Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: don't know what good it does you exactly. While the
Speaker 1: rest of the media and some of the public freaks
Speaker 1: out over that nitwit with the same crazy stare, Cash
Speaker 1: Patel has Kristen Welker on NBC insisting to Trump that
Speaker 1: he's joking about stealing an unconstitutional and illegal third term,
Speaker 1: and the dictator replying, no, I'm not joking. I'm not joking.
Speaker 1: You already knew this because the first time I warned
Speaker 1: here that the fascists were looking to game the twenty
Speaker 1: second Amendment term limits was on Wednesday, November eighth, two
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty three. This has been the plan, like
Speaker 1: all the other plans, take something unconstitutional and illegal and
Speaker 1: do it anyway, and dare somebody to sue, and then
Speaker 1: get his concierge Supreme Court to invent a new law
Speaker 1: and a new country to let him do it anyway,
Speaker 1: and then insist that this is the law, and if
Speaker 1: you oppose him on this, you are breaking the law.
Speaker 1: That's the way they papered over Trump's violation of the
Speaker 1: Insurrection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. That's the way they
Speaker 1: are going to try to paper over Trump violating the
Speaker 1: twenty second Amendment term limits. The news in Welker's flatulent
Speaker 1: lap sitting phone interview of Trump yesterday is that the
Speaker 1: insane brain damage dictator gave away one of the ways
Speaker 1: the entire lunatic revolutionary authoritarian mob would scam the twenty
Speaker 1: second Amendment. Trump now seems to think they could do
Speaker 1: a Lurelean Wallace and run Vance as the presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: with Trump as the VP but really in power, or
Speaker 1: Trump not even on the ticket, and then the elected
Speaker 1: VP quits and Vance appoints Trump VP, and then Vance resigns,
Speaker 1: and then Trump is president again. It's still unconstitutional and
Speaker 1: illegal because under the twenty second Amendment, Trump cannot serve
Speaker 1: again after two full or virtually full terms. Oh the constitution,
Speaker 1: like that matters. That is also the problem with the
Speaker 1: first scam, in which someone somehow was to award Trump
Speaker 1: another term because he'd had to spend so much of
Speaker 1: his first term defending himself against his you know, crimes,
Speaker 1: or because he can get enough people to say he
Speaker 1: really did win in twenty twenty, so we owe him
Speaker 1: that one. In fact, that would be the way they'd
Speaker 1: go for a fourth term. The twenty second Amendment is
Speaker 1: explicit two terms or one full term and most of
Speaker 1: a second term, and you are ineligible to again serve
Speaker 1: as president. The question that remains there is whether you
Speaker 1: could even be elected vice president, because you, as vice
Speaker 1: president would be there to assume the presidency in the
Speaker 1: event of the death of the president in any event.
Speaker 1: This is also the problem with the second scam, which
Speaker 1: they have apparently abandoned now after running with for more
Speaker 1: than a year, that the twenty second Amendment limit of
Speaker 1: two terms means two consecutive terms. So Trump, as the
Speaker 1: first non consecutive electee since Grover Cleveland, could run again,
Speaker 1: but Obama couldn't, and Clinton still couldn't, and Bush still couldn't.
Speaker 1: Just Trump and Grover Cleveland. And there is of course
Speaker 1: reason to wonder which one of them is more mentally
Speaker 1: fit for the job, because while Grover Cleveland died in
Speaker 1: June of nineteen oh eight, Trump is completely insane. The
Speaker 1: vibe I got from this latest interview, apart from the
Speaker 1: fact fact that Trump told this moron Welker that knows
Speaker 1: she was wrong, he wasn't joking, and she never once
Speaker 1: came back with the Constitution limits a president to two terms.
Speaker 1: You know that, right, What makes you think you would
Speaker 1: get away with it? She never said anything like that,
Speaker 1: because she's an idiot. The vibe I got besides that
Speaker 1: is that they may not have enough bullshit even to
Speaker 1: get this legal leisure domain passed his own Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and they just cut to two versions of the same
Speaker 1: ending of American democracy. One is the simple elimination of
Speaker 1: elections or the declaration of an emergency of some sort,
Speaker 1: with the subsequent violence and suppression and arrest of political opposition,
Speaker 1: a preview of which we could be seeing now in
Speaker 1: the disappearing of those protesters and of course the gay
Speaker 1: barbers with tattoos. The other is a variation on that
Speaker 1: lureline Wallace ploy in which the twenty twenty eight fascist
Speaker 1: ticket is anybody and anybody else, and when it comes
Speaker 1: time for the inaugura address, President anybody says I am
Speaker 1: ceding all power to Donald Trump, and Trump doesn't even
Speaker 1: move out of the Oval office, let alone out of power.
Speaker 1: If that sounds at all familiar somebody who isn't president
Speaker 1: acting as president, they may have taken that out for
Speaker 1: a test run for the first few months of this presidency,
Speaker 1: though it seems to be receding somewhat. That was the
Speaker 1: period of the musk Co presidency. Could you get away
Speaker 1: with somebody actually running the government without being president? Could
Speaker 1: Trump's mental diseases be satisfied by being president in reality
Speaker 1: but not president in name only? Regardless? No, sorry, miss Welker,
Speaker 1: he's not joking. You're wrong. You should resign. I have
Speaker 1: mentioned this on and off for the last five hundred
Speaker 1: and nine days on this podcast. Trump not only as
Speaker 1: a pathological need to remain in power, he has no
Speaker 1: choice but to try to do so, no matter what
Speaker 1: laws he must subvert, nor who he must kill or
Speaker 1: have killed to remain in power. It is more than
Speaker 1: appropriate to yet again quote the Yale historian Tim Snyder,
Speaker 1: reminding us that Trump is in the classic dictatorial position.
Speaker 1: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power
Speaker 1: to stay out of prison. This means that he will
Speaker 1: do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power,
Speaker 1: will do all that he can do to never let
Speaker 1: it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies
Speaker 1: everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy. Tim Snyder's
Speaker 1: precise somber encapsulation of the reality of what we face
Speaker 1: and what people who are supposed to be a thousand
Speaker 1: times smarter than Kristen Welker still somehow think as a
Speaker 1: oak or is trolling of some kind. This has taken
Speaker 1: on added gravitas in the past week. Few things shock
Speaker 1: me anymore. This shocked me. The Yale Daily News reports
Speaker 1: that three of that university's top professors are leaving to
Speaker 1: go teach somewhere else starting with the fall term this year.
Speaker 1: Philosophy Professor Jason Stanley, history Professor Marcy Shore, and Marcy
Speaker 1: Shore's husband, history Professor Tim Snyder. All three are moving
Speaker 1: to the Monks School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
Speaker 1: at the University of Toronto. Tim Snyder is leaving the country.
Speaker 1: As I said, few things shock me anymore. But for
Speaker 1: an hour after I read the news of Tim Snyder
Speaker 1: bailing out, I was beginning to make preparations to see
Speaker 1: if Professor Snyder of the Monk Schools of Toronto needs
Speaker 1: a teaching assistant. I once was a teaching assistant. It
Speaker 1: was in Communication arts. It was in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: I was an undergraduate, and I have to say I
Speaker 1: was pretty good at it references available upon request. Happily
Speaker 1: at the moment, I actually think Trump should be less
Speaker 1: worried about getting a third term and more worried about
Speaker 1: finishing his second one. There are forces gathering against him,
Speaker 1: all of them on his side of the political spectrum,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that individually any of these forces
Speaker 1: could extract him from office. But if they coalesce, and
Speaker 1: if the Democrats win the midterms, a popular anti Trump
Speaker 1: front could literally drive him from office. The first force
Speaker 1: is the most blatant and least acknowledged sign of his insanity.
Speaker 1: These suicidal tariffs analysis from the Federal Reserve Banks of
Speaker 1: Atlanta and Richmond and Duke University have put out a
Speaker 1: new study. American companies that import heavily from Canada, China,
Speaker 1: Mexico and other victims of trumpanomics. The Lets Party like
Speaker 1: its eighteen ninety nine plan. They expect to raise prices
Speaker 1: this year by more than five percent. The ones who
Speaker 1: won't be strangled by tariffs still plan to raise prices
Speaker 1: this year by nearly three percent. Now, you can blind
Speaker 1: yourself trying to analyze this data, but the headline is
Speaker 1: Trump promised lower prices on day one, and here as
Speaker 1: April looms is now delivering inflation at least three percent more,
Speaker 1: may be well over that five percent more figure. He
Speaker 1: bluntly stated on camera that he wants foreign car prices
Speaker 1: to go up. Is this registering with his mesmerized base.
Speaker 1: You bet your ass. At election time, nearly half of
Speaker 1: all American voters believed they would be economically better off
Speaker 1: under Trump. That was November. That number has already fallen
Speaker 1: to twenty five percent. And it's not just consumers. The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal says Trump got on the phone with
Speaker 1: the CEOs of the top auto companies in this country
Speaker 1: and warned them against raising prices after tariff flation hits,
Speaker 1: that he will recriminate against them if he does so.
Speaker 1: He has already repaid the media companies that prostituted themselves
Speaker 1: to him by killing tourism to this country, so that
Speaker 1: the Universal theme parks co owned with NBC and the
Speaker 1: Disney theme parks co owned with ABC are going to
Speaker 1: hit crises. His psycho in charge of health is threatening
Speaker 1: to ban prescription drug advertising on television. And if you
Speaker 1: haven't watched linear television lately, that's all the advertising there
Speaker 1: is on linear television anymore. And Friday, his nut job
Speaker 1: at the FCC repaid Bob Eiger cow twing to him
Speaker 1: by opening an investigation of Disney Quote. In particular, I
Speaker 1: want to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been
Speaker 1: violating FCC Equal Employment Opportunity regulations by promotioning invidious forms
Speaker 1: of DEI discrimination. He attached an article by a right
Speaker 1: wing conspiracy theorist which called Disney quote the wokest place
Speaker 1: on Earth. Gee, Bob, It's almost as if trying to
Speaker 1: appease lunatics who threaten you with multimillion dollar bribes just
Speaker 1: makes them conclude you will keep giving them more multimillion
Speaker 1: dollar bribes if they keep threatening you. Not great, Bob.
Speaker 1: The point is the CEOs and the stock market is
Speaker 1: coming to understand that when they thought Trump would cook
Speaker 1: the economy to give a select group of people all
Speaker 1: this nation's wealth, he didn't mean them. He meant him.
Speaker 1: He meant him, and maybe Musk and maybe Bezos. But
Speaker 1: I bet you any amount of money Trump plans to
Speaker 1: cut Bezos's legs out from under him sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: In any event, every time they turn around, He's cut
Speaker 1: another bunch of them out of the money Club. He's
Speaker 1: tanked the stock market, He's killed overseas markets for American companies.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to buy anything here right now. We don't
Speaker 1: need a consumer strike. The consumers aren't buying crap. We're
Speaker 1: headed for a depression, a Donald Trump depression, and bluntly,
Speaker 1: copations are designed. They exist to eliminate the human equation
Speaker 1: from business decisions. They eliminate any sense of feeling. They eliminate,
Speaker 1: you know, whether or not people should live or die.
Speaker 1: They are there to make money, guilt free, nothing else,
Speaker 1: and anything in their way will eventually be removed. If
Speaker 1: anybody extracts Trump from office, it will be from the
Speaker 1: far right via a consortium of corporations, unless it's his
Speaker 1: own intelligence community. The Trump Cabinet civil war enters its
Speaker 1: second week, and all evidence leads to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: the National Security Advisor is doing his damndest to get
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense fired and hopes that it'll keep
Speaker 1: him from getting fired. And the likeliest outcome is that
Speaker 1: Trump refuses to fire either of them. And the heg
Speaker 1: Seth Security Disaster and the second heg Seth Security disaster,
Speaker 1: and now the third heg Seth Security Disaster and the
Speaker 1: fourth heg Seth security disaster. They continue to sit atop
Speaker 1: Trump's face like the prop monsters from the Aliens movies.
Speaker 1: Somebody is leaking everything they have on Pete Hegseth to
Speaker 1: the media. Oh no, how will we ever figure out
Speaker 1: who's doing this? Who could it be? How could this
Speaker 1: mystery ever be solved? Unless it could possibly be the
Speaker 1: National Security Advisor, the guy who had the number for
Speaker 1: the editor of The Atlantic in his phone and put
Speaker 1: him on the secret chat about exactly when to attack
Speaker 1: the houties and did everything but set an alarm in
Speaker 1: the editor's phone to go off when the bombs went off.
Speaker 1: That all started a week ago today, and it will
Speaker 1: continue to strang the Trump administration if the Democrats just
Speaker 1: lift a finger to poke at the scandal every day.
Speaker 1: You remember the Democrats that used to be the other party,
Speaker 1: led by Chuck Schumer, that apparently decided once another guy
Speaker 1: was elected with a minority of the vote, all the
Speaker 1: Democrats should go on sabbatical or something, or just start
Speaker 1: mailing in their opposition and talking about the price of
Speaker 1: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or something. Christ back to
Speaker 1: the Hegseth scandal, scandals already in progress. Because it turns
Speaker 1: out for Pete it's always happy hours somewhere Hegseth, it's
Speaker 1: also always bring your wife to work day and bring
Speaker 1: your brother to workday somewhere. And those stories leaked out
Speaker 1: in the last week. And again, who in this equation
Speaker 1: has high level Washington media contacts and would be leaking?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean besides the National Security Advisor who
Speaker 1: apparently and put his finger about six inches above the
Speaker 1: jay on his phone and boom. Jeffrey Goldberg of The
Speaker 1: Atlantic has suddenly added to the Boa Boma real good
Speaker 1: group chat. First, somebody tipped off the Associated Press that
Speaker 1: one of heg Seth's most promising young staffers at the
Speaker 1: Pentagon is a podcaster named Phil heg Seth. Why that's
Speaker 1: a coincidence. He's Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior advisor,
Speaker 1: which is impressive since he has no qualifications except he
Speaker 1: came out of the same womb as the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 1: He worked for somebody else's podcast company, and then he
Speaker 1: had his own podcast company. Why that's the entire spectrum
Speaker 1: of experience, isn't it? References available on request the end?
Speaker 1: We don't know what this seeming textbook example of nepotism
Speaker 1: is getting paid by us. But the AP also found
Speaker 1: out that little Phil was previously hired by Pete at
Speaker 1: Concerned Veterans for America for one hundred and eight thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to do media relations. And we know what Concerned
Speaker 1: Veterans for America is concerned with. It's concerned with paying.
Speaker 1: Hegseth brothers then came a leak to the Associated Press
Speaker 1: that heg Seth and the Wall Street Journal that Hegseth
Speaker 1: had brought his wife, the new one, the one he
Speaker 1: cheated on with the previous wife, the ex Vice President
Speaker 1: Fox Nation, the new wife. He has brought her to
Speaker 1: a series of sensitive international meetings. There was one on
Speaker 1: March sixth with the UK's Secretary of Defense, even though
Speaker 1: she probably has weaker security clearances than his little brother does.
Speaker 1: Brought the misses in to meet the secretary from the UK.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon even issued official photographs of a meeting with
Speaker 1: Hegseth and foreign leaders and missus Hegseth, who doesn't have
Speaker 1: any clearance? Now, why wasn't she on the Houthie call?
Speaker 1: Hegseth was already in such trouble over the houthie call
Speaker 1: that a right wing group was launched called veteran action,
Speaker 1: and the action they mean is threats. They are there
Speaker 1: to threaten, according to the lead thug quote members of
Speaker 1: Congress that they better have Pete hegseats back. And the
Speaker 1: thing with bring your wife to the secret meeting day
Speaker 1: was responded to by the right with a universal chand
Speaker 1: of ooh, wait, will I tell you about Jill Biden,
Speaker 1: which kind of collapsed once the fascists were reminded that
Speaker 1: unless it's way worse than we know, Jennifer Hegseth is
Speaker 1: not the first Lady of the United States and is
Speaker 1: not sleeping with Trump. It had already gotten to the
Speaker 1: stage when another story leaked on Missus Hegseth Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal Again. Remember those meetings with senators before his confirmation,
Speaker 1: the ones who were little concerned, earned who were Susan
Speaker 1: Collins ish about heg Seth's anger management issues and the
Speaker 1: history of allegations of abuse of women, his total lack
Speaker 1: of qualifications for a job. The one on one meetings
Speaker 1: between heg Seth and those senators nah two on one meetings.
Speaker 1: Quoting the Journal, some senators were surprised that Pete Hegseth
Speaker 1: invited his wife Jennifer to sit next to him in
Speaker 1: their private meetings, making it awkward to ask questions about
Speaker 1: allegations related to infidelity and sexual misconduct, said people familiar
Speaker 1: with the senators, thinking, not only did heg Seth bring
Speaker 1: his wife to these meetings with US senators seeking their
Speaker 1: votes for his confirmation, but he used his wife as
Speaker 1: a human shield against allegations related to infidelity and sexual misconduct.
Speaker 1: Once again, I just can't imagine where all these stories
Speaker 1: are coming from, other than Mike Waltz, a nepotism story,
Speaker 1: a wife gets to see classified information story, the continuing
Speaker 1: who he chat classified information story, or sensitive information story,
Speaker 1: or simply bombing schedule story. All we're missing is another
Speaker 1: story about Hegseth and that other thing they've mentioned about
Speaker 1: him for years. What's that word again? I think it
Speaker 1: sounds kind of like nepotism. It doesn't rhyme with nepotism exactly,
Speaker 1: but doesn't it end also in ism? Thank you, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: We could be headed to that rare simultaneous double knockout
Speaker 1: here because Politico reports that Vance and Susie Wiles and
Speaker 1: one of Trump's personnel flunkyes have urged him to fire
Speaker 1: Mike Waltz, especially after the photo of Mike Waltz with
Speaker 1: jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic popped up on social media.
Speaker 1: The guy, Waltz says, he's never met I can tell
Speaker 1: you for one hundred percent, I don't know this guy,
Speaker 1: wouldn't know him if I bumped into him, if I
Speaker 1: saw him in a police lineup, police line up. Maybe
Speaker 1: you haven't confused with Hegseth. Anyway, turns out, four years ago,
Speaker 1: the French outeur and TV philosopher Bernard Henrie Levi held
Speaker 1: a book launch in Washington, and there in a photograph
Speaker 1: is Waltz applauding, and right behind him, leaning in on
Speaker 1: Waltz as if whispering to Waltz directly into his ear
Speaker 1: is Jeffrey Goldberg. And Waltz has never met Jeffrey Goldberg,
Speaker 1: which means Jeffrey Goldberg is standing way too close. Leevy
Speaker 1: posted the photo in twenty twenty one and tagged Waltz
Speaker 1: and Goldberg on Twitter. So if the Democrats just pushed
Speaker 1: this a little, maybe Waltz could get Hegseth fired, and
Speaker 1: then vance can get Waltz fired because, to be fair,
Speaker 1: Hegseth is self destructing. And this is just going to
Speaker 1: stay like this because Trump can't afford to fire any
Speaker 1: of them, even if he believes there's a reason to,
Speaker 1: because he has now convinced himself that all criticism of
Speaker 1: him is a hoax. And as I examined last time,
Speaker 1: they around him are all lying to him about his
Speaker 1: poll numbers and his popularity and how well everything's going,
Speaker 1: and even his vote count. They'll be lying to him
Speaker 1: about the inflation numbers soon enough, because they know Trump
Speaker 1: is coming apart at the scenes mentally and they have
Speaker 1: to manage him and give in to what Advance called
Speaker 1: the president's desires or something really bad could happen. Oh
Speaker 1: like what, it's not like he's forgetting easy to remember
Speaker 1: facts like what's a country and what's not a country? Quote.
Speaker 1: If the European Union works with Canada in order to
Speaker 1: do economic harm to the USA, large scale tariffs far
Speaker 1: larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both
Speaker 1: in order to protect the best friend that each of
Speaker 1: those two countries has ever had. So uh uh, he
Speaker 1: U is now a country?
Speaker 2: Trump?
Speaker 1: Nah, He's fine, He's fine. No, reason to assume all
Speaker 1: of this destruction of the economy in these nineteenth century
Speaker 1: terrify ideas, and this move towards assuming the presidency for
Speaker 1: life is actual insanity. No no, no, no, no, he's
Speaker 1: he's fine. He's And on the journalism front, they're fine too.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever learns nobody. The White House Correspondence Association Annual Dinner,
Speaker 1: also known as Community Service for Reporters or a preview
Speaker 1: of Your Time in Hell, will for the second time
Speaker 1: in seven years, not feature a comedian because the Association,
Speaker 1: at its president Eugene Daniels of MSNBC, naturally is afraid
Speaker 1: of Trump and more interested in their own jobs than
Speaker 1: in preserving the free press or the United States of America.
Speaker 1: They have fired Amber Ruffin as the comedian after booking
Speaker 1: her months ago. Quote Politico report or It's that. The
Speaker 1: decision to remove Ruffin came after the White House Deputy
Speaker 1: Chief of Staff Taylor Budowitch criticized the WHCA for hiring
Speaker 1: Ruffin as she has been critical of President Trump. Alongside
Speaker 1: a clip of Ruffin calling the political climate bonkers, boodoo
Speaker 1: Witch wrote, this year's WHCA dinner will be hosted by
Speaker 1: a second rate comedian who is previewing the event by
Speaker 1: calling this administration murderers who want to feel like human beings.
Speaker 1: But they shouldn't get to feel that way because you're
Speaker 1: not all right. That's a statement of fact. They are murderers,
Speaker 1: and the political climate certainly is bonkers. Second rate comedian
Speaker 1: Caroline Levitt is a second rate comedian. Wait, there's more
Speaker 1: from this story. Trump is expected to not attend the event.
Speaker 1: In his past administration, he also did not attend any
Speaker 1: of the dinners hosted. So Trump's not going, The fascists
Speaker 1: aren't going. Appeasing Trump doesn't work. After taking money literally
Speaker 1: from the people who run the media and own the media,
Speaker 1: he's now going after those people again. So fire Amber
Speaker 1: Ruffin anyway, when the comedian was the only reason worth
Speaker 1: paying for parking at that event, which is literally less
Speaker 1: impressive than the annual Big to do of the Rotary
Speaker 1: Club in Ithaca, New York in nineteen seventy seven, I've
Speaker 1: attended both, and the White House Correspondence dinner sucks. In
Speaker 1: the old days. It was bad enough in the old days.
Speaker 1: It was torture in the old days. Now it's just
Speaker 1: dinner at Fichies. But to leave you with two happy moments.
Speaker 1: My glass half full report that Christy Nomes sado masochistic
Speaker 1: ilsa she wolf of the SS porn video that she
Speaker 1: put out, filmed in front of the kind of people
Speaker 1: she helped to kidnap off our streets and trundle off
Speaker 1: without due process to an l Salvador slave prison. A
Speaker 1: pro tip here, I have found my ability to process
Speaker 1: that Christy Nomes snuff film improves appreciably if I interpret
Speaker 1: the images backwards. Just tell yourself as you look at
Speaker 1: this that she's the one behind the bars and the
Speaker 1: dozens of shirtless guys are outside of her cage. And
Speaker 1: I have a second half glass full, glass half full.
Speaker 1: Lara Trump on her Fox show, which I believe is
Speaker 1: titled we have to Fill weekends somehow, ask the Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Interior and Commissioner of Eyebrows, Doug Bergham, if
Speaker 1: we'd ever see Trump's face on Mount Rushmore. Now this
Speaker 1: might be a little hannibal lectorish, but my first thought
Speaker 1: was Trump's face, his real face on Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here in this all new edition of Countdown,
Speaker 1: Bill maher self destructs again. How many times can you
Speaker 1: do this bill? Only this time he explains to Chris
Speaker 1: Cuomo that he's going to go to talk to Trump
Speaker 1: at the White House so they can save the country.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't go to the White House? Bill to a go
Speaker 1: to an emergency room, get a CT scan. Also, I
Speaker 1: have resumed my television sports career, and this merits both
Speaker 1: an explanation and a plug. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2: This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Still ahead. In this all new additional countdown, I have
Speaker 1: resumed my TV sports career. I want to go into
Speaker 1: some detail about this and why, because if you've been
Speaker 1: listening the last roughly two and a half years, you
Speaker 1: will have heard me say I don't think you should
Speaker 1: be doing both politics and sports, certainly not in the
Speaker 1: same venue, but maybe not even in different venues. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to amend those remarks because I'm now doing
Speaker 1: it in different venues, politics here and baseball on TV.
Speaker 1: Ahead first, believe it or not, there's still more new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the misgrants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worse persons in the world. Here are the nominees the
Speaker 1: Bronze Worse, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. If that is your
Speaker 1: real name, Anna Meyerhoffer, And I'm sorry, miss, but I'm
Speaker 1: afraid the role of Marjorie's stupid Green has already been cast.
Speaker 1: But honestly, when she hits that magic percentage of body
Speaker 1: weight that is just steroids and she goes catatonic, we
Speaker 1: will call you, madam. Miss Luna announced on Fox quote,
Speaker 1: I would like to tell the American people. I was
Speaker 1: made aware to me this evening that NBC actually have
Speaker 1: a video that has never been seen before that allegedly
Speaker 1: shows Oswald near a vehicle at the time, which means
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been him. Now, look, she's a simpleton.
Speaker 1: She shows some evidence of brain damage, and god knows
Speaker 1: what she heard and couldn't understand and decided was was
Speaker 1: that evidence that it couldn't have been Oswald. I assume
Speaker 1: either somebody told her about Oliver Stone's movie JFK and
Speaker 1: a v tape of JFK this is the tape that
Speaker 1: NBC has, or they told her about the various recreation
Speaker 1: films of Oswald near the vehicle in which police officer
Speaker 1: Tippett was shot long, the biggest timeline hole in the
Speaker 1: Oswald Solo gunman theory, though not a fatal flaw in
Speaker 1: that theory. But anyway, this misses the point. The day
Speaker 1: JFK was shot, there was no way to burn tom
Speaker 1: of Day into film or even the early giant sized
Speaker 1: forms of videotape. There was no time code available until
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, so no nineteen sixty three film could
Speaker 1: establish when anybody was anywhere that day or any other
Speaker 1: day in human history, even one with a clock visible
Speaker 1: in the background, because clocks could be wrong. I know
Speaker 1: by this point her eyes have rolled back in her
Speaker 1: head and the drool is flowing like wine. But you
Speaker 1: still get my point. Also, the congresswoman added quote, we
Speaker 1: hope to bring forward legislation to ensure this never happens again.
Speaker 1: And who in the hell knows what she meant there?
Speaker 1: Make sure assassinations never happened again. Make sure no more
Speaker 1: Warren commissions, make sure there's no more evidence locked away
Speaker 1: by the government. Make sure there's no more Oliver Stone movies.
Speaker 1: Who knows, by the way, you know who was great
Speaker 1: in that movie doesn't get credit for it. John Candy
Speaker 1: was great and AFK. Moving on the runner up, Dave
Speaker 1: la Rock, the far far right would be candidate for
Speaker 1: governor of Virginia, the one who referred to Virginia's quote
Speaker 1: colored community unquote. He didn't say that in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: he said it in twenty twenty one. He's a nut
Speaker 1: job and a nitwit. And if you didn't know that,
Speaker 1: listen to this interview in which he brings up his
Speaker 1: favorite movie, No Not JFK, in which it was proved
Speaker 1: that at the time of the assassination Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 1: was actually working with a chisel atop Mount Rushmore No.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and sevens film Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite movies, and I tell you moves
Speaker 4: me emotionally, is a movie called Freedom Writers. Have you
Speaker 4: ever seen that? I have seen that movie. Yes, it's
Speaker 4: a spectacular movie, isn't it. And it's this inner city,
Speaker 4: these kids that think they've life has been terrible, and
Speaker 4: it justifies them being violent toward each other, and the teacher,
Speaker 4: Hillary Swank, I think, introduces them to a Holocaust survivor,
Speaker 4: and I think it's based on a true story. It is,
Speaker 4: and they just appreciate that what these people have been
Speaker 4: put through it, which makes their own struggles, I think,
Speaker 4: seem like something they can overcome. So again, the central
Speaker 4: theme of it is, well, a couple of different things
Speaker 4: going on, but it uses the I think it was
Speaker 4: Anne Frank that they actually brought in to tell her
Speaker 4: story and it really changed these people's lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a life changing event when they brought on franc
Speaker 1: into the classroom in Long Beach, California in person to
Speaker 1: tell the kids about the Holocaust. On Frank herself. I
Speaker 1: guess these days you and I should be happy when
Speaker 1: we find a Republican, even an idiot Republican, who believes
Speaker 1: it happened and believes it mattered. But honestly, can we
Speaker 1: lock LaRock and Luna in a classroom for like three
Speaker 1: minutes and just force them to brush up their knowledge
Speaker 1: of just these two events and leave the other ten
Speaker 1: thousand things they each get wrong in day to day
Speaker 1: life wrong just on these things. Just about the fact
Speaker 1: that there's no videotape of the JFK shooting and couldn't
Speaker 1: be that, and then a Frank did not survive the
Speaker 1: holl just somebody tell him this, Good God, But they
Speaker 1: have excuses they're morons. Our winner the worst, once again,
Speaker 1: does not have such an excuse. Bill Maher with assists
Speaker 1: from Chris Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. He's got everybody working
Speaker 1: with him except Chris Soliza. I'm not going to suggest
Speaker 1: here or anywhere else that anybody ever took Bill Maher
Speaker 1: seriously as a political thinker, but he had a certain fearlessness,
Speaker 1: and one of like well two platforms that were largely
Speaker 1: or mostly liberal in the early years of this century,
Speaker 1: I might modestly countdown, was the other one. But Bill's
Speaker 1: trolley has come off the track, and like so many
Speaker 1: seemingly strong figures in our society, turns out that he
Speaker 1: was made out of paper mache and filled with oatmeal.
Speaker 1: Just like all the guardrails. What Bill has done has
Speaker 1: decided he wants to be on the winning side more often.
Speaker 1: So he's now going to the White House to see
Speaker 1: Trump with his new friend Kid Rock. And once you
Speaker 1: get past his new friend Kid Rock, everything else is
Speaker 1: superfluous detail. If Kid Rock is one of your friends,
Speaker 1: your life is at essentially an end. Mar is hanging
Speaker 1: out with other quizzlings too. I mentioned Newsom, who used
Speaker 1: to be the Democratic governor of California and is now
Speaker 1: a podcast host. Announced on Mars Show Friday, Newsom did
Speaker 1: that the polling showing the Democratic Party has twenty seven
Speaker 1: percent approval means, quote, the Democratic brand is toxic right now.
Speaker 1: Unquote gav a. The Republican Party has thirty six percent approval,
Speaker 1: which is not a lot more given that they won
Speaker 1: the election. B Most of the dissatisfaction with the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is from Democrats because of the weasliness and appeasement
Speaker 1: from clowns like c. Gavin Newsom and Bill Maher. We
Speaker 1: talk down to people, Newsom told Mar, we talk past people. Well,
Speaker 1: the two of you do, That's correct, the idea that
Speaker 1: we can even have a conversation with the other side,
Speaker 1: Newsom asked rhetorically. Mar's reply, you have to They won,
Speaker 1: says oo. Fox News has a larger audience that Bill
Speaker 1: Maher Hell Newsmax. May Bill, do you have to talk
Speaker 1: to them because they won? Mar apparently thinks this means
Speaker 1: going to talk to Trump and to step into his
Speaker 1: own personalized echo chamber that says this is a good idea.
Speaker 1: He went on with Chris Cuomo, another guy who, to
Speaker 1: paraphrase a line about Michael Jordan's willingness to do commercials
Speaker 1: for anything. If they promised Chris Cuomo his own Network
Speaker 1: TV show again, but he had to do a commercial
Speaker 1: for it wearing a jockstrap that you wore on your face,
Speaker 1: he would do it for once. Though. In this clip,
Speaker 1: Chris Cuomo is the least insufferable person in the room
Speaker 1: because the only on other one in the room is
Speaker 1: mar listen to the delusions of grandeur parade out of
Speaker 1: Bill Maher's tiny, little deviated septum.
Speaker 2: What do you think has been the response so far?
Speaker 2: What do you think it will be?
Speaker 1: And why are you doing it?
Speaker 2: Which I'm totally for by the way, and I love it.
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm doing it because first of all, it was
Speaker 3: presented as a dare not a dare no, just like
Speaker 3: maybe this is a beginning to heal America. Now, I
Speaker 3: don't have some sort of complex where I think I
Speaker 3: can heal America.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get that clear. I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: healing America. But if two guys who've been at each
Speaker 3: other for so long, I mean, it's kind of a
Speaker 3: Nixon to China thing, I have the credential there was
Speaker 3: nobody who was harder on Trump or more prescient about
Speaker 3: the fact that he wasn't going to leave office voluntarily
Speaker 3: than I was. I feel like I have the credentials,
Speaker 3: but they also respect me because I'm honest about the
Speaker 3: woke train to crazy Town.
Speaker 1: First, Bill, they don't respect you. They're using you. That's
Speaker 1: all this is. Don't you see that? Ten years ago,
Speaker 1: the next to last time I was on Bill Mars show,
Speaker 1: he and I talked about how the Trump who had
Speaker 1: just announced his candidacy was utterly different than the one
Speaker 1: we had met personally. That in person he had been polite,
Speaker 1: almost mild mannered. I said that the disparity was so
Speaker 1: vast that it didn't matter which Trump was the real
Speaker 1: one and which one was the act the racists viewing
Speaker 1: hate Trump or Eddie Haskell Trump. That the problem was
Speaker 1: we could never survive a president who had two complete
Speaker 1: and completely contradictory personalities Bill Bill said he thought we
Speaker 1: should give the nice Trump a try, leading me to
Speaker 1: my second point. Bill Maher was hardly the first person
Speaker 1: to say Trump would never leave office. I said it
Speaker 1: in my commentaries before the twenty sixteen election. I said
Speaker 1: it on Mars show the night of the inauguration in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, and Bill thinks he's been the toughest on Trump.
Speaker 1: He may have been because of the size of his
Speaker 1: platform top one hundred maybe, but his work since election
Speaker 1: cozying up to Trump's people, platforming them. And now this
Speaker 1: Neville Chamberlain was cool parade and going to the Lanehouse
Speaker 1: with my friend, can'd rock because you have to talk
Speaker 1: to the paint bomb. Bill is down to about a
Speaker 1: millionth on the list. Also woke, Bill, take woke and
Speaker 1: shove it up your ass. Wait wait, wait, Bill Maher
Speaker 1: actually got worse, more condescending, more delusional. Just just listen
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 3: First of all, it's an honor to be invited to
Speaker 3: the White House.
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 3: And I've already had a couple of people who I
Speaker 3: said to them, you know, I'm just going to take
Speaker 3: it as a backhanded compliment. Then you glide right past
Speaker 3: the idea that little Bill Maher from Rivervale, New Jersey,
Speaker 3: just a humble kid from the suburbs, was invited for
Speaker 3: a private dinner of the White House. You glide right
Speaker 3: past that to how dare you talk to him? And
Speaker 3: that you're not impressed.
Speaker 2: By it at all.
Speaker 3: I'm impressed by it a lot. I'm impressed the fuck
Speaker 3: out of it. I get to go to the White
Speaker 3: House and yes, that is the structure of this dinner
Speaker 3: is just let's talk. Let's talk to each other face
Speaker 3: to face. Let's not stop shouting from three thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So if they expect me to be leaving in a
Speaker 3: maga hat, they're going to be very disappointed. But I
Speaker 3: know they don't and I think it's going to be
Speaker 3: you know, look, it probably will accomplish very little, but
Speaker 3: you got to try him, man, you got to try.
Speaker 2: I love it, you know, Kanye, Bill Maht. Thank they
Speaker 2: very much appreciate you. Love being with you, Bud. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was so much fun and I love that you're going.
Speaker 3: I think it's graced for exactly that is, isn't it
Speaker 3: a hundred percent?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: And I will celebrate it when it happens.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: And Bill, if Chris Cuomo loves it, it's the worst
Speaker 1: idea of your life. Newsom Chris Cuomo. And as I said,
Speaker 1: all you need is the endorsement of Chris Solisza and
Speaker 1: you have the complete quizzling boxed set. Also, it's an
Speaker 1: honor to be invited to the White House now after
Speaker 1: what Trump did with Zelensky in the White House. Oh,
Speaker 1: Hitler's invited me to the Life Chancellery. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: get a selfie with him, Maybe you let me wear
Speaker 1: his hat. It's an honor, I mean after Connor McGregor
Speaker 1: was invited, after Sarah Palin, after a bunch of crooked
Speaker 1: TV evangelists. Cuomo mentioned Kanye West. You were invited seven
Speaker 1: years after Kanye West. They're just inviting you now, and
Speaker 1: you think it's an honor. Hell, I was first invited
Speaker 1: to the White House checks notes twenty six years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're just getting to you now, Bill, Let's stop yelling
Speaker 1: at Hitler. Mar two Day's Other Worst Person and the
Speaker 1: World Take four B one March thirty one, three two one.
Speaker 2: This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, host Scripts to the news,
Speaker 2: some headlines, some updates, some snark, and in this case,
Speaker 2: some explanation for unexpected personal conduct, not bad personal conduct.
Speaker 1: I'm not in the Trump administration, just unusual personal conduct.
Speaker 1: And first, this is the Countdown podcast. And these are
Speaker 1: the places where there's news. Dateline New York while and
Speaker 1: other places like Atlanta, Cincinnati, Miami, the Tampa Bay Area
Speaker 1: actually in this case Tampa itself, Detroit, Los Angeles, but
Speaker 1: more correctly Anaheim, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Milwaukee.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: I have railed recently about the increasing merger between sportscasting
Speaker 1: and politic casting, between the number of sportscasters at nominally
Speaker 1: sports venues who have gone into commenting on politics. This
Speaker 1: has been led by such derelict outlets as barstool and
Speaker 1: the others, but it has also recently creeped into places
Speaker 1: like ESPN, and I have been virulently angry and most
Speaker 1: condescending towards with I think justificationation Stephen A. Smith, who
Speaker 1: has decided the other day on the air that he
Speaker 1: is going to debate Donald Trump on the subject of DEI.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, part of what Steven A. Smith
Speaker 1: thinks is a very clever little idea of his to
Speaker 1: get himself mentioned as a presidential candidate, and as ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of the country laughs when they hear that,
Speaker 1: the other one percent say, I'd like to have a
Speaker 1: president who could give a seven hour State of the
Speaker 1: Union address without taking a breath and without saying anything
Speaker 1: at all because the one thing we want after this
Speaker 1: one is another guy who wants to take all of
Speaker 1: the air out of the room for himself. In any event,
Speaker 1: it's not hard to figure. Many politicians have tried this before,
Speaker 1: and lots of people who know nothing about politics think
Speaker 1: it's a clever idea. Tell everybody that, oh, you'd do
Speaker 1: it if it were necessary and people really wanted you to,
Speaker 1: but you don't have the time, and you certainly don't
Speaker 1: want to be president, and you let other people say no,
Speaker 1: he'd make a great president, and you try a draft
Speaker 1: some anonymous name like I don't know, John A. Smith
Speaker 1: for president. There's been a lot of that recently, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, things that at ESPN literally five years
Speaker 1: ago would have gotten anybody suspended or perhaps fired is
Speaker 1: now encouraged. Part of this was the new management there,
Speaker 1: and part of it was its affection for people like
Speaker 1: Pat McAfee. I think that's the name the guy who
Speaker 1: spends all afternoon talking and talking and talking and bringing
Speaker 1: on people like Aaron Rodgers, who was not necessarily fully
Speaker 1: versed in living in this universe and has his own
Speaker 1: kind of universe. And this eventually bleeds into politics, which
Speaker 1: of course now fifty percent of all political discussion is
Speaker 1: actually a conspiracy theory about something that does not exist,
Speaker 1: because we have moved into that America. The post reality
Speaker 1: America is where we are politically, as you well know.
Speaker 1: But what I have been complaining about, and what I
Speaker 1: had complained about even in the old days when I
Speaker 1: was at ESPN and at other sports venues before that,
Speaker 1: was that something we had done long long ago didn't
Speaker 1: really work anymore and really shouldn't be done anymore. I
Speaker 1: no longer thought it was a good idea for one
Speaker 1: broadcaster to be a sports personality in one place, one network,
Speaker 1: one outlet, one online place, one I don't know website,
Speaker 1: and then be a political commentator somewhere else. Not that
Speaker 1: there was any reason that a sportscaster should not be
Speaker 1: qualified to talk about politics, but because in this time
Speaker 1: of extraordinary pressure on all of us, we do need
Speaker 1: to have a few areas in which politics will not
Speaker 1: chase us. I always think of Donald Trump as the
Speaker 1: character if you can believe this on the old Fred
Speaker 1: Flintstone show who used to when you turn the TV off,
Speaker 1: the hand would come out from around on the side
Speaker 1: of the TV, and this character would turn the TV
Speaker 1: back on so he could keep talking to you. That's Trump,
Speaker 1: that's politics. I think there needs to be a place
Speaker 1: where we can get away from that, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the easiest ways for that is sports. I
Speaker 1: am not saying when something like when the Trump administration
Speaker 1: tried to erase Jackie Robinson from the history of the
Speaker 1: Defense Department, I'm not saying that should be ignored by sports.
Speaker 1: Quite the contrary, that's when it is absolutely necessary. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that when athletes have opinions about sports that
Speaker 1: they should be ignored. Absolutely not. That is their platform,
Speaker 1: and they should be covered, and they should be covered
Speaker 1: to some degree neutrally, and the fallout should be covered
Speaker 1: to some degree neutrally. But the point is that they're
Speaker 1: the ones making the comments, not the sportscasters. The sportscasters
Speaker 1: don't count. As I said in the old days back
Speaker 1: at NBC in nineteen ninety seven, when I was first
Speaker 1: hired there, I was hired to do both news and sports,
Speaker 1: and the news part quickly devolved into almost all politics.
Speaker 1: I was anchoring the State of the Union address and
Speaker 1: then going to the Super Bowl weeks later. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and then when I went back to MSNBC
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, it was just going to
Speaker 1: be news. Well, that changed rather quickly too, and by
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven I was on Football Night in America,
Speaker 1: co hosting it with Bob. Bob Costas and several other
Speaker 1: people were involved in the show at that time too.
Speaker 1: Later Dan Patrick joined me on that program and we
Speaker 1: separated those two entities. I did sports five nights a
Speaker 1: week on MSNBC, or rather five nights a week of
Speaker 1: news on MSNBC, in politics and increasingly political commentary on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and then one night a week on Big NBC, doing
Speaker 1: just football and leaving politics out of it. In fact,
Speaker 1: prior to that, in two thousand and five, I had
Speaker 1: joined with Dan on the radio and talked sports for
Speaker 1: an hour every day at three o'clock in the afternoon
Speaker 1: or two o'clock in the afternoon, I can't remember now
Speaker 1: one of those two hours. And then I'd get in
Speaker 1: a car and go over to New Jersey and at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock at night, it's been an hour yelling at
Speaker 1: George Bush and it didn't really seem to bother anybody.
Speaker 1: Those two things were separate identities. The mention of these
Speaker 1: two subjects in the same lifetime in somebody's work as
Speaker 1: a body of work was acceptable to the point where
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh tried to buy the Saint Louis Rams football team,
Speaker 1: and I supported him when lots of people on both
Speaker 1: sides of the political spectrum said no, I said, if
Speaker 1: you've got a reason for him not to be an owner,
Speaker 1: that's fine. His failure at ESPN when he tried to
Speaker 1: do football commentary, well, maybe that's a good reason for
Speaker 1: him not to be an owner in the NFL. But
Speaker 1: the simple idea that he was a political commentator or
Speaker 1: in this case, a propagandist who had been sent by Satan, well,
Speaker 1: I can understand why that might piss you off, and
Speaker 1: you would want him to be an owner in the NFL.
Speaker 1: But that's not a good enough reason. Well that's the
Speaker 1: way we felt back then, before everything got kind of
Speaker 1: out of hand, because what is complained about now basically
Speaker 1: is if you are a liberal political figure and you
Speaker 1: happen to have some other livelihood, the right wants to
Speaker 1: destroy that livelihood. You can't be a sportscaster who has
Speaker 1: liberal political opinions. You're not allowed to be a sportscaster
Speaker 1: anywhere your simple presence is some sort of expression of
Speaker 1: liberal media. That is the way these people think, or
Speaker 1: at least pretend to think. And I mean pretend to
Speaker 1: think in both senses of that phrase. So as time
Speaker 1: war on, it became more and more difficult for me
Speaker 1: to do both the sports end of my career and
Speaker 1: the political end of my career. And they did overlap
Speaker 1: for a solid fifteen years, and then I went back
Speaker 1: into sports, and then I went back into politics. And
Speaker 1: then I went back into sports, and then I went
Speaker 1: back into politics, and I kept them each separate. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I was working at ESPN. I did Sports
Speaker 1: Center for ESPN. I did other programs and weekly features
Speaker 1: for ESPN. And as the election approached, as September came around,
Speaker 1: given the fact that there were really no sports and
Speaker 1: there wasn't much for me to do anyway, I wanted
Speaker 1: to comment on the upcoming election. Obviously, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to sit that out, and so I retired from ESPN.
Speaker 1: In any event, that was my decision because I wanted
Speaker 1: to keep those things separate. I felt that was nice
Speaker 1: and clean and important for it to be that way.
Speaker 1: The rules have changed. As I said, I'm railing against
Speaker 1: what Steven Smith and others have been doing and with
Speaker 1: ever increasing measures. And there are sports websites that are
Speaker 1: essentially this spell of portnoy at Barstool. And there's another
Speaker 1: some other Southern guy, I forget his name. He's not
Speaker 1: particularly smart, but he's a out kick kick can whatever
Speaker 1: it's called. That's just a right wing website that they
Speaker 1: use sports to draw people in and suck them in.
Speaker 1: That's not really a sports site, but it does underscore
Speaker 1: the merging of these two things. So, having said all
Speaker 1: of this for the last ten minutes about how we
Speaker 1: should not put sports and news, particularly politics together anymore,
Speaker 1: it's just not two thousand and nine, where on January twentieth,
Speaker 1: I anchored the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of
Speaker 1: the United States on MSNBC. That's January twentieth. January twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: I turned fifty years old, and February first, I co
Speaker 1: anchored the three hour pre pregame Super Bowl show. That's
Speaker 1: quite a lot of stuff for twelve days, But the
Speaker 1: two extremes, I think that'll be the last time you'll
Speaker 1: see anything like that because it was pure politics in
Speaker 1: the first and news, and then twelve days later it
Speaker 1: was sports and my partisan and yay and flags and
Speaker 1: flyovers and all the rest of the Super Bowl. I
Speaker 1: think that time has gone. And having said that, I
Speaker 1: don't expect any of you saw this. The likelihood is
Speaker 1: probably very, very small. But I resumed my TV sports
Speaker 1: career last week surprise. It was kind of a surprise
Speaker 1: to me too, and it may be nothing more than
Speaker 1: what was accomplished last week. It was done as a
Speaker 1: very last minute idea from a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: is now running the network called fan Dual Sports. He
Speaker 1: asked me last week if I would be willing to
Speaker 1: do some quick, minute and a half long essays on
Speaker 1: what he needed to know as the generic viewer for
Speaker 1: each of the nine teams the baseball teams that the
Speaker 1: fandual network carries. That would be the Atlanta Braves, the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Reds, the Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit Tigers,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Kansas City Royals, Cleveland Guardians,
Speaker 1: and Milwaukee Brewers. Just whatever I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: something serious, but something off the beaten track. And then
Speaker 1: if I wanted to put something funny in it. That
Speaker 1: would be fine too, write them up and send them
Speaker 1: to me. Well that was Tuesday, and I think the
Speaker 1: first of them aired on Thursday in the preseason specials
Speaker 1: for these teams for Opening Day, and they were met
Speaker 1: with absolutely no negative response. I mean, now that I'm
Speaker 1: publicizing this, I suspect somebody will complain, but to this
Speaker 1: point nobody said, Gee, Keith Oleruman can't also continue to
Speaker 1: do baseball pieces. I do have some credibility on this subject.
Speaker 1: Fan Duel counts as a network and thus is the
Speaker 1: fifth network I have covered baseball for. I have hosted
Speaker 1: the World Series and for two of them NBC and Fox,
Speaker 1: and added in for Turner the hosting of the postseason.
Speaker 1: I've done play by play of baseball for ESPN and
Speaker 1: now this work for FanDuel, and I reported from dugouts
Speaker 1: in World Series, have been in World Series games per se,
Speaker 1: in the postgame interviews and all the rest of that.
Speaker 1: And I'm a baseball historian. I've been a member of
Speaker 1: the Society for American Baseball Research since nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: and been associated with them since nineteen seventy three. So
Speaker 1: I have some chops on baseball that perhaps stand alone
Speaker 1: from the rest of my sports experience in any event, though,
Speaker 1: I was hesitant to merge these two streams to use
Speaker 1: a ghostbuster's analogy, And then as I was sitting there
Speaker 1: listening to myself complaining about Steven A. Smith, it dawned
Speaker 1: on me that the rules I was trying to enforce
Speaker 1: on them no longer were being applied to anybody. So,
Speaker 1: after a moment's hesitation whether or not I should do this,
Speaker 1: I said, why not? Why should I apply those rules
Speaker 1: to me when I am meticulous about keeping the two
Speaker 1: things separate anyway, And all this rule does when I
Speaker 1: apply it to myself, which is you're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about sports while you're talking about politics nominally, and
Speaker 1: you're certainly not going to talk about politics while you're
Speaker 1: doing sports. Always religiously that those rules are long gone,
Speaker 1: and the next one in which Steven A. Smith can
Speaker 1: go on ESPN and demand that Trump debate him, if
Speaker 1: that's the rules, my doing a feature piece on whether
Speaker 1: or not Mike Trout is going to be healthy this
Speaker 1: year for the Los Angeles Angels is not much of
Speaker 1: a violation, and it would make for a nice break
Speaker 1: because frankly, doing these pieces as valuable as I understand
Speaker 1: they are to you, and as cathartic as they are
Speaker 1: often to me, they still are, like, you know, gargling uranium.
Speaker 1: And it's nice to do something other than gargle uranium
Speaker 1: every once in a while and to just try to
Speaker 1: figure out what are the most interesting five things about
Speaker 1: each of these baseball teams. It was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got to do a couple of good jokes.
Speaker 1: I got to say farewell to Bob Buker on the
Speaker 1: air in Milwaukee, which pleased me very much. I got
Speaker 1: to talk about whether or not my old friend Tito Francona,
Speaker 1: the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, would have taken that
Speaker 1: job if he didn't think the Cincinnati Reds were going
Speaker 1: to be winners. And I got to make a joke
Speaker 1: about the Detroit Tiger young star Colt Keith and whether
Speaker 1: or not he could pull off his move from playing
Speaker 1: second base to playing first base. And I noted that
Speaker 1: there's one thing that you should know that perhaps nobody
Speaker 1: but me would know that only five times have World
Speaker 1: Series winning teams in baseball history featured a player named Keith.
Speaker 1: So this has been done. The rubicon has been crossed.
Speaker 1: I am continuing to do these political broadcasts, podcasts, political appearances,
Speaker 1: political commentary, social media commentary full of swear words, and
Speaker 1: yet over here I am now part of the legendary
Speaker 1: pre season baseball coverage at yet another television network. As
Speaker 1: I said that maybe it it may have been a
Speaker 1: one shot deal. There were no expectations on either end.
Speaker 1: He just wanted these pieces. He thought they'd make the
Speaker 1: better broadcast, which is a good enough reason. And you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to leave the house, and they paid me.
Speaker 1: So it's baseball. It's not exactly heavy lifting for me,
Speaker 1: and it was nice to use those mental muscles once again.
Speaker 1: But it does underscore this idea of where are we
Speaker 1: going if we are going to have a rule in
Speaker 1: which you can say anything you want to on any
Speaker 1: television network and drag politics into it and not provide anybody,
Speaker 1: including me and you, somewhere safe to go where we
Speaker 1: are not likely to be chased by Donald Trump, because that,
Speaker 1: of course, is the essence of being Donald Trump. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember who it was, whether it was Roger Angel.
Speaker 1: I think it may have been Roger Angel, the great
Speaker 1: baseball writer who said during the Ken Burns documentary that
Speaker 1: when he went to a New York Yankees game, whether
Speaker 1: he was literally there or simply thinking about the Yankees,
Speaker 1: every time he tried to look at the team, he
Speaker 1: would see the owner, George Steinbrenner, stand up in front
Speaker 1: of his view and start screaming and saying, no, listen
Speaker 1: to me, listen to me. Well, that's a characteristic that
Speaker 1: happens to be true of Trump. Obviously, it's far more
Speaker 1: dangerous in a man who happens to be the commander
Speaker 1: in chief of a large military and is out of
Speaker 1: his mind and is being treated as he is out
Speaker 1: of his mind by his colleagues who are working every
Speaker 1: day to find new roots around him. It's a very
Speaker 1: dangerous situation, and we really shouldn't spend too much time
Speaker 1: not watching what the f this lunatic bastard is doing next. However,
Speaker 1: I think it would be okay if we all went
Speaker 1: for two hours over into a sporting event or into
Speaker 1: a movie and felt fairly sure we were not going
Speaker 1: to be unless we thought in advance we would be
Speaker 1: attacked by news of Trump and Trump's people. Maybe that
Speaker 1: gives them a two hour head start. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I do know if we attempt to continue to cover
Speaker 1: this in our own minds, you and me, NonStop without
Speaker 1: a break, without something else, the top of my head's
Speaker 1: bound to blow off at some point. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean somebody's going to make it happen. I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: they're out to get me. I'm just saying that the
Speaker 1: pressure inside is going to blow the roof off of
Speaker 1: my head. Now it may fall back into place, and
Speaker 1: I have some good gorilla glue in the garage, maybe
Speaker 1: I can use that. I'm just saying I put out
Speaker 1: a steadfast rule that the time had gone when we
Speaker 1: could ever have a sportscaster and a political commentator in
Speaker 1: the same being in the public space in the United
Speaker 1: States of America. And when I said that, I meant
Speaker 1: there were degrees to that. I meant politics and sports
Speaker 1: on the sports network. That's no good. This other one
Speaker 1: where the guy does the Hair on Fire political podcast
Speaker 1: about Trump twice a week or more and then does
Speaker 1: a feature on how many guys named Keith have ever
Speaker 1: played on a World Series winning team. I am now
Speaker 1: officially declaring that that's not only okay, but it was
Speaker 1: actually pretty effing funny. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and
Speaker 1: John Phillips Shanel, the musical directors have countdown, arranged, produced
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had old
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
Speaker 1: and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our
Speaker 1: satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the
Speaker 1: old Woman theme from ESPN two, Who's This over Moon Anyway?
Speaker 1: It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. I can pronounce
Speaker 1: his name, and its courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend Dennis Leary, who succeeded in
Speaker 1: pronouncing my name. Everything else was, as ever, my fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, just three hundred and ninety two
Speaker 1: days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and
Speaker 1: lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner, or the
Speaker 1: actuarial tables do, or the corporations do. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Thursday. As always bulletins as the news warrants.
Speaker 1: Remember in peach Trump. It won't work now. It will
Speaker 1: though when the Democrats the mid terms. If there are midterms,
Speaker 1: if the Democrats are going to show up, put out
Speaker 1: an APB for Chuck Schumer. No, don't until next time.
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Oulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goode, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.