Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: would just like to go on the record and thank
Speaker 1: the person who is doing the most to undermine the
Speaker 1: Trump transition and the most to let the air out
Speaker 1: of the momentum of Trump's gigantic one point four percent landslide.
Speaker 1: I'd just like to thank the person who is making
Speaker 1: Trump look stupid and amateurish and failureish. And that person,
Speaker 1: of course, is Donald Trump. He was humiliated with the
Speaker 1: Matt Gates nomination to the degree that when the thing
Speaker 1: finally became utterly untenable and potentially destructive to him personally,
Speaker 1: he didn't even try to blame anybody. He didn't stamp
Speaker 1: his feet. He just moved on. And he got the
Speaker 1: famous prosecutor who put Dwight Gooden, the failed Mets pitcher,
Speaker 1: in jail for seven months. He just punted on Gates.
Speaker 1: And you know, Trump knows he's in trouble when he
Speaker 1: shuts up. Now, he has not said a word. He's
Speaker 1: just standing there next to Pete Hegseth, who will never
Speaker 1: be Secretary of Defense, who will never run the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: who right now is probably a poor bet to get
Speaker 1: his job back on the weekend edition of the Fox
Speaker 1: News Morning Show. And every time Pete heg Seth's dumpster
Speaker 1: fire goes out or drops down a little bit in intensity,
Speaker 1: Trump is there as it reignites. When Mommy becomes part
Speaker 1: of your story, When it's mommy who called you an
Speaker 1: abuser of women, when it's mommy who suggested you needed
Speaker 1: psychological help, and somebody she sent the email to has
Speaker 1: decided to give it to the media. When mom from
Speaker 1: eight years ago, seven years ago, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: it was seven minutes ago. When Mom is part of
Speaker 1: the reason you're not going to get the job, and
Speaker 1: it's so bad that you have to put Mom on TV,
Speaker 1: and it's so bad on TV that Mom instead of
Speaker 1: answering the softball questions, the answering of the softball questions
Speaker 1: was insufficient. She turned to camera and stared and thanked
Speaker 1: the furor for his support of her son, the abuser,
Speaker 1: and then she blamed the media, the awful media, for
Speaker 1: having threatened her by calling her up and telling her
Speaker 1: that they were going to print this and they wanted
Speaker 1: to know what her reaction was and if she wanted
Speaker 1: to say something, what evil bastard's trying to make it
Speaker 1: fair to her, we can see where heg Sith got
Speaker 1: his stupidity and his arrogance. And then as part of
Speaker 1: the softball questions, this guy Doucey says to her, so
Speaker 1: will you testify in front of the Senate on your
Speaker 1: son's behalf? And if you are really trying, if you
Speaker 1: are debasing yourself, Donald Trump, to the point of having
Speaker 1: your nominee for Secretary of Defense, the punching power of
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, the macho, slicked back, greasy haired Pete Hegseth,
Speaker 1: who's had to turn to his mom to get him
Speaker 1: out of trouble. When you go to that sense and
Speaker 1: level of self humiliation for Hegseth, for his mom, for Fox,
Speaker 1: for the entirety of the conservative fascist operation, and for
Speaker 1: yourself Trump, when you go to that degree, and this
Speaker 1: man Deucey turns to this woman and says, will you
Speaker 1: be testifying on his behalf in front of the Senate?
Speaker 1: And she says, I don't have an answer for you
Speaker 1: on that, and she isn't sure. She won't commit. He's meet,
Speaker 1: He's done, and not only that, instead of bailing out
Speaker 1: on him when there was still time for people to
Speaker 1: forget about him when there was still time for him
Speaker 1: not to come up in every subsequent discussion of whoever
Speaker 1: becomes the head of the Pentagon the Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: when you could have removed the stain from your red
Speaker 1: tie instead of doing it then, now just stand a
Speaker 1: little closer to this. I will quote Bert Lancaster again
Speaker 1: as JJ Hunsecker talking to the Tony Curtis character in
Speaker 1: the great film Sweet Smell of Success. Your dead son,
Speaker 1: get yourself buried heg Sith was supposed to meet as
Speaker 1: part of the Pete Hegseth, Hey, you want to have
Speaker 1: a beer with Pete Hegseth. Isn't that how we judge conservatives?
Speaker 1: Who do you want to have a beer with this
Speaker 1: alcoholic over here? He was supposed to have a beer
Speaker 1: or something with Josh Hawley from Missouri, who is his
Speaker 1: own dumpster fire, But we can leave that alone for
Speaker 1: the time being. He was supposed to meet with Josh Hawley,
Speaker 1: and then Hally's announcement came that there was going to
Speaker 1: be a postponement of this meeting as part of the
Speaker 1: senatorial tour of Pete Hegseth the dumpster fire on wheels
Speaker 1: rolling past your Senate Office, Hawley said, it's been canceled.
Speaker 1: Somebody in the transition team told PBS's reporter on the
Speaker 1: Hill that they were told the transition team was told
Speaker 1: that the Hegseth Hally meeting was canceled because Hegseth has
Speaker 1: to be somewhere else today. The PBS reporter Lisai dejar
Speaker 1: Dan naturally said, Florida, And there was apparently a shrug
Speaker 1: and no answer to that. But we were informed by the
Speaker 1: transition team member that the decision to cancel the Holly
Speaker 1: Hegseth meeting was in fact on the Hegseth side, and
Speaker 1: it quote came from a higher power. This is disastrous.
Speaker 1: It's fantastically, wonderfully disastrous. If you had popcorn leftover from
Speaker 1: the Matt Gates fiasco, keep it handy, because it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like Trump's going to get out of this anytime soon,
Speaker 1: because he's crazy and now he may in fact be
Speaker 1: lazy and crazy, but lazy in a sense of not
Speaker 1: maintaining that fisticuff's position that was the hallmark of everything
Speaker 1: in his life. If there's one thing you'd look at
Speaker 1: Trump and say, I find that useful and possibly something
Speaker 1: I want to try to achieve. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: he's never been satisfied with something. When there is a victory,
Speaker 1: he wants more. This is his illness. It's not about
Speaker 1: having money. It's about getting money. It's not about having power.
Speaker 1: It's about getting power. It's not about defeating you or
Speaker 1: winning in some way. It's about destroying you and then
Speaker 1: coming back and destroying you once again. And in this case,
Speaker 1: both with Gates and now with eg Seth, he took
Speaker 1: his foot off the pedal. This is after the mom'st
Speaker 1: worry about the email. All of this now, this is
Speaker 1: after the drinking at Fox story. NBC News reports ten
Speaker 1: sources at Fox News who said that he was always
Speaker 1: drinking there, and let me see if I can read this.
Speaker 1: One of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him
Speaker 1: as recently as last month and heard him complain about
Speaker 1: being hungover this fall. I will confess to you that
Speaker 1: twice in my broadcasting career I went on the air
Speaker 1: after having had alcohol at dinner, and once I had
Speaker 1: too much and was mortified that I was going to
Speaker 1: just sound like this on the air. I watched the
Speaker 1: video of the show the next day and it was
Speaker 1: absolutely fine. Nobody noticed, and I thought, well, I got
Speaker 1: away with it. I'm never going to try that again.
Speaker 1: One of the sources said they smelled alcohol and Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth as recently his last month. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: ancient history, because this was also after the story about
Speaker 1: him drinking so much at Concerned Veterans for America, like
Speaker 1: eight years ago that there was a whistleblower report about
Speaker 1: his drinking and he had to quit. And if you
Speaker 1: thought the idea of Donald Trump again having his little
Speaker 1: fat fingers on the button, if you thought that was
Speaker 1: terrifying enough, now imagine that the guy at the Pentagon
Speaker 1: who would be conferred with in the event that anything
Speaker 1: was done, including invading Canada. Canada. Hello, if you want
Speaker 1: to make it worse, just think about Trump calling up
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense and he's drunk. I'm sure this
Speaker 1: has happened before at some point in American history, but
Speaker 1: this would apparently happen with Pete Hegseth on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: and who would talk him out of bombing Vancouver. And
Speaker 1: all of this was after the story of the serial
Speaker 1: philandering during his first marriage and the story of the
Speaker 1: sexual allegations or sexual abuse, allegations at the Conservative Convention
Speaker 1: and his whole campaign that he started to turn the
Speaker 1: army into the equivalent of the eleventh century crusaders who
Speaker 1: slaughtered the infidels because they were true Christians. I'm not
Speaker 1: making these references. These are the things he said. He
Speaker 1: wants the nineteenth century version of the US military, or
Speaker 1: the eleventh century version of the Christian crusaders, just go
Speaker 1: into a part of the country or the world, or
Speaker 1: the nation or wherever, and just wipe everybody out, because
Speaker 1: we know true Christians believe that Christ truly supported infidelity
Speaker 1: and abuse and alcohol and especially slaughtering. Pete Hegseth says
Speaker 1: Trump called him yesterday and told him to hang in there.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Was he drunk. Did Trump just tell
Speaker 1: him to hang I suppose. I suppose at heart. One
Speaker 1: of the principal problems that Trump has in assessing other
Speaker 1: people to work for him is that he's such a
Speaker 1: piece of crap himself that everybody else looks like I
Speaker 1: don't know Sigmund Freud or Beethoven or Mickey Mantle or
Speaker 1: I don't know who. He can't possibly know that just
Speaker 1: because you are better than he is at a given
Speaker 1: thing that that does not mean you're any good at it.
Speaker 1: And after all, I think the number of children that
Speaker 1: heg Seth has with the number of women that he's
Speaker 1: had them with is still less than Trump's figure. The
Speaker 1: only thing that is likely to actually resonate with Trump
Speaker 1: is this idea of drinking. He doesn't like drinking. There
Speaker 1: have been alcoholics in his family, his own brother died
Speaker 1: from it. This has registered in some way that I'm
Speaker 1: sure Trump does not understand, other than drinking bad. Well,
Speaker 1: this is why you vet people. This is why, whether
Speaker 1: you are fitting out your sports department at a local
Speaker 1: television station or the entirety of your government as president
Speaker 1: of the United States, why you can't just pick people
Speaker 1: you see on TV and think they look good. You
Speaker 1: can't cast an administration, even if you are crazy would
Speaker 1: be dictator. You should ask other people first, because all
Speaker 1: you need is for the first two big picks in
Speaker 1: your draft to blow up in your face and suddenly
Speaker 1: you are a foot shorter and you're going ten miles
Speaker 1: an hour slower. And then after he eventually cuts bait
Speaker 1: with Hegseth, whenever what's next comes out comes out, then
Speaker 1: he's going to go through this with cash Patel. I'd
Speaker 1: say keep an eye on cash Patel, but that would
Speaker 1: be a cheap joke. And then you'll go through this
Speaker 1: with Musk, and if not with Musk, then with Vivek Ramaswami,
Speaker 1: because the Department of Government Efficiency is just another confidence
Speaker 1: trick designed to in some way privatize something or cut
Speaker 1: the taxes of well Elon Musk. And it turns out,
Speaker 1: as CNN reported yesterday, there are hours and hours of
Speaker 1: tape of Vivek Ramaswami trashing Elon Musk, his new co
Speaker 1: director at the Department of stealing money from the government.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Department of Government Efficiency. And he's saying, and
Speaker 1: let me see if I can read this quote from
Speaker 1: the CNN story, this is him on tape. I have
Speaker 1: no reason to think Elon won't jump like a circus
Speaker 1: monkey when Jijinping calls in the hour of need, endless interviews, comments,
Speaker 1: podcast appearances, apparently stopping passers by on the street to
Speaker 1: tell them this that he's in bed Musk. That is
Speaker 1: with China, calling Musk a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: And this again, this is not stuff that his mother
Speaker 1: wrote about Vivek Ramaswami in twenty eighteen. This is from
Speaker 1: last year. This is the problem with confidence tricksters. They
Speaker 1: lie so much, they have forgotten half their lives, and
Speaker 1: they don't know going into a room whether they hate
Speaker 1: all those people in there or love them. Back to
Speaker 1: second Secretary of Defense if it's not heg Seth, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've been able to pick this
Speaker 1: up from my comment so far, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be heg Seth. The Trumper has put out a story
Speaker 1: yesterday that the second choice is Ron DeSantis. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I believe this. I suppose the DeSantis willingness to
Speaker 1: go back and endorse Trump might have registered and pushed
Speaker 1: its way through Trump's only satisfaction in life, which is
Speaker 1: to torture people one way or the other. But I
Speaker 1: still think they might as well have said, oh no,
Speaker 1: the new Secretary of Defense is going to be Nicki Haley.
Speaker 1: They've made up. The other big name was Jonie Ernst.
Speaker 1: You remember her. She is the governor of Iowa who
Speaker 1: has run on campaigns and more campaigns and more campaigns
Speaker 1: after that, all of them with the same theme, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go kill a pig right now. I wish
Speaker 1: I were making that up. I wish that was a
Speaker 1: euphemism for something. I wish that was like saying keep
Speaker 1: an eye on cash Pattel. She just made another reference
Speaker 1: to killing pigs. But and this is where all of
Speaker 1: this kind of oh, popcorn time. Let's watch Trump burn
Speaker 1: down his own house while he's still in it. It's
Speaker 1: a one nothing lead right now for the good guys.
Speaker 1: This could make it to nothing. There's one practical thing
Speaker 1: that could make it far more than two nothing. It
Speaker 1: could make it one hundred to nothing, CNN reported. And
Speaker 1: I don't know that anybody picked this up that the
Speaker 1: other vetted name as an alternate for when hegseeth finally disappears,
Speaker 1: like the cheshire cat, where all that will be left
Speaker 1: of him before he vanishes is his slicked down hair.
Speaker 1: The other guy that they vetted to be Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense is Congressman first term Congressman Slea Hunt from Texas
Speaker 1: and the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. And
Speaker 1: so what if he picks another Republican congressman for his cabinet.
Speaker 1: The Republican threshold right now in the House, their lead
Speaker 1: in the House, their margin in the House is two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen Republicans to two hundred and fifteen Democrats.
Speaker 1: So take one away and it's a one vote margin,
Speaker 1: which is a no vote margin. Nothing. Nothing could be
Speaker 1: more pleasing than the idea of Mike Johnson, Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House, unable to get anything done because one of
Speaker 1: the remaining Republicans is out drunk or has been appointed
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense. We want hunt, we want hunt, we
Speaker 1: want hunt, we want hunt, we want just now, I
Speaker 1: said about a quote. If I can read this, this
Speaker 1: is not a figure of speech. I am suffering from
Speaker 1: a Chalasian or Khalasian, depending on your pronunciation, an eye
Speaker 1: infection in which one of my eyes is pretty much
Speaker 1: closed and the other one's not too happy with me either.
Speaker 1: It could be a double Kalaysian. So I'm doing my
Speaker 1: best here, but I can't really see. So I've had
Speaker 1: to add lib and thus this thing has had a
Speaker 1: certain ragged quality that I would rather it did not.
Speaker 1: I'm doing my best here, but I am playing hurt
Speaker 1: and I'm supposed to not be doing this. Please do
Speaker 1: not tell doctor Renee Richards. Now I will mention something
Speaker 1: else I told you so remember Sunday night when the
Speaker 1: story broke but Joe Biden was pardoning his son, and
Speaker 1: everybody went, oh, no, it'll give Trump an excuse to
Speaker 1: do this, And I said, I love this. Do more
Speaker 1: ten million pardons by the Biden administration before the Democracy
Speaker 1: going out of business sale ends on January twentieth. I
Speaker 1: want Biden signing pardons as Trump goes to the podium
Speaker 1: seventy two hours after I suggested this, politico, and I
Speaker 1: am going to try to read this. Biden White House
Speaker 1: is discussing preemptive pardons for those in Trump's crosshairs. Well
Speaker 1: good White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary
Speaker 1: step of handing out blanket pardons to those who've committed
Speaker 1: no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling
Speaker 1: Trump's criticisms. Once again, stop stop thinking that Trump needs
Speaker 1: fuel for his criticisms. Trump is conducting a conversation in
Speaker 1: his head and has been since sometime in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: He's holding a conversation at all times. The person he
Speaker 1: is speaking to is his best friend, his twin, his
Speaker 1: invisible twin, Ronald Trump, who's even angrier than Donald is
Speaker 1: that's all this is about. He doesn't need fuel. He
Speaker 1: has Ronald fueling Trump's criticisms. Trump without criticisms stops breathing.
Speaker 1: Back to what Politico wrote, Let's see I was here,
Speaker 1: both because it could suggest impropriety and because those offered
Speaker 1: preemptive pardons may reject them. Pro tip, don't reject them.
Speaker 1: Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress's
Speaker 1: January sixth committee as Senator elect Adam Schiff and former
Speaker 1: GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said
Speaker 1: Cheney should go to jail, along with the rest of
Speaker 1: the Unselect Committee. Also mentioned by Biden's aids for a
Speaker 1: pardoner is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Allergy and Infections and Infectious Diseases. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I can't really read. Can I again? Why are we
Speaker 1: stopping here? I see a list there of let's see Fauci,
Speaker 1: Cheney shift. That's three people. We're about ten million, nine
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety nine thousand short. I know it's hyperbole
Speaker 1: to have a one eight hundred hotline hundred pardon me, Joe,
Speaker 1: but why not? Trump is already mocking the concept of
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice. We're not talking ineptitude like Garland.
Speaker 1: This is corruption. This is persecution. This is star Chambers.
Speaker 1: This is making up laws to prosecute people who are innocent.
Speaker 1: And the bitterness and the anger and the inability to
Speaker 1: take the win is limitless in Donald Trump. And if
Speaker 1: it ever stopped or in some way ebbed, Ronald Trump
Speaker 1: would be there to make sure he got angry again.
Speaker 1: I mean, honest to God, the White House should spend
Speaker 1: the rest of the Biden term offering pardons to every
Speaker 1: family member of everybody associated with anybody who might get
Speaker 1: a pardon, every administration staffer, every media member, everybody's ever
Speaker 1: worked for Amtrak. Be a stack of blank pardons sent
Speaker 1: to MSNBC and crew and every left wing organization. But
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be reasonable, no more than five thousand
Speaker 1: of them per outfit. I'll take one. I will take
Speaker 1: a pardon. I don't know that I have ever broken
Speaker 1: a law, not knowingly. I'll take it. Whatever preemptive partner. Sure,
Speaker 1: these people are going to pervert the justice system. They
Speaker 1: are going to do it. They are nuts, they are fascists,
Speaker 1: and all the comparisons to Hitler are obviously hyperbolic in
Speaker 1: some way, because only Hitler was Hitler and only the
Speaker 1: Holocaust was the Holocaust. But every time I've referred to
Speaker 1: Trump as Hitler, it's about the stuff that preceded that.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie Judgment at Nuremberg? Trying
Speaker 1: not to turn this into the Burt Lancaster Show, but
Speaker 1: Bert Lancaster in that movie plays an eminent German jurist,
Speaker 1: a combination of several real life figures, who has tried
Speaker 1: for war crimes along with other Nazi jurists, and as
Speaker 1: they make excuses, he breaks down and goes through, case
Speaker 1: by case almost how they perverted the law to turn
Speaker 1: it into a weapon for Hitler. That's what we're going
Speaker 1: to face. That's what's going to happen when they go
Speaker 1: looking through your social media feed, when they run out
Speaker 1: of other people to prosecute. That's what we're facing. And
Speaker 1: you think somehow, Gavin Newsom and other Democrats and the
Speaker 1: New York Times editorial board and other handwringers, you think
Speaker 1: that this makes the Democrats look bad, makes Biden look bad.
Speaker 1: On January twentieth, at noon, Trump is going to light
Speaker 1: the w White House on fire and figuratively the nation
Speaker 1: on fire, and what Biden is doing by pardoning his
Speaker 1: son and discussing these preemptive pardons for others is pulling
Speaker 1: people out of the fire, people who don't deserve to
Speaker 1: die in a fire started by Donald Trump. Consequences to this,
Speaker 1: some people are going to judge it harshly f them.
Speaker 1: The issue here is getting as many people out alive
Speaker 1: as we can alive to fight back and destroy Trump
Speaker 1: and trump Ism and create a world in which, at
Speaker 1: some point in the near future it will be illegal
Speaker 1: to say the name Trump out loud in America. They
Speaker 1: want to put cash Patel in charge of the FBI.
Speaker 1: Do you think he is going to be there because
Speaker 1: they've suddenly embraced DEI. He is there because they no
Speaker 1: longer care whether the FBI director even tries to act
Speaker 1: like actual law enforcement. They care only that he acts
Speaker 1: like an enforce er. One last thing, and I'm pushing
Speaker 1: my luck here, but I will now confess I am
Speaker 1: surprised that the world did not come to an end
Speaker 1: and the planet did not burn to a cinder on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: because apparently that's when this happened. Chris Solissa did some
Speaker 1: sort of podcast where his guest was Chuck Todd. First
Speaker 1: of all, I'm shocked because I always assumed they were
Speaker 1: the same person, the same stupid blame everybody but themselves person.
Speaker 2: I follow the Hunter Biden trial very closely. I read
Speaker 2: every transcript, all the testimony, because that's what you can.
Speaker 2: All that was made public, and there is you want
Speaker 2: to you want to read, you want to you want
Speaker 2: to get angry, just as a as as somebody in
Speaker 2: just all these mixed emotions. You read the Halle Biden
Speaker 2: transcript and that's both widow yes and and essentially he
Speaker 2: turned her into a crack addict. And this was all
Speaker 2: happening in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and Joe and Joe
Speaker 2: Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided
Speaker 2: to run for president.
Speaker 1: YEP.
Speaker 2: I just so when you talk about the word selfish,
Speaker 2: I it's almost like the word doesn't I mean I.
Speaker 2: Their decision to run for president put the entire Democratic
Speaker 2: Party and the United States of America in the position
Speaker 2: that is in now.
Speaker 1: Ah. Of course, that was terrible of Biden to run
Speaker 1: and defeat Trump and save democracy in twenty twenty What
Speaker 1: a horrible selfish person he is Chuck Todd and Crys.
Speaker 1: You know who's missing from that conversation. They could have
Speaker 1: used special guest Mark Halprin and maybe Nate Silver, but
Speaker 1: I think, I think right now what we need is
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd and Chris interviewing Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzynski.
Speaker 1: Also ahead in an unbelievably all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: I am going to reread to you a special comment
Speaker 1: that I did in two thousand and nine, which I
Speaker 1: have identified as the day, not the comment being the
Speaker 1: cause of this, but what it was about the day
Speaker 1: in which the idea of the president as the final
Speaker 1: guard rail protecting American society changed, was erased, was broken irretrievably.
Speaker 1: You may ask if I'm saying I can't actually see
Speaker 1: the papers in front of me, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: fudging it. I've probably got a couple of quotes wrong.
Speaker 1: How did I read this well? I actually recorded the
Speaker 1: next segment a couple of days ago before this chariso
Speaker 1: got in my eye. I can't stop calling it a
Speaker 1: cheriso to people. I have a chariso in my eye.
Speaker 1: Also one other commentary, which I will do live because
Speaker 1: I don't need to read anything about this. Have you
Speaker 1: heard about this idea from baseball the golden at bat,
Speaker 1: where a manager wants a game can summon anybody he
Speaker 1: wants to hit in a particular situation, presumably a potential
Speaker 1: game winning situation. And you might have the theory of
Speaker 1: a game in which show Heyotani bats for the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Dodgers, and then since he popped out or struck
Speaker 1: out and didn't get that run home, the manager Dave
Speaker 1: Roberts says, Okay, I'm gonna have show Aotani bat next.
Speaker 1: In other words, destroying the essence of baseball. It's been
Speaker 1: proposed by somebody in baseball who happens to be the
Speaker 1: commissioner of baseball and who went to college with me.
Speaker 1: If you think baseball is dying, this will remove any
Speaker 1: doubt that you have that baseball is dying. And if
Speaker 1: you think that it's dying slowly, the good news will
Speaker 1: be this will speed it up. All that is ahead.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is a Playing Herd edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: I have been ruminating of late as to the start date.
Speaker 1: How did we get here? I think we may know
Speaker 1: when did we start going here? That's a little tougher,
Speaker 1: I guess realistically, it's whatever day the primordial human crawled
Speaker 1: out of the primordial sludge in which our ancestors lived.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean Trump's family getting to America. But
Speaker 1: if you want a date at which all of this
Speaker 1: was elevated to the presidential level, where the last guardrail,
Speaker 1: which really is what the president of the United States
Speaker 1: is supposed to be and has become in the entire world,
Speaker 1: the last guardrail, when that turned into no more guard rails.
Speaker 1: I think I have figured out that date or roughly
Speaker 1: that year, and I don't want anybody to mistake this
Speaker 1: as I read this piece again that I am blaming
Speaker 1: Barack Obama for Donald Trump, but there is a main line,
Speaker 1: straight line connection between two things something Obama did not
Speaker 1: do and everything that Trump has done since I gave
Speaker 1: a special comment, and most of them I have forgotten
Speaker 1: and have seen again or read again with some surprise
Speaker 1: and not inconsiderable pride, if you will forgive me that.
Speaker 1: But this one I've always remembered because of the reaction
Speaker 1: to it. The date it was given was January nineteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and I can remember it a
Speaker 1: cold night in Washington, the night before the inauguration of
Speaker 1: the first non white guy president of the United States,
Speaker 1: and the euphoria that had come through most of the country,
Speaker 1: including those people who had voted for John McCain, who said, well,
Speaker 1: at least we have done this. Seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: the country seemed to be at least accepting this idea
Speaker 1: that this was something good, whether or not they liked
Speaker 1: the man at all. And so the night before, having
Speaker 1: unintentionally but nonetheless having supported Obama in his nomination bit
Speaker 1: against Hillary Clinton, I decided to be the one who
Speaker 1: relieved themselves in the soup I believe would be the
Speaker 1: youthstic explanation for this. I did a commentary the night
Speaker 1: before Obama was inaugurated, and the next day people were
Speaker 1: yelling at me during the coverage of the inauguration, complaining
Speaker 1: that I had not given the man a chance. As
Speaker 1: it turned out, I was right. And not only was
Speaker 1: I right, I was prescient in ways that I did
Speaker 1: not understand. And as always when you are prescient, the
Speaker 1: one problem with prescience is you always get the timeframe wrong.
Speaker 1: I thought we had perhaps fifty years before what happened
Speaker 1: would happen. It turned out. Let's see January nineteenth, two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine to January twentieth, twenty sixteen seventeen. Rather
Speaker 1: we had eight years and one day. This is what
Speaker 1: I read with no edits on the night of January nineteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, which I will take as the
Speaker 1: start of how we got where we are right now,
Speaker 1: where the last guardrail turned out to be made out
Speaker 1: of paper mache. We have tortured people. You and I.
Speaker 1: This is the people's democracy. We are those people. These
Speaker 1: are our elected officials. That they did not come to
Speaker 1: us and ask us to act thusly in our names
Speaker 1: is unfortunate, indeed criminal, But it is also almost irrelevant.
Speaker 1: They work for us. They work for us, and they
Speaker 1: tortured people, And so we have tortured people. You and
Speaker 1: I know we have tortured colleague shak Mohammad. We not
Speaker 1: only know about it, we have now heard it boasted
Speaker 1: about by one of the men who, as of tomorrow
Speaker 1: will no longer work for us, George Walker Bush quote.
Speaker 1: The techniques were necessary and are necessary to be used
Speaker 1: on a rare occasion to get information necessary to protect
Speaker 1: the American people. Mister Bush said to Fox News on
Speaker 1: January eleventh. One such person, who gave us information was
Speaker 1: colleague Shak Mohammad. I'm in the Oval office. I'm told
Speaker 1: that we have captured colleague Shake Mohammad and the professionals
Speaker 1: believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So
Speaker 1: I asked what tools are available for us to find
Speaker 1: information from him. They give me a list of tools,
Speaker 1: and I said, are these tools deemed to be legal?
Speaker 1: We got legal opinions before the decision was made. I
Speaker 1: think when people study the history of this particular episode,
Speaker 1: they will find out we gained good information from colleague
Speaker 1: Shack Muhammad in order to protect our country. We believe
Speaker 1: that the information we gained helped saved lives on American
Speaker 1: soil unquote. Never Mind mister Bush's delusions here. Never Mind
Speaker 1: all primary sources who witnessed the interrogation of colleague Shake
Speaker 1: Mohammad said they got nothing from him until they started
Speaker 1: buddying up to him. Never Mind that mister Bush's supporter's
Speaker 1: favorite torture construction, the mythical ticking time bomb scenario, not
Speaker 1: only did not transpire here, but mister Bush has not
Speaker 1: even had the imagination to pretend it did, just in
Speaker 1: order to slightly cover his moral tracks. The key is
Speaker 1: that this statement, if it had been under oath, would
Speaker 1: have been a confession to a war crime. Mister Bush
Speaker 1: is proactive. I asked what tools are available. Mister Bush
Speaker 1: is aware of the legal haze in which he steps,
Speaker 1: and I said, are these tools deemed to be legal?
Speaker 1: Mister Bush realizes the tools he has chosen have been used.
Speaker 1: We gained good information from colleague Shaik Muhammad. Since we
Speaker 1: know from previous admissions at the Pentagon that colleage Shik
Speaker 1: Muhammad was waterboarded, we can infer that mister Bush knew
Speaker 1: he would be waterboarded and knew afterwards that he had
Speaker 1: been waterboarded. Mister Bush is guilty. He is guilty as sin.
Speaker 1: Mister President Elect, you were first asked about all this
Speaker 1: on the eighteenth of April last I am proud to
Speaker 1: say you were asked about it by a fellow who
Speaker 1: got onto his high school newspaper while I was the
Speaker 1: editor Will Bunch the Philadelphia Daily News. I think you
Speaker 1: are right you President elect Obama told him if crimes
Speaker 1: have been committed, they should be investigated. You are also
Speaker 1: right that I would not want my first term consumed
Speaker 1: by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as
Speaker 1: a partisan witch hunt because I think we have too
Speaker 1: many problems we have to solve. So this is an
Speaker 1: area where I would want to exercise judgment unquote. Good amen,
Speaker 1: But in that brief interview was born, or at least elucidated,
Speaker 1: a loophole genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies.
Speaker 1: Vice President elect Biden echoed this on December twenty first,
Speaker 1: in a statement to which your transition team has directed
Speaker 1: all those to whom this is a paramount issue. He said,
Speaker 1: the questions of whether or not a criminal act has
Speaker 1: been committed or a very very bad judgment has been
Speaker 1: engaged in is something the Just Department decides. After his
Speaker 1: comment last week with straightforwardness that was like water to
Speaker 1: a lost soul in the Sahara that waterboarding is torture,
Speaker 1: your nominee at Justice, mister Eric Holder, echoed all this.
Speaker 1: We don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist
Speaker 1: between the outgoing administration and the administration that is about
Speaker 1: to take over. But mister President elect, you have a
Speaker 1: confession since this statement of a structure of policy prefacing
Speaker 1: policy itself for mister Biden, you have had mister Bush's confession. Moreover,
Speaker 1: since mister Biden's statement, you have a legal assessment from
Speaker 1: within the bowels of the Bush administration itself. Quote, we
Speaker 1: tortured Mohammad al Katani, Judge Susan Crawford told The Washington
Speaker 1: Post a week ago. His treatment met the legal definition
Speaker 1: of torture. That was why. Judge Crawford added that as
Speaker 1: the Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether or
Speaker 1: not to bring detainees at Guantanamo Bay in trial, she
Speaker 1: decided in Katani's case not too This, mister President elect,
Speaker 1: was not the obvious waterboarding of colleague Sheik Muhammad. This
Speaker 1: was a more insidious combination of legally approved procedures that
Speaker 1: still nearly killed this man Katani. The techniques were all authorized,
Speaker 1: Judge Crawford continued, but the manner in which they applied
Speaker 1: them was overly aggressive and too persistent. This was not
Speaker 1: any one particular act. It was just a combination of
Speaker 1: things that had a medical impact on him that hurt
Speaker 1: his health. In fact, mister President Elect, the records at
Speaker 1: GITMO showed that Katani's heart beat eventually slowed to thirty
Speaker 1: five beats per minute. Quote. It was abusive and uncalled
Speaker 1: for and coercive, clearly coercive. I sympathized with the intelligence
Speaker 1: gatherers in those days after nine to eleven, not knowing
Speaker 1: what was coming next, and trying to gain information to
Speaker 1: keep us safe. But there still has to be a
Speaker 1: love that we should not cross. Unfortunately, what this has done,
Speaker 1: I think has tainted everything going forward. Sadly, as commendable
Speaker 1: as the intention here might seem, this country has never
Speaker 1: moved forward without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.
Speaker 1: In point of fact, every effort to merely draw a
Speaker 1: line in the sand and declare the past dead has
Speaker 1: served only to keep the past alive, and often to
Speaker 1: strengthen the past. We compromised with slavery in the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence and in the Constitution, and four score and
Speaker 1: nine years later we had buried six hundred thousand of
Speaker 1: our sons and brothers in a civil war. After that
Speaker 1: war's ending, we compromised with the social restructuring and protection
Speaker 1: of the rights of the minorities in the South, and
Speaker 1: a century later we had not only not resolved anything,
Speaker 1: but black leaders were still being as assassinated in the
Speaker 1: cities of the South. We compromised with Germany in the
Speaker 1: reconstruction of Europe after the First World War. Nobody even
Speaker 1: arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials
Speaker 1: then and nineteen years later there was an indescribably more
Speaker 1: evil Germany and a more heartrending Second World War. We
Speaker 1: compromised with the trusts of the early nineteen hundreds. Today
Speaker 1: we have corporations too big to fail. We compromised with
Speaker 1: the Palmer raids and got McCarthyism, and we compromised with
Speaker 1: McCarthyism and got Watergate. We compromised with Watergate, and junior
Speaker 1: members of the Ford administration realized how little was ultimately
Speaker 1: at risk, and they grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz
Speaker 1: and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. But mister President elect,
Speaker 1: you are entirely correct as you say what we have
Speaker 1: to focus on is getting things right in the future,
Speaker 1: as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in
Speaker 1: the past. That means prosecuting all those involved in the
Speaker 1: Bush administration's torture of prisoners and starting at the top.
Speaker 1: You are also right that you should not want your
Speaker 1: first term consumed by what was perceived on the part
Speaker 1: of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt. But your only
Speaker 1: other option might be to let this set and fester indefinitely, because,
Speaker 1: mister President elect, someday there will be another Republican president,
Speaker 1: or even a Democrat, just as blind as mister Bush
Speaker 1: to ethics and to this country's moral force. He will
Speaker 1: look back to what you did about mister Bush, or
Speaker 1: what you did not do, and he will see precedent,
Speaker 1: or as Cheney saw, he will see how not to
Speaker 1: get caught next time. Prosecute, mister President elect. Even if
Speaker 1: you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished
Speaker 1: good for generations unborn. Merely by acting. You will deny
Speaker 1: mister Bush what he most wants right now, without prosecutions,
Speaker 1: without this nation standing up and saying this was wrong,
Speaker 1: we will atone. Mister Bush's version of what happened goes intoe.
Speaker 1: The historical record of this nation. Torture was legal, It worked,
Speaker 1: It saved the country. The end, we have tortured people,
Speaker 1: You and I, mister President elect. This is the people's democracy.
Speaker 1: We are the people. These were our elected officials. That
Speaker 1: they did not come to us and act thusly in
Speaker 1: our names is unfortunate and indeed criminal, but it is
Speaker 1: almost irrelevant. They worked for us, they tortured people, and
Speaker 1: so we have tortured people. Thus, beginning tomorrow, it is
Speaker 1: up to you not just to discontinue this, but to
Speaker 1: prevent it. At the end of his first year in office,
Speaker 1: mister Lincoln tried to contain, extualize the Civil War for
Speaker 1: those who still wanted to compromise with evils of secession
Speaker 1: and slavery. The struggle of today, Lincoln wrote, is not
Speaker 1: altogether for today, It is for a vast future. Also,
Speaker 1: mister President elect, you have been handed the beginning of
Speaker 1: that future. Use it to protect our children and our
Speaker 1: distant descendants from anything like this ever happening again. If
Speaker 1: you are worried about the Republicans viewing any torture prosecution
Speaker 1: in the way you postulated to Will Bunch a partisan
Speaker 1: witch hunt, you can remind them that the woman who
Speaker 1: said all that, Susan Crawford, is a lifelong Republican. So,
Speaker 1: mister President Elect, beyond whatever else will come out as
Speaker 1: the whistleblowers began to say what they're going to say
Speaker 1: just after noon tomorrow, you have your predecessor's unofficial confession,
Speaker 1: and you have this singular evaluation by a principle in
Speaker 1: your assessor's administration, this kind of line level confession. They
Speaker 1: are guilty of this, Mister President elect. They are guilty
Speaker 1: as sin. Since he talked to my friend Bunch in April,
Speaker 1: mister Obama's only lengthy comments about this were made to
Speaker 1: George Stephanopolis on January eleventh of this year. See if
Speaker 1: a disturbing theme becomes evident, Obviously we are going to
Speaker 1: look at past practices. I don't believe that anybody is
Speaker 1: above the law. On the other hand, I also have
Speaker 1: a belief that we need to look forward as opposed
Speaker 1: to looking backwards. Later, my instinct is to focus on
Speaker 1: how do we make sure that moving forward we are
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. Later, still, my orientation is going
Speaker 1: to be to move forward. Finally, what we have to
Speaker 1: focus on is getting things right in the future, as
Speaker 1: opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past,
Speaker 1: asked January nineteenth, two thousand and nine, on MSNBC, the
Speaker 1: night before Obama took office, imploring him to not let
Speaker 1: the legal violations of the torture statutes by the Bush
Speaker 1: administration go unpunished, in large part because it would warn
Speaker 1: all those to come that all they had to do
Speaker 1: was to act in some fashion that would cloak their
Speaker 1: sins as president or around the presidency, and they would
Speaker 1: not be prosecuted and could not be prosecuted. Before there
Speaker 1: was Supreme Court presidential immunity, there was de facto presidential immunity.
Speaker 1: And are we paying the price for it now? Because
Speaker 1: mister Obama was right. What we have to focus on
Speaker 1: is getting things right in the future, as opposed to
Speaker 1: looking at what we got wrong in the past and
Speaker 1: doing that we got things wrong in the future. I'm
Speaker 1: not right, George Crowing A pleasure to have you here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. This is the best news show ever. I
Speaker 1: toil that to one of your producers, and I want
Speaker 1: you to know that I've seen them all and it's
Speaker 1: just for especially the first thirty five minutes. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's just just unparalleled. I got bad news between you
Speaker 1: and I. We got six minutes to completely still that
Speaker 1: in here. That's good.
Speaker 3: This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
Speaker 3: is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: And, as promised in an almost completely ad libbed edition
Speaker 1: of The Big Show, a final comment about sports. You
Speaker 1: may or may not have heard about this. It is
Speaker 1: simply the most ridiculous idea I have heard proposed by
Speaker 1: anybody in any position of authority in any sport in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. And if I make it to the end
Speaker 1: of next month, I'll be sixty six years old. I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of crap, and this is the worst.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly enough, it comes from a guy I went to
Speaker 1: college with, Robert Manfred, Commissioner of Baseball, the man they
Speaker 1: chose in order to make Bud Selig look like a
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. Commissioner Rob Manfred has floated an idea
Speaker 1: of allowing once a game per team, in every baseball game,
Speaker 1: presumably during the regular season and in the postseason and
Speaker 1: in the World Series, to defy the primary cardinal rule
Speaker 1: of the game, thou shalt bat, in order he wants
Speaker 1: to have teams have a choice once again to have
Speaker 1: a golden at batch, a golden ball, a golden well,
Speaker 1: there's another word I'm thinking of now, but I'll leave
Speaker 1: it alone, But it would shower you with excitement. The
Speaker 1: golden ball would be an opportunity for a team to
Speaker 1: defy the batting order. If it says your worst hitter,
Speaker 1: the worst hitter of all time is up in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ninth inning, with the winning run at
Speaker 1: second base, you have to have him hit or pinch
Speaker 1: it for him and remove him from the game. Those
Speaker 1: are the rules. They have been the rules since the
Speaker 1: beginning of time. It's not like basketball, and this is
Speaker 1: always one of the great selling points of the game.
Speaker 1: This and the fact that there's no clock, which they
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned in the last couple of years since they
Speaker 1: installed a clock. But the primary idea was you could
Speaker 1: not have Lebron James take every one of your crucial shots.
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan could have the ball at any time. Tom
Speaker 1: Brady would throw the ball every time, nearly every time
Speaker 1: the New England Patriots or his other teams needed him two.
Speaker 1: In hockey, the shot could always be taken by your
Speaker 1: best shooter. But in baseball, there are nine batters and
Speaker 1: how they come up, how you order them is the
Speaker 1: fundamental strategy of a game of baseball and thus a
Speaker 1: season of baseball, and Rob Manfred wants to change that
Speaker 1: once again. You can take out your worst hitter and
Speaker 1: have anybody you want hit for him at that moment.
Speaker 1: If you have the worst hitter on the Los Angeles Dodgers,
Speaker 1: Chris Taylor who bat it. I don't know. I believe
Speaker 1: the number was in negatives last year. If he's due
Speaker 1: up in that game winning situation, you can take him
Speaker 1: out and have show Hey Otani bat or anybody else
Speaker 1: you want. It's a total joke. It is a total
Speaker 1: prostitution of the point of baseball. The point of baseball
Speaker 1: is that in that clutch situation, your hero can only
Speaker 1: be the hero if it's his turn. The reason baseball
Speaker 1: has been part of America for two hundred years, almost
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty years professionally is that it is
Speaker 1: that balance between the individual star and the team unit.
Speaker 1: You don't have the choice of giving that at bat
Speaker 1: to the best player. You can't have the best pitcher
Speaker 1: throw that one pitch for a variety of reasons. But
Speaker 1: in the situation with a hitter who could conceivably come
Speaker 1: up every day every year, you can't just say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm putting Chris Taylor on the bench just for this
Speaker 1: crucial moment and bringing in Babe Ruth. It can't do it,
Speaker 1: and he wants to do it now. There has been
Speaker 1: some version of this in which it would only be
Speaker 1: allowed in extra innings, which they've already destroyed by having
Speaker 1: a runner start each extra inning at second base with
Speaker 1: nobody out, because we want less baseball, not more. But
Speaker 1: this idea of having somebody be able to come in
Speaker 1: and hit in the clutch in that critical situation sounds
Speaker 1: great the way a three point contest in the middle
Speaker 1: of a baseball game would sound new and exciting and invigorating.
Speaker 1: Because we're losing the young people, we're not growing the game.
Speaker 1: There is an argument ongoing in New York between two
Speaker 1: of the primary announcers for the two teams, Michael Kay
Speaker 1: of the Yankees, who's been a friend of mine for
Speaker 1: about twenty five years, and Howie Rose of the Mets,
Speaker 1: who's been a friend of mine for about forty five years.
Speaker 1: And they have been going back and forth kind of inadvertently,
Speaker 1: because Michael thinks this is a way to grow the
Speaker 1: game and get youngsters interested in it, and how He,
Speaker 1: of course thinks it's completely crazy, and how he is
Speaker 1: right because among other things, and I haven't seen this emphasized,
Speaker 1: if they actually did this in one regular season game,
Speaker 1: where you could come in and have this guy bat
Speaker 1: during all games, not just extra inning games, and extra
Speaker 1: inning games average nine or ten percent a year. So
Speaker 1: there's every team plays about sixteen seventeen somewhere in there
Speaker 1: extra inning games a year. But if you could conceivably,
Speaker 1: in that clutch moment, have show Heyotani come in one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty two extra times. And mind you, this
Speaker 1: is in addition to his other at bats. He could
Speaker 1: have just popped out to second base and then you
Speaker 1: give him another chance to give the get the winning
Speaker 1: run home from second. The same man could bat twice
Speaker 1: in a row, or you could bat him ahead of himself.
Speaker 1: Show Aotani is on deck, you could pinch it, show
Speaker 1: he Otani for the guy hitting ahead of shoe Heotani.
Speaker 1: It's literally a home run contest in the middle of
Speaker 1: a game that counts. It further dilutes the concept of baseball.
Speaker 1: But to the point I was just making one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty two, theoretically extra at bats would be given
Speaker 1: to show Heyo Tani. What would happen to all the records?
Speaker 1: How many home runs would Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron,
Speaker 1: or for God's sakes, even Arry Bonds have hits if
Speaker 1: they had an extra one hundred and sixty two at
Speaker 1: bats every year. The numbers are meaningless. Now the statistics,
Speaker 1: the entire history, the contact between baseball and its past,
Speaker 1: would be totally obliterated, and it would be reduced to,
Speaker 1: as I said, a home running contest. The reason Michael
Speaker 1: Kay and others have pointed out that this needs to
Speaker 1: be done is that baseball is not getting the younger audience,
Speaker 1: even though the younger audience has increased on TV and
Speaker 1: radio in any event for baseball over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. But the point is that it isn't growing
Speaker 1: the game, meaning that Michael and many other well intentioned
Speaker 1: baseball people have over the course of fifty years of
Speaker 1: the drip drip drip of this term, we're not growing
Speaker 1: the game. They've fallen victim to this nonsense. Growing the
Speaker 1: game is the owner's euphemism for we want more money.
Speaker 1: If you are a baseball fan, you should not and
Speaker 1: could not have any interest whatsoever in whether or not
Speaker 1: there are sixty and other people sitting in the ballpark
Speaker 1: with you or six. You should not care whether there
Speaker 1: are five million people watching baseball or fifty million baseball
Speaker 1: fans watching at the same time you are. There are
Speaker 1: certain important indicators as to the health of a game
Speaker 1: that those numbers reflect, but no teams are going out
Speaker 1: of business. The last baseball team that actually went bankrupt
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy. The Seattle Pilots went bankrupt, and
Speaker 1: the guy in Milwaukee who was thus able to obtain
Speaker 1: them and move them to Milwaukee, where they had become
Speaker 1: the Milwaukee Brewers by putting down something like ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of his own money, was a car salesman named
Speaker 1: Bud Selig, a commissioner of baseball who turned out to
Speaker 1: have a lot of millions of dollars because a team
Speaker 1: went bankrupt. No baseball teams are going bankrupt. The worst
Speaker 1: economic situations in Tampa in Oakland, these are still profit
Speaker 1: making operations, and any owner who's dissatisfied with how much
Speaker 1: money he makes can simply sell the team, probably ten
Speaker 1: to twenty times what he paid for it. Baseball teams
Speaker 1: are now worth a billion dollars each minimally, how much
Speaker 1: do you think the Boston Red Sox would get if
Speaker 1: you suddenly got tired of it? Because the game is
Speaker 1: not growing enough? And yes, maybe they'll come a day
Speaker 1: when franchises are worthless and owners make less, and so
Speaker 1: perhaps the teams will only be worth half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars in any event, This is not about improving the
Speaker 1: game or getting the youngsters, or having the Golden Ball,
Speaker 1: or seeing sho Heo Tani back five times a game
Speaker 1: rather than four and hit one hundred and thirty three
Speaker 1: home runs in a season and finish second in the
Speaker 1: National League with that number. That's not what this is about.
Speaker 1: This is about getting the owners more money. And it's moronic,
Speaker 1: and everybody buying into it doesn't even see that they're
Speaker 1: just serving rich people to help them get richer. It
Speaker 1: is part of a fundamental issue of what's wrong with
Speaker 1: this country. We began to fetishize not people having money.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with people having money. I encourage people
Speaker 1: to have money. I have money myself to have more money.
Speaker 1: I often take the opportunity to get more money. But
Speaker 1: when that becomes the only thing in life, as I've
Speaker 1: said many times in the nineteen seventies, business coverage investment,
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Markets and such business coverage on television
Speaker 1: in this country, other than in the event of economic
Speaker 1: crashes or depression or price controls. Like Richard Nixon put in,
Speaker 1: the economic coverage on television consisted of Walter Cronkite somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show, just before the second
Speaker 1: or third commercial on the CBS Evening News saying Wall
Speaker 1: Street closed, mostly higher today and relatively active trading. This
Speaker 1: was the CBS Evening News. That was it. There were
Speaker 1: no networks devoted to business coverage. There was no lionization
Speaker 1: of great investors or inventors. There was nobody interested in
Speaker 1: who the hell Warren Buffett was. And yes, these men
Speaker 1: were important behind the scenes, but then they'll die the
Speaker 1: day to day lives of ordinary Americans. They didn't amount
Speaker 1: to a rat's ass. Collectively, owners in baseball were known
Speaker 1: only when they screwed things up or move their teams
Speaker 1: to other cities. Walter O'Malley became famous for being hated.
Speaker 1: And now we are relatively ready to have the commissioner baseball,
Speaker 1: who by the way, went to the Industrial and Labor
Speaker 1: Relations College at Cornell where he studied how to screw
Speaker 1: labor rob Manfred wants to make them even more money
Speaker 1: because they're not making more money faster enough, instead of
Speaker 1: doing what previous owners and commissioners have done. When the
Speaker 1: profit margins were not one hundred and seventy eight percent
Speaker 1: every year. They've done sillier things in the past. They
Speaker 1: used to just simply add another team and charge some
Speaker 1: idiot two billion dollars for a team that didn't exist.
Speaker 1: The Tampa Bay Rays, the Arizona Diamondbacks exist because previous
Speaker 1: owners in the nineteen eighties tried to knock down the
Speaker 1: prices of salaries. This was the price that Baseball paid
Speaker 1: for the owner's collusion. Again, the owners screwing up, and
Speaker 1: now they want to complete destroy the uniqueness of the
Speaker 1: game another one of its ten or twelve unique elements
Speaker 1: that separates it from basketball, that separates it from hockey,
Speaker 1: that separates it from football, that separates it from soccer.
Speaker 1: They want to take away the point, the difficulty. They
Speaker 1: want to dumb it down. The Golden rule, the Golden
Speaker 1: at bat, the Golden I don't know, the Golden corral.
Speaker 1: Its nonsensical, stupid, destructive, and Baseball should fire its commissioner
Speaker 1: immediately for even giving voice to it. And your understanding
Speaker 1: of the crux of the problem in baseball is in
Speaker 1: this this commissioner. The previous commissioner was a baseball fan
Speaker 1: who used to go to baseball games and enjoy baseball,
Speaker 1: and he had many stupid, mistaken ideas, and he had
Speaker 1: a vanity the size of ten knees. But he liked baseball,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to see good baseball. I have no
Speaker 1: idea if Rob Manfred likes baseball or not, but I
Speaker 1: would like to see an adaptation of his rule. I'd
Speaker 1: like to have a golden Commissioner moment in which, in
Speaker 1: a matter of a clutch situation, once in every big decision,
Speaker 1: I could swap him out and put in the best
Speaker 1: commissioner I had, which in this case would be anybody
Speaker 1: but him. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this unusual edition of Countdown
Speaker 1: where I could barely see anything written in front of
Speaker 1: me other than some very large font notes. And again,
Speaker 1: how did you do the Obama special comment from two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine? I recorded that earlier. In any event,
Speaker 1: you know the credits. Brian Ray and John Phillip Scheneil
Speaker 1: do the music, and there's Nancy Faust with the special
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments. And the sports music is from ESPN
Speaker 1: two by Mitch Warren Davis, and some other music in
Speaker 1: there is from No Horns Allowed. In any event, I
Speaker 1: did write this number down in big letters on the
Speaker 1: door to the studio, five hundred and nine days until
Speaker 1: the scheduled end of the Lane Duck presidency of Lame
Speaker 1: Donald Duck. The next scheduled countdown is Sunday. We'll see
Speaker 1: or possibly maybe we won't see. Wish me luck. My
Speaker 1: vision is not in jeopardy. It's just that I can't
Speaker 1: really see and I'm supposed to not be doing this,
Speaker 1: So don't tell doctor Renee Richards. Thank you in the
Speaker 1: interim bulletins, as the news warrants, as long as I
Speaker 1: can find my own studio till the next time, whenever
Speaker 1: that is. I'm Keith Aulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
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