Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. He
Speaker 1: came in through Biden's ridiculous open border policy, Trump writes
Speaker 1: of the man who has purportedly confessed in the Bolder
Speaker 1: flamethrower attack, which has hurt our country so badly he
Speaker 1: must go out under Trump policy. Yeah great, well he didn't. Trump,
Speaker 1: You have blood on your hands for Boulder, Colorado. The
Speaker 1: attack on the weekly march of those remembering the Gaza
Speaker 1: hostages was carried out by a man here illegally, whom
Speaker 1: Trump and his big talking crowd of bullies, losers and
Speaker 1: cowards have had four months to find and removed, and
Speaker 1: have criminally failed to do so because they under phony
Speaker 1: tough guy Tom Homan and dress up Barbie Christinome. We're
Speaker 1: too busy kidnapping mothers and gay hairdressers and kids at
Speaker 1: their high school graduations, and people here legally and immigrants
Speaker 1: dutifully showing up for their hearings the way law abiding
Speaker 1: people law abiding means not like Trump. Law abiding people
Speaker 1: do that. The suspect Mohammad Sabri Solomon was still here
Speaker 1: is the fault of Donald Trump, because the entire Maga
Speaker 1: immigration stunt is a show put on for the racists
Speaker 1: and the xenophobes. It goes after only the soft targets.
Speaker 1: It uses only brutality and force when neither is necessary.
Speaker 1: It is there to terrify one part of this country
Speaker 1: and satiate the sadism of the other part of this country.
Speaker 1: It is the opposite of securing the borders. It is
Speaker 1: a prelude to something called remigration, a term I will
Speaker 1: get to in a moment. And remigration is itself the
Speaker 1: prelude to ethnic cleansing. And the guy here illegally actually
Speaker 1: doing something terroristic does not fit in to the scheme
Speaker 1: of Trump and his henchman, Stephen Miller, the champion of remigration,
Speaker 1: the demented, warped, soulless bastard behind it, Stephen Miller, who
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to turn the Sunday attack into a sword
Speaker 1: with which to again try to butcher this nation's humanity.
Speaker 1: And I mean he couldn't wait, literally, he couldn't wait.
Speaker 1: If he had waited, more people would have realized Miller
Speaker 1: and his gestapo are not the solution to this problem.
Speaker 1: They are its cause. Miller writes, a error attack was
Speaker 1: committed in Boulder, Colorado, by an illegal alien. He was
Speaker 1: granted a tourist visa by the Biden administration, and then
Speaker 1: he illegally overstayed that visa. In response, the Biden administration
Speaker 1: gave him a work permit. Suicidal migration must be fully reversed.
Speaker 1: That's remigration. Incidentally, everything else in there is factually inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Visa was overstayed in twenty thirteen, meaning Trump and Miller
Speaker 1: have not just had the last four months to find
Speaker 1: and remove this creature, but they had the entirety of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen through the beginning of twenty twenty one to
Speaker 1: do so. They did not act against this man because
Speaker 1: he doesn't fit the profile. He was not a sitting duck.
Speaker 1: He was a real danger. And Miller and Nome and
Speaker 1: Homan and the ice dickwads who are too terrified to
Speaker 1: show their faces in public, let alone pursue a real danger,
Speaker 1: don't want to take any chances with anybody who might
Speaker 1: cause a problem. Miller, blood on your hands, scumbag. There
Speaker 1: are people in this country who should not be There
Speaker 1: are people who should be deported or repatriated or detained.
Speaker 1: Every administration has acknowledged this. Every administration has done this.
Speaker 1: The Obama administration did this at a rate higher than
Speaker 1: the Trump one has, largely because they looked for threats,
Speaker 1: not scapegoats, because they were fairly good at finding them.
Speaker 1: The Boulder, Colorado flamethrower terror attack was hard work to
Speaker 1: find who did it. It would have been harder work
Speaker 1: to find who was going to do it. That they
Speaker 1: didn't try is Donald Trump's fault. And what is to
Speaker 1: come after this is even worse and even more per
Speaker 1: formative and even more confirmational of the fact that Trump
Speaker 1: and Miller and Marco Rubio are not looking for criminals
Speaker 1: to remove. They are looking for innocent people and those
Speaker 1: guilty of misdemeanors or things less than misdemeanors to purge,
Speaker 1: to remove, to cleanse. Got little notice last week, but Rubio,
Speaker 1: rapidly rising to the top of the hypocrisy charts to
Speaker 1: replace even Lindsey Graham for largest percentage of soul sold,
Speaker 1: announced a reorganization of the State Department that would in essence,
Speaker 1: eliminate all efforts inside that department to provide a haven
Speaker 1: here for foreign nationals who have helped this country, like
Speaker 1: the thousands of people in Afghanistan who fought the Taliban
Speaker 1: with us. Before Trump surrendered to the Taliban, it would
Speaker 1: eliminate that department and replace it with quote the Office
Speaker 1: of Remigration. Go look up that word remigration on social media.
Speaker 1: Nearly everything you will find on Twitter x will be
Speaker 1: in German. Sometimes it will have been translated from German
Speaker 1: by some pasty white Englishmen with bad teeth associated with
Speaker 1: Nigel Farage. It is the nice way to say ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: It is the word of the decade among the far right,
Speaker 1: Neo Nazis and the Nordic Arians. It is what they
Speaker 1: say is their answer to their great paranoid, lunatic fear,
Speaker 1: the great replacement, the theory that white people are to
Speaker 1: be removed and succeeded by everybody else, by everybody who
Speaker 1: isn't white at the moment. Remigration. It is what Nazis
Speaker 1: do in the twenty first century. Marco Rubio wants to
Speaker 1: introduce it into our country, and he is trying to
Speaker 1: do so. Now, let's just pass on the irony that
Speaker 1: most of the European Arians would look at Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: and say he needs to be remigrated. They haven't told
Speaker 1: Marco that part yet. The whole twisted inside out perverted
Speaker 1: anti American, anti democracy, anti humanity approach of Rubio and
Speaker 1: Miller and Holman and Gnome and Ice and Trump was
Speaker 1: summarized in an exchange printed last week by the news
Speaker 1: site Axios, in which an anonymous current Rubio flunky at
Speaker 1: State claimed that we've had remigration before in this country
Speaker 1: because a bureau doing exactly the opposite thing had the
Speaker 1: same name, quote the way that it worked before. Population
Speaker 1: refugee migration was basically an entire bureau dedicated to bringing
Speaker 1: people into the United States, said the State Department official,
Speaker 1: who spoke on condition of anonymity. It had the migration function,
Speaker 1: it's in the name. We're just reversing the flow of
Speaker 1: migrants who shouldn't be here to go out of the country.
Speaker 1: Consider that for a moment, remigration is fine according to
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio's stooges, because we used to call saving people
Speaker 1: from bad countries and bringing them here is the same
Speaker 1: to the Trump criminal gang as taking people from this
Speaker 1: country and sending them into danger into bad countries. This
Speaker 1: is exactly the same as saying a blood transfusion is
Speaker 1: identical to letting somebody bleed to death because blood keeps
Speaker 1: moving through a little hole in you. In both cases,
Speaker 1: we're just quibbling over which direction it's flowing. It would
Speaker 1: be patently monstrous if it were not first so patently stupid.
Speaker 1: But that is the entire existence of Donald Trump in
Speaker 1: one sentence, isn't it? And this isn't new. They sneaked
Speaker 1: it through amid the other ten tons of shit that
Speaker 1: comes out of Trump's mouth every day. In September of
Speaker 1: last year, in the middle of the usual racist hate
Speaker 1: dressed up as border issues, as Trump escalated it towards
Speaker 1: his neo Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden just before
Speaker 1: the election, Trump wrote of his vow to quote return
Speaker 1: Kamala's illegal migrants to their home countries parentheses, also known
Speaker 1: as remigration. Remigration is farther right than even those Trump
Speaker 1: cultists cheering on the day disappearing of the innocence Advocate,
Speaker 1: and Trump is at its forefront, and Trump is bringing
Speaker 1: it here with his little horror Marco Rubio at the helm.
Speaker 1: And the key thing to remember is, like all good
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing, it is not about finding people who are
Speaker 1: actual threats, like the man who admitted to creating his
Speaker 1: own flamethrowers, and trying to burn Jews to death in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Those people are too much trouble for the ethnic cleansers.
Speaker 1: Ethnic cleansing remigration is about convincing all the white people
Speaker 1: that you don't actually have to search for threats, or
Speaker 1: investigate for threats, or prepare for threats, or separate those
Speaker 1: people who are threats from those people who are not.
Speaker 1: You just round up all the people who you think
Speaker 1: look like threats. That is remigration, that is ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: That is Donald Trump's presidency. And that because you no
Speaker 1: longer bothered to look for people who are guilty or
Speaker 1: who might be planning heinous acts. You just look for
Speaker 1: their skin tone and their names. That is why the
Speaker 1: blood of Boulder, Colorado is on the hands of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I said this would be a headline based format for
Speaker 1: this special experimental Tuesday edition of the Countdown podcast. So
Speaker 1: here are some headlines. Good news, big surprise in big
Speaker 1: law at big at least the big vshy law. Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal reports that Oracle, Morgan, Stanley, McDonald's, and at
Speaker 1: least eight other gigantic American corporations have moved at least
Speaker 1: some of their legal representation away from the cowardly collaborators,
Speaker 1: the ones who folded to Trump and agreed to do
Speaker 1: his bidding for him, if only he would spare them,
Speaker 1: collaborators like Paul Weiss and Scadden Arps now known as
Speaker 1: Scadden Arps scumbag. McDonald's dropped its Paul Weiss litigator on
Speaker 1: the eve of trial. Its litigator was Loretta Lynch, the
Speaker 1: Obama Attorney General, who has not yet had the intestinal
Speaker 1: fortitude to resign from Paul Weiss. Finally, somebody showing some
Speaker 1: guts McDonald's, Morgan Stanley Oracle please note Columbia University. It's
Speaker 1: not just the big money bailing out of those who
Speaker 1: hoared themselves for Trump. Tesla sales in Europe have crashed
Speaker 1: faster than well than a musk rocket. Down nineteen percent
Speaker 1: in Spain, down thirty percent in Denmark, down thirty six
Speaker 1: percent in Holland, down fifty four percent in Sweden, down
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent in France, down sixty eight percent in Portugal.
Speaker 1: But who will pay for Ewon's drugs? Hasn't anybody thought
Speaker 1: about Ewon's drugs? What about Elon's drugs? The price of
Speaker 1: depends will go down as a result of this, and
Speaker 1: while most leading Democrats are still trying to throw everything
Speaker 1: into reverse, looking at you, Gavin Newsom, because they think
Speaker 1: all democracy needs is its own Trump, its own Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: its own Adolf Hitler. Wes Moore may at least be
Speaker 1: driving in the right direction forward more, according to Politico,
Speaker 1: got the real message out of Trump's success. The real
Speaker 1: lesson cut to the chase with the voters. Quoting the
Speaker 1: Maryland governor from last week, urgency is the instrument of change.
Speaker 1: And do you know who understands that really well? Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Wes Moore went on. I want to be clear. We
Speaker 1: can and we must condemn Donald Trump's reckless actions, but
Speaker 1: we would also be foolish not to learn from his impatience.
Speaker 1: He's right. The point is to promise change as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, and then do as much of it as
Speaker 1: you can before they try to stop you. What is
Speaker 1: the lesson of twenty twenty five? Have a game plan,
Speaker 1: don't have a party. Have a game plan. Map out
Speaker 1: your first hundred days down to who you are going
Speaker 1: to indict. We saw what happened when Joe Biden thought
Speaker 1: we could just go back to normal, not understanding that
Speaker 1: normal had been destroyed by Trump. We saw what happened
Speaker 1: when he appointed Merrick Garland, who's still thinking about it.
Speaker 1: We saw what happened when Biden dithered on putting them
Speaker 1: all in jail forever. They didn't go to jail. Democratic
Speaker 1: candidates preparing for twenty twenty eight must now vow to
Speaker 1: prosecute everybody and override any and all Trump pardons immediately
Speaker 1: by whatever means are necessary. You want change, do you maga?
Speaker 1: You want remigration? How about packing up Tom Holman, Christy Nome,
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio and Trump at twelve oh one pm January twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine, and putting them on a cargo flight
Speaker 1: to El Salvador before anybody can stop you. Also of
Speaker 1: interest here on this special edition, I have been challenged
Speaker 1: by professional complainer and America's favorite eighty fifth place swimmer
Speaker 1: Riley Gains to a swimming race of some kind to
Speaker 1: prove she is right about everything she whinds about, which
Speaker 1: is everything. Here is my advice, as a veteran of
Speaker 1: fifty years in sports broadcasting. Bet on her, because I'm
Speaker 1: sixty six and Riley Gains is what fifty fifty five
Speaker 1: something like that. That's next This is Countdown. This is
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend host scripts to
Speaker 1: the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark, and sometimes,
Speaker 1: like in this edition, some stories that are actually just
Speaker 1: about me, some of them like perhaps all This is
Speaker 1: the Countdown podcast and these are the places where there's news.
Speaker 1: Dateline Brazil. So you heard about that Glenn Greenwald video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I'm going to say about it, except it
Speaker 1: was hardly the worst Glenn Greenwald video of recent date.
Speaker 1: Just over the last week, in fact, just over the
Speaker 1: past weekend. Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald also did a videotaped interview
Speaker 1: with Tucker Carlson which had far more foot worship and sucking,
Speaker 1: not necessarily of feat. He claimed Biden had been sick
Speaker 1: for a five years, ten years, five hundred years, I
Speaker 1: don't know. And let me tell you a story about
Speaker 1: who Glenn Greenwald is. This is from twenty ten, when
Speaker 1: Glenn Greenwald was with Salon and he was not totally
Speaker 1: nuts yet. Joan Walsh was the editor in chief and
Speaker 1: an occasional guest on Countdown, and I mentioned to Joan
Speaker 1: that Joe Scarborough had gotten our contributor to the Countdown
Speaker 1: program on MSNBC coas Marcos Mulitsis, the hosts of the
Speaker 1: proprietor of the Daily Coast website. He'd gotten Marco's band
Speaker 1: because Marcos had made a vague reference on Twitter to
Speaker 1: the death of the assistant, the woman assistant in Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough's congressional office. There was a valid point in making
Speaker 1: this reference because Joe had insisted that the Democrats would
Speaker 1: never investigate something bad that had happened to somebody, and
Speaker 1: Marcos was pointing out, Oh, an investigation like what happened
Speaker 1: to your assistant in your office when she died? Well,
Speaker 1: Scarborough accused Marcos of accusing him of murder, went to
Speaker 1: our bosses, and because he and one of my bosses
Speaker 1: used to like to go drinking together, he got him
Speaker 1: to ban Marcos Militsus from my show. So somebody else
Speaker 1: getting one of my regulars banned from my show, which
Speaker 1: made the company one hundred million dollars a year, some
Speaker 1: of which was spent on backstopping the money losing Jaw
Speaker 1: Scarborough program, which has now proved to be what it
Speaker 1: always was at heart, a conservative blowing with the wind.
Speaker 1: He's back to blowing with the Trump wind and you
Speaker 1: can make the next stage of that joke for yourself
Speaker 1: in any event. I mentioned this to Joan Walsh in
Speaker 1: a conversation before or after she was on the show
Speaker 1: one night, and she said, you know, Glenn Greenwald is
Speaker 1: really upset. He'd heard something about this and would love
Speaker 1: to be able to write something, even if you have
Speaker 1: to do it anonymously with him. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: have him give me a call or shoot me an
Speaker 1: email or whatever. And I can't remember if he emailed
Speaker 1: me or shot me a call or what he did.
Speaker 1: I don't remember which way it was, and I don't
Speaker 1: have the records of this anymore, but I do remember
Speaker 1: the conversation, whether it was written or actually oral au
Speaker 1: are al. Glenn wanted to know if this was true,
Speaker 1: if Scarborough had connived to get Malitsus thrown off MSNBC
Speaker 1: on a permanent basis, and I told him what I
Speaker 1: knew about it, and I said, now it has to
Speaker 1: be completely off the record, because I can't I can't
Speaker 1: talk to you about this. I can't reveal this information.
Speaker 1: They could fire me, and I don't want them to
Speaker 1: fire me because I am preparing to quit the place.
Speaker 1: He said, I agree completely I will always keep your confidence.
Speaker 1: I have never given up a source. I have that
Speaker 1: same journalistic standard that you do. I have great respect
Speaker 1: for your work. Blah blah blah blah blah. And he
Speaker 1: published some kind of story about it, citing an anonymous
Speaker 1: NBC source. He didn't even point me out as the
Speaker 1: person who had talked to him, And apparently he had
Speaker 1: many other sources for this story. Not exactly a secret,
Speaker 1: but obviously I would have been the definitive one. Marcos
Speaker 1: knew about it. Obviously too, he'd got in the phone
Speaker 1: call from the MSNBC executive who did this act on
Speaker 1: behalf of his pet, Joe Scarborough. So something happened in
Speaker 1: the ensuing couple of days. And I don't even remember
Speaker 1: what this was, but I was critical of some detail,
Speaker 1: some minor conclusion in a Glenn Greenwald article and said
Speaker 1: so on countdown, and the next thing I knew, Glenn Greenwald,
Speaker 1: I believe, again, was on the phone telling me that
Speaker 1: if I did not rich tacked to my criticism of him,
Speaker 1: he would announce that I was the source for his
Speaker 1: story about Marcos Malitsus being banned in effect by Joe Scarborough. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: at least jeopardizing my employment at NBC and theoretically setting
Speaker 1: me up to be fired for cause for speaking to
Speaker 1: him without permission. That is who Glenn Greenwald was in
Speaker 1: twenty ten. So if you saw what I saw in
Speaker 1: the six or seven seconds I watched of that other video,
Speaker 1: not the Tucker Carlson one. The Tucker Carlson stuff doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me in the least. Glenn Greenwald has no standards,
Speaker 1: and certainly no standards that are relied upon to exist
Speaker 1: in the same way six months from now, at alone,
Speaker 1: fifteen years from now, Glenn Greenwald dressed up in like
Speaker 1: a sexy French woman maids costume doesn't surprise you. Know.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, I knew he must have had one
Speaker 1: of those Glenn Greenwald dateline eighty fifth place in some
Speaker 1: swimming pool somewhere. Riley Gaines is back. I happen to
Speaker 1: think this might be the greatest self own of the
Speaker 1: modern social media era. I pointed out once again. I
Speaker 1: think it was this time after Lynda McMahon, the secretary
Speaker 1: of I Don't Have an Education, claimed that one of
Speaker 1: our great Olympic swimmers, Riley Gaines, had had her career
Speaker 1: ruined and something like her Olympic medals denied because she
Speaker 1: had once had to face or she was beaten by
Speaker 1: a transgendered swimmer. In point of fact, Riley Gaines never
Speaker 1: participated in the Olympics because she was a mediocrity. She
Speaker 1: finished fifth, tied for fifth in the race one by
Speaker 1: Leah Thomas, the former male who was swimming as a
Speaker 1: woman for Penn State. Whenever this was in like the
Speaker 1: last known incident of a major sporting event in solving
Speaker 1: a transgender athlete. Because all the time we spend talking
Speaker 1: about this and the Republicans wringing their hands because of
Speaker 1: their secret fear that one day they'll wake up wanting
Speaker 1: to become transgendered, because that's what this is all about,
Speaker 1: just as their hatred of gaye is all about their
Speaker 1: secret desire to be gay. Look it up. In any event,
Speaker 1: the whole thing behind this is they would rather spend months, years,
Speaker 1: decades debating and of course demonizing the people involved, rather
Speaker 1: than spending the same amount of time looking at each
Speaker 1: case individually of there being a transgendered athlete competing against
Speaker 1: women who were born women and saying, well, what kind
Speaker 1: of balance can we make here? It's like the horse
Speaker 1: races if the jockeys are different weights. In a horse race,
Speaker 1: if all the jockeys are one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: except for that one guy who weighs only one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty two pounds, they give him three pounds of
Speaker 1: weights to put in his shoes so he weighs the
Speaker 1: same as the other jockeys. Otherwise, you'd win the race
Speaker 1: based on how light the jockey was, and someday somebody
Speaker 1: would win a race with a forty seven pound kid
Speaker 1: running the race on behalf of the horse owner. So
Speaker 1: you could just do that by I don't know. In swimming,
Speaker 1: add a second to the athlete who had the longer,
Speaker 1: long bones, who had the male physique or part of
Speaker 1: it before they were transgendered. It's not impossible. My friend
Speaker 1: Renee Richards, who happens to be a transgender athlete who
Speaker 1: won a title at the US Open as a woman
Speaker 1: and did not destroy women's tennis in the process, and
Speaker 1: did not beat Martina Navratilova and was accepted in the
Speaker 1: community and did not destroy things, she has suggested that
Speaker 1: perhaps this is the solution. You play a game in
Speaker 1: tennis or a match in tennis, and the transgender athlete
Speaker 1: starts having lost the first game, so that the other athlete,
Speaker 1: the woman in the race, in the game, in the match,
Speaker 1: is already ahead one nothing, and then you start something.
Speaker 1: You could spend a lot of time examining each case
Speaker 1: and reside of it equitably to everybody's belief. In one
Speaker 1: millions of the time that has been wasted, turning this
Speaker 1: into a debate as if the world is filled with
Speaker 1: male athletes who decided to cut off their penises so
Speaker 1: they could win a fricking tennis match. I've said it
Speaker 1: before and I'll say it again. You will find lots
Speaker 1: of male athletes who will joke that they'd cut off
Speaker 1: a testicle to win. You've never heard one say they'd
Speaker 1: cut off something a little bit more important in the
Speaker 1: same general physiological area. In any event, Riley Gaines believes
Speaker 1: her life was ruined by a transgender swimmer. She would
Speaker 1: have finished I don't know, eighty fourth in the Olympic
Speaker 1: trials rather than eighty fifth. She would be a little
Speaker 1: less mediocre without transgendered athletes. Therefore, she has become a
Speaker 1: campaigner against them. Her latest big thing was complaining about
Speaker 1: the University of Maryland selecting as its speaker for its
Speaker 1: commencement address Kermit the Frog. Then, I don't know just
Speaker 1: to throw out a name, Riley Gaines. I think you
Speaker 1: can make the comparison there and understand that Riley Gaines
Speaker 1: is not considered to be as smart as Kermit the Frog.
Speaker 1: Certainly she doesn't sound as unusual as Kermitt the Frog,
Speaker 1: and she has more broad human intelligence than Kermit the Frog.
Speaker 1: In any event, that was the latest thing. And of
Speaker 1: course Kermit the Frog and the creator of the Uppets,
Speaker 1: Jim Henson, have a long standing connection to the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland. There's a statue of them there. There is
Speaker 1: history there. But I digress the self own I promised you.
Speaker 1: I wrote about Linda McMahon making a big deal and
Speaker 1: pointing out that she finished eighty fifth in the Olympic Trials.
Speaker 1: She finished tied for fifth the only race. If there
Speaker 1: had been no transgendered athlete, she might have finished tied
Speaker 1: for fourth. Riley Gaines responded, I'm literally one of the
Speaker 1: fastest Americans of all time. But okay, l lol. If
Speaker 1: you're one of the fastest Americans of all time, how
Speaker 1: come you finished eighty fifth? I'd challenge Keith Olderman to
Speaker 1: a race where the loser puts up money to the
Speaker 1: charity of the winner's choice, but no one wants to
Speaker 1: see him in a speedo. Yeah, deh, this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea, though, Riley Gaines. I accept your challenge to
Speaker 1: a race, a swimming race. A sixty six year old
Speaker 1: man who has not been in a swimming pool to
Speaker 1: swim in the swimming sense of the term since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, who has an arthritic left knee with enough
Speaker 1: empty space in it that he could keep his keys
Speaker 1: in it, who has chronic stress fractures in his right foot. Me,
Speaker 1: sixty six year old guy, somebody you could finally beat
Speaker 1: Dateline Tarrytown, New York yesterday, Hackley School, my alma mater
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, which was the last time I actually
Speaker 1: got into a pool to swim competitively. Dear members of
Speaker 1: the Hackley kum Lauday Society, you are cordially invited to
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty five Kum Loudi Society Induction Ceremony Jude
Speaker 1: twas two in black Box Theater located in the Center
Speaker 1: for the Creative Arts and Technology at Hackley School. Celebrad
Speaker 1: Hackeys have founded in nineteen oh six. The kum Loude
Speaker 1: Society is an association of three hundred and eighty two
Speaker 1: chapters in the United States and abroad dedicated to honoring
Speaker 1: scholastic achievement in secondary schools. Each chapter is limited to
Speaker 1: electing a maximum of twenty percent of the senior class
Speaker 1: per year. This is at least the fifty fifth ceremony
Speaker 1: at Hackey. It's probably closer to the one hundred and nineteenth.
Speaker 1: I can only refer to the ones I can testify to,
Speaker 1: and it's fifty five years since I got to Hackley,
Speaker 1: so they've been at least fifty five of them. And
Speaker 1: I was invited because I am a member. I was
Speaker 1: one of the seven or eight members inducted to the
Speaker 1: kum Laude Society in nineteen seventy five. A certain grade
Speaker 1: point average based on a percentage of the class is
Speaker 1: set as the cutoff points, and I don't remember what
Speaker 1: it was. It might have been a three point seven
Speaker 1: or three point eight. I don't know, but I had
Speaker 1: it and I was admitted, and I can now reveal
Speaker 1: it's a total fraud. I don't mean it's a total
Speaker 1: fraud in that it helped me get into college when
Speaker 1: I didn't belong there. The college grades on which I
Speaker 1: was judged preceded the events that I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that anybody took money for this, or
Speaker 1: that anybody did anything other than did some common sense here.
Speaker 1: This was not planned and at one of those rare
Speaker 1: events where the law of unexpected consequences turns out to
Speaker 1: be positive for everybody except whoever would have been behind
Speaker 1: me on the list who actually should be in the
Speaker 1: kum Laude Society. As I have said many times again,
Speaker 1: I'd already gotten into my colleges that accepted me based
Speaker 1: on grades that had nothing to do with the cum
Speaker 1: Laude Society. So I didn't need it to get into college.
Speaker 1: I didn't ask for it, I didn't check on it.
Speaker 1: When they said you're going to show up for the
Speaker 1: saraheremony tomorrow, I said, what ceremony? They said? Here in
Speaker 1: the cum Laude Society? And I burst into laughter. Because
Speaker 1: of the following story, I was mistaken as a child
Speaker 1: for a math genius. In point of fact, I just
Speaker 1: liked playing with small numbers. I literally had a box
Speaker 1: full of numbers magnetic numbers, plastic numbers with magnets in
Speaker 1: the back, and I like to play with the numbers.
Speaker 1: And I loved numbers. And my interest in sports originates
Speaker 1: from the numbers on the backs of the baseball cards,
Speaker 1: and the numbers on the backs of the players, and
Speaker 1: all the numbers in the statistics on the baseball cards.
Speaker 1: That's my interest in it. I was a numbers freak,
Speaker 1: but I was not a math prodigy. This was a mistake.
Speaker 1: Several several people were involved in making this mistake, and
Speaker 1: I learned it faster than they did. I was not
Speaker 1: a math prodigy. I just like to sit there and
Speaker 1: you know, add forty seven digit numbers or multiply them,
Speaker 1: just to see if I could do it. That didn't
Speaker 1: imply that I could do anything else, including divide. Once
Speaker 1: we got into I began to flounder, and then later
Speaker 1: on I really hit the wall. I hit the wall
Speaker 1: as a senior in a class called Math five, and
Speaker 1: Math five was taught by the head of the math department,
Speaker 1: Jerry Murphy, a very nice, easygoing guy with a great
Speaker 1: sardonic sense of humor. And when we got into the
Speaker 1: trigonometry problems, he put one up on the board, six
Speaker 1: or eight lines of x's and division marks and square
Speaker 1: roots and equal signs. And I looked at it, and
Speaker 1: then I turned my head upside down, and I looked
Speaker 1: at it upside down, and it looked exactly the same.
Speaker 1: And then I put one hand over my left eye
Speaker 1: and looked at it, and one hand over my right
Speaker 1: eye and looked at it, and it all looked exactly
Speaker 1: the same. And I raised my hand and I said,
Speaker 1: mister Murphy, which part is the question and which part
Speaker 1: is the answer? And he went, oh, you've hit the
Speaker 1: math wall. And I said, I thought I heard something.
Speaker 1: He said, come see me after class. There were three
Speaker 1: of us who went to see him after class, Three
Speaker 1: of us, otherwise intelligent math students who had gotten a's
Speaker 1: and b's in math throughout our high school careers, who
Speaker 1: had suddenly hit that point in which that could have
Speaker 1: been instructions on how to install a humidifier written in
Speaker 1: Chinese up there on that blackboard, as well as a
Speaker 1: math problem. We couldn't have told the difference. And mister
Speaker 1: Murphy said, this is very easy. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I hit my math wall. It's why I'm not doctor Murphy.
Speaker 1: I was on my second day of working one of
Speaker 1: those equations that they would give you in math's college
Speaker 1: that would take two or three days for you to solve.
Speaker 1: And I was so far behind on day two that
Speaker 1: I burst into tears. And my wife said, Jerry, it's
Speaker 1: probably time for you to drop out, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you're right. I'll just go become a math
Speaker 1: teacher and teach the stuff I understand and not spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life trying to understand the things
Speaker 1: I'm not wired to understand. He said, this is what
Speaker 1: I want you to do. Go down to the registrar's
Speaker 1: office and change this class from a graded class ABCDF
Speaker 1: to a pass fail. I will pass you under the
Speaker 1: following circumstances. You and you, and you Olberman, especially you.
Speaker 1: You come in every day and I don't want to
Speaker 1: hear a word out of you. I don't want you
Speaker 1: talking to anybody else. I don't want you egging anybody
Speaker 1: else on. I don't want you Oberman, making any quips.
Speaker 1: I just want you sitting there quietly. You may bring newspapers.
Speaker 1: The only noise I want to hear from you during
Speaker 1: the class is the sound of you passing newspapers. Back
Speaker 1: and forth. If you actually understand something, raise your hand
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about it after the class. Otherwise I
Speaker 1: don't want to know you're here. I'll pass you and
Speaker 1: that will be that. I'm not going to keep you
Speaker 1: from graduating because you hit the same math while I
Speaker 1: did only little earlier. That was great. Annie said, one
Speaker 1: more thing. You guys do this new Money Python series.
Speaker 1: You watch this Monty Python show every night Sunday at
Speaker 1: ten thirty, and you come in talking about it every
Speaker 1: Monday morning. I want you to come into this class
Speaker 1: and reenact as best you can the best skit from
Speaker 1: the latest Monty Python show. Because I go to bed
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock every night. We had met Missus Murphy,
Speaker 1: so we were not surprised by that. In the slightest,
Speaker 1: if anybody could get that class quiet in a hurry,
Speaker 1: it would be when Missus Murphy would stop by. There
Speaker 1: was a reason to consider maybe pursuing math a little bit. Further.
Speaker 1: Missus Murphy liked math guys in any event, so we
Speaker 1: would come in every Monday morning and we did the
Speaker 1: parrot sketch from Monty Python, and then sat down and
Speaker 1: I'd read the New York Daily News which I brought in,
Speaker 1: and one of my friends would read the New York
Speaker 1: Post that he brought in, and the third friend would
Speaker 1: have the Times, and then when we were done, we'd
Speaker 1: just pass it along and then we left and we
Speaker 1: all got passes instead of fails or d minuses. So
Speaker 1: my kum Lauday graduation record, the fact that I was
Speaker 1: invited to the Kumlaude Society and have for fifty years
Speaker 1: been in the Kumlaudee Society is a total unmitigated fraud.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jerry Murphy, because if you had not committed
Speaker 1: that fraud and I had not participated with you, I
Speaker 1: would not be in the Kumlaude Society. I would instead
Speaker 1: be at Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, in my
Speaker 1: fifty first year as a senior who had failed math
Speaker 1: five fifty years in a row. Dateline Washington and the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. One of the few remaining assets of that
Speaker 1: newspaper is Philip Bump, especially his Saturday newsletter how to
Speaker 1: read this chart? Imagine my surprise at this. CNN's Ariel
Speaker 1: Edwards Levy has this annoying habit of finding weird, interesting
Speaker 1: poll results that I feel compelled to explore This week,
Speaker 1: Bump went on she for some reason and found twenty
Speaker 1: ten polling from Pew Research Center in which respondents were
Speaker 1: asked whether they knew anyone named Adam Allen Bruce or
Speaker 1: one of nine other options. As it turns out, people
Speaker 1: reported being least likely to know Walters and most likely
Speaker 1: to know Rachel's. In fact, according to the charts, thirty
Speaker 1: four percent knew a Walter, only thirty four percent new
Speaker 1: a Walter, but fifty three percent knew somebody named Rachel.
Speaker 1: At at least ten percent new at least three Rachel's.
Speaker 1: I saw this chart and thought, you know, I have
Speaker 1: to call Rachel and Rachel and Rachel. And here's the punchline.
Speaker 1: The poll, Bump wrote, also asked respondents to identify the
Speaker 1: weirdest name they could think of. The winner, by a
Speaker 1: wide margin, Keith. I have reached out to Ms. Edwards
Speaker 1: Levy and mister Bump for more information on this. I'd
Speaker 1: have to say, the first other human I knew named
Speaker 1: Keith was a couple of years behind me in grammar school.
Speaker 1: I was, I guess eight. I had literally never met
Speaker 1: nor heard of another Keith. I thought I was the
Speaker 1: only one in the world, or at least there was
Speaker 1: a chance of it. The other Keith was best known
Speaker 1: around town for having run into the side of a
Speaker 1: slow moving school bus. Now, anybody can run into a
Speaker 1: bus coming towards them, or in front of a bus.
Speaker 1: But I was there nineteen sixty seven, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: and this bus was already partially past Other Keith, going
Speaker 1: fairly slowly when he bolted out into the road and
Speaker 1: ran headfirst into the side of it. He bounced off
Speaker 1: in front of the back wheel, and as near as
Speaker 1: I know, did not suffer a scratch. Later I found
Speaker 1: out about Rupert Murdoch and the fact that his real
Speaker 1: first name is Keith, and he prefers Rupert. I was
Speaker 1: going to go on about how I think the weirdest
Speaker 1: name you can think of is Keith, and say the
Speaker 1: fact check was true, when mister Bump blew the whole
Speaker 1: thing by getting back to me and telling me that
Speaker 1: this was in fact a joke that had blown up
Speaker 1: in his face. And I said, now, sir, you know
Speaker 1: how us Keith's feel. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our
Speaker 1: countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
Speaker 1: and John Phillips Shaneil musical directors have Countdown. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass
Speaker 1: and drums, and mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards.
Speaker 1: Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: Is the sports music. Some other music arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
Speaker 1: my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was as ever my fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, Day one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: of America held hostage just one three hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: eight days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck
Speaker 1: and lame brained term unless Putin removes him sooner, or
Speaker 1: the actuarial tables to, or Leonard Leo does, or we do.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Today's special episode was
Speaker 1: an ex peer meant we'll see if it's feasible long term.
Speaker 1: As always, bulletins as the news warrants, and remember, as always,
Speaker 1: Trump is laying the groundwork now to not leave office later,
Speaker 1: and thus he must be stopped till Thursday. I'm Keith Alderman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.