we'll get to single payer eventually,
Speaker 1: and start thinking these issues are life or death of
Speaker 1: democracy issues. Unbalance the Senate. Defang the entire issue of
Speaker 1: voter fraud by making registration automatic in some way so
Speaker 1: that you don't have to do anything extra or pay
Speaker 1: more money, because that's the whole thing. It's a poll tax.
Speaker 1: Think big, Be big, my friends in the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: or its successor. While I'm on this, Medica, The second
Speaker 1: biggest threat, of course, is an inert news media. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many commentaries I've done about this, It
Speaker 1: must be in three digits. By now, preoccupied with their
Speaker 1: own careers and safety, as if they did not live
Speaker 1: in America and the future America they are helping create
Speaker 1: by their lack of attention, it won't affect them in
Speaker 1: some way. Tell me about it. All of you who've
Speaker 1: lost your jobs or gotten fired or work at CBS News,
Speaker 1: and you know what's going to have to happen. Somebody
Speaker 1: we're not expecting is going to have to risk their
Speaker 1: own careers. Somebody's going to have to get fired on
Speaker 1: the air, Somebody we do not expect anything from. The
Speaker 1: perfect example, the mean candidate for this is Kristen Welker
Speaker 1: of Meet the Press, totally clueless. Once or twice in
Speaker 1: her entire tenure has she said anything, followed up in
Speaker 1: any way or embarrassed anybody From MAGA. Margaret Brennan is
Speaker 1: an option. It wouldn't be enough for George Stephanoppolis.
Speaker 2: To do this.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be enough even for Jake Tapper, as bad
Speaker 1: a guy as Jake Tapper is and as useless as
Speaker 1: he is, it wouldn't be enough because that would be
Speaker 1: written off as he's just the left winger. Somebody's going
Speaker 1: to have to do a cross between Cronkite and Howard
Speaker 1: Beale somebody who is not expected to be willing to
Speaker 1: risk anything. Now, who could those people think Tony de
Speaker 1: Couple is going to do that? Maybe you want to
Speaker 1: redeem yourself. Somebody could do this. Somebody could lose it
Speaker 1: in an interview with Trump and just tell him the
Speaker 1: truth and say this is where I am leaving broadcasting
Speaker 1: and going to run a bar, and I mean lose it.
Speaker 1: Tell him the truth. Tell him he's crazy, tell him
Speaker 1: he's losing in Iran. Tell him he's not popular, tell
Speaker 1: him he's lying, Tell him he's insane. Tell him he
Speaker 1: smells like crap. Tell him his hair is the color
Speaker 1: of urine. Go ahead, Tony, show me you're actually made
Speaker 1: of something. The Hollywood Reporter recently put out its most
Speaker 1: powerful list of people in New York media. Rebecca Blumenstein,
Speaker 1: Caesar Condey, who runs NBC News, although I don't think
Speaker 1: they've seen him there in about two years. Jerry Cardinally,
Speaker 1: Jeff Zooker, Joanna Coles, Anderson Cooper, Barry Diller, Meredith Kopit, Levian,
Speaker 1: Kara Swisher. Somebody please explain to me what it is
Speaker 1: she's supposed to be doing. David Haskell, Alman, Kara Medovich,
Speaker 1: John Kelly, Rebecca Cutler who apparently runs MSNBC, Rachel Maddow
Speaker 1: who actually runs MSNBC, Emma Tucker, Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's
Speaker 1: the one who sits there and goes, Joe Kernan. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're right about that. That's power, and Emily Sunberg.
Speaker 1: Any names I just mentioned to you there strike you
Speaker 1: as somebody who'd risked twenty dollars to save the democracy,
Speaker 1: let alone twenty million dollars. Rebecca Blumenstein or Stein is
Speaker 1: the head of NBC News editorial Still. The last time
Speaker 1: we heard from her was when she was one of
Speaker 1: the people who tried to bring in Ronna Romney McDaniel
Speaker 1: as a commentator on NBC and MSNBC. Did she get
Speaker 1: fired for that fiasco? She did not. What has she
Speaker 1: been doing since? She has been running the editorial content
Speaker 1: on NBC News, so she is Kristin Welker's boss. And
Speaker 1: what has she really been doing. She's been writing a
Speaker 1: book about her days at The New York Times. She
Speaker 1: is the head essentially of NBC News, and she's not
Speaker 1: writing memos about how to save democracy through good journalism.
Speaker 1: She's writing a book and it's not even about NBC News.
Speaker 1: It's about her days, the good old days at the
Speaker 1: New York Times. She's everything that's wrong with media. I
Speaker 1: never met her. Politico put it this way. The idea
Speaker 1: of bringing the Trump flunky into NBC News began with
Speaker 1: negotiations for the NBC coverage of a Republican debate, and
Speaker 1: I'm quoting Politico though that process. Through that process, rather
Speaker 1: McDaniel built a good rapport with Boodolph Brown and Blumenstein.
Speaker 1: McDaniel left the RNC, signed on with the CIA Talent Agency,
Speaker 1: and what looking for a TV contract. While McDaniel had
Speaker 1: talks with other networks, she was trying to avoid working
Speaker 1: for CNN, but had serious discussions with ABC. NBC always
Speaker 1: had the inside track. Quote Rona had a good experience
Speaker 1: with Carrie and Rebecca and felt more comfortable than with
Speaker 1: them with then with some of the other networks. A
Speaker 1: person close to McDaniel said, log rolling, I believe is
Speaker 1: the term. All that conversation was about putting Rona McDaniel
Speaker 1: on NBC News. Was trying to advance her career and
Speaker 1: the career of those at NBC News who were going
Speaker 1: to put her on and that's what television news is,
Speaker 1: and most of news still is Hey, the country's on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I made another twenty thousand dollars. I am encouraged
Speaker 1: about the new bosses at Disney suing the FCC and
Speaker 1: Brendan Carr and by inference Trump over the chilling effect
Speaker 1: and their attempts to quash the First Amendment, and in
Speaker 1: so doing they quoted then DC Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh,
Speaker 1: who wrote in twenty seventeen that the government could not
Speaker 1: quote tell Amazon or Politics and Pros what books to
Speaker 1: promote or tell the Washington Post or the Drudge Report,
Speaker 1: what columns to carry or tell ESPN or the NFL network,
Speaker 1: what games to show or tell, how appealing or bench memos,
Speaker 1: what articles to feature or tell Twitter or YouTube, what
Speaker 1: videos to post or tell Facebook or Google? What content
Speaker 1: to favor? Brett Kavanaugh, twenty seventeen. Of course, the Trump
Speaker 1: administrations have tried to do everything Kavanaugh said they could
Speaker 1: not do. On the other hand, disabuse yourself of the
Speaker 1: notion that Brett Kavanaugh would say again what he said
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen now on the Supreme Court, or even
Speaker 1: remember that he said it, or remember what he said
Speaker 1: last week, Hey you got any of that? Where's cash?
Speaker 1: Pttel on the free stuff. People betray themselves and us
Speaker 1: on a daily basis in this country. That's where we
Speaker 1: are especially betraying themselves. After this thing about ABC and
Speaker 1: Disney suing the FCC, the newsletter's status turned for comment
Speaker 1: to Floyd Abrams. They identified Floyd Abrams as one of
Speaker 1: the nation's leading First Amendment lawyers and did not note
Speaker 1: that he was the quizzling who represented the scumbag anti
Speaker 1: free speech fascist David Bossi in the case that put
Speaker 1: us here, Citizens United. Floyd Abrams first Amendment champion until
Speaker 1: Citizens United, which killed the First Amendment. Thank you, Floyd.
Speaker 1: As we have seen in the last year, especially to
Speaker 1: quote John Houston's character in Chinatown explaining to Jack Nicholson's
Speaker 1: character how he Houston's character raped his own daughter quote,
Speaker 1: most people never have to face the fact at the
Speaker 1: right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nancy Faust. Yeah, this is not the final countdown,
Speaker 1: but Nancy never recorded a song called this is not
Speaker 1: the Final Countdown, So I had to take what I had.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nancy Faust. It's probably the only song she
Speaker 1: never did record. Is there a song called that Let's
Speaker 1: run some headlines before the break? A Keem Jeffries is
Speaker 1: apparently panicking over that virgin idea that I mentioned, the
Speaker 1: forced retirement of the entire Supreme Court and doing the
Speaker 1: whole thing over again rather than pulling the emergency switch.
Speaker 1: The Times, during a private discussion on Saturday that included
Speaker 1: Democratic House members from Virginia and Representative of Keem Jeffries
Speaker 1: of New York, the minority leader, the most dramatic idea
Speaker 1: they discussed, which would involve an unusual gambit to replace
Speaker 1: the entire state Supreme Court with the goal of reinstating
Speaker 1: their gerrymandered map. True mixed reactions on the call, said
Speaker 1: the people who were the other people on the call,
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller and Fing Trump, and it was not clear
Speaker 1: that it would be even viable or palatable to Governor
Speaker 1: Abigail Spanberger and Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly. A
Speaker 1: warning here to the governor and the members of the
Speaker 1: Virginia General Assembly, get your asses in gear and save
Speaker 1: your state, or be prepared to be exppelled from this country.
Speaker 1: Governor Spanberger, who The Times was nice enough to identify
Speaker 1: as miss span Berger. Nice sexism. I didn't even use
Speaker 1: that against her, and I'm really pissed at her. Spanburger
Speaker 1: would have to sign off on any legislation. The Times
Speaker 1: wrote that lowered the judicial retirement age. She has not
Speaker 1: been briefed on the proposal. The people involved in the
Speaker 1: discussion or briefed on it, said, well, why hasn't she
Speaker 1: been She was in the house, acheme. You should have
Speaker 1: met Abigail at some point or is The Times referred
Speaker 1: to her Miss Spanburger. The governor Virginia Times condescending, mfing bastards.
Speaker 1: Do it? Do it now? Do it? Before I finished
Speaker 1: this sentence, we don't have a lot of time left,
Speaker 1: and your state map is vital to the nation. I
Speaker 1: don't give a crap about Virginia in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things. We're talking about whether it's going to be
Speaker 1: Republican owned for the next two hundred years. Get off
Speaker 1: your ass, Governor and minority leader while you are still
Speaker 1: minority leader. Trump again on Iran. The latest Iran's response
Speaker 1: to his latest bullshit proposal to not end his bullshit
Speaker 1: war is, according to him, unacceptable bullshit. Anybody notice he
Speaker 1: just rotates the lies. Every day, Trump says, A, he
Speaker 1: won in Iran him personally, he won. The next day,
Speaker 1: he says, B he may start blowing them to hell.
Speaker 1: The day after that, he says, see piece is close
Speaker 1: in Iran is begging, sir, please, We have tears in
Speaker 1: our eyes. Can we have a deal, sir? Please? Sir?
Speaker 1: Once some more? And our media, from Fox News to
Speaker 1: The New York Times, the whole gamut nods to this
Speaker 1: like a row of bobblehead dolls on a giveaway day
Speaker 1: at a ballpark. Can't you see it? It's a Monday, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday thing. He says the same thing in the same order.
Speaker 1: It should be obvious to fourth graders. I would rather
Speaker 1: have fourth graders populating the news organizations of this country
Speaker 1: right now. This is the one true thing that I
Speaker 1: worry about sometimes in my moment of absolute egotism. There
Speaker 1: is the possibility that this podcast is one of the
Speaker 1: top two or three news sources in America, not because
Speaker 1: it's particularly good or because I do it, but because
Speaker 1: everything else sucks. On the newest Iranian response, Trump, I
Speaker 1: have just read the response from Iran so called representatives.
Speaker 1: I don't like it totally. Unacceptable. Well, F Trump, we
Speaker 1: don't like you, and yet somehow you're still here. Urine
Speaker 1: hair from the Supreme Court, sam Alito lying no. The
Speaker 1: claims that Samuel Alito made about voter turnout in Louisiana
Speaker 1: in a landmark Voting Rights Act case where based on
Speaker 1: a misleading data analysis, a Guardian review has found, writs
Speaker 1: the Guardian. The New Republic version of this. In the
Speaker 1: Court's majority opinion, Alito claimed that the kind of racial
Speaker 1: discrimination that it prompted the creation of the Voting Rights
Speaker 1: Act no longer existed. He said black voters now participate
Speaker 1: in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate,
Speaker 1: even turning out at higher rates than white voters in
Speaker 1: two of the five most recent presidential elections nationwide and
Speaker 1: in Louisiana. Alito wrote he was citing a Friend of
Speaker 1: the Court brief submitted by the Department of Justice. That's
Speaker 1: Trump's Department of Justice, which is something out of Orwell's
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. It's the Department of Trump Justice, which
Speaker 1: is of course illegal. It relied on a statistical methodology
Speaker 1: that is not preferred by experts in determining statewide voter turnout.
Speaker 1: The brief calculated black and white voter turnout in Louisiana
Speaker 1: as a proportion of the total population of each racial
Speaker 1: group over the age of eighteen. This is generally considered
Speaker 1: a suboptimal method because it includes people who can't vote,
Speaker 1: including non citizens and people with felony convictions. In other words,
Speaker 1: Alito's arguing that there is no longer a disparity in
Speaker 1: who votes in Louisiana, and he uses this by and
Speaker 1: proves this by cooking the effing books. Sam Alito should
Speaker 1: be in prison, John Roberts, this is your last chance.
Speaker 1: The best thing for this country right now would be
Speaker 1: if we did not have a Supreme Court. It would
Speaker 1: be chaos. It would be better than this. Sam Alito
Speaker 1: is a crook. He is a megalomaniac. He is rewriting
Speaker 1: law and now changing numbers to justify his political prejudices
Speaker 1: and his hatred of minorities. Get him the out of here,
Speaker 1: John Roberts. When I said earlier, we need a Cronkite
Speaker 1: moment or a Howard Beale moment from somebody, now, I
Speaker 1: think Supreme Court Chief Justice of the United States John
Speaker 1: Roberts might be the right guy. I'm not holding my breath,
Speaker 1: speaking of which Erica Kirk has given the commencement address
Speaker 1: at White Trash College. I'm sorry I misread that Hillsdale.
Speaker 1: As Ron philip Kowski noted on social media, her husband
Speaker 1: wrote a book on how kids should not go to college.
Speaker 1: Missus Kirk is requesting privacy at this time. Also more
Speaker 1: speaking bookings cash only. Google's chief scientists its lead on
Speaker 1: Gemini AI went to give a scientific lecture at UC Berkeley,
Speaker 1: complains a tech dude. Modern AI research was the topic.
Speaker 1: He was not there to debate Gaza or Google contracts,
Speaker 1: but protesters disrupted the event anyway, and within ten minutes
Speaker 1: it was shut down. Goodf him, af Google. If you're
Speaker 1: not going to address public issues in public, don't speak
Speaker 1: in public. It's simple. F off tech nerds. And by
Speaker 1: the way, leave all your money from the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: after it literally lost more than one thousand local council
Speaker 1: seats to every party except the World Party, the band
Speaker 1: from the eighties. Keir Starmer's Prime ministership appears finally to
Speaker 1: be dying slowly. I have not thought that any of
Speaker 1: the challenges to it would actually unseat him, but it
Speaker 1: is now evident that there is a rebellion brewing inside
Speaker 1: his party, because even British labor recognizes when it is
Speaker 1: time to change the leaders of the leading liberal unit,
Speaker 1: our version of labor, the Democrats, No Chuck Schumer another
Speaker 1: twenty years. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy went on Fox to
Speaker 1: defend along with his wife an idiot, They're the Great
Speaker 1: American Road Trip. This is a reality show that they
Speaker 1: have shot that will start dropping episodes online next month.
Speaker 1: They shot this while he was Transportation Secretary. And I
Speaker 1: know how unseemly this sounds. On the other hand, why
Speaker 1: are we complaining about this. The less shit this idiot
Speaker 1: does in the office, the better. The less shit the
Speaker 1: idiot wife does on Fox, the better. And again, the
Speaker 1: bottom line here is he's been out out of the office.
Speaker 1: He's been shooting a reality show, something he's done before
Speaker 1: and represents the limit of his intellect. The further Sean
Speaker 1: Duffy stays away from the office, the fewer plane crashes
Speaker 1: we will have and the more of us might survive this.
Speaker 1: And Garrett Graf is back at doomsday scenario his website
Speaker 1: on the White House Correspondent's Dinner, It wasn't an assassination
Speaker 1: attempt attempt quote. I wrote last week about how the
Speaker 1: shooting he put shooting in quotes, bless you, Garrett graf
Speaker 1: was so strange, and how there seemed plenty of reason
Speaker 1: to doubt that the suspect, Cole Thomas Allen, fired at all.
Speaker 1: With some further evidence, including the release of higher resolution
Speaker 1: security camera footage, graph Rights, some evidence from the government statements,
Speaker 1: and mostly worked by The New York Times, I'm prepared
Speaker 1: to be convinced that Cole Thomas Allen fired his shotgun once.
Speaker 1: But man, oh man, this still remains just about the
Speaker 1: strangest shooting I've ever seen, he continues quote. The higher
Speaker 1: resolution video shows several things not evident in the low
Speaker 1: quality version that Trump tweeted in the out hours after
Speaker 1: the incident. That's Trump who painted the gold not gold
Speaker 1: but gold and colored urine, including that Alan was evidently
Speaker 1: brandishing the shotgun as he ran through the checkpoint, and
Speaker 1: we can see the muzzle flashes from the officer who
Speaker 1: opened fire in the bottom left corner of the video.
Speaker 1: There is still no indication Garrett graft Rights on the
Speaker 1: video of a muzzle flash from Alan's shotgun, nor any
Speaker 1: reaction from the officer who is the apparent target that
Speaker 1: he is hit by a blast. One more quote, and
Speaker 1: I I have to send him a check But Garrett
Speaker 1: Graf rights. The high resolution video of Alan barging past
Speaker 1: and through the Secret Service checkpoint raises its own set
Speaker 1: of meaningful new questions about the security. The one officer
Speaker 1: who opened fire does so in the most reckless way,
Speaker 1: firing basically every shot at the suspect when one of
Speaker 1: his own fellow officers or agents is down range of
Speaker 1: the shot. He amazingly misses the suspect with every shot,
Speaker 1: and only by some miracle, also misses everyone around him. This,
Speaker 1: mister Graff concludes, could have been a mass shooting event
Speaker 1: from blue on blue fire of the Secret Service officer alone.
Speaker 1: Derek Graf Doomsday scenario is his site. It's a great subscription.
Speaker 1: It's worth it. Are our intrepid reporters in the mainstream
Speaker 1: taking notes, just reading this the way I did. Perhaps yesterday,
Speaker 1: the New York Times put a thirty one paragraph piece
Speaker 1: out about the White House correspondence dinner and the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the so called shooting, so called assassination attempt, and
Speaker 1: the thirty one paragraphs are entirely devoted to whether or
Speaker 1: not they should still have the dinner, nothing about the
Speaker 1: discrepancies in the video that this man and his laptop
Speaker 1: were able to perceive. The New York e fing Times.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Garrett Graff, you have tried. I appreciate you,
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, where fed? Okay? Two more segments before hiatus,
Speaker 1: and I am not sure changing you with this episode,
Speaker 1: am I? This might last you until I return. The
Speaker 1: rest of this episode is all Ted all the time.
Speaker 1: The real story of Ted Turner's triumph over intense suicidal
Speaker 1: impulses that he talked about with us the lowest level
Speaker 1: CNN staffers forty five years ago and who helped him
Speaker 1: through it, and the amazing recovery of another Ted, my
Speaker 1: first rescue dog. Ted, the producer of this show, I
Speaker 1: can now tell you in December, had eight hours of
Speaker 1: open heart surgery and he was on a heart lung machine.
Speaker 1: All Ted all the time. You'll give us twenty two minutes.
Speaker 1: We'll give you the Ted that's next. This has countdown,
Speaker 1: you know, this is countdown with you know Keith Alberman.
Speaker 4: Hey, millions of Americans from many backgrounds, many lifestyles.
Speaker 1: And several voices of my past who I wanted to
Speaker 1: put in here just in case this is the last one,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it is. You're not getting away
Speaker 1: that easily. My late friend Richard Lewis. It's tough for
Speaker 1: me to hear his voice. It is still impossible for
Speaker 1: me to believe he is not with us. So in
Speaker 1: a sense, there he is introducing countdown with the theme
Speaker 1: from the CBS Evening News on radio introducing him, followed
Speaker 1: by the newscast I interned on a scant fifty now
Speaker 1: forty eight years ago. It's not fifty eight yet, hopefully
Speaker 1: it'll be fifty eight eventually, the Channel five ten o'clock
Speaker 1: News with Bill Jorgensen in the summer of nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: I've told that story and the story of the fabulous
Speaker 1: and gritty and highly principled newscaster Bill Jorgensen. And I'm
Speaker 1: always sorry that Bill Jorgenson did not associate himself or
Speaker 1: get tied in with in some way somebody else who
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about in this episode, rather than
Speaker 1: doing a worse person segment here as they normally do.
Speaker 1: Who passed away in the past week? Ted Turner. Ted
Speaker 1: Turner put me on television he didn't do it directly,
Speaker 1: and given the amount of alcohol he was doing between
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one when I started with CNN and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four when I left CNN, he probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: remembered at any point there that I worked for him,
Speaker 1: although several times we did encounter each other directly. Once,
Speaker 1: as I have told here, almost resulted in a fistfight,
Speaker 1: another time almost resulted in a fire that would have
Speaker 1: consumed RFK Stadium in Washington. It was an interesting period
Speaker 1: of time with Ted, and I'd like to pray tribute
Speaker 1: to him, because if you can imagine this, a man
Speaker 1: who's passing was covered on networks worldwide as the father
Speaker 1: of essentially what we have now in television and in
Speaker 1: video news, so covering the whole gamut from TV to
Speaker 1: streaming to online stuff to videos on TikTok. I don't
Speaker 1: think he got his due nine tenths of what you
Speaker 1: see on television right now. Ted Turner either started, thought
Speaker 1: of himself or inspired And there are still dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of people who you see and you listen to,
Speaker 1: who he rose or put in position to rise to
Speaker 1: prominence in this business, and they are still there and
Speaker 1: at a time when I am at that very sad
Speaker 1: maximized window in which all of the role models and
Speaker 1: all of the key people from my past are gradually
Speaker 1: slipping away, is almost indescribably important. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: read to you something I wrote about him in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen and the reaction that that got and why, particularly
Speaker 1: Ted's decline, and I want to discuss how Ted's decline,
Speaker 1: as sad as it is, it's amazing that he lasted
Speaker 1: as long as he did so that he could decline,
Speaker 1: but how Ted's decline actually may have unfortunately put us
Speaker 1: some degree in the position we are in right now politically.
Speaker 1: As I said, he started my career indirectly. He was
Speaker 1: running CNN. It was already at the end of its
Speaker 1: first year, the beginning of its second year, and he'd
Speaker 1: already made his mark in sports, and people were forgetting
Speaker 1: that part of it. He'd already made his mark in cable.
Speaker 1: He was the guy who put the Atlanta local garbage
Speaker 1: UHF television station on the satellite for this burgeoning thing
Speaker 1: that he saw called cable. Because his father was an
Speaker 1: early television mogul in the sixties and in advertising, mostly
Speaker 1: in the South. He started my career indirectly because they
Speaker 1: needed to populate CNN Sports with a wave of people
Speaker 1: who worked cheap, and then when those people turned out
Speaker 1: to be really good and got real jobs, the big
Speaker 1: jobs of the day at the Channel forty five in Scranton,
Speaker 1: which would have paid more than CNN did in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: he had to get a second wave of people to
Speaker 1: go on and do sports and news and all the rest.
Speaker 1: So one of the interesting truths, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that it was Ted's idea. It may have been his
Speaker 1: fact totem the oddly named Ed Turner, it may have
Speaker 1: been his idea. I never did find out who this
Speaker 1: was who thought this up. But the original hiring process
Speaker 1: at CNN favored married couples who both worked in the business.
Speaker 1: Was your wife also a newscaster, We'll offer you more
Speaker 1: for both of you to come down there, because obviously
Speaker 1: the family moving was more likely to stay because they
Speaker 1: weren't both likely to get another job somewhere else, but
Speaker 1: they were often getting their first chance to work together,
Speaker 1: and they filled two jobs for the price of one move.
Speaker 1: So the company was populated by people who were married
Speaker 1: to each other. We had television directors who were married
Speaker 1: to producers, and we had we had co anchors who
Speaker 1: were married couples. It was it was quite an adventure.
Speaker 1: And then there was the second wave of people like
Speaker 1: me who had just no television experience, but who managed
Speaker 1: to after the first day anyway, not knock the camera over.
Speaker 1: And that was me. I met Ted for the first
Speaker 1: time at the Football Talks the nineteen eighty two strike.
Speaker 1: I have told this story. I walked in and my
Speaker 1: camera crew and I had won CBS Sports caps from
Speaker 1: the president of CBS Sports because I asked him a question.
Speaker 1: He had not been asked about the effect of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two National Football League players strike on CBS Sports,
Speaker 1: and he had said, if you asked me a question,
Speaker 1: I haven't been asked already. Name was Neil Pilson. If
Speaker 1: you asked me a question I haven't been asked for
Speaker 1: I give you all. And we thought jobs, and he
Speaker 1: thought caps. So we had caps. And I didn't think
Speaker 1: twice about it. But there comes my camera crew to
Speaker 1: go interview Ted Turner as he walks into the Football
Speaker 1: Strike Talks at the Durral Hotel on Lexington Avenue in
Speaker 1: New York, in nineteen eighty two, and my camera crew
Speaker 1: is the same one, and they are proudly wearing their
Speaker 1: CBS Sports caps and Ted recognizes me as he comes
Speaker 1: down the long hallway towards the meeting room, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he sees the camera crew with me and the CNN microphone,
Speaker 1: and there we are wearing CBS Sports caps. And he'd
Speaker 1: berated me in front of everybody. He wouldn't answer any questions,
Speaker 1: he just insult to me. And I thought, I don't
Speaker 1: like this job, not particularly, and I don't like him
Speaker 1: doing that to me in public. Maybe I'll just sock him.
Speaker 1: And instead I had another idea, which was to stick
Speaker 1: CNN bumper stickers over the CBS Sports caps so that
Speaker 1: the next time he saw the crew, when the crew
Speaker 1: came in to take pictures of him meeting with all
Speaker 1: these football players he was trying to impress, there were
Speaker 1: CNN Sports caps and he loved that and vowed to
Speaker 1: get us all CBS or CNN Sports caps for Christmas.
Speaker 1: And there they were, and I reminded him as he left,
Speaker 1: don't forget the caps, and he gave me a dirty look,
Speaker 1: and then for Christmas he gave us caps. The second
Speaker 1: time I was at a football game with Ted when he,
Speaker 1: as I will describe in this piece that I aired
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, he managed to have essentially a pickup
Speaker 1: game of the striking players in front of literally invited
Speaker 1: guests at RFK Stadium in Washington, and he was so
Speaker 1: inebriated that, as I said, if he had lit a cigarette,
Speaker 1: the whole place could have gone up easily. That was
Speaker 1: Ted's life, and I wanted to emphasize something I heard
Speaker 1: nowhere else. And I've told the stories about his womenizing.
Speaker 1: I just told the story the other way the other
Speaker 1: day about him and the camera person at CNN who
Speaker 1: he propositioned and who stood up and slapped him at
Speaker 1: a French restaurant, the French Restaurant in Georgetown, and then
Speaker 1: they tried to make it good with her and gave
Speaker 1: her a job at the assignment desk, which led to
Speaker 1: her working in television news as an anchor for twenty
Speaker 1: or more years. Worked out, okay, nothing untoward happened. The
Speaker 1: only person who got actually violated in any sense there
Speaker 1: was Ted getting hit in the face, not that he
Speaker 1: would have felt it because again, there was so much
Speaker 1: alcohol involve but the one thing I did not hear
Speaker 1: in any of the obituaries of Ted Turner that kind
Speaker 1: of disappointed me was this truth. Jane Fonda saved his life.
Speaker 1: There is no other conclusion Ted Turner was on a
Speaker 1: suicidal jag, whether or not he was overtly trying to
Speaker 1: kill himself with alcohol or just was passively doing it
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to do it in some other way.
Speaker 1: I'll leave to your conclusions and the conclusions of his
Speaker 1: various biographers. But I had one story. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever told it publicly. I've told it privately many times,
Speaker 1: and it was well known around CNN in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: again because of that football strike. I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in Washington at the CNN bureau in Georgetown
Speaker 1: in eighty two, and to a lesser degree eighty three,
Speaker 1: probably a couple of months old, told and Ted was
Speaker 1: still drinking. And one day one of our production assistants
Speaker 1: Runners Couriers, full time employee, lovely woman named Paula, and
Speaker 1: I'll just leave her last name out of it. Paula wonderful, nice,
Speaker 1: pretty intelligent. I don't know what happened in her career.
Speaker 1: I hope it was good. She was just a nice
Speaker 1: person there, and she was just a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and she used to come out on shoots with us
Speaker 1: to get an idea of how to do that. And
Speaker 1: that's all it was, and that's all it was going
Speaker 1: to be. And that's you know, that's it's just somebody
Speaker 1: who worked with And Paula comes up to me one
Speaker 1: day and she's white as a sheet. And Paula was
Speaker 1: I don't know, five two, five three, And Paula was
Speaker 1: many wonderful things, but imaginative was not one of them.
Speaker 1: So I never had any doubts that this story was true.
Speaker 3: Keith.
Speaker 1: I just got back from picking up mister Turner at
Speaker 1: the airport and I went, oh, boy, here we go. No, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that. That's how big his reputation was
Speaker 1: among the women at CNN already by that point. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to say what she thought I meant, or
Speaker 1: what I thought she meant. She said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I we didn't have the all the crew cars were out.
Speaker 1: I had to go use my and she had like
Speaker 1: a Simca. She had a car with a you know,
Speaker 1: a square footage of like forty square feet. There might
Speaker 1: have been a passenger seat maybe, and the car, knowing Paula,
Speaker 1: it was full of garbage anyway, and she had to
Speaker 1: brush it off to get him. She drove to Washington
Speaker 1: National Airport, she explained, and she picked Paula up and
Speaker 1: he didn't care because he was kind of drunk. And
Speaker 1: they drove back to the hotel. And I think he
Speaker 1: stayed at the Georgetown Holiday Inn, where the rest of
Speaker 1: us did. I think CNN was usually fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the population at that hotel, and it was ninety seconds
Speaker 1: walk from the bureau, so it made perfect sense. And
Speaker 1: I think Ted may have stayed there on a quick
Speaker 1: flying trip through DC. And Paula went to get him,
Speaker 1: and she was shivering and white as a sheet, and
Speaker 1: she said, Keith, I never got to say anything other
Speaker 1: than hello, mister Turner, this is my car over here.
Speaker 1: We haven't good with the crew car. Then no, that's
Speaker 1: not a problem, that little lady. Thank you, ah, she said.
Speaker 1: He got in the car. Then he started talking about
Speaker 1: talking about when he finally decided to do it, which
Speaker 1: way he was going to kill himself, not whether or
Speaker 1: not he was going to kill himself, but which way
Speaker 1: he was going to kill himself. And I went, oh God,
Speaker 1: and he he said, he said, you can't do what
Speaker 1: my daddy did. You can't. You can't. I'm adding the
Speaker 1: accent and the whole routine. You can't. You can't do
Speaker 1: what my daddy did and blow your brains out in
Speaker 1: the in the in the toilet, because then you never
Speaker 1: get the blood out of the grout. You had to
Speaker 1: redo the whole toilet in the bathroom, and you got
Speaker 1: to pull out the sinks. And he talked about apparently
Speaker 1: he went through every possibility of ending one's life and
Speaker 1: two possibly the lowest ranked employee in all of Turner Broadcasting, Paula.
Speaker 1: This is how self destructive Ted Turner was. And then
Speaker 1: he met Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda, I only know I
Speaker 1: met her once, very briefly. She was about eighty and
Speaker 1: extremely fotatious and a gas to be with. And the
Speaker 1: one thing I don't think anybody ever got to read
Speaker 1: people who hate her, people who love her, people who
Speaker 1: just know her from the movies. And she might have
Speaker 1: been taller, but not by much than Paula in Washington.
Speaker 1: Jane's not a big, big person, but the gigantic personality
Speaker 1: ten feet tall, and I knew of her only through
Speaker 1: my friend Donald Sutherland, who had a relationship with her,
Speaker 1: and described it in some detail. Nothing nothing, nothing scandalous,
Speaker 1: and nothing too detailed, but enough to make me respect
Speaker 1: Jane fondas as a as an alluring individual. How's that
Speaker 1: for euphemisms? But she saved Ted Turner whatever it was
Speaker 1: that was about Jane Fonda, the Jane Fonda that that
Speaker 1: Ted Turner knew, and I guess Donald Sutherland too, and
Speaker 1: Roger Vadim and whoever else she was married to or
Speaker 1: involved with. Ted Ted was told by Jane you have
Speaker 1: to clean up your act. A. You're killing yourself. B.
Speaker 1: If you want to be with me, you have to
Speaker 1: clean up your act. And he did in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: If you had said to me, okay, Ted Turner is
Speaker 1: going to last, He's going to be alive when you're
Speaker 1: sixty seven years old, I would have taken that bet
Speaker 1: for any amount of money, and I would have taken
Speaker 1: the rest of the possibilities of what would have happened
Speaker 1: to him that in him living to twenty twenty six?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I'm not sure he's going to
Speaker 1: live to what time is it now? It's ten after four,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure he's going to make it to five thirty.
Speaker 1: And I'm not being exaggerative here. And Jane Fonda saved
Speaker 1: his life. And what did he do with it? Well,
Speaker 1: he repopulated the bison in this country. All the bison
Speaker 1: who exists in the United States, basically have Ted Turner.
Speaker 1: To think, much of the private environment mentalism in this
Speaker 1: country was founded and funded by Ted Turner. He took
Speaker 1: the money that CNN began to produce for him in
Speaker 1: car load lots and spent it mostly on charity and
Speaker 1: the environment and goodwill measure measures across the country. And
Speaker 1: it turned out and the world, and it turned out
Speaker 1: he was an extraordinarily sincere individual. And he meant all
Speaker 1: the things that he intended with CNN, some of which
Speaker 1: were achieved in some of which the opposite of which
Speaker 1: was achieved, and none of which would have happened without Jane. Period.
Speaker 1: She saved him. The second half of his life was
Speaker 1: sobriety environmentalism and one terrible mistake selling CNN and that
Speaker 1: horrible time Warner Merger. If he hadn't done that, and
Speaker 1: he said that he might have been in position to
Speaker 1: do real damage to the creeping fascist movement that he
Speaker 1: recognized twenty years ago. And Trump, and I mean Trump
Speaker 1: particularly because Trump worshiped Ted Turner. Everybody has somebody they
Speaker 1: think is much better than them in life, and Trump's
Speaker 1: was Ted Turner. Not only did he worship him, he
Speaker 1: envied him, and he was most importantly afraid of Ted Turner.
Speaker 1: I never figured out what that was about, but I
Speaker 1: heard it on countless occasions from countless individuals. And you
Speaker 1: can go through all of the public comments that Trump
Speaker 1: made about Ted Turner over the years. Something about Ted
Speaker 1: Turner terrified Donald Trump. If Ted had been with us
Speaker 1: for the last ten years in a more realistic sense
Speaker 1: than he was, Who knows if CNN had been with
Speaker 1: us in the last ten years, If CNN had just
Speaker 1: had Ted Turner's name attached to it directly rather than
Speaker 1: this succession of morons who have run it over the years,
Speaker 1: who knows how life would have been different in this country.
Speaker 1: And that leads me into what I promised before. I'm
Speaker 1: going to reread this script with which I opened The
Speaker 1: Olderman Show on ESPN two on March twenty six, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: I think the script is self explanatory. I think it's
Speaker 1: worth reading it again, and then the reaction to it,
Speaker 1: I think is the punchline that you may enjoy. All right,
Speaker 1: are you ready?
Speaker 3: Here goes?
Speaker 1: We begin tonight with the Sports Emmy nominations. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got Best Daily Sports Studio Show. I'm delighted for
Speaker 1: the staff. They should get something besides having to work
Speaker 1: with me. But my attention was drawn to the Lifetime
Speaker 1: Achievement Award they will be giving out at the ceremonies
Speaker 1: here in May. To Ted Turner, how did he not
Speaker 1: have one already? What you watch now? Essentially he invented
Speaker 1: all this, not ESPN. He didn't have that idea. Simately
Speaker 1: this idea would surpass and subsume one big idea that
Speaker 1: he did have. But sports on national television on more
Speaker 1: or less a daily basis, Ted did that, and the
Speaker 1: Daily Sports Studio show on at the same time every
Speaker 1: day or night. Ted did that too, and buying sports
Speaker 1: teams to have something to put on your television station.
Speaker 1: Ted did that too. WTCG Channel seventeen Atlanta was the
Speaker 1: fringiest of fringe television stations when he bought it in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, but then six years later he bought first
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Braves and then the Atlanta Hawks, and he
Speaker 1: bought a couple of satellite dishes, and the FCC made
Speaker 1: the fateful decision to let him put Channel seventeen up
Speaker 1: on the satellite so it could be shown on those
Speaker 1: fledgling cable systems around the country. Ted Turner, who was
Speaker 1: shameless among other things, promptly outbid George Steinbrenner and the
Speaker 1: New York Yankees and signed the first baseball player ever
Speaker 1: to take advantage of what we now know as free agency,
Speaker 1: Andy Messersmith. Messer Smith got what looked like all the
Speaker 1: money in the world from Ted Turner, more money than
Speaker 1: any baseball player had ever gotten or would ever get.
Speaker 1: One million dollars yeah, over three years. With one catch.
Speaker 1: He had to wear uniform number seventeen like the station number,
Speaker 1: and instead of having Messersmith written on the back of
Speaker 1: his uniform shirt, he had to have the word channel,
Speaker 1: so his uniform for at least the first couple of
Speaker 1: days read Channel seventeen. Baseball stopped that right quick, and
Speaker 1: it also stopped Ted the day he decided he would
Speaker 1: like to see what it was like to manage the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Braves. His lifetime record was oh and one. But
Speaker 1: the cable sports genie that was out of the bottle,
Speaker 1: and nobody was stopping it. And the bottle and this
Speaker 1: is a fitting analogy if I've ever written one, had
Speaker 1: Ted Turner's name on it. Next came news. Even then,
Speaker 1: his crazy idea cable news network rested squarely on the
Speaker 1: first regularly scheduled nightly sports newscasts in national television history,
Speaker 1: CNN Sports Tonight at seven eleven and two am Eastern,
Speaker 1: while Sports Center was on for fifteen minutes one night
Speaker 1: at seven pm and an hour the next at ten
Speaker 1: seventeen pm Sports Tonight on CNN. Was there come News
Speaker 1: or high Water? Seven nights a week. Of course, Ted
Speaker 1: Turner wasn't just shameless, He was also technically penniless. So
Speaker 1: he hired a couple of real veterans to run and
Speaker 1: anchor the thing. Bill McPhail, who helped invent the NFL
Speaker 1: on CBS and Monday Night Football, and his former CBS
Speaker 1: colleague Bob Westler, and Nick Charles, a star of Washington
Speaker 1: and Baltimore sports casts. He spent the money on them.
Speaker 1: Everybody else well. In nineteen eighty one, Ted Turner sent
Speaker 1: Bill McPhail to hire somebody like me. When I told
Speaker 1: Bill I made forty two thousand dollars the year before
Speaker 1: working in radio for Charlie Steiner, Bill spit his drink
Speaker 1: halfway across the room. We were planning on hiring six
Speaker 1: guys to start with for a total of ninety five thousand. Later,
Speaker 1: when we recalibrated, who got what of that ninety five thousand,
Speaker 1: they got me anyway, And they got Dan Patrick and
Speaker 1: Hannah Storm and Fred Hickman and Dan Hicks and Gary
Speaker 1: Miller and dozens of others and reporters and cameramen and
Speaker 1: editors and executives on shorts production assistant wound up becoming
Speaker 1: the president of CNN. His name was Jim Walton. He
Speaker 1: worked on one of my shows. Another became president of MSNBC,
Speaker 1: Phil Griffin. He was my field producer in New York.
Speaker 1: ESPN reshaped television sports, but early on CNN staffed ESPN
Speaker 1: and much of the rest of the industry. And I'm
Speaker 1: skipping how Ted Turner mainstreamed World Cup yachting at least
Speaker 1: for a while, and Ted and TNT and Ted and
Speaker 1: the Goodwill Games and Ted and World Championship Wrestling whose
Speaker 1: matches were held right above the CNN newsroom, so you
Speaker 1: could hear the wrestlers falling, particularly on Saturday afternoons when
Speaker 1: they were live in the newsroom in Atlanta, you could
Speaker 1: hear them fudding into the ceiling. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the Braves winning fourteen straight division titles under his ownership,
Speaker 1: and the repopulation of bison in this country. But my
Speaker 1: favorite Ted Turner story comes from something he did not
Speaker 1: pull off, not that he didn't try. When the football
Speaker 1: owners forced the players out on strike in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Ted sent me to cover it every day for eight months,
Speaker 1: and then one day he showed up to meet with
Speaker 1: the players, and after a little tiff that I, by
Speaker 1: the way, mentioned earlier, when he came out, he announced
Speaker 1: that he would bankroll and Tedle buys two games, one
Speaker 1: at RFK Stadium in Washington, the other at the Rose
Speaker 1: Bowl in southern California. Basically, it would pit each of
Speaker 1: them pick up teams of striking players the American Conference
Speaker 1: versus the National Conference. He called it the All Star Season,
Speaker 1: All Star season, acronym all Star Season. I asked him
Speaker 1: about the acronym. He winked at me. He shushed me,
Speaker 1: and then he took aside and he asked me what
Speaker 1: I thought of it, and I told him nobody would
Speaker 1: watch and he would lose money. And he looked at
Speaker 1: me and he said, nobody watches you, and I lose
Speaker 1: money on you.
Speaker 4: So what?
Speaker 1: He then explained that what he was really doing was
Speaker 1: setting the owners up. If he could put the games
Speaker 1: together and get them on TV with no more than
Speaker 1: a month's lead time, the players Union was going to
Speaker 1: partner up with him. Ted Turner's real motive for the
Speaker 1: ass the All Star Season ass ass ass was nothing
Speaker 1: less than creating his own football league, twenty four teams
Speaker 1: to begin play in this country in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: and be televised exclusively on TBS. All he needed was
Speaker 1: the players going along with him, and then a labor
Speaker 1: court ruling that they would go and get that the
Speaker 1: owners had forced the players union to strike would thus
Speaker 1: allow the union to negotiate with new employers. It's a
Speaker 1: standard provision of the National Labor Relations Board. Obviously he
Speaker 1: didn't get that court ruling. It's still the National Football
Speaker 1: League as opposed to Welcome to season forty four of
Speaker 1: Ted Turner's ass but Ted was shooting for nothing less
Speaker 1: than killing the National Football League and replacing it with
Speaker 1: a new one that he owned all by himself. Ted
Speaker 1: would have owned football, technically co owned it with the players.
Speaker 1: It would have been pure goddamn socialism. And don't forget,
Speaker 1: nearly all of this was done on a shoe string budget,
Speaker 1: with borrowed money, with all of us his employees convinced
Speaker 1: he was crazy, and the whole thing wouldn't last till
Speaker 1: next Tuesday, And when we would get our paychecks, we
Speaker 1: would race each other to the bank to cash them,
Speaker 1: just in case there wasn't going to be enough for everybody.
Speaker 1: A Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Television Emmys. Ted Turner
Speaker 1: has been in the Television Hall of Fame since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. A Lifetime Achievement award. Hell, they ought to
Speaker 1: give him two a couple days later. Again, that was
Speaker 1: March twenty six, twenty fourteen. I got a letter at
Speaker 1: my home, very unusual. I didn't give that address out.
Speaker 1: I got the mail somewhere else. March twenty eighth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Mister Keith Olerman, two hundred and e sixty
Speaker 1: ninth Street spelled correctly I might add New York, New
Speaker 1: York one zero zero two to one. Dear Keith, your
Speaker 1: piece on Ted Turner and the Lifetime Achievement Award was fantastic,
Speaker 1: and you're right when you say he should get two
Speaker 1: of them. Keep up the great work, Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work. Is underlined in black sharpie, boldly with a
Speaker 1: stroke underneath it with best wishes, sincerely Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 1: and its signed. It signed rather reminiscent of that birthday
Speaker 1: card to Jeffrey Epstein, it signed just Donald. When I
Speaker 1: say Ted Turner somehow terrified Donald J. Trump, somehow was
Speaker 1: Trump's dream and nightmare at the same time, I ain't
Speaker 1: kidding he was so important to Trump. Trump wrote me
Speaker 1: a fan letter about him. One more edition before we
Speaker 1: wrap this up in on the actual hiatus, and it
Speaker 1: is the story of my dog Ted. And if you're
Speaker 1: tired of me talking about dogs, a screw you, b
Speaker 1: you want to hear this one anyway. This is one
Speaker 1: of the most fantastic things that has ever happened in
Speaker 1: my life or anybody else's. That's next.
Speaker 2: This is countdown.
Speaker 1: On the twenty eighth of July twenty twenty five, I
Speaker 1: took my first rescue dog Ted, who had come to
Speaker 1: me nearly what seven years previously as Spaghetti, a dog
Speaker 1: who needed a Maltese of several months who needed heart surgery.
Speaker 1: I took him in for a checkup. Ted was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a foster. I was a perfect foster fail.
Speaker 1: Ted became part of our little family of mostly dogs
Speaker 1: and me, who they shared ownership of. And I said
Speaker 1: to him, I will do anything for you except call
Speaker 1: you Spaghetti. So Spaghetti Saghetti Teddy Ted my dad's name.
Speaker 1: How perfect. Ted is a wonderful dog. He's about eight
Speaker 1: pounds with a personality of about an eight hundred pound animal.
Speaker 1: He loves people. He goes hunting for girls in Central Park.
Speaker 1: He likes to cuddle up next to girls on blankets
Speaker 1: in Central Park. They all say the same thing, how
Speaker 1: did you teach him how to do this? And I say,
Speaker 1: I didn't teach him how to do it. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: I get to learn it from him. Anyway. Ted was
Speaker 1: having a checkup for his heart. He had the surgery
Speaker 1: and it was brilliantly successful under the guidance of a
Speaker 1: cardiologist and surgeon at the Animal Medical Center in New
Speaker 1: York named Dennis trafney. He came through it with glowing
Speaker 1: results so good that they wrote up the results of
Speaker 1: what they called a ballooning to loosen up a stuck
Speaker 1: valve inside at his heart, they put a thread in
Speaker 1: through his juguar vein stopped his heart, pumped this little
Speaker 1: balloon in his heart to knock the stuffy kind of
Speaker 1: valve open and closed again and again, like you knock
Speaker 1: the rust off hinges by continually opening and closing the door.
Speaker 1: And he was fine ever since. But as often happens,
Speaker 1: as usually happens with Malteses and with other small dogs,
Speaker 1: Jack Russell's our common breed for this. King Charles Cavaliers
Speaker 1: are common breed for this. He developed mitral valve disease.
Speaker 1: Most Malteses will have this. It will contribute to their deaths.
Speaker 1: However most of them have it as an annoyance. It
Speaker 1: is quite literally a hole in the mitral valve, and
Speaker 1: it causes blood to regurgitate, and it screws up that
Speaker 1: system by which fresh blood with oxygen in it is
Speaker 1: pumped around the body and the other blood, the used blood,
Speaker 1: if you will use that expression, is brought back into
Speaker 1: the heart and filled again in the lungs with oxygen.
Speaker 1: It slows that down. It tires them out, but usually
Speaker 1: it hits in their teens and if it hurts them,
Speaker 1: if it contributes to premature death, it will be by
Speaker 1: a factor of a year perhaps, and a Maltese in
Speaker 1: good health can live to seventeen. I believe the record
Speaker 1: might be twenty. I know of some who have led
Speaker 1: lives of eighteen years. Ted was seven and a half
Speaker 1: years old, and he had been a year before diagnosed
Speaker 1: with this disease that his sister, Rose was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. Rose had had by this point had
Speaker 1: had mitral valve disease for seven years. They start with
Speaker 1: a drug called pemo Benden, which is essentially a chewable
Speaker 1: supplement that improves the heart in every area except the
Speaker 1: mitral valve, so that everything else is working at top form,
Speaker 1: and if it works right, you are essentially improving everything
Speaker 1: else while the mitral valve disease reduces the quality of
Speaker 1: the heart's efficacy in one area and you balance it out.
Speaker 1: Rose's use of this drug has been so effective that
Speaker 1: she has never She takes two a day, one in
Speaker 1: the morning and one at night, and she has never
Speaker 1: needed a third one, which she can have let alone
Speaker 1: any kind of intervention. Rose has since twenty eighteen gotten
Speaker 1: those two pills, and every one of her checkups has
Speaker 1: been better than the previous one. Stevee, my oldest dog,
Speaker 1: has this too. She has the following symptom every couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. She does this one cough every three or
Speaker 1: four weeks. This was the extent of her disease, her
Speaker 1: mitro valve disease. As she approached her fourteenth birthday, but
Speaker 1: Ted was beginning to well. He liked to sit on
Speaker 1: my lap during walks. Walks were okay for him, a
Speaker 1: little tense. Ted doesn't like dogs out there who are
Speaker 1: bigger than he is without written authorization. He's one of
Speaker 1: those dogs. He will not bark or bother dogs his
Speaker 1: own size or smaller, and he's often quite friendly to them.
Speaker 1: As I said before, he loves people. He has a
Speaker 1: wonderful personality and is as handsome as the devil. And
Speaker 1: he's very loud, and he will bark a whole lot,
Speaker 1: and he loves to sit on my lap outside. He
Speaker 1: loves to stand on my lap and bark at passer
Speaker 1: by dogs. He's wonderful he is my son, and like
Speaker 1: my dad, Ted, he's actually an architect. He builds himself
Speaker 1: a little cocoon every night out of blankets, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I swear to you he puts them in perfect form.
Speaker 1: He's got a California ranch design he uses every six
Speaker 1: days with his head while grunting and clearly swearing like
Speaker 1: a Stevadoor. Ted puts together his home every night on
Speaker 1: my bed. He's marvelous. But on these walks, the stops
Speaker 1: to go and have a sit down on my lap.
Speaker 1: We're increasing. And I noticed that he seemed to be
Speaker 1: wanting to stop every couple of blocks or in the park,
Speaker 1: every I don't know, two or three hundred yards. When
Speaker 1: it had been every four hundred yards or every five blocks.
Speaker 1: Now it was half that. Now it was the only
Speaker 1: thing I noticed. No cough, no lack of appetite, no
Speaker 1: seeming lack of energy, just this one trait. And so
Speaker 1: the checkup on July twenty eight, twenty twenty five, was
Speaker 1: just that, a checkup, bi annual checkup, and the doctor
Speaker 1: came back, the cardiologist at the Animal Medical Center in
Speaker 1: New York said he's now in advanced mitrovalve disease. The
Speaker 1: next step is congestive heart failure and death, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: There's nothing we can do about it. We can increase
Speaker 1: his pemo bendin, we can try certain palliatives, but probably
Speaker 1: he has a year a year and a half, and
Speaker 1: it will be of decreasing quality, increasing stress, increasing grief.
Speaker 1: While I was stunned, Ted is as vibrant as any
Speaker 1: dog as I've ever met, and his volume embarking didn't
Speaker 1: slow down. Ted is a straight forward, full speed ahead,
Speaker 1: damn the torpedoes kind of dog. Ted leaves nothing in
Speaker 1: the locker room. And I was shocked, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see it. I didn't see any of the decline doctor
Speaker 1: Betsy Bond was talking about, and there was no reason
Speaker 1: to suspect she was mistaken. She had been She was
Speaker 1: about to celebrate her fiftieth anniversary in the field at
Speaker 1: the Animal Medical Center in New York and is revered,
Speaker 1: and as the joke goes, it is literally true that
Speaker 1: her ID is in black and white. She's been there
Speaker 1: that long, and she is that much of an THINGT already.
Speaker 1: In any event, I just didn't see it, and I
Speaker 1: thought perhaps she was reading something wrong. Well, obviously that's
Speaker 1: how you begin to act in denial. But I did
Speaker 1: have something I could do to verify or refute what
Speaker 1: she said. He was operated on as a puppy less
Speaker 1: than one year old by as I mentioned before, doctor
Speaker 1: Dennis Trafney, who had since left the hospital and become
Speaker 1: a cardiologist working with dogs and other animals in New
Speaker 1: York on a kind of freelance basis, going from veterinary
Speaker 1: clinic to veterinary clinic on a once every two weeks
Speaker 1: basis or thereabout, carrying his equipment with him and doing
Speaker 1: a great service to a lot of people who could
Speaker 1: not afford to go to the animal medical center. So
Speaker 1: I made an appointment to go see Dennis Trafney, because,
Speaker 1: after all, he had been inside Ted's heart. He knew
Speaker 1: what he was talking about. He knew what he would see.
Speaker 1: He would recognize it, he would know the territory. He
Speaker 1: scoped Ted and felt his chest and assess things, and
Speaker 1: closed his computer and looked at me and said, no,
Speaker 1: she's right, and in fact, I think she may be
Speaker 1: under selling it. This is what I would do if
Speaker 1: Ted were my dog and he was my patient. So
Speaker 1: I feel that sense of proprietorship. I would call the
Speaker 1: University of Florida at Gainesville. I would call their veterinary clinic,
Speaker 1: their small animal hospital, and I would do it, not
Speaker 1: just today, I'd do it right now. I'd go out
Speaker 1: into the lobby of this building or out unto the
Speaker 1: street here and phone. I would not wait till you
Speaker 1: get home, because it's already late in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: you will have lost today. If you call today, you
Speaker 1: can get this process started today. Don't wait till later. Well,
Speaker 1: my blood ran cold at that. When was the last
Speaker 1: time you were told something like that about yourself or
Speaker 1: about a dog. Don't wait till you get home to
Speaker 1: make this call. You have to do this now, not
Speaker 1: half an hour from now. Ted blissfully unaware of this,
Speaker 1: simply barked at a large dog walking past us. I called,
Speaker 1: prepared to call the University of Florida, and then I
Speaker 1: realized I didn't know why I was calling them. I said, Dennis,
Speaker 1: why am I calling them? And he looked at me
Speaker 1: like I had three heads. They're doing the Japanese surgery
Speaker 1: there now, and I blinked at him briefly and went,
Speaker 1: they are the Japanese surgery was something that Dennis Trafte
Speaker 1: and I had talked about in twenty eighteen when he
Speaker 1: operated on Ted for the stuck valve in his heart.
Speaker 1: It was the backup in case that did not work.
Speaker 1: Because in Japan, at a clinic in fact Yokohama, right
Speaker 1: outside of Tokyo, they had developed, perfected and put into
Speaker 1: use surgery to repair mitro valves and other small, microscopically
Speaker 1: sized body parts in the hearts of small, almost microscopically
Speaker 1: sized dogs like Ted. They were doing the equivalent of
Speaker 1: surgery on a human infant, but on small dogs, and
Speaker 1: essentially it was bypass surgery. The dog would be hooked
Speaker 1: up to a heart lung machine. A profusionist, which is
Speaker 1: what somebody who operates one of those is called, would
Speaker 1: be operating Ted's or whoever's body his heart and lungs,
Speaker 1: her heart and lungs. While this delicate surgery was done,
Speaker 1: the surgery itself was not that much of a problem.
Speaker 1: The process, the expense was, and it was being done
Speaker 1: in Tokyo. There are all sorts of issues about getting
Speaker 1: your dog to Tokyo from say New York, but now
Speaker 1: they were doing it the University of Florida. I had
Speaker 1: no idea, he said, Well, they're not promoting it yet
Speaker 1: because they just started that I think last year maybe
Speaker 1: or two years ago. But one of the Japanese doctors
Speaker 1: is coming over and spends I don't know, five months
Speaker 1: a year here and he does the surgery and he's
Speaker 1: training the surgeons there and they're doing it. And Ted
Speaker 1: would be a really good candidate, I think for this.
Speaker 1: And I sard you recommend him, and I'm sure they
Speaker 1: would at the AMC, and I said the AMC, they don't.
Speaker 1: They said there was nothing to do. Well, there may
Speaker 1: not be official methods of recommending this yet, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're not convinced that this is any good. After all,
Speaker 1: it's only been done on Earth for the last ten years.
Speaker 1: They had begun to do it in London, I believe
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty again repatriated Japanese surgeons who decided there
Speaker 1: was a field to work in outside of Japan, and
Speaker 1: who also altruistically, as is the case with the doctor
Speaker 1: who went to Florida, doctor Matsura, they wanted to bring
Speaker 1: this to America and teach American surgeons to do the surgery,
Speaker 1: so that this surgery could be done at every place
Speaker 1: where there were dogs facing death because of what could
Speaker 1: now be corrected surgically. Damn the torpedoes and the cost.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to spend the money and they had
Speaker 1: the time. If you had eight days to keep your
Speaker 1: dog in a surgical icee you after eight hours of
Speaker 1: open heart surgery, why not what is more important to you?
Speaker 1: Roughly the same price the life of your dog, particularly
Speaker 1: if he's eight years or younger and might be getting
Speaker 1: nine years more of life out of it instead of
Speaker 1: a terrible death or a mid range SUV about the
Speaker 1: same cost. Well, now they were doing this not in
Speaker 1: Japan and London, but in Florida, and so we put
Speaker 1: the wheels in motion to apply to the University of Florida, Gainesville,
Speaker 1: which I had never been at, nor contemplated going to,
Speaker 1: and an application a reference, a referral by the Anamal
Speaker 1: Medical Center to the facility in Yokohama in Japan, and
Speaker 1: to the Royal Veterinary College in London, the three places
Speaker 1: on this planet where they did the surgery. Now I
Speaker 1: immediately went into a stage in which I looked at
Speaker 1: Ted and his robustness, and we walked home and he
Speaker 1: was fine. I think we only stopped once. So He
Speaker 1: blied all of the issues that were behind the idea
Speaker 1: that he was sick, That he was not slowing down
Speaker 1: because he wanted to spend more time on my lap.
Speaker 1: He was slowing down because he was running out of stamina,
Speaker 1: because his heart was very seriously damaged by this disease.
Speaker 1: None of that was apparent, and I suddenly began to
Speaker 1: think I was setting in process something that would risk
Speaker 1: his life for something that need not be risked. In
Speaker 1: other words, very bluntly, was I going to send him
Speaker 1: onto an operating table for a very risky procedure that
Speaker 1: could kill him, for a disease that would not kill him?
Speaker 1: In other words, bluntly, Again, further on the bluntly scale,
Speaker 1: was I making the choice to kill him at the
Speaker 1: age of seven and a half. The application proceeded. We
Speaker 1: had zoom meetings with the University of Florida doctor Matsura
Speaker 1: and his fellow doctor Greta Chu, and in one memorable
Speaker 1: zoom meeting, they scared the hell out of me. This
Speaker 1: exacerbated my feeling that what if I was doing this
Speaker 1: for me rather than for him. I mean, I knowe
Speaker 1: the death by mitra valve disease for a dog is unpleasant,
Speaker 1: to say the least. It is essentially an internal smothering.
Speaker 1: Fluid goes into the lungs on top of everything else
Speaker 1: that stops working. Now you have fluid in the lungs,
Speaker 1: there are awful coughs. There are resting breathing rates of
Speaker 1: fifty breaths a minute while the dog is deeply asleep.
Speaker 1: A good number for a dog in a minute is twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty five is great, thirty is okay. Some dog in
Speaker 1: deep sleep with great lungs and great hearts are as
Speaker 1: low as fifteen. The dogs who succumb to mitrovalve disease,
Speaker 1: it goes.
Speaker 4: Into the fifties.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible thing. It is literally your dog gasping
Speaker 1: for breath, with no improvement possible. And the disease, as
Speaker 1: horrible as it is, sometimes sounded like it was better
Speaker 1: than the way they describe this operation because of all
Speaker 1: the things that could go wrong, and all the things
Speaker 1: you'd have to prepare yourself for. And when I say
Speaker 1: all the things, they listed thirty or forty things that
Speaker 1: could go wrong, and they do that deliberately. The demand
Speaker 1: for this surgery is extraordinary, and they had just gone
Speaker 1: to doing two of them a week. Because it is
Speaker 1: an all day operation. It requires three people who are
Speaker 1: designated as surgeons, the profusionist, doctor Chu, who is the
Speaker 1: number two on this and doctor Matsura, who is at
Speaker 1: this rate anyway here in this country thirty weeks of
Speaker 1: the year working at the University of Florida, and there
Speaker 1: can be unbelievable consequences. Usually not on the table. The
Speaker 1: dog is usually since he supported by a heart lung machine,
Speaker 1: is usually in good shape throughout the surgery. It is
Speaker 1: in the hours thereafter that the nightmare can begin, when
Speaker 1: the body will not restart, that it's been through so much,
Speaker 1: that it's been through so much damage because of the
Speaker 1: mitro valve disease, that simply eight hours of open heart
Speaker 1: surgery on an eight pound dog is a terrible ratio.
Speaker 1: And the dog succumbs, and there are blood clots, and
Speaker 1: there is internal bleeding, and there are shocks, and there
Speaker 1: are strokes, and there are organ failures. And the night
Speaker 1: after the surgery, the hours between two am and sunrise
Speaker 1: after the surgery are the dark period. Then every hour
Speaker 1: after after that that the dog survives, it improves the
Speaker 1: chances that there'll be another hour. Then another day, and
Speaker 1: another month and another year. But the point of that
Speaker 1: conversation is to get you off the list. If you
Speaker 1: are not prepared to go the distance, you've got to
Speaker 1: go to Gainesville, Florida. You've got to stay there with
Speaker 1: your dog for at least eight days. He's going to
Speaker 1: be in the ICU, and you're not going to see
Speaker 1: him for at least forty eight hours. When you see him,
Speaker 1: he's going to be wired up and he's going to
Speaker 1: see you for about five minutes, and then you'll see
Speaker 1: him in increasing doses during his stay there. But the
Speaker 1: reason we keep him there is he is still at
Speaker 1: mortal risk until we give him back to you literally
Speaker 1: one week after you checked in. Then we should probably
Speaker 1: have you stick around for another week and have you
Speaker 1: recheck him in another week after that, and then there's
Speaker 1: a recheck at your local hospital a month later, and
Speaker 1: then at two months, three months, six months, a year
Speaker 1: if you're lucky, And then there is that haunting thought
Speaker 1: of what if he doesn't really need this? Ted was accepted.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a zoom call in Japan. He was
Speaker 1: accepted in Japan. He was to be accepted in London,
Speaker 1: but something went wrong in the process, and by the
Speaker 1: time that needed to be resolved it was an academic question.
Speaker 1: I was ready to take him to Yokohama to go
Speaker 1: through a sort of soft He wouldn't have been in
Speaker 1: a cage somewhere, He would not have been in an
Speaker 1: embargo situation somewhere, but he would have had to have
Speaker 1: repeated tests so that he wouldn't carry rabies into Japan.
Speaker 1: The Japanese islands are free of rabies and they intend
Speaker 1: to keep it that way. But he was accepted at
Speaker 1: the University of Florida. The question now became when would
Speaker 1: he be scheduled. Our conference calls were in August and
Speaker 1: the beginning of September in twenty twenty five, and the
Speaker 1: next set of dates for this surgery, the mitro valve
Speaker 1: surgery at the University of Florida, was to be in
Speaker 1: March of twenty twenty six or March of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: and Ted would be put on the emergency list. If
Speaker 1: there was a cancelation, perhaps he could be scheduled earlier,
Speaker 1: and repeated checkups at the Animal Medical Center were recommended,
Speaker 1: and I should take good care of him and look
Speaker 1: for the following things and not stress him out too much,
Speaker 1: and keep him on walks, but keep him on short walks,
Speaker 1: and be very responsive to when he wanted to stop,
Speaker 1: and perhaps carry him home, and look for this, and
Speaker 1: look for that, and look for this. And I was
Speaker 1: one of the lucky ones who had been accepted. And
Speaker 1: all this time I'm still thinking, what if he doesn't
Speaker 1: really need this and I'm making a choice to put
Speaker 1: him on that table, and what if he doesn't survive it.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything more horrible. And everyone can
Speaker 1: counseled me, Oh no, no, no, you're doing something extraordinary
Speaker 1: for him. You're doing more this way. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: tell that to yourself at three o'clock in the effing morning. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: or fortunately perhaps in one respect, that became an increasingly
Speaker 1: academic question, as it was while we were waiting for
Speaker 1: something to happen with his scheduling. Is it going to
Speaker 1: be March? Something going to open beforehand? Maybe January December?
Speaker 1: Perhaps if we were really lucky, something would happen. What
Speaker 1: kind of operation could I make to get him down there?
Speaker 1: We had all sorts of transportation issues, if you recall,
Speaker 1: in the fall and early winter of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: with airplane schedules being completely ruined by the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and flights being canceled in long delays, And what if
Speaker 1: I couldn't get him there in time? And what would
Speaker 1: I do? What about a train? What about making him
Speaker 1: a care dog? I mean he was good at smelling
Speaker 1: those many seizures that I have in connection to the
Speaker 1: not so harrowing sounding disease I have called restless legs syndrome.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing. But would he be qualified to
Speaker 1: get on a train?
Speaker 4: I get a car?
Speaker 1: How would I get there? I have it never been that?
Speaker 1: What's it near? One of the variables ended very quickly
Speaker 1: while we were waiting for further word from the University
Speaker 1: of Florida, and doctor Matsura and doctor chu Ted began
Speaker 1: to really show symptoms of this disease. And by that,
Speaker 1: I mean his heart rate got out of hand. You
Speaker 1: could see the hair moving on his chest with every
Speaker 1: heart beat, and when he would fall deeply asleep, his
Speaker 1: breath would get up to thirty five forty five a minute,
Speaker 1: and then he began to gasp for air, and as
Speaker 1: September became October, I had to rush him to the
Speaker 1: Animal Medical Center. Four different times each time he stayed
Speaker 1: at least one night, I was with him on a
Speaker 1: walk when he went into congestive heart failure. I could
Speaker 1: see it on his face. I could not pinpoint the
Speaker 1: exact moment, but we were walking along and he slowed
Speaker 1: to a stop and looked up at me, and suddenly
Speaker 1: his eyes were a little cloudy. And Ted has beautiful
Speaker 1: perceptive piercing I know what you did last summer eyes,
Speaker 1: as do all malteses. And I saw it, and I
Speaker 1: knew it had happened, and it was October and he
Speaker 1: needed the surgery, and it was clear to me he
Speaker 1: not only needed the surgery. And all those worries I
Speaker 1: had about making him go on to a table when
Speaker 1: maybe he really didn't need this and I was risking
Speaker 1: his life unnecessarily they were out the window and replaced
Speaker 1: entirely by I need to get him on to that
Speaker 1: table as quickly as goddamn possible. His grade, and they
Speaker 1: grade the candidates for this surgery at the University of Florida,
Speaker 1: drop from A one. You have the disease, but it's
Speaker 1: not urgent B two, which was Ted's initial assessment. It's
Speaker 1: worsening but still totally manageable, not impacting his life significantly.
Speaker 1: He's he could plateau, he could get better, he could
Speaker 1: wait for a while for the surgery. And then you
Speaker 1: get into the numbers that indicate that congestive heart failure
Speaker 1: has begun and the dissent could be within a matter
Speaker 1: of weeks, certainly within months. And that was the day
Speaker 1: they turned Ted from a B two to a C three.
Speaker 1: He stayed one night for three days, and his habits,
Speaker 1: his willingness to eat, dropped to almost nothing. And it
Speaker 1: got so bad that at the AMC one of his
Speaker 1: two cardiologists who worked with him on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: one was Airon Achilles, and the other was a great,
Speaker 1: great doctor Hunter Enderly, who took unbelievably personal care of Ted.
Speaker 1: In the worst of the hours in September and October
Speaker 1: and November of twenty twenty five, he gave him the cheapest, saltiest,
Speaker 1: tastiest human chicken in a can. And Ted would eat that,
Speaker 1: and we said, screw it, we're just trying to get
Speaker 1: him in one piece onto that operating table. Whenever that
Speaker 1: day comes. He ate that stuff. I mean you could
Speaker 1: smell the salt on it. But he liked it. And
Speaker 1: he would eat it, and he would eat nothing else.
Speaker 1: And when I would go over and visit him while
Speaker 1: he was hospitalized, he would eat it out of my
Speaker 1: hand and then just curl up in my lap for
Speaker 1: an hour or so and just sleep, breathing monstrously, heavily
Speaker 1: all that time, slow motions. Suffocation of the first dog
Speaker 1: I ever rescued, who I promised to do anything for,
Speaker 1: And I could do nothing for him but wait. On
Speaker 1: the night of Friday, November seventh, just as November descended,
Speaker 1: the dark November of our souls, as Melville wrote in
Speaker 1: Moby Dick, about quarter to seven, I think it was
Speaker 1: my phone rang and the return address was Gainesville, Florida,
Speaker 1: and I went no way, and it was doctor Greta Chu,
Speaker 1: who said, there's been a cancelation. We have an open
Speaker 1: Could you bring ted here and be here on And
Speaker 1: I said, yes, I'll be there. And she said, I
Speaker 1: didn't tell you what day it was. I said, I
Speaker 1: don't care what day it is. Is it tomorrow? We'll
Speaker 1: be there tomorrow And she said no, but almost, it's
Speaker 1: a month from Sunday, December ninth. I said, we'll be there.
Speaker 1: What time? Well, we check in about nine to forty five,
Speaker 1: I'll be there at eight. So the next month literally
Speaker 1: became Hunter Enderley and Aaron Achilles and the senior cardiologists
Speaker 1: at the AMC, Phil Fox, Betsy Bond, all of them
Speaker 1: just trying to get him to the finish line. Any
Speaker 1: trick we had to do, anything we had to do
Speaker 1: to improve something called see reactive protein score, which was
Speaker 1: an overall indication of inflammation, which I learned. I learned
Speaker 1: awful lot about mitral valve disease. And then as it
Speaker 1: became increasingly apparent that there was nothing I could rely
Speaker 1: on in a million years to get us there by
Speaker 1: commercial air, and of course the variables of flying with
Speaker 1: the dog. Would he have to go in the hold?
Speaker 1: Would he have to go in a cage in the back?
Speaker 1: Could he sit on the floor? Could he sit on
Speaker 1: my lap? What about the train and the guide dog?
Speaker 1: Could you know, wear dark glasses and lie and said,
Speaker 1: was bad trouble with my vision? Was he? Was he
Speaker 1: a support dog? Was he a seizure sensing dog? None
Speaker 1: of this, None of it made sense. Pay the two dollars,
Speaker 1: as the old line goes, I called up and rented
Speaker 1: a private jet. I have never been on a private
Speaker 1: jet in my life. I never anticipated doing it. I
Speaker 1: think it is wasteful, I think it is ruinous. I
Speaker 1: don't like it. I don't like small planes. I did it.
Speaker 1: I did it round trip, and I said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sell that baseball card and this I
Speaker 1: used game used baseball and I'm gonna sell that, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to buy this, and I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. We have to be there. We
Speaker 1: have to be there that morning. It's his chance, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if it will work. I may be
Speaker 1: bringing him to his death, but I know this. Whatever
Speaker 1: his chances are, and they guestimated seventy percent, that's seventy
Speaker 1: percent he has, and his chances of seeing the year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven if we don't do this are zero percent.
Speaker 1: So my attitude switched entirely to I'm going to get
Speaker 1: this done. Ted who I often quote as the producer
Speaker 1: of this show, sits at my feet as he is
Speaker 1: sitting now in my little studio. It is perhaps the
Speaker 1: only time he is entirely quiet. It's the best kind
Speaker 1: of producer. He's there to support and lick his feet.
Speaker 1: We got there. We flew out of Teeterborough. And by
Speaker 1: the way, was I ever wrong about flying in a
Speaker 1: small plane? Oh my goodness, I don't know how the
Speaker 1: hell I'm ever going to get on a real one again,
Speaker 1: which is going to be extremely costly in the days
Speaker 1: to come. And moreover, Ted loves flying, who knew, even
Speaker 1: on the way down, as sick as he felt, he
Speaker 1: just enjoyed the hell out of it. And we got
Speaker 1: to Gainesville on Sunday, December seventh for December eighth check in,
Speaker 1: And just after we arrived the airborne floods. It rained
Speaker 1: like hell, and I don't know how we would have
Speaker 1: gotten in commercially or any other way the rest of
Speaker 1: that day. We would have missed the check in at
Speaker 1: nine forty five. His window, his chance on December ninth
Speaker 1: might have gone to some other dog. And so on
Speaker 1: the ninth of December I got an uber and Oliver
Speaker 1: we went to the University of Florida, which is a magnificent, sprawling,
Speaker 1: gigantic community that, other than the lack of snow and hills,
Speaker 1: immediately reminded me of Corneill University, especially the emphasis on
Speaker 1: agriculture and the intellectual superiority of that environment, even though
Speaker 1: it's surrounded by horse farms and open piles of manure.
Speaker 1: Just like itthaic of New York, rural, rural, rural, educational oasis, rural, rural, rural,
Speaker 1: A magnificent facility at the University of Florida. The city
Speaker 1: in Florida, by the way, Gainesville, that is furthest away
Speaker 1: from any beach, and so furthest away from your idea
Speaker 1: of what Florida cities look like. There's Spanish moss on
Speaker 1: the trees. It's just Georgia called Florida in many senses.
Speaker 1: I like the town immeasurably. The hotel was great, and
Speaker 1: it was a hotel full of dogs because half the
Speaker 1: people who were there were there to have their animals
Speaker 1: treated at the small or large animal hospitals at the
Speaker 1: University of Florida, which, by the way, have a footprint
Speaker 1: the size of Madison Square Garden. I have never before,
Speaker 1: being an arrogant New Yorker, ever thought of myself as
Speaker 1: the guy who just fell off the turnip truck. The
Speaker 1: yokel from out of town says, gee, you look at
Speaker 1: all the big buildings. That was me. Their waiting room
Speaker 1: is three stories tall. It's a five minute walk to
Speaker 1: the back, and in the back of the waiting room
Speaker 1: there's a bagel shop. There's a bagel shop that serves
Speaker 1: mixed coffee like a Starbucks. The waiting room at the
Speaker 1: Animal Medical Center perhaps the finest facility in the Northeast,
Speaker 1: as a bench and a bunch of chairs, and they've
Speaker 1: recently celebrated the reopening of the parking space out front
Speaker 1: three hundred parking spaces at the University of Florida. I
Speaker 1: was kind of impressed, and then I met the doctors.
Speaker 1: Doctor Chu was gracious and professional. Doctor Matsua was warm kind.
Speaker 1: I was told later that his favorite thing after one
Speaker 1: of these surgeries is to be the first to take
Speaker 1: the dog he has operated on out for a pee.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see your heart surgeon do that with
Speaker 1: you now. There was one shocking moment when I handed
Speaker 1: doctor Matsura my boy Ted, who, of course tail wagging
Speaker 1: and bright eyed, even though he was so sick. I
Speaker 1: handed him to doctor Matsua, and doctor Matsua involuntarily felt
Speaker 1: how powerful, overly powerful his heartbeat was, and he just
Speaker 1: went and I went, yeah, I have a feeling we
Speaker 1: got here just in time. And he said yes, you did.
Speaker 1: We will take care of him. I would like to
Speaker 1: say that the next twenty four hours were the longest
Speaker 1: of my life, but that would be a lie, because
Speaker 1: my job was to get him there, and I did it.
Speaker 1: I spent the money, I made the effort, I got
Speaker 1: the right doctors to help him. I devoted that month
Speaker 1: to him. I couldn't do anything else, but I did it.
Speaker 1: I did my part of it. I'm not the surgeon.
Speaker 1: I know the difference. I was preparing to say goodbye
Speaker 1: to him when I handed him to doctor matsur if
Speaker 1: I never saw him again. I knew at that point
Speaker 1: that the worst outcome was not him dying during the
Speaker 1: operation or after it, but him dying of this terrible
Speaker 1: disease and essentially suffocating over months while I watched and
Speaker 1: could do nothing. That was the worst outcome. Something untoward
Speaker 1: happening during the sury was the second worst outcome. Everything
Speaker 1: else was perfection. And so I waited, and they spent
Speaker 1: the rest of the day examining him and checking blood
Speaker 1: pressure measurements, and I believe thirty six different locations on
Speaker 1: his body, and he's not that big, so they knew
Speaker 1: exactly where to make the incisions, a day's worth of
Speaker 1: pre operation screenings, and the next morning, I guess about
Speaker 1: six am, he went in and was given the initial
Speaker 1: sedation so they could do even more tests and take
Speaker 1: more scopes and take more pictures and take more videos. Because,
Speaker 1: as I said, the premise of this is not that
Speaker 1: it's untoward outer space miraculous surgery. It's that you are
Speaker 1: applying what you would do to a baby that size
Speaker 1: only to a dog, and each time you do it,
Speaker 1: you learn a little bit more, hasten the process, lower
Speaker 1: the cost, and eventually the dog, god willing, this becomes
Speaker 1: available to almost everybody. The surgery itself began, I guess
Speaker 1: a little before nine on December ninth, Tuesday, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and it lasted until about four pm. They told me
Speaker 1: to expect a call. There's no reason to hang around.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to let me see him. There was
Speaker 1: nothing I could do if it went wrong. Go back
Speaker 1: to the hotel and wait there, try to rest, do something.
Speaker 1: There are caves with bats in them if you want
Speaker 1: to go see that, and I was like, yes, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I want to do. You'll be hearing from
Speaker 1: us no later than five point thirty six o'clock, six o'clock,
Speaker 1: they haven't called. Now I'm beginning to go cold. At
Speaker 1: six point twenty, the phone rings. It's doctor Chew. Everything
Speaker 1: went well. There are a few minor glitches, but nothing untoward.
Speaker 1: He was much sicker than we thought, just like you said,
Speaker 1: but you got the inflammation down sufficiently. That sea reactive
Speaker 1: protein crap. That worked out. Okay, good job by you
Speaker 1: and the guys at the AMC. She didn't put it
Speaker 1: quite that way. Now we wait. We wait to make
Speaker 1: sure his heart gets going again on its own, all
Speaker 1: of his organs. And if you do not hear from
Speaker 1: us overnight, that's good news. On Wednesday the tenth, my
Speaker 1: eyes opened close open slowly to the light coming in
Speaker 1: through the window with the Hilton on the campus at
Speaker 1: the University of Florida.
Speaker 2: And I looked at my phone and it was seven
Speaker 2: forty five and the goddamn morning. And I shouted.
Speaker 1: And the phone. I don't think it was ten minutes later,
Speaker 1: as doctor Chew, he's doing very well. There was an
Speaker 1: hour in there where we weren't sure which direction it
Speaker 1: was going to go, but he fought through it. He
Speaker 1: had what we call smoke and I said, what on
Speaker 1: God's name is smoke? Well, it's kind of a precursor
Speaker 1: for blood clots, kind of a haziness that appears in
Speaker 1: our videos and our scopes, and it was there, and
Speaker 1: we thus have to increase the blood thinners so that
Speaker 1: the clots don't form and the stroke doesn't happen and
Speaker 1: he doesn't die because of that. There's still many risks,
Speaker 1: but that's the primary one. We're beginning to see it dissipate,
Speaker 1: so you can come see him this afternoon. Okay, fell
Speaker 1: back asleep, immediately, got up in plenty of time for
Speaker 1: the pre arranged hour, went in and saw him, and
Speaker 1: I walk in and there he is in his oxygen room, awake,
Speaker 1: sitting up, not sedated, not zoned out by the drugs,
Speaker 1: a lot of wires, wearing a sweater. Doctor Matsura is there,
Speaker 1: a big smile on his face, shakes my hand. He says,
Speaker 1: I think it went very well. So far it has.
Speaker 1: There's no more smoke. Doctor Chu smiled. They opened the gates.
Speaker 1: I petted him, I leaned down and kissed him, which
Speaker 1: is when he recognized me from the smell, I assume,
Speaker 1: and started barking his head off, and I know all
Speaker 1: of Ted's barks, and that one was get me the
Speaker 1: f out of here, at which point I said, i'll
Speaker 1: see you tomorrow. Let's not agitate him any further, and
Speaker 1: they put him back in And the next day I
Speaker 1: came and saw him and they brought him into the
Speaker 1: room with me. They detached him from all of his connections,
Speaker 1: and I saw him for maybe twenty minutes that day
Speaker 1: the Thursday, and then Friday it was more like an hour,
Speaker 1: and we went for a walk with doctor Matsura, and
Speaker 1: then Saturday it was a couple of hours, and Sunday
Speaker 1: it was more and Monday they examined him and discharged him,
Speaker 1: and I took him back to the hotel, and I
Speaker 1: had thought about going immediately back to New York, but
Speaker 1: the point was that in that first week after the surgery,
Speaker 1: he's got to stay away from other dogs, and he
Speaker 1: needs to be carefully controlled because he's on blood thinners
Speaker 1: because the clot risk is still there, so he can't fall.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to have him anywhere, he's got
Speaker 1: to be in a position where if there is a
Speaker 1: fall or a collision or something, you can get him
Speaker 1: to the hospital immediately. Why am I going back also
Speaker 1: to New York when these doctors here in Gainesville who
Speaker 1: just did a literally life saving, last minute job, and
Speaker 1: you can see it in his eyes. They were just
Speaker 1: inside this heart. They know not only what they should see,
Speaker 1: but what they are not seeing. They were just they
Speaker 1: So we hung around for a week, just me and Ted,
Speaker 1: going for like three walks of maybe five minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and he got better and better and better and better.
Speaker 1: And Ted, who was on when we left New York
Speaker 1: seven different medications, and who was on in the week
Speaker 1: until the recheck before we left Gainesville, Florida, two days
Speaker 1: before Christmas twenty twenty five, Ted was on seven different medications,
Speaker 1: eight different medications, most of which had to be refrigerated,
Speaker 1: and I had to give it to them three times
Speaker 1: a day. And he wanted to run around because he
Speaker 1: felt so good because of course his heart now worked
Speaker 1: and it wasn't leaking blood all through him. We come
Speaker 1: out of the recheck a week later and he's not
Speaker 1: on any medications anymore except the blood thinners. Three months
Speaker 1: on the blood thinners, that's it. We flew back to
Speaker 1: New York the next day, once again an hour on
Speaker 1: my lap Ted looking out the window, clearly getting the concept,
Speaker 1: barking happily and waving his tail, waving his tail like
Speaker 1: a scimitar, waving his tail at the clouds. He loved flying,
Speaker 1: took a nap, woke up and got up and loved
Speaker 1: flying the rest.
Speaker 2: Of the way. That was Christmas.
Speaker 1: Every day since then Ted has gotten a little bit better.
Speaker 1: The major issue with Ted at this point, Ted causes
Speaker 1: my wrist to hurt because he pulls on our walks.
Speaker 1: He pulls on the leash because he has so much
Speaker 1: energy because his heart is now fine. The first time
Speaker 1: he was rechecked at the one month mark at the
Speaker 1: Animal Medical Center, doctor Aaron Achilles, who I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: with doctor Hunter Enderley, the two local managers of this project,
Speaker 1: said well, he's doing fantastically. The results are this is
Speaker 1: a different dog. It's just great. But we want to
Speaker 1: continue the PMO bendon just for precaution. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, he was taken off the PMO bendin after
Speaker 1: the surgery, and she went, what, well, then, these these
Speaker 1: are not tremendous results. These are unbelievable results. This is perfection.
Speaker 1: The official opinion of the Animal Medical Center on this
Speaker 1: procedure on this surgery, on the Japanese surgery to use
Speaker 1: doctor Trafney's term is there now in favor of it,
Speaker 1: and they now recommend it, and they now tell their
Speaker 1: clients who are in this situation, and unfortunately there are
Speaker 1: dozens every month. You should call the University of Florida
Speaker 1: a small animal hospital, because this works and it will
Speaker 1: save dogs. Ted was the eighty third dog to get
Speaker 1: this surgery in North America, or South America for that matter,
Speaker 1: or in fact anywhere except London or Japan. Eighty third.
Speaker 1: If he had been born ten years earlier than he was,
Speaker 1: if I had become a dog person ten years earlier
Speaker 1: than I did, he would have been out of luck.
Speaker 1: We would have had to find a different planet to
Speaker 1: go to. They didn't do this surgery in twenty and
Speaker 1: fourteen anywhere, and now we had this. When I first
Speaker 1: found out about it, my first response was, what about
Speaker 1: the other Ted's whose humans can't possibly afford this figure, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to pay for somebody who can't do it.
Speaker 1: And then in discussions at the University of Florida and
Speaker 1: discussions with friends of mine, it dawned on me that
Speaker 1: it's not a bad gesture. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: doesn't increase the number of dogs.
Speaker 2: Who get this operation and get their lives saved.
Speaker 1: It just changes the socioeconomic nature of one of them
Speaker 1: or two of them. So while I make efforts to,
Speaker 1: you know, fund another program somewhere so this can be done,
Speaker 1: maybe here in New York, maybe an expansion of the program,
Speaker 1: since it's already up and running at the University of Florida.
Speaker 1: They are dark twenty two weeks a year while doctor
Speaker 1: Matsura is back in Japan while we work on that.
Speaker 1: I am very happy to say that I met someone
Speaker 1: who's dog was also dying of mitral valve disease, and
Speaker 1: who was in fact in worse shape than Ted. And
Speaker 1: this guy had this, then he is now fine. Then
Speaker 1: he is now off meds. Because this works. The punchline
Speaker 1: of all of this, especially in the context of other
Speaker 1: things I have discussed here on this program, was when
Speaker 1: they told me about the smoke and the threat of
Speaker 1: blood clots and thus seizures I've mentioned before. I believe
Speaker 1: I'm pretty spiritual. Certainly dogs have increased my spirituality and
Speaker 1: my belief in the meaningfulness of the universe and the
Speaker 1: intentionality of the universe, But I subscribe to no religion,
Speaker 1: and most of them make me laugh out loud at
Speaker 1: the obviousness of the scam that they are perpetrating on people.
Speaker 1: But the belief is a different issue altogether. I just
Speaker 1: think you can talk directly with whatever you think the
Speaker 1: universe is. If you like to go to church because
Speaker 1: you like to sing, have a nice Sunday. Otherwise, I
Speaker 1: think you can do it in the privacy of your
Speaker 1: own mind, and in the privacy of my own mind.
Speaker 1: When they told me what faced ted on that night
Speaker 1: of nightmares in the hours after the surgery, as December
Speaker 1: ninth became December tenth, I said, one thing, universe, blood clots, strokes,
Speaker 1: heart disease, give it to me instead. I think it's
Speaker 1: nice to know that sometimes somebody, something, some entity in
Speaker 1: the universe listens to you and says it's a deal.
Speaker 1: By the way, the Large Animal Hospital down at the
Speaker 1: other end of the waiting room at the Small Animal
Speaker 1: Hospital at the University of Florida at Gainesville, that's where
Speaker 1: they do dentals, dentals on tigers. And as I said
Speaker 1: to doctor Darcy Aiden, who's one of the heads of
Speaker 1: the Small Animal program there like me at Cornell grad
Speaker 1: Corneill Vett, and I'm Cornell agg I said, they are
Speaker 1: sedated for that right if you or a dog, If
Speaker 1: your dog or a dog you know is up against it,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's heart. The University of Florida. Hopefully in
Speaker 1: the next ten years that can expand to University of
Speaker 1: Florida or over here, over there, over there, over here,
Speaker 1: over here, right now, call them, I mean, I said
Speaker 1: to them, if I ever had a heart problem, could
Speaker 1: I just come down here and scrunch up on one
Speaker 1: of the tables. If you guys could work on a
Speaker 1: bigger you know, a bigger canvas than you're used to,
Speaker 1: I'll sign. I'll sign something all right on that point,
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. The musical directors have Countdown or John Phillip,
Speaker 1: Shaneil on keyboards, handling of the orchestration, Brian Ray on guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums. Their work is produced by Tko Brothers,
Speaker 1: and I think mister Chaneale and my friend mister Ray
Speaker 1: with all of my heart. Nancy Faust is the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever. She's responsible for the satirical and
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments and for a great deal of the
Speaker 1: support for this program. Thank you, Nancy. My announcer today
Speaker 1: is my late friend Richard Lewis, and I thank my
Speaker 1: other announcers Larry David, John Dean, Stevie van Zant, Jonathan Banks,
Speaker 1: Dennis Leary, Kenny Maine, Tony Korneiser, Nancy, the late Howard Feyneman,
Speaker 1: all of whom we're willing to associate themselves with this
Speaker 1: rag tag podcast, and we signed on nearly four years ago.
Speaker 1: You are all the best. This program was produced by
Speaker 1: Ted and Stevie and Rose and Kit and my late
Speaker 1: boys Mine and Mishu. Everything else was, as always my fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, Day four hundred and seventy seven
Speaker 1: of America held hostage again exactly nine hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: six days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck
Speaker 1: and lame brained term, unless he's removed sooner by the
Speaker 1: Epstein files remember them, or Iran where he's losing because
Speaker 1: he's an idiot, or by Patel Brand Bourbon, or most
Speaker 1: likely by the urine colored walls of his oval office
Speaker 1: and his urine colored hair in my absence. This is
Speaker 1: what I ask of you. Do not say that is
Speaker 1: Trump Gold, say that is Trump. Urine. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown will be I don't know. I bet you can
Speaker 1: bet on it somewhere until the next one. I'm Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, good luck, and think big,
Speaker 1: be big, my friend.
Speaker 3: A total and complete disaster. Trump is not that stupid.
Speaker 3: He's made some deal with the deem state to throw
Speaker 3: the election of Democrats. That's something. This can be.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman 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.