Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: nation must have a new commander in chief immediately. The
Speaker 1: current one is mentally incapable of keeping the United States
Speaker 1: of America safe, and, with one seemingly throwaway remark, he
Speaker 1: has literally left this country vulnerable to attack. This is
Speaker 1: less about his evil. This is less about his betrayal
Speaker 1: of Ukraine and our allies. This is less about his
Speaker 1: pouring himself out to putin. This is even less about
Speaker 1: his apparent reference to himself yesterday as the King, which
Speaker 1: was promptly amplified by White House social media, in which
Speaker 1: you dismiss as trolling at your risk and at the
Speaker 1: risk of the democracy. This is about Trump's now complete
Speaker 1: disconnection from reality, from the baseline truths about what risks
Speaker 1: America faces in the twenty first century. This war, he
Speaker 1: posted in the middle of his diet tribe against Zelenski
Speaker 1: yesterday is far more important to Europe than it is
Speaker 1: to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.
Speaker 1: This idea that America is in some way protected by
Speaker 1: the Atlantic or the Pacific, or both of them, has
Speaker 1: been poignantly absurd, since no lighter than Pearl Harbor in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one. It is madness exceeding anything Trump has
Speaker 1: said or claimed before. Somehow Trump has forgotten about the
Speaker 1: prospect of weapons in space. Trump has forgotten about intercontinental missiles.
Speaker 1: Trump has forgotten about airplanes. Trump has forgotten that the big,
Speaker 1: beautiful ocean can be crossed in five hours. The ocean
Speaker 1: didn't do a damn thing to halt nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: that the ocean didn't do a damn thing preventing Putin's
Speaker 1: soft power invasions of our country the last nine years,
Speaker 1: especially insomuch as Trump helped. But with this ocean madness,
Speaker 1: Trump has now moved his incompetence from a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour a day risk to the safety of every American citizen, city, territory.
Speaker 1: He's moved it from that baseline of potential disaster around
Speaker 1: every corner to an immediate crisis in which, because of
Speaker 1: what he doesn't seem to understand, in which, because of
Speaker 1: what he doesn't seem to understand, our nation could be
Speaker 1: bombed out of existence in half an hour, and he
Speaker 1: would not even bother to come in off the goddamned
Speaker 1: golf course because he thinks we have a big, beautiful
Speaker 1: Ocean as separation. You know, the last people to actively
Speaker 1: point to the Atlantic and the Pacific as the guarranteurs
Speaker 1: of our safety. The isolationists of the nineteen thirties, the
Speaker 1: ones who wanted to cut a deal with Hitler, the
Speaker 1: ones led by Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly
Speaker 1: solo across the Atlantic and thus the first to disprove
Speaker 1: what Trump said yesterday, Led by Lindbergh, led by the
Speaker 1: other quizzlings of the more disgraceful parts of our history,
Speaker 1: the Trumps of their time, the isolationists of the thirties
Speaker 1: and early forties. What would have happened if Charles Lindbergh
Speaker 1: had been elected president in nineteen forty He was, for
Speaker 1: at least a while, one of the favorites for the
Speaker 1: Republican nomination to run against Fdr. What if this isolationist
Speaker 1: occasional brilliance atop a giant dunghill of selfish laziness nation
Speaker 1: really had sided with the Nazis in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and either joined them in sublimating the world, or, as
Speaker 1: Lindberg and the elationists preferred, simply stood aside and watched
Speaker 1: guess what we are finding out in real time? What
Speaker 1: would have happened if Lindbergh had been in power and
Speaker 1: had sided with the Nazis, Because that's what Trump is
Speaker 1: doing now. And it's not even the comparatively happy ending
Speaker 1: versions of that which we've seen in the Wroth novel
Speaker 1: or a dozen other films and sagas, but the real
Speaker 1: life version in which there is no rescue and no
Speaker 1: remorse and no collective conscience that stops us in time,
Speaker 1: where we elect a president with prejudices and hatreds and
Speaker 1: evils in his heart, or worse yet, no heart at all,
Speaker 1: nothing but a wallet where his soul should be, and
Speaker 1: nothing at all where his brain should be. What would
Speaker 1: have happened if Lindbergh had become the thirty third president,
Speaker 1: or Senator William Bora had or an unassassinated Huey Long,
Speaker 1: and they had done a deal with Hitler and sold
Speaker 1: it to this nation as our only chance of survival
Speaker 1: in a world where, for all they knew, the imaginary
Speaker 1: threats lind Bergen vote were real, but the real threats
Speaker 1: he downplayed were unsurvivable. What would have happened to us then, well,
Speaker 1: we would have been in nineteen thirty nine or nineteen
Speaker 1: forty where we are today. First, we would have had,
Speaker 1: within a year, within maybe months, cleared the path for
Speaker 1: a European war in which one power would have swept
Speaker 1: back from failure and bankruptcy, a near national collapse into
Speaker 1: total ruthless, murderous domination of France, of England, to Poland,
Speaker 1: of Italy, of all the places who thought we would
Speaker 1: help them. Their collapse would have meant nowhere for Canada
Speaker 1: or Mexico to turn. If the still resource rich Americans
Speaker 1: had wanted their territory or fuel, or people, or just
Speaker 1: the land, we would have taken them with little trouble,
Speaker 1: and we would have split Latin and South America with Hitler,
Speaker 1: maybe not even that, maybe just given him Africa and
Speaker 1: we take the entirety of this hemisphere. That would have
Speaker 1: been first. If we had made a deal with Hitler,
Speaker 1: it would have taken quite an army, of course, to
Speaker 1: maintain all that new territory. So the first step would
Speaker 1: have been to strip social spending in this country such
Speaker 1: as it was in nineteen thirty nine, roll back everything
Speaker 1: those liberals had just put in place, destroy that new
Speaker 1: safety net put in for a Pentagon budget increase of
Speaker 1: just to pick a figure at random, say another three
Speaker 1: hundred and five billion a year, while virtually going through
Speaker 1: the rest of the budget and just refusing to spend
Speaker 1: that money, even though it's in constitution that you can't
Speaker 1: just refuse to spend that money, no matter who the
Speaker 1: hell you think you are. And we would have folded
Speaker 1: the manufacturers and the cutting edge inventors and the new
Speaker 1: industries into the Government of nineteen thirty nine in semi
Speaker 1: official roles. Maybe something like international business machines would have
Speaker 1: been able to speed up the conversion from peaceful society
Speaker 1: with at least passing token, clunky efforts to enhance the
Speaker 1: lives of citizens, taken it from that into a wartime
Speaker 1: literally machine, a perpetual wartime machine. Now there's no fear
Speaker 1: of unemployment. If everybody's in the military putting down the
Speaker 1: rebellions in British Columbia and British Guiana, well we would
Speaker 1: have had to change their names, since Hitler would have
Speaker 1: erased Britain by then. We'd have had to change other
Speaker 1: things too. If President Lindbergh had subsumed Mexico, I mean,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have a Mexico anymore, would you so? Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico would have been pretty silly, wouldn't it. We
Speaker 1: would have been in nineteen forty where we are today.
Speaker 1: The meetings with Russia are not about Ukraine. The Russians
Speaker 1: said as much. The meetings between the United States and
Speaker 1: Russia are about dividing Ukraine between US and dividing the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe between US. Jd. Vance wasn't just avenging
Speaker 1: himself against professors who told him he didn't know enough
Speaker 1: to pass a freshman course in modern European history. He
Speaker 1: was giving them, the Europeans, a hint of what is coming. Noah,
Speaker 1: you better install fascist friendly regimes, because we are going
Speaker 1: to own North and South America and this neighborhood here,
Speaker 1: this is going to be Putin's. And if you already
Speaker 1: have a Putin friendly quasi dictatorship ready to roll dictator
Speaker 1: orban Madame La Penn, mister Wilders, Putin won't need to
Speaker 1: waste any money or blow to install one. He'll just
Speaker 1: use yours and you can stay in charge, running your
Speaker 1: little corner of his empire. For now, we've been too focused,
Speaker 1: understandably on not being critical. I've been doing it too.
Speaker 1: We've been too focused to a ghast, to a ghast
Speaker 1: at the revisionist acceptance of the Holocaust, and even worse
Speaker 1: than now, active promotion of the Holocaust by people like
Speaker 1: the Fances and Musks, to a gas at the betrayal
Speaker 1: of Ukraine, and more selfishly, the seeming ignorance of our
Speaker 1: new insect overlords that know the Zelensky's right. Putin will
Speaker 1: take Europe next. Who's going to stop him? In Poland,
Speaker 1: in Germany, in England. We have been too stunned by
Speaker 1: the details to even contemplate the big picture, let alone
Speaker 1: recognize that it is already being painted as we speak
Speaker 1: at this minute. The meetings with the Russians are about
Speaker 1: device up the world. Because we don't have Lindberg with
Speaker 1: his seven illegitimate children in Germany. We have Trump with
Speaker 1: his four idiot adult children here. And the utter unabashed
Speaker 1: evil isn't in Germany this time anyway, it's lightly to
Speaker 1: the eastern Russia. And yet otherwise it's just the World
Speaker 1: War two, maps and plans and goals and dreams and
Speaker 1: nightmares all over again, only this time they were smarter
Speaker 1: than Hitler. Hitler didn't have the presence of mind to
Speaker 1: keep his big bazoo shut and keep his true evil
Speaker 1: goals to himself until it was too late for anybody
Speaker 1: to do anything about it. It never really occurred to
Speaker 1: Hitler that sure, funding the German American League in this
Speaker 1: country the bund was a nice way to show the
Speaker 1: flag here. But again, where was the subtlety? He should
Speaker 1: have spent his money on influencers and covert propaganda and
Speaker 1: buying it congresswomen. Hitler would have should have could have
Speaker 1: compromised the TULSEI Gabbard and J. D Vance and Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg types of his day, and assessing the amazing lack
Speaker 1: of self defense built into the American form of government
Speaker 1: and its naive, pathetic reliance on the goodwill of all
Speaker 1: the parties, and spending every ruble he could find making
Speaker 1: sure Trump got elected. I'm sorry, Typho, making sure Lindberg
Speaker 1: got elected, spending every Deutsche mark he could find, making
Speaker 1: sure Lindbergh got elected got my alternative nineteen thirty eight
Speaker 1: history confused with my alternative twenty twenty five twenty six history.
Speaker 1: It's sorry, except it's not alternative twenty twenty five twenty
Speaker 1: six history. Is it? Trump's five dollars horror. Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: meets with Lavrov in Riad to figure out which ways
Speaker 1: to accelerate the dis memberment of Ukraine. The way in
Speaker 1: which we sell Ukraine a truce and take their rare
Speaker 1: minerals instead of getting our money back. If we have
Speaker 1: to get our money back from bandits who caused this,
Speaker 1: that would be the Russians. And then after the truce
Speaker 1: or the ceasefire, when the Russians have resupplied and restocked
Speaker 1: their war machine and they violate the ceasefire and the
Speaker 1: token European troops get slaughtered in Kiev, and we don't
Speaker 1: defend our NATO allies and instead we attack the one
Speaker 1: north of us and putin rolls into Krackoff and Warsaw
Speaker 1: and Berlin and Paris. Hey, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Shrug emoji? I mean, what's the big problem here? We've
Speaker 1: got that ocean, don't we that beautiful ocean? And the
Speaker 1: video game networks is still intact, and look at that
Speaker 1: stock market, and the Netflix streams are clearer than ever
Speaker 1: they're now in seventy And is it nicer not to
Speaker 1: have to worry about where to bigation? Now? Given how
Speaker 1: cheap the Mediterranean view. Russian stewge suites are at the
Speaker 1: new Trump Gaza Riviera Resort, complete with its two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty seven different golf courses. The next European war
Speaker 1: is being planned, and probably the next World war is
Speaker 1: being planned, with it first this week in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: then whenever Trump goes to the Kremlin and unfortunately comes
Speaker 1: back or Putin comes here. The Russians described the Riyad
Speaker 1: meeting not as a way to resolve the crisis they
Speaker 1: created in Ukraine, but as a first step towards improving
Speaker 1: relations with the United States. Their invasion of Ukraine is
Speaker 1: incidental to them. Their invasion of the United States is
Speaker 1: the key. What the Russians are going to do next
Speaker 1: in our country is the key, because we have a
Speaker 1: president who thinks we are protected by water. But don't worry,
Speaker 1: you aren't at risk. Your stocks will continue to rise,
Speaker 1: the Times will keep publishing a new wordle every day,
Speaker 1: while both sides in forced relocation as opposed to ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: Because finally, finally, finally, the United States of America, it's
Speaker 1: not going to get surprised by a world war. We're
Speaker 1: not going to make that repeat mistake of trying to
Speaker 1: stop it. We're going to help start it. Because our
Speaker 1: God send visionary fere Trump has seen what Wilson and Teddy,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and FDR and all the other idiots never could.
Speaker 1: He has seen in the coming World War, what they
Speaker 1: never even dreamed of. He has seen the American ownership
Speaker 1: position in the next World War. The beautiful ocean will
Speaker 1: protect us. This nation needs a new commander in chief
Speaker 1: and needs him or her to day. Oh and Trump's
Speaker 1: lies about President Zelenski of Ukraine, who clearly so ticked
Speaker 1: him off so much yesterday when he said Trump was
Speaker 1: quote living in a disinform space unquote manipulated by Russia,
Speaker 1: which is a plain statement of fact. Trump responded by
Speaker 1: calling Zelensky a dictator who didn't have elections, even though
Speaker 1: the constitution there prohibits elections while there's martial law. And
Speaker 1: then he threatens Lensky and this is all about the
Speaker 1: phone call. I just need you to do me a favor. Though.
Speaker 1: Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have
Speaker 1: a country left. Maybe, mister Trump, Zelensky can get himself
Speaker 1: a beautiful ocean. I understand an ocean solves everything. Interesting
Speaker 1: phrasing here, he better move faster, or he's not going
Speaker 1: to have a country left. Zelensky, better move faster. He's
Speaker 1: not going to have a country left. America. Better move faster.
Speaker 1: They are not going to have a country left. Just
Speaker 1: thinking out loud. Trump later boasted that he had stopped
Speaker 1: congestion pricing here in New York. He hasn't. The city
Speaker 1: and state sued to overturn a ruling about that by
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Reality shows, mister Duffy. Even the secretary
Speaker 1: himself knew he would be in court instantaneously. His ruling
Speaker 1: was not even supposed to take effect for a month.
Speaker 1: But Trump wrote, congestion pricing is dead Manhattan and all
Speaker 1: New York is saved. Long live the King. I don't
Speaker 1: know who the king could be in this construction of
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't mean Trump in that sentence. Manhattan is the king.
Speaker 1: He said, New York has been destroyed. Congestion pricing is
Speaker 1: the king. No, he meant Trump is the king. I
Speaker 1: do know a tea party slob that Trump made. Deputy
Speaker 1: White House Chief of Staff promptly tweeted that with an
Speaker 1: AI image of Trump in fetching King's robes that, like
Speaker 1: his suits, was clearly cut to hide his belly, and
Speaker 1: the official White House account then put out a fake
Speaker 1: magazine cover with a drawing of Trump wearing a crown
Speaker 1: two or three sizes too small. And it is tempting
Speaker 1: to dismiss, as many people did, as trolling or as
Speaker 1: a distraction, but at minimum, this is part of the
Speaker 1: effort to make him look omnipotent and invincible and mandated
Speaker 1: instead of what he really is, which is a president
Speaker 1: with forty nine point eight percent of the vote and
Speaker 1: a disapproval poll rating that went from forty one percent
Speaker 1: on inauguration day to fifty one percent last week, ten
Speaker 1: points in a month in the wrong direction. By the way,
Speaker 1: I hear long Live the King, and having lived in
Speaker 1: LA for a long time, I think of the guy
Speaker 1: who used to do his own commercials for big screen TVs,
Speaker 1: Paul the King of big Screens. No emotion in his
Speaker 1: voice whatsoever. Sounded like he was trying to be enthusiastic,
Speaker 1: but Jess couldn't quite pull it off. And he'd finished
Speaker 1: this thing off with I Am the King. I hear
Speaker 1: that same inflection in Trump's voice, I am the King,
Speaker 1: King forty nine point eight percent. As to the King's Boss.
Speaker 1: I hate to endorse anything from Steve Mannon, but Steve
Speaker 1: Mannon on e long musk quote a parasitic illegal immigrant
Speaker 1: Check who wants to impose his freak experiments and play
Speaker 1: act as God Check without any respect for the country's history, values,
Speaker 1: or traditions. Wait that last part, Bannon, are you four
Speaker 1: or against it? Then there's Trump's attempt to repurpose the
Speaker 1: failed mayor of New York City, Eric Adams as a
Speaker 1: Trump drone b This will wait another day. The judge
Speaker 1: holding off a ruling maybe today on whether or not
Speaker 1: to go ahead with the dismissal of the corruption charges
Speaker 1: against Adams, giving Trump's first weaponizing tool inside the DOJ.
Speaker 1: Emil Beauveat the chance to insist at prosecuting Adams was weaponizing,
Speaker 1: and Bove got another chance to threaten everybody still at
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, all five or ten employees. You
Speaker 1: know this guy. You've seen this guy. He's the one
Speaker 1: who looks exactly like exactly like Uncle Fester. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. We have our first white supremacist. Hey, your
Speaker 1: white clan sheet is showing citing the Texas Observer reports
Speaker 1: the operator of an extremely racist social media account with
Speaker 1: such pithy observations as quote, all blacks are foreign to
Speaker 1: my people and quote America is a white nation founded
Speaker 1: by whites. And last year quote nobody is proposing feeding
Speaker 1: migrants into tree shredders, yet unquote the author of that
Speaker 1: is actually an ICE attorney in Dallas. This after the
Speaker 1: head of ICE Tom innumerable chins Homeman threatened to put
Speaker 1: AOC behind bars because she reminded migrants that they have
Speaker 1: rights even if the Gestapo grabs them. Can't be innocent
Speaker 1: until proven guilty. Not the Tom Hoeman, the interim US
Speaker 1: attorney in DC at Martin, maybe even crazier. He is
Speaker 1: angry the Democrats are reacting at all against the doge embezzlements.
Speaker 1: He is personally launching an investigation into Senator Chuck Schumer
Speaker 1: for trying to stop doge I wish. This underscores my
Speaker 1: point to Democrats that milk toast color within the lines.
Speaker 1: Responses to the kaleidoscope of crime already perpetrated by Trump
Speaker 1: will be treated just as harshly by Trump and his whores,
Speaker 1: as will be the kind of responses that actually rally
Speaker 1: opposition and cheer. People who remember the good old days
Speaker 1: when we still had a democracy. The good old days,
Speaker 1: you remember them a month ago this morning, all right,
Speaker 1: a couple of laughs. Lauren Bobert has appeared in a
Speaker 1: photo standing next to a statue of Trump with his
Speaker 1: hand raised and clenched. So she raised her hand and
Speaker 1: clenched it. Obviously, this statue honored Bobert's date at that
Speaker 1: theater in Colorado. Let's hear it for the boy. Let's
Speaker 1: give the boy a hand. Meanwhile, there is this from
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Claudia Tenny, who faulted into the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: after hosting a radio show in Oneida, New York. Oneida
Speaker 1: near Wampsville. Congressman Tenny moves to make President Trump's birthday
Speaker 1: a federal holiday. Congressman Claudia Tenney blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: idiot from New Establishment Act officially designate June fourteenth as
Speaker 1: a federal holiday to commemorate President Donald J. Trump's birthday
Speaker 1: and flag day. Born on June fourteenth, nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1: That's right. Remind everybody he's really really old and coming
Speaker 1: apart at the seams. Trump's birthday coincided with Flag Day,
Speaker 1: had it been adopted by then, had flag Day already
Speaker 1: started by nineteen forty six? I mean the Stars and
Speaker 1: Shrapes was adopted in seventeen seventy seven. That's roughly that's
Speaker 1: like the same decade as Trump's birth. Legislation would permanently
Speaker 1: codify a new federal holiday called Trump's Birthday and flag Day. Hey,
Speaker 1: let's run Trump up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.
Speaker 1: Better be a strong flagpole. This goes along with the
Speaker 1: Addison McDowell push to rename Dulles in Washington Trump Airport. Actually,
Speaker 1: and sorry in advance for this, the idea of naming
Speaker 1: anything Trump Airport that would probably be better used as
Speaker 1: the name of that stretch of the Potomac next to
Speaker 1: National Airport, and the annap Paulina Luna bill to put
Speaker 1: Trump's head on Mount Rushmore. Now hear me out, I
Speaker 1: think we should all consider supporting that. Consider Anna Paulina
Speaker 1: Luna's idea to put Trump's head on Mount Rushmore, as
Speaker 1: long as she means his real head. Also of interest
Speaker 1: on an all new editions Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. As
Speaker 1: weird enough as it is without getting all broke back
Speaker 1: Mountain on US at a Senate hearing. And you would
Speaker 1: think even hockey guys would know that Trump's threat to
Speaker 1: coerce or annex or invade Canada might just be a
Speaker 1: third rail in Canada right before a title game between
Speaker 1: the US and Canada. No, sir, the American team general
Speaker 1: manager has decided a possible war between these two countries
Speaker 1: is good motivation for his team in their stupid, meaningless
Speaker 1: exhibition little hockey game tonight. That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 1: Biscuit in the basket. This is Countdown with Keith Oberman.
Speaker 1: Oberman still ahead in this all new edition of Countdown,
Speaker 1: a new segment comic relief. It was the creepiest thing
Speaker 1: an athlete has ever said to me. I mean unintentionally.
Speaker 1: And it just came to the four again with some
Speaker 1: sad news yesterday and the person I into it the
Speaker 1: animal hospital who sounded like the reporter from my first
Speaker 1: MSNBC show twenty seven years ago. That was because she
Speaker 1: was the reporter from my first MSNBC show twenty seven
Speaker 1: years ago. Well, that ahead in comic relief. I'm working
Speaker 1: on a new title first, believe it or not, there's
Speaker 1: still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
Speaker 1: of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
Speaker 1: constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Dedicated today
Speaker 1: to Sean Hannity and Lara Trump. Lara Trump idiot, Eric's
Speaker 1: idiot wife, the one whose eyes go in different directions,
Speaker 1: who recently started quote singing unquote, who has produced a
Speaker 1: fitness video in which it certainly looks like she's appearing
Speaker 1: as the before in the before and after contrast. Hannity
Speaker 1: introduced her on his show the other night as quote,
Speaker 1: this is a exact quote the host of the upcoming
Speaker 1: hit show My View with Laura Shitt Trump. Why did
Speaker 1: you have to add Trump? I mean he got something
Speaker 1: right for the first time, first honest thing, Sean said
Speaker 1: in twenty nine damn years My View with Laura, You
Speaker 1: bet your ass. Any who hear the nominees the runner
Speaker 1: up worse Senator Mark Wain, I'm not creepy at all,
Speaker 1: Mullin of Oklahoma. First off, Mark Wayne, Mark Wayne, make
Speaker 1: up your mind, Mark Wain. During a hearing last year,
Speaker 1: Mark Wayne nearly threw hands with union leader Sean O'Brien.
Speaker 1: They screamed at each other and threatened to go outside.
Speaker 1: What we thought it was about a fight, Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Yesterday O'Brien attended another hearing at which Senator
Speaker 1: said they were now friends, and Senator Mullen added, quote
Speaker 1: on the record, if we were in a relationship, I'd
Speaker 1: be the man in the relationship. Okay, I am beginning
Speaker 1: to suspect, because it would explain everything that when we
Speaker 1: do the post mortem, I mean, the frustration and the
Speaker 1: lies and everything else, and the madness in these people,
Speaker 1: and the desire to hurt members of any minority group,
Speaker 1: any oppressed group. When we do the post mortem on
Speaker 1: the late United States of America, we will discover that
Speaker 1: as many as ninety percent of maga Republican men who
Speaker 1: were elected to office during this nightmare, that they were
Speaker 1: actually self denying, self clothing gay men. That's just my guess.
Speaker 1: If we were in a relationship, mister O'Brien, I'd be
Speaker 1: the man in the relationship. Okay, you used your a
Speaker 1: loud voice for that, Senator Mark Wayne runners up the
Speaker 1: National Hockey League. Okay, at first, it's Bill Garren, the
Speaker 1: general manager of the United States team at the four
Speaker 1: Nations face Off and with him commentator PK. Sue Ban
Speaker 1: from ESPN. The Four Nations Face Off is a series
Speaker 1: of meaningless exhibition games for which they stopped the National
Speaker 1: Hockey League season at its prime moment for two weeks
Speaker 1: so they could play seven exhibition games, which concludes tonight
Speaker 1: with the United States versus Canada, with Canada having been
Speaker 1: given a kind of penalty weight that could put extra
Speaker 1: wait on a jockey. To make it even with the
Speaker 1: other horses and jockeys, they have to play their worst
Speaker 1: goalie again just to make it close. Mister Garin, who
Speaker 1: runs the Minnesota Wild and is from woos To, mass
Speaker 1: has decided that the threat made to Canada's sovereignty by
Speaker 1: the current president of the United States is bulletin board
Speaker 1: material for his team. I think there was a little
Speaker 1: bit of political flat to it. It's just the game
Speaker 1: that we're in Canada and the United States played Saturday
Speaker 1: night and there were three fights in the first nine seconds.
Speaker 1: I think our guys use that as inspiration. You let
Speaker 1: it get the better of you, then you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: But I really do think the play has used it
Speaker 1: as inspiration. Garon also called the game the highest level
Speaker 1: of hockey ever played, and he extended an invite to
Speaker 1: Trump to attend the final game, which is tonight in Boston, Boston.
Speaker 1: We would love it if President Trump was in attendance.
Speaker 1: We have a room full of prouda may can play
Speaker 1: as and coaches and staff and listen, We're just trying
Speaker 1: to represent our country the best way we can. Bill
Speaker 1: Garroon has a troubled, troubled history, and now he says
Speaker 1: this to you need to get him some help. I'm
Speaker 1: going no further than that. And then yesterday PK Suban,
Speaker 1: who first was the most overrated defenseman in the National
Speaker 1: Hockey League, then became the most overrated studio analyst for
Speaker 1: ESPN's appallingly bad National Hockey League coverage. He tweeted, imagine
Speaker 1: Trump shows up on Thursday. Mister Trump, your up chips
Speaker 1: are pushed in folks who you got and he spelled
Speaker 1: your yo. You are, mister Bettman. Donald Trump has threatened
Speaker 1: to annex Canada. And if this is not a particular
Speaker 1: concern to you, I might point out that seven of
Speaker 1: your businesses, seven of your franchises, are in Canada. It's
Speaker 1: not like baseball where there's just the Toronto Blue Jays,
Speaker 1: or football where there are no Canadian teams in the NFL,
Speaker 1: where the NBA, where there's one team. Seven of your
Speaker 1: businesses are located, including that one in Toronto, where the
Speaker 1: Hockey Hall of Fame is, your fans there, your players
Speaker 1: from Canada, and forty one percent of the league is
Speaker 1: still Canadian. They are enraged about this, just as Gary,
Speaker 1: you would be if Prime Minister Trudeau announced that he
Speaker 1: was going to annex the United States and he had
Speaker 1: the firepower to do it, make it an extra province.
Speaker 1: God knows we need to do something else here. If
Speaker 1: the general manager of one of your teams in this
Speaker 1: four Nations tournament had invited, say the general manager of
Speaker 1: the Swedish team or the Finnish team had invited Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin to a game to emphasize his plans to a
Speaker 1: next Ukraine, Or if the Canadians had invited AOC to
Speaker 1: emphasize plans to impeach Trump, the outrage and the recriminations
Speaker 1: from your office would have been amazing and total. There
Speaker 1: would have been year long suspensions for this. Right now.
Speaker 1: The Canadians have been restrained right now, but as it
Speaker 1: has been in the last couple of years, Commissioner Bettman,
Speaker 1: you coward's erased Pride Night because of one of Bill
Speaker 1: Garn's players from the Minnesota Wild who is a Russian
Speaker 1: homophobe and objected to all that gainess. Yet you allow this,
Speaker 1: You allow the general manager of the team to basically
Speaker 1: invite the president as he's threatening the other country, and
Speaker 1: the allow this idiot Sue Band to say essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing. No follow up, no comments, no don't do
Speaker 1: that again, no killing of the tweet. Even Canada's fans
Speaker 1: have been really restrained. I think they should stop being
Speaker 1: restrained when the season resumes on Saturday. I hope Canadian
Speaker 1: fans at every game in which the American team is
Speaker 1: visiting the Canadian team, I hope Canadian fans not only
Speaker 1: refuse to even stand for the American anthem, I hope
Speaker 1: they boo continuously and drown the American anthem out. See
Speaker 1: what you do, then, Betman, you hapless clown, but our winner.
Speaker 1: Speaking of hapless clowns, Stephen A. Smith, I'm afraid to
Speaker 1: report that Stephen A. Smith's ego has finally escaped. It
Speaker 1: is now destroying buildings like the god Zilla sized creature
Speaker 1: it is. He went on a podcast with Tommy Veeder
Speaker 1: talking politics. I'm not sure why his experience in politics
Speaker 1: as being a friend of Sean Hannity's. That's like less
Speaker 1: than knowing nothing about politics, but talking politics Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Smith when talking sports often proves too much for him.
Speaker 1: Stephen did one of those I don't know why everybody's
Speaker 1: saying I should be president things, one of those hold
Speaker 1: me back, hold me back, I shouldn't be running for president.
Speaker 1: Veeter said, I do think there's space between yes, Trump
Speaker 1: has a mandate and the suggestion you see sometimes that
Speaker 1: Democrats shouldn't be fighting back, or that we're the problem
Speaker 1: for fighting back, that it's the wrong optics are messaging,
Speaker 1: to which Steven A. Smith said something that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with what had just been said. That's not
Speaker 1: that much of a surprise, but here it is. Quote Well,
Speaker 1: what I would say is that you are wrong, and
Speaker 1: the reason you are wrong is because never before has
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party been this damaged. This is bad, bro.
Speaker 1: The Democratic Party lost, let's see the nineteen sixty eight elections,
Speaker 1: after a landslide in nineteen sixty four, then they lost
Speaker 1: in seventy two, nearly lost in seventy six, lost in eighty,
Speaker 1: lost in eighty four, lost in eighty eight, But never
Speaker 1: before has the Democratic Party been this damaged this year,
Speaker 1: that's true this year. Smith also said Democrats need to
Speaker 1: run a fearless candidate in twenty twenty eight who has
Speaker 1: box office appeal. Quote. I believe it is an utter
Speaker 1: embarrassment to the Democrat Party that I am a candidate
Speaker 1: in people's eyes for the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 1: It's an indictment against them, and they need to get
Speaker 1: their act together. Steve, and I have good news for you,
Speaker 1: and I have bad news for you. The bad news
Speaker 1: there is only one person talking about you as a
Speaker 1: candidate for the presidency of the United States, and that's you.
Speaker 1: The good news is, I'm happy to inform you you
Speaker 1: will remain the only person talking about you as a
Speaker 1: candidate for the presidency of the United States. Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Smith candidate for well whatever it is he does on
Speaker 1: ESPN Today's other Worst Person. Hello, Well, however to the
Speaker 1: number one story on the Countdown, And I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to need to get new music done for a
Speaker 1: new segment called Comic Relief. It seems to me this
Speaker 1: is where the stupid stuff of the day should all go.
Speaker 1: I mean the stupid stuff that does not directly pertain
Speaker 1: to this particular nightmare timeline in which the President of
Speaker 1: the United States believes that the ocean will keep us safe,
Speaker 1: which is something that Lincoln said and would have realized
Speaker 1: by certainly eighteen ninety, something that you know, Kaiser Wilhelm
Speaker 1: could have sent the German fleet to New York pretty
Speaker 1: easily buy you know, nineteen hundred, to say nothing of
Speaker 1: that new thing called the airplane which was used at
Speaker 1: Pearl Harmer So comic relief. I have two stories. They
Speaker 1: are totally unconnected, and one of them involves brain disease,
Speaker 1: which isn't that funny a topic, but it relates only
Speaker 1: as the news hook for it. So let's try these
Speaker 1: two stories, and I'll save the hilarious brain disease story
Speaker 1: for a second. The first one is this the first
Speaker 1: time I did a show at MSNBE. It was about
Speaker 1: the Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton story. It did not start
Speaker 1: out that way, as I've mentioned many times. It was
Speaker 1: a news magazine show called The Big Show, and it
Speaker 1: premiered on October first, nineteen ninety seven, under the illusion
Speaker 1: at NBC management that I simply throwing my glove out
Speaker 1: on the mound would draw huge audiences to hear me
Speaker 1: talk about things they were not used to hearing me
Speaker 1: talk about. And so we did unique news stories. We
Speaker 1: did unconventional news leads, and one day I saw myself
Speaker 1: interviewing as the live guest in the leads story the
Speaker 1: publisher of the Farmer's Almanac. The big news we chose
Speaker 1: that day in late nineteen ninety seven was the publication
Speaker 1: of the nineteen ninety eight edition of the Farmers Effing Almanac.
Speaker 1: It's not as interesting as it sounds. He was the
Speaker 1: live guest. We were a little lost. And then unfortunately
Speaker 1: the Bill Clinton story came along, and instead of what
Speaker 1: I would have hoped in retrospect had happened, which is
Speaker 1: that they would have canceled my show, instead we got
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in this stupid little magazine show, which had
Speaker 1: its moments, It had good feature segments. It just didn't
Speaker 1: convey the idea that at eight o'clock at night on
Speaker 1: a cable news network trying to establish itself against CNN,
Speaker 1: that maybe we should put news on. Well, we got
Speaker 1: all the news we wanted, although I never was convinced
Speaker 1: that the story was always news. It was Clinton and
Speaker 1: Lewinsky every night, and finally I got so sick of
Speaker 1: it that I begged them to get rid of me,
Speaker 1: and they sold me to Fox Sports for a million
Speaker 1: dollars and I got out and got my wish and
Speaker 1: then had to get out of there too, and wound
Speaker 1: up going back to MSNBC in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: I've told these stories many times, but this was story
Speaker 1: number two thousand out of this and it is not
Speaker 1: yet complete because a new development in the story of
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight MSNBC The Big
Speaker 1: Show with Keith Overman, a new development has occurred this week.
Speaker 1: I used to have every night since we led with
Speaker 1: Clinton and Lewinsky an opening segment of five to ten
Speaker 1: minutes in length that was written for me, largely by
Speaker 1: a friend of mine from my CNN days in the
Speaker 1: eighties named Bob Lily. Bob worked with me at CNN
Speaker 1: at MSNBC, came back to work with me at MSNBC
Speaker 1: the second time, and came with me to Current TV.
Speaker 1: He worked with me four separate times and lived to
Speaker 1: tell the tale and actually looked and felt younger at
Speaker 1: the end of the process than at the beginning. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Bob would write this, and I would put in
Speaker 1: a few tweaks, and sometimes Bob would hand me this
Speaker 1: script as we were going on the air at eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: It was very intricate, a lot of sound bites and
Speaker 1: a lot of videotape, and a lot of puns and
Speaker 1: a lot of ad libs, and it needed and killed
Speaker 1: a couple of directors. It needed good directors and wore
Speaker 1: them out really fast. And then we would go to
Speaker 1: the White House lawn where one of NBC's White House
Speaker 1: correspondents would appear, needless to say, the White House car
Speaker 1: respondents where NBC News were kind of busy in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, certainly from January onwards, so occasionally we would
Speaker 1: get still the late great David bloom Ill Starred Ill,
Speaker 1: fated and ultimately a tragic story. But David, who would
Speaker 1: have been on the Today Show at six o'clock that morning,
Speaker 1: or would have been traveling back from Peru or wherever
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton had been at six o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: would often stick around and appear live at eight o'clock
Speaker 1: anyway where he got this energy, and how he spent
Speaker 1: his time and his money I will never understand in
Speaker 1: any event, if it wasn't him. The second choice usually
Speaker 1: was a great veteran NBC news correspondent named John Palmer.
Speaker 1: And the first time I ever saw John Palmer, he
Speaker 1: was doing the news on the Today Show, and I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and one of the few genuine thrills
Speaker 1: as I became further and further disenthralled with news at
Speaker 1: NBC in the year nineteen ninety eight, was the chance
Speaker 1: to interview and introduce John Palmer, and I wrote him
Speaker 1: a note to that effect, and when he retired after
Speaker 1: I left NBC, he sent me a letter thanking me
Speaker 1: for having him on my show. One of the great
Speaker 1: backwards juxtaposition stories I've ever encountered. You're thanking me, John Palmer.
Speaker 1: All right, So it was usually one of those two,
Speaker 1: or if not, then the other White House correspondent they
Speaker 1: had three of them at that point, was a lovely
Speaker 1: and talented woman named Claire Shipman. And Claire clearly had
Speaker 1: gotten the idea in her head that she was probably
Speaker 1: not going to go long term into news, even though
Speaker 1: she had all the skills to do so. But Claire
Speaker 1: had something a lot of other people did not. She
Speaker 1: had control of her own ego. Claire did not need television.
Speaker 1: She did it extraordinarily well. But Claire would be out there,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't Claire, and if it wasn't John Palmer,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't David Bloom, they would break people
Speaker 1: in who were just starting at NBC News, either moved
Speaker 1: in from other cities where they had worked for NBC affiliates,
Speaker 1: or moved in from other publications making their TV debuts.
Speaker 1: And the other three, including Claire, were known as somewhat
Speaker 1: insultingly but very affectionately in the nicest sense of the word,
Speaker 1: as Keith's harem three beautiful and gifted, talented, hard working
Speaker 1: women who deserved the job and also just looked like
Speaker 1: a million bucks at all times. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying how they appeared physically, but how they conducted themselves
Speaker 1: on television. These people knew what to do to make
Speaker 1: a good impression in a professional sense. And it was
Speaker 1: always the highlight of the show to me. And the
Speaker 1: downturn of the show began when I would say thank
Speaker 1: you to her, to him, to whoever it was, and
Speaker 1: said you know, thank you Claire Shipman at the White House.
Speaker 1: That was the point at which there was no reason
Speaker 1: to watch the rest of the show, all right. So
Speaker 1: the three women who did this role, led by Claire Shipman,
Speaker 1: a White House correspondent, and the two kind of trainees
Speaker 1: who I think were in their first year at NBC.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the other guy on the show
Speaker 1: who was always on from Washington in the middle was
Speaker 1: a guy named David Gregory who was just breaking into
Speaker 1: NBC News, who did a story for us on The
Speaker 1: Big Show every night, something to do with Clinton Lewinsky.
Speaker 1: And if you think I had a bad job, his
Speaker 1: job was way worse. He had to do a package.
Speaker 1: We had to decide and advance what his story was
Speaker 1: going to be. Poor David every day, five of them week.
Speaker 1: But it made his reputation and eventually, for good or
Speaker 1: for ill, he wound up hosting Meet the Press. So
Speaker 1: it worked out all right for David. In any event,
Speaker 1: I keep teasing this Claire Shipman. If it was not Claire,
Speaker 1: and it was not David Bloom and it was not
Speaker 1: John Palmer, it was one of the two trainees, a
Speaker 1: woman named who we had just hired from a publication
Speaker 1: I think called The Hill, a woman named Nora O'Donnell.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to Nora O'Donnell other than her tenure at
Speaker 1: NBC News anchoring newscasts and working on all of the
Speaker 1: programs and then jumping to CBS to become the anchor
Speaker 1: of the CBS Evening News. The great Nora O'Donnell started
Speaker 1: her NBC big time career on My show. And if
Speaker 1: it wasn't her, the other one was the new local
Speaker 1: news person they'd hired with the big hair, who they
Speaker 1: brought in and had her appear several times. She was
Speaker 1: like fifth string Campbell Brown. That's nineteen ninety eight. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, when the bosses of CNN overruled
Speaker 1: the president of CNN who wanted to hire me to
Speaker 1: do their eight o'clock show, to take Countdown and move
Speaker 1: it from MSNBC to CNN, and they got overruled by
Speaker 1: a man named Jim Walton. They went instead and hired
Speaker 1: Campbell Brown away from NBC News. Campbell Brown and I
Speaker 1: once spent a weekend together at thirty Rock Co anchoring
Speaker 1: weekend Today. She just looked like television. So there was
Speaker 1: my roster of White House Correspondence, David Bloom later weekend
Speaker 1: host of The Today Show, John Palmer, a Broadcasting Hall
Speaker 1: of Famer, Claire Shipman probably the best of the five
Speaker 1: of them, who then went on to ABC News and
Speaker 1: then sort of drifted out of news largely or certainly
Speaker 1: out of the network news business. And then Nora O'Donnell,
Speaker 1: future anchor of the CBS Evening News, and Campbell Brown
Speaker 1: soon to be hired to work against me as CNN's
Speaker 1: eight o'clock primetime anchor and then to go off into
Speaker 1: right wing educational revisionism. So it was a pretty impressive bunch.
Speaker 1: And I thought about them because as I was sitting
Speaker 1: with one of my pups at the Animal Medical Center
Speaker 1: here in New York the other afternoon, in the waiting area,
Speaker 1: I heard a very familiar voice and I saw a
Speaker 1: very familiar face, and I heard about a woman who
Speaker 1: talked about having been a reporter. And I looked at
Speaker 1: her and I went, boy, that she looks just like
Speaker 1: Clare Shipman. But it couldn't be Claire Shipment, because she
Speaker 1: looks like Claire Shipman did in nineteen ninety eight. That
Speaker 1: can't be her. It's not nineteen ninety eight anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: you hold up a picture of me from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight compared to my face right now, and I look
Speaker 1: like my own great grandfather now, or if you can
Speaker 1: sidering the nineteen ninety eight picture, I looked like my
Speaker 1: own great grandson. Then sure enough it was Claire Shipman.
Speaker 1: She was in with her dog as I was in
Speaker 1: with my dog, and we visited and hugged and talked
Speaker 1: about something, and we weren't there long enough for me
Speaker 1: to tell the quick Claire Shipman story. Claire was very
Speaker 1: straight laced on the air, with a great sense of humor,
Speaker 1: but she sort of restrained herself, and I, by the
Speaker 1: middle of May, say, nineteen ninety eight, stopped restraining myself.
Speaker 1: I was mocking the story whenever I could, in hopes
Speaker 1: for God's sake, stop watching this show and please fire me,
Speaker 1: and I could every time I tried that. The ratings
Speaker 1: went up. Tells you something. I don't have time to
Speaker 1: analyze it. Those of you who can do mass media
Speaker 1: psychology can try to ascertain what that means. I guess
Speaker 1: it was the liberation and the freedom and the idea
Speaker 1: that I didn't give a crap and the audience went,
Speaker 1: I like this guy. He doesn't give a crap in
Speaker 1: any event. One day, Claireshipman reporting from the White House,
Speaker 1: and those days, Wolf Flitzer worked for CNN as the
Speaker 1: White House corresponded, and Wolf Flitzer was standing next to
Speaker 1: Claire Shipman live on CNN at eight o'clock at night
Speaker 1: while we were live on MSNBC. And as Claire was talking,
Speaker 1: and she had a pleasant, good broadcasting voice, you could
Speaker 1: hear Wolf Flitzer, who's a little little louder than say,
Speaker 1: the public address system at Penn Station, the railroad station
Speaker 1: in New York, A little louder than that, not much,
Speaker 1: but just a little louder than that. You could hear
Speaker 1: him quite clearly. And you could see Claire kind of
Speaker 1: edging her way screen left to try to get away
Speaker 1: from Flitzer. And it felt like this on television. And
Speaker 1: I finally she finished up, and I went Claire Shipman
Speaker 1: for us at the White House, and Claire, if you
Speaker 1: do me a favor, would you tell that Wolf Blitzer
Speaker 1: from CNN to pipe down. I mean, I can hear
Speaker 1: and she burst into laughter and giggles, and then we
Speaker 1: just cut away and was one of my fondest memories
Speaker 1: of that show, and Claire, who was always together and
Speaker 1: always there, called me up afterwards and said thanks, I
Speaker 1: needed that laugh, And I said, I think we all
Speaker 1: needed that laugh. So that's the one humorous relief. I
Speaker 1: ran into her the other day and somehow or another
Speaker 1: she didn't look any older. Good for her. Congratulations to
Speaker 1: Claire Shipment on that. And Claire is now I believe
Speaker 1: owns Columbia University or something like that. I didn't get
Speaker 1: quite the whole story, but she's been in charge of
Speaker 1: Columbia University trying to put it back together again, and
Speaker 1: as a Cornelian, I just sort of wished her good
Speaker 1: luck and with an emoji, you know, a shrug emoji,
Speaker 1: and said good, yeah, good luck with that. If you
Speaker 1: need any help, don't call me. The other story is
Speaker 1: based on a tragedy, but it mainlines back to a
Speaker 1: really really, really really strange statement, possibly the strangest thing
Speaker 1: any athlete ever said to me in an interview. And
Speaker 1: it comes to bear now because the news came out
Speaker 1: yesterday officially that the hockey great Bobby Hull, who broke
Speaker 1: the record for most goals in a season back when
Speaker 1: the record was just fifty goals in one season. Bobby
Speaker 1: Hull died two years ago, and it has now been
Speaker 1: confirmed that he died, as so many hockey players whose
Speaker 1: families donated their brains after their demise, obviously for study,
Speaker 1: died of CTE, of the brain damage illness that leads
Speaker 1: to madness, violence, hatred, all sorts of antisocial behavior, and
Speaker 1: Bobby Hull will No one will ever say, oh, poor
Speaker 1: Bobby Hull, because by the end of his life he
Speaker 1: was largely disliked. I think that's a pleasant euphemism for
Speaker 1: how he was believed in in sports and in hockey
Speaker 1: in the waning years of his life, and in some
Speaker 1: quarters much more than that. There were racist overtones and
Speaker 1: sexism and violence towards women dating back to his early life.
Speaker 1: But of course nobody can tell yet at this point
Speaker 1: when CTE would have started. And this pertains to our
Speaker 1: current situation, because, as I've mentioned many times before, there
Speaker 1: is growing indication that some people are getting in the
Speaker 1: military simply by handling the vibrations from these superpowered machine
Speaker 1: guns and other weapons. They are getting certainly some brain damage,
Speaker 1: and for all we know, it's going to wind up
Speaker 1: being CTE later in life. I mean I hit my
Speaker 1: head on a train in nineteen eighty, and every once
Speaker 1: in a while I wonder if I'm going to have CTE,
Speaker 1: or maybe if I have it already, or if I
Speaker 1: had it in nineteen eighty. So we don't know when
Speaker 1: Bobby Hall started to get sick with this brain injury,
Speaker 1: how much of it was that, how much of it
Speaker 1: was him just being maybe a racist, sexist, misogynist, violent jerk.
Speaker 1: Who knows, But it was an eye opening thing that
Speaker 1: somebody could have had that, and for all we know,
Speaker 1: we got the first symptoms of it in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: not two thousand and five. It's a terrible thing, and
Speaker 1: it's going to become a bigger and bigger thing in
Speaker 1: sports and outside of it, particularly as it comes to
Speaker 1: our veterans. Why we need more help for our veterans
Speaker 1: and not less as the Trump administration seems to think
Speaker 1: at the moment, because what would Donald Trump know about
Speaker 1: the needs of veterans being a guy who evaded the
Speaker 1: draft the way he did. Avoided the draft, evaded the draft.
Speaker 1: It's a gray area, just like everything between his ears. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Bobby Hall story. Anytime Bobby Hall's name
Speaker 1: has come up since November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: I have flashedback too November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and our other bit of humorous relief for this trying
Speaker 1: week after last week's trying week and an advance of
Speaker 1: next week's trying week in the real world. Sam Rosen,
Speaker 1: my first boss at UPI Radio, the sports director now
Speaker 1: retiring after forty plus years doing the New York Rangers
Speaker 1: hockey games, assigned me on one of my non studio
Speaker 1: days to take a tape recorder and go to the
Speaker 1: Winnipeg Jets first game ever at Madison Square Garden to
Speaker 1: play the New York Rangers after the merger of the
Speaker 1: National Hockey League and the World Hockey Association. When the
Speaker 1: World Hockey Association had gone into business in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: the first big get was Bobby Hall being named player
Speaker 1: coach of the Winnipeg Jets. They stole him for some
Speaker 1: phenomenal sum of money from the Chicago Blackhawks and announced
Speaker 1: that the WHA the World Hockey Association, had arrived. It
Speaker 1: never really got much further than that. Although Mark Messier
Speaker 1: played in that league first and Wayne Gretzky played in
Speaker 1: that league first, and a lot of other superstars played
Speaker 1: there first, but the WHA was on fumes by the
Speaker 1: time it quote unquote merged with the NHL in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy nine, and so Bobby Hall, who
Speaker 1: was particularly voluminous in his scoring against the New York
Speaker 1: Rangers in his days with the Chicago Blackhawks, was back
Speaker 1: in Madison Square Garden for the first time since the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one seventy two season, an old man playing
Speaker 1: one last lap around the NHL, and his only game
Speaker 1: as a Winnipeg Jet at Madison Square Garden was on
Speaker 1: November twenty first, nineteen seventy nine, a Wednesday, and they
Speaker 1: sent me there. Sam said, make sure you get Hull.
Speaker 1: And I talked to the PR guy beforehand, and I said,
Speaker 1: does Bobby give interviews after the game? Yes, he does.
Speaker 1: There's not much else for him to do, He's not
Speaker 1: playing a lot. And so I went in and I
Speaker 1: interviewed Bobby Hall, and he gave me a great interview.
Speaker 1: But he said the creepiest, weirdest thing any athlete has
Speaker 1: ever said to me. Who wasn't trying to say something creepy,
Speaker 1: I said about after talking about his career and coming
Speaker 1: back to New York in many senses, and the World
Speaker 1: Hockey Association in Chicago and Winnipeg and the whole arc
Speaker 1: of his career, finally said, so, you're back in New York.
Speaker 1: This has been a place for you of accomplishment, and
Speaker 1: you scored your fifty first goal against the Rangers in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and you're playing at Madison Square Garden. And the few
Speaker 1: times you've been back here in the WHA there were
Speaker 1: two or three thousand people here and now there were
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand, and wasn't a particularly big game other than
Speaker 1: they came to see you. I said, what is what
Speaker 1: does it feel like? What sort of nostalgia? What sort
Speaker 1: of And hopefully I don't have the tape of me
Speaker 1: asking the question, but I hope it took less time
Speaker 1: than it does for me to recount it. I like
Speaker 1: to keep my questions to less than three and a
Speaker 1: half minutes in length. In any event, I asked him,
Speaker 1: how about coming back here? Does it bring back a
Speaker 1: lot of memories? And he said, and somewhere I have
Speaker 1: the tape, but I could not find it. Bobby Hall said, oh,
Speaker 1: never mind the past. We're here in the future now.
Speaker 1: That is the creepiest thing I have ever heard. And
Speaker 1: I almost screamed then too, never mind the past. We're
Speaker 1: here in the future now. Did we just jump here
Speaker 1: from the past? We're in the po When are we talking?
Speaker 1: We're here in the future now. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: science fiction line. You could create an entire short story. Hell,
Speaker 1: these days, you could create an entire Netflix series based
Speaker 1: on that one line. We're here in the future now,
Speaker 1: time travel Bobby Hall, time traveler. Jeez, if you're a
Speaker 1: time traveler, could you've gotten a better weave for your
Speaker 1: thinning hair? All right, Well that's a cheap shot, and
Speaker 1: he's dead too. But you know, in any event, I
Speaker 1: have never in forty five and a half years, forty
Speaker 1: five years and what two months now, November twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, I've never shaken that it's up there
Speaker 1: in those voices that still appear in my head periodically,
Speaker 1: like asking Catfish Hunter how his arm was, and he answered,
Speaker 1: marm feels real good. Marm feels real good. And for
Speaker 1: weeks upon weeks, all of us who heard that tape
Speaker 1: asked each other how our arms were, and we all answered,
Speaker 1: marm feels real good. How's your marm today, Keith. It's
Speaker 1: in there in the Hall of Fame. Marm feels real
Speaker 1: good because we're here in the future now. Never mind
Speaker 1: the past. We're here in the future now, and it
Speaker 1: sucks my Bobby Hull impression. Done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. And on a
Speaker 1: serious note, boy, oh boy, do we need an acknowledgment
Speaker 1: from the National Hockey League that CTE is a real thing.
Speaker 1: The NFL finally got around to saying something. The National
Speaker 1: Hockey League, afraid of being sued by every X player,
Speaker 1: is still denying that there could ever be a connection
Speaker 1: between brain injuries, particularly CTE, and the deaths of their
Speaker 1: players or their conduct and their remaining years of their
Speaker 1: last years. It's unforgivable, Like much of what the NHL does.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle, musical directors
Speaker 1: of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of the music.
Speaker 1: Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
Speaker 1: and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our Satirical in fifthy.
Speaker 1: Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust Nancy, how is your arm? The sports music
Speaker 1: is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and
Speaker 1: performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
Speaker 1: with marm was my friend Larry David. Everything else was
Speaker 1: as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one days until the scheduled end of
Speaker 1: his lame duck and lame brained term, unless Musk removes
Speaker 1: him sooner. Donald Trump CTE. I never thought about it.
Speaker 1: Is it's possible he's hit his head. Lord knows he's
Speaker 1: made other people hit their head heads against walls. So
Speaker 1: it's one four three one till he goes or the
Speaker 1: actual aerial tables taken first. The next schedule countdown is Monday,
Speaker 1: as always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember, impeach trumpet
Speaker 1: will not work now. It will, however, win the Democrats
Speaker 1: the midterms, if there are midterms. Never mind the past.
Speaker 1: We're here in the future, till next time, I'm Keith Olderman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.