Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. At
Speaker 1: two fifteen on the early morning of Monday, July twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, a newscaster named John Wydra on WCBS
Speaker 1: Radio in New York City made an utterly inarguable and
Speaker 1: utterly mind blowing statement about a labor dispute. Quote the
Speaker 1: next development in the strike isn't expected until today, unquote,
Speaker 1: implying that there existed some chance, somehow somewhere that the
Speaker 1: next development could be expected to happen yesterday. I thought
Speaker 1: of this because Kamala Harris has chosen her running mate,
Speaker 1: or will have chosen her running mate, or as you
Speaker 1: already know, but I don't. As I record this, she
Speaker 1: has chosen her running mate earlier for you, but later
Speaker 1: for me. Because John Wydra astuteley rewriting on the fly
Speaker 1: some outdated copy that must have read until tomorrow. John
Speaker 1: Widra was right. The next development in the veepstakes is
Speaker 1: not expected until today Walls or Shapiro, according to Reuter's
Speaker 1: the Finalists. I'll get to that. But despite the near
Speaker 1: universal contention otherwise, the vice presidency isn't the lead story
Speaker 1: and the decision may or may not make any damn difference.
Speaker 1: The Morning Consult and Decision Desk poll numbers are the
Speaker 1: lead story. She is ahead forty eight forty four. A
Speaker 1: week ago in Morning Consult she was ahead by one point.
Speaker 1: Two weeks ago, Trump was ahead by two points. The
Speaker 1: Vice President is ahead in that poll among independents forty
Speaker 1: two to thirty seven. She's ahead among voters under the
Speaker 1: age of thirty five by forty nine to forty. Morning
Speaker 1: Consult also does what it calls a news cycle poll.
Speaker 1: Have you heard positive things or negative buzz about the candidates?
Speaker 1: I swear they use the word buzz and after the
Speaker 1: Republican Convention, Trump was at almost fifty to fifty positive
Speaker 1: and negative stories, positive and negative buzz, And in two
Speaker 1: weeks since, he has sunk to twenty three points underwater
Speaker 1: negative buzz. In the same span, the Harris Express has
Speaker 1: retained its speed. Her favorability in this poll was at
Speaker 1: fifty percent last week. It is now virtually the same
Speaker 1: at forty eight percent. They also did some polling on
Speaker 1: Harris versus Trump attributes Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: State by state. Trump wins who's too old in a landslide.
Speaker 1: Harris wins who's mentally fit in a landslide like forty
Speaker 1: eight to thirty five. Harris also wins life dangerous in
Speaker 1: a landslide. Harris wins cares about me based on the
Speaker 1: state from two points to ten points. She's tied him
Speaker 1: on strong leader in Michigan, is within seven points on
Speaker 1: strong leader in three other states. And who is more Presidential?
Speaker 1: Harris wins in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It is tied
Speaker 1: in Nevada. He wins most Presidential by one point in
Speaker 1: Georgia that was before that farce. Over the weekend, he
Speaker 1: wins it by three points in North Carolina at four
Speaker 1: points in Pennsylvania. Survey USA came out yesterday with national
Speaker 1: polling done on Sunday, Harris by three. Three weeks ago,
Speaker 1: that poll was Trump by three. It's another six point swing.
Speaker 1: CBS News put out a poll with Ugov on Sunday
Speaker 1: that had Harris ahead nationally by one. In its poll,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden never led never. This was the first CBS
Speaker 1: poll since Trump led Biden by five. CBS has them
Speaker 1: tied in the swing states. Morning consult will presumably have
Speaker 1: a new set of swing state raw numbers polls for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg today. They put one out last Tuesday, and in
Speaker 1: that Harris led huge in Michigan, by one or two points,
Speaker 1: in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, was tied in Georgia, was
Speaker 1: behind by two in North Carolina, behind by four in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Her net lead in all seven of the states last
Speaker 1: week was one point. So watch to see if there
Speaker 1: is a new one today or maybe tomorrow. Early Vote
Speaker 1: Action polled the state of Pennsylvania and it finds Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: tied forty eight forty eight or forty five forty five,
Speaker 1: with Kennedy at four. And so what except Early Vote
Speaker 1: Action is the group led by that sleazy trumpist Scott Presler,
Speaker 1: the one who bills himself as the Persistence. It's tied
Speaker 1: in the Persistence poll in Pennsylvania. Persistence as in if
Speaker 1: symptoms persist longer more than four hours see your doctor
Speaker 1: decision Desk. HQ I mentioned them earlier. They put out
Speaker 1: an average of swing state polls yesterday and at chose
Speaker 1: Harris gaining in nine out of ten battleground states and
Speaker 1: the only one she hasn't gained in is Virginia, where
Speaker 1: President Biden led by three and she leads by three
Speaker 1: per Decision Desk. She has already taken away Trump's lead
Speaker 1: in Michigan by one point, cut his seven point leads
Speaker 1: in Arizona and Georgia to three point leads, cut his
Speaker 1: nine point lead in Nevada to three points, cut his
Speaker 1: ten point lead in North Carolina to three points. Again.
Speaker 1: I am at just about the point where the numbers
Speaker 1: will make my head explode, and I'm sitting here looking
Speaker 1: at them. I can read along with my voice. The
Speaker 1: gist of this is it's like at some singular points
Speaker 1: along a road or even a city street. We have
Speaker 1: them here along parts of Park Avenue. You can see
Speaker 1: ten or sometimes it seems like twenty intersections at a time,
Speaker 1: and the traffic lights. You are only startled by one
Speaker 1: occurrence in such a scene, when all the lights are green,
Speaker 1: and for Vice President Harris right now, and Boyd can
Speaker 1: change in a hurry, ask the Republican nomineeh, what's his name? Again?
Speaker 1: Ask that guy? But right now for Harris, all the
Speaker 1: lights are green, all right, Two more numbers and I'll stop.
Speaker 1: There is one inside the Decision Desk averages that I
Speaker 1: love this is because I kind of made it up myself.
Speaker 1: I did the addition here myself. Last poll in eight
Speaker 1: Swing states, Trump's total net lead was thirty seven points.
Speaker 1: That's all the individual leads added together. He wasn't leading
Speaker 1: the Swing States by thirty seven overall, but it was
Speaker 1: thirty seven. Now in eight states his lead is nine points.
Speaker 1: And it's really difficult to point at Nate Silver one
Speaker 1: week and say he's full of shit, and then quote
Speaker 1: him the next week and go, nice work, Nate. But
Speaker 1: I'm doing this less to support the Decision desk and
Speaker 1: morning consult polls than I am to help breath the vibe.
Speaker 1: God forgive me for the first time. Nate Silver's projection
Speaker 1: is that she has the better chance of winning the
Speaker 1: electoral college fifty three percent and winning it, he says,
Speaker 1: by two hundred and eighty two votes to two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five for Trump. He has her up in
Speaker 1: the polls by one and nine tenths points, largely because
Speaker 1: his average of the polls in Pennsylvania has her up
Speaker 1: by point there, and he has her up in Michigan
Speaker 1: by just under three. And Nate Silver has Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: within six points of the lead in Florida. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: full of shit was an exaggeration on my part. I'm sorry, Nate.
Speaker 1: Now it is August sixth, and if on July sixteenth
Speaker 1: I had written all this, all the numbers would have
Speaker 1: gone the other way. The Harris lights all would have
Speaker 1: been read, and I would have made you listen to
Speaker 1: them only in order to try to convince you that
Speaker 1: encouraging the Democrats to change candidates was the right course,
Speaker 1: just as a reminder about how fast things can change,
Speaker 1: even after a decade in which they barely seemed to
Speaker 1: change at all and certainly never got better. They could
Speaker 1: revert back to Trump three weeks from today, then re
Speaker 1: revert to Harris three weeks after that, then re re
Speaker 1: revert back to Trump, then re re re revert back
Speaker 1: to Harris three weeks after that, which would be the
Speaker 1: twenty ninth of October, which would be fine. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any polling suggesting one vice presidential option would help
Speaker 1: her more than any other would That will will have
Speaker 1: helped whatever would have helped. The Associated Press put out
Speaker 1: a poll on the first of the month, and the
Speaker 1: first of this month is so long ago that the
Speaker 1: poll offered a choice of Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly, Andy Bashier,
Speaker 1: and Roy Cooper. No Tim Walls and Cooper had withdrawn
Speaker 1: from consideration two days earlier, and he was still in
Speaker 1: the poll. In the poll, sixty percent of Americans, fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of Democrats did not know enough about Josh
Speaker 1: Shapiro to have an opinion about him, twenty percent liked him,
Speaker 1: twenty percent didn't like him. Seventy percent of Americans didn't
Speaker 1: know enough about Basher. Half of Americans knew enough about
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly, thirty percent liked him, twenty percent didn't. Half
Speaker 1: of them still didn't know who he was, and he's twins.
Speaker 1: They did. The Associated Press polsters somehow cobbled together enough
Speaker 1: data to offer approval data on Governor Walls and found
Speaker 1: ninety percent of Americans didn't know enough about him. But that,
Speaker 1: of course was before he invented the word weird. All
Speaker 1: the polling of Democrats seemed unanimous. If it was their choice,
Speaker 1: the vice president would be Pete Budajeg. What trumpists and
Speaker 1: of course political media have been looking for, dreaming of
Speaker 1: praying for, is democratic schism over anything Biden leaving the ticket. Oh,
Speaker 1: Democrats and disarrayed. Nope, we all agreed on that Harris
Speaker 1: become his successor. Out. We all agreed on that too.
Speaker 1: Who the vice president is, they'll oh, they'll beat each
Speaker 1: other at Nope. I think we're all going to agree
Speaker 1: on that the schism was over the president seeking reelection.
Speaker 1: The vice presidential choice is unlikely to leave a trail
Speaker 1: of disaffected Democrats vowing to stay home because it isn't
Speaker 1: Tim Kaine. Again and again, Reuter said it was Waltz
Speaker 1: or Shapiro. They and Mark Kelly met with her on Sunday,
Speaker 1: and all all I will do here is again hearken
Speaker 1: back to the eighties. On the night of July sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, it seemed so likely that former President Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford would agree to become Ronald Reagan's running mate that
Speaker 1: a bunch of morning newspapers around the country published the
Speaker 1: story as if it were a done deal, and a
Speaker 1: New York radio station was still going with it the
Speaker 1: next sunrise, hours actor the negotiations had collapsed. Of the
Speaker 1: two supposed finalists, my reaction is, sure, whoever you like,
Speaker 1: Madam Vice President, just write it down somewhere slightly deeper
Speaker 1: analysis points to these questions, how is it that Tim
Speaker 1: Walls reads old and Josh Shapiro reads young when Walls
Speaker 1: is only nine years and seventy six days older than Shapiro,
Speaker 1: and by the way, Mark Kelly is two months older
Speaker 1: than Walls. It's the hair and the glasses. Walls looks
Speaker 1: a little like Rupert Murdock because of the hair in
Speaker 1: the glasses. Solution, get them new classes, problem solved. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's deeper than that. I look at it and wonder
Speaker 1: exactly what Shapiro brings outside of being likely to help
Speaker 1: carry Pennsylvania, which is a lot. Don't underestimate that. But
Speaker 1: she might carry Pennsylvania anyway. You wonder if being Jewish
Speaker 1: still matters today, especially with the would be president's husband
Speaker 1: being Jewish. Then you wonder if we have any idea
Speaker 1: what matters anymore? Given that the Republicans have now run
Speaker 1: three elections in a row, an anti Semitic, anti democracy,
Speaker 1: racist bastard. I will say I didn't get any pop
Speaker 1: out of Kelly, who is married to a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: Walls has already shown signs he could become as unlikely
Speaker 1: a folk hero as we have in this country and
Speaker 1: whatever percentage of the Kamala Harris reminds everybody Trump is
Speaker 1: a crazy old man. Effect that would be given back
Speaker 1: by going with an older white man like Tim Walls
Speaker 1: is mitigated by the fact that unless she goes off
Speaker 1: the board with Buddhage Edge or somebody else, they are
Speaker 1: all older white men. Only Shapiro seems to have it
Speaker 1: more under control. I'm telling you, Tim Walls is five
Speaker 1: years younger than I am. You should be able to
Speaker 1: make sure he cleans up nice. He's already the first
Speaker 1: Democratic politician to stick a label on Trump. That has
Speaker 1: to mean a lot. If it's not the right choice
Speaker 1: for vice president, he's got to be a secretary of
Speaker 1: Memes or something. Obviously, the identity is the key here,
Speaker 1: but to me, almost as important is where the new
Speaker 1: team is going on its opening joint tour. Starting in Philly, Wow,
Speaker 1: no brainer, Wisconsin than Detroit, and finishing in Phoenix in
Speaker 1: Vegas completely logical. But in the middle they're going to Raleigh,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. They're going to Savannah. This buzz stuff is
Speaker 1: for real and it is spectacle And if you need
Speaker 1: any further inspiration, Yes, President Jimmy Carter who a month
Speaker 1: ago was said by his family to have just days left,
Speaker 1: has changed his mind. He has told his son he
Speaker 1: intends to hang on until at least November fifth, so
Speaker 1: he can vote for Kamala Harris for President of the
Speaker 1: United States. Given that, I think you and I can
Speaker 1: get our sorry asses out of bed one more time
Speaker 1: a week and do something more than we are doing now.
Speaker 1: I leave that to you to figure out what the
Speaker 1: hell that is.
Speaker 2: Woman in front of me hit a bear and killed it,
Speaker 2: a young bear. So I pulled over, and i'd picked
Speaker 2: up the bear and put him in the back of
Speaker 2: my van because I was going to skin the bear,
Speaker 2: and it was very good condition, and I was gonna
Speaker 2: and with the meat my refrigerator. I had an old
Speaker 2: bike in my card that somebody'd asked me to get
Speaker 2: rid of it. I said, let's go point the bear
Speaker 2: in the Central Park and we'll make it look like
Speaker 2: you got him by any fun funny for people. So
Speaker 2: everybody thought that's a great idea. So we one and
Speaker 2: did that, and we thought it would be a music
Speaker 2: for whoever found it or something. The next day it
Speaker 2: was like it was on every television station. It was
Speaker 2: a front page of every paper, and I turned on
Speaker 2: the TV and there was like a mile of yellow
Speaker 2: tape and there were twenty odd cards. There were a
Speaker 2: helicopter's lying over it, and I was like, oh my god, what.
Speaker 3: Did I do?
Speaker 1: So now we know why Kennedy got out in front
Speaker 1: of that dead bear cub story, with him telling it
Speaker 1: like it was a funny anecdote to a barely comprehending
Speaker 1: Roseanne Barr, who is in his house for some reason
Speaker 1: as he tells this story. Roseanne blinking at him as
Speaker 1: he tells it, I mean, way to bury the lead, Bob,
Speaker 1: Roseanne is in your house.
Speaker 3: Call the cops.
Speaker 1: Why did Kennedy do that video? First he served Trump.
Speaker 1: He pushed the President of Egypt's bid to bribe Don
Speaker 1: Old Trump with ten million dollars during the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 1: and then having the DOJ investigation shut down by Bill Barr.
Speaker 1: He pushed that right off the front page. We went
Speaker 1: from bar to bear. In fact, we went from bar
Speaker 1: to bear with Roseanne Barr. Second reason, as they said
Speaker 1: in the movie The American President, there's art. The New
Speaker 1: Yorker did not just have the story of the poor
Speaker 1: Derange changed former environmentalist finding a bear supposedly killed by
Speaker 1: a motorist, taking the body of the bear, deciding to
Speaker 1: skin it and eat it, then getting distracted because he'd
Speaker 1: already planned a day of falconing, as one does, and
Speaker 1: then after the falconing was done, going instead to a
Speaker 1: famous New York steakhouse where they do not serve bear,
Speaker 1: And he could have done the whole joke about do
Speaker 1: you have bear here? Do you serve bear? And they
Speaker 1: could have said no, and he could have said, oh,
Speaker 1: too bad, I have one in the car. So he
Speaker 1: still had the dead bear in his car, and he
Speaker 1: had to dump the bear somewhere, I guess before the
Speaker 1: car started to smell. So he drove to Central Park
Speaker 1: and dumped it there, But he put an old bicycle
Speaker 1: he just happened to have in his car on top
Speaker 1: of it to make it look like the bear had
Speaker 1: been killed by a cyclist. Well, not only did the
Speaker 1: New Yorker have all that, but it also had a
Speaker 1: photo of Bobby Kennedy Junior with his hand in the
Speaker 1: poor dead infant's mouth, pretending the bear was biting him.
Speaker 1: And reports from twenty fourteen have surface that the poor
Speaker 1: bear cub had stab and slash wounds. And oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, the photo of the cub and Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1: In the photo, Bobby Kennedy's fly is unzipped. I'll repeat that.
Speaker 1: In the photo, Bobby Kennedy's fly is unzipped. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you. I
Speaker 1: met Bob Kennedy once and I talked to him several
Speaker 1: times and he called me his hero, which was really
Speaker 1: flattering in two thousand and four, now not so much.
Speaker 1: We met on the field before a New York Mets
Speaker 1: game in twenty eleven and he hugged me, and there's
Speaker 1: a photo and I have to say, I know he's
Speaker 1: older than me, but boy, the last thirteen years have
Speaker 1: treated me better than I thought. Don't handle so many
Speaker 1: dead bears, Bob, all right? So the hero part was
Speaker 1: from actor the two thousand and four election, when I
Speaker 1: did a couple of reports on MSNBC questioning what the
Speaker 1: hell happened to the John Kerry vote in Ohio because
Speaker 1: none of the numbers seemed to make any sense. On
Speaker 1: election night, officials in Warren County, which is southern Ohio,
Speaker 1: like Newton Falls, Warren, Ohio, locked down the county administration
Speaker 1: building and threw all the reporters there from monitoring the
Speaker 1: vote count and announced that there was a terrorist threat
Speaker 1: that on a scale of one to ten was a ten,
Speaker 1: claiming the information came from an FBA agent. The FBI
Speaker 1: denied that then and denies it now. But they said
Speaker 1: there was a terrorism threat and everybody had to get
Speaker 1: out and they would just count the votes. Well, nobody
Speaker 1: was watching. Now. This made no sense whatsoever, because Warren
Speaker 1: County was Ohio Territory through and through. People in that
Speaker 1: part of Ohio speak with Southern accents. I knew one
Speaker 1: of them in college, and he said he was from Ohio,
Speaker 1: and I had never heard of anybody in Ohio who
Speaker 1: wasn't from Cleveland. And boy did he surprise. He told
Speaker 1: lot this. I swear to goodness. So Warren County should
Speaker 1: have gone very heavily for George Bush in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, and it did. And in two thousand only
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent of voters there had gone for Gore,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand and four twenty eight percent
Speaker 1: went for Kerry. Well, why would there be a suppression.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of suppression. The numbers look right. Twenty
Speaker 1: eight percent in twenty twenty eight percent two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: except that in two thousand al Gore stopped running TV
Speaker 1: commercials in Ohio many weeks before election day, and he
Speaker 1: had Ralph Nader going against him. In addition to Bush,
Speaker 1: Kerry competed in Ohio to the last, knowing that it
Speaker 1: would probably decide the election, and it did. There was
Speaker 1: no Nator or strong third party candidate. And yet, even
Speaker 1: despite all his additional efforts in Ohio, John Kerry got
Speaker 1: the same percentage of votes that al Gore had. And
Speaker 1: I said, how come? And the phone call came in
Speaker 1: the next day, you are my hero? And it was
Speaker 1: Bob Kennedy Junior. And imagine this, I mean understand, I
Speaker 1: was nine years old when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated the day my sister was born.
Speaker 1: There really is that kind of visceral family tie to
Speaker 1: that name. And he's telling me I'm his hero because
Speaker 1: I raised that question. Well, I soon found out that
Speaker 1: Bob seemed a little driven by conspiracy theories even twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. But given what happened to his father and
Speaker 1: his uncle and the subsequent you know, fifty years of
Speaker 1: daily new conspiracy theories about either or both of them.
Speaker 1: I kind of let him off the hook about the
Speaker 1: subject of conspiracy theories. Well, I made a huge mistake, because,
Speaker 1: as RFK Junior is discovering right now, the conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: eventually come around and catch you. He's caught. He is
Speaker 1: now caught. He is now caught between a bear and
Speaker 1: New York City. And a picture of himself with a
Speaker 1: bear and with his fly unzipped, caught between a bear
Speaker 1: and New York Cidy, New York.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, oh, Nancy.
Speaker 4: When you get caught between a bear and New York City.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes it eats you.
Speaker 4: If you stab a bear and claim it got hit
Speaker 4: by a bike in New York.
Speaker 5: City, the best that you can do is unzip your fly.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Nancy, fast run like the wind.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here, well, yes, my late pup me
Speaker 1: Nay is one of the finalists at the Animal Medical
Speaker 1: Center Paul Olympics, and you can see video of him
Speaker 1: leaping at their sites at Facebook and Instagram. AMC and
Speaker 1: y on Instagram, AMC Animal Medical Center New York on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Schwartzman Animal Medical Center on Facebook and you can vote,
Speaker 1: I presume for him, but it's freedom of choice here.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any polling on this. How does MiNet
Speaker 1: fair against Trump? Probably better than he was faring last week.
Speaker 1: In any event, you have to vote today or early tomorrow.
Speaker 1: For the Polympics, and having watched them, I'd have to say,
Speaker 1: there's some very impressive, you know, three legged agility dogs,
Speaker 1: and there's some cats that can jump like seventeen feet
Speaker 1: straight up in the air. I'm very impressed by them.
Speaker 1: Menasior winner. But besides that, there are two different Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justices on the three person worst person's list. And honestly,
Speaker 1: has anybody ever seen Clarence Thomas reading anything or listening
Speaker 1: to the lawyers at the Supreme Court, Because from what
Speaker 1: we know of him publicly, all he has done for
Speaker 1: the last twenty years is accept all expenses paid travel
Speaker 1: and vacations from Harlan Crowe. There's more of them. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown.
Speaker 6: This is Countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman, thank you.
Speaker 7: Bob Shepherd as portrayed by Larry David. David still ahead
Speaker 7: of us on this edition of Countdown. No more of
Speaker 7: those impressions. The singing was bad enough. The anniversary is Friday,
Speaker 7: and I am not going to bump Thurber on Friday
Speaker 7: for it. I mean, it's thirty six years now. All
Speaker 7: the principles in the story are pretty damn tired of it,
Speaker 7: although I love the story because it proves you can
Speaker 7: accomplish great things by getting out of the way, by
Speaker 7: doing nothing and just letting everybody else.
Speaker 1: Do all the work for you. I broke the story
Speaker 1: of the trade of Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers
Speaker 1: to the Los Angeles Kings as important a moment as
Speaker 1: there has been in the history of the development of
Speaker 1: hockey in this country, particularly anything west of Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: I did it by just answering the phone a couple times.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't even have to leave my office
Speaker 1: or anything. The Gretzky Trade of August nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: and my absolutely unnecessary role in breaking it, and things
Speaker 1: I promise not to tell next. First, there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the
Speaker 1: mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute
Speaker 1: today's wor bisons in the world. The morons worse Neil
Speaker 1: Gorsich of the Supreme Court. Gorsichis on the Biden ethics
Speaker 1: and term limits plan. Mister Gorsch, I hate to call
Speaker 1: him Justice, It would be meant ironically. Justice Gorsich says,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into what is now a
Speaker 1: political issue during a presidential election year. I don't think
Speaker 1: that would be helpful. And then he gets into a
Speaker 1: political issue during a presidential election year. He adds, quote,
Speaker 1: I just say, be careful, hey, Justice, which one of
Speaker 1: you perjured yourself in front of the Senate about Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade gorsicic Biden should be careful. No, you should be careful.
Speaker 1: Remember how Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney ended up when
Speaker 1: everybody decided they weren't going to listen to him anymore
Speaker 1: in a boarding house by himself, counting his fingers and
Speaker 1: toes Worser. This is the Supreme Court edition of the
Speaker 1: program The Silver goes to Justice Clarence Thomas. Now you
Speaker 1: think he would have met his quota of graft and
Speaker 1: corruption and bribetaking. But no, no, no, he hasn't. From
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Thomas failed to publicly disclose additional
Speaker 1: private travel. Has anybody ever seen him at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: I mean when Laura Ingram and I went out on
Speaker 1: our one actual date that was not a hostage drama
Speaker 1: where she took me hostage. That was the one in
Speaker 1: New York. The one actual date we went on was
Speaker 1: in Washington, and she took me to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and had me sit in Justice Thomas's chair at the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, at the main room, at the main courting room,
Speaker 1: at the Supremeist of the Supreme Court portions. She had
Speaker 1: me sit there so I can say I put my
Speaker 1: ass in Clarence Thomas's seat and did nothing for this
Speaker 1: country exactly as he would have done. Well, the point
Speaker 1: of my mentioning it now is he wasn't there. Then
Speaker 1: has anybody ever at we've seen him at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: It seems to be all he does is drive around
Speaker 1: the world in an RV and get carried places by
Speaker 1: people paying for him. And he doesn't seem to think
Speaker 1: there's anything wrong with this. Billions of dollars worth of
Speaker 1: free travel, all right, billions maybe an exaggeration, but The
Speaker 1: Times reports he failed to publicly disclose private travel provided
Speaker 1: by the wealthy conservative donor Harlan Crow. Again what does
Speaker 1: he do for a living? Well, I move, I'm involved
Speaker 1: in logistics. What kind of logistics I move? Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: around the country. A top Democratic senator has said this
Speaker 1: in a letter filed yesterday Customs and Border Protection Records.
Speaker 1: Customs and Border, I mean when he had to go
Speaker 1: through customs in his graft. Are you going to declare anything? Yes,
Speaker 1: I take a bribe here, I'm taking a bribe. Customs
Speaker 1: and Border Protection Records revealed that the Justice and his wife, Virginia,
Speaker 1: took a round trip between Hawaii and New Zealand in
Speaker 1: November twenty ten on mister Crow's private jet. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that's not a short hop. That's not going from one
Speaker 1: Hawaiian island to the other. And what's the difference it's
Speaker 1: to a foreign country on a private dime. You're declaring
Speaker 1: me think, oh, I'm corrupt as f According to Wyden's letters,
Speaker 1: Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat of Oregon, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite senators, writing to mister Crow's lawyer demanding that he
Speaker 1: supply more information about the financial relationship between the two men.
Speaker 1: You know what's worse than this? In Republican circles, the
Speaker 1: thing that may actually undo Clarence Thomas. It's not the graft.
Speaker 1: They admire the graft. They all think they're going to
Speaker 1: get a cut of the graft. Their goal is to
Speaker 1: be that way. There's studies done of conservatives who believe
Speaker 1: that their financial situation will someday be everything they've ever wanted.
Speaker 1: Conservatives worth ten thousand dollars are convinced they're going to
Speaker 1: become multi millionaires. That's what the Trump appeal is. They've
Speaker 1: done study after study after study indicating this is literally true.
Speaker 1: This is the way they think all going to win
Speaker 1: the lottery. They're convinced of this. They admire this. Look
Speaker 1: at what this self made man has done. He has
Speaker 1: managed himself into a position of being the most bribed
Speaker 1: man in America, more than more than an usher at
Speaker 1: a ballpark fifty years ago when you could pay him
Speaker 1: fifty cents and get a better seat. You know what's
Speaker 1: going to do him in with the Republicans though not this.
Speaker 1: They're gonna build a statue to him and you know,
Speaker 1: out of gold. What's going to undo him is when
Speaker 1: they all realize that Clarence's wife never had any children.
Speaker 1: So that means, according to the Republicans. They should be
Speaker 1: set adrift on a loose iceberg somewhere. Do I have
Speaker 1: that right? Jd Vance if that is your real name?
Speaker 1: But our winner, the worst e lawn Musk, the whiney
Speaker 1: little b word immigrant son of a You may have
Speaker 1: heard that he responded to violent protests in England stoked
Speaker 1: by the right wing and falsely blamed on immigrants, of
Speaker 1: which Elon Musk is one. In this country and in
Speaker 1: several others. He has written in response to this, civil
Speaker 1: war is inevitable. Now, apart from the fact that he
Speaker 1: owns a website and he is seemingly encouraging civil war
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, it turns out that last November
Speaker 1: Elon Musk responded to another one of these money idiots
Speaker 1: on Twitter zero Hedge by answering something that he posted
Speaker 1: on November first of last year, civil war is brewing.
Speaker 1: On the thirteenth of last November to Radio Genoa, Europe
Speaker 1: appears to be headed for civil war. On October twentieth,
Speaker 1: he wrote Europe is sted for civil war? Something else
Speaker 1: like that on October fourteenth last year, let's see civil
Speaker 1: war is brewing? November one, if corrupt trends continue, he
Speaker 1: wrote to Douglas K. Murray on the tenth of October
Speaker 1: last year, civil war in Europe is inevitable, among other things.
Speaker 1: Elon seems to be wrong a lot on this one topic.
Speaker 1: But that's not gonna stop him. He's gonna keep writing
Speaker 1: that civil war is inevitable, even though it clearly is not.
Speaker 1: It's almost We have what five examples, six examples here?
Speaker 1: God knows how many more we all have lives to
Speaker 1: live on like this pasty idiot. Well he has to
Speaker 1: worry about is if he gets his ozempic in on time.
Speaker 1: How many times has he claimed this as if he
Speaker 1: wanted civil wars, if there were money in civil war?
Speaker 1: Well it probably is, Elon. How has he not o
Speaker 1: deed yet? Musk civil war? My ass two days worst
Speaker 1: person and the world. The phone rang in my office
Speaker 1: at Channel five in La I am a viewer. I
Speaker 1: took a deep breath. You never knew where a call
Speaker 1: that started like that was going to end up. I
Speaker 1: just wanted you to know. I was out golfing at
Speaker 1: Riviera at the Riviera Club this afternoon, and Bruce McNall,
Speaker 1: the owner of the Kings, well he just walked through
Speaker 1: the locker room saying, hey, guys, if you want to
Speaker 1: buy your season Kings tickets, do it now. I just
Speaker 1: traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price is going to go
Speaker 1: up next week. To be polite to the viewer, I
Speaker 1: asked a few questions, but frankly, the story was pretty stupid.
Speaker 1: This was the second week of August nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of talk that the Edmonton
Speaker 1: Oilers were going to trade Wayne Gretzky, the most famous
Speaker 1: player in hockey, and there was nearly as much talk
Speaker 1: that that trade would send him to use in La.
Speaker 1: But the owner of the Kings just telling passers by
Speaker 1: at random in a golf clubhouse that he had just
Speaker 1: made the trade. I was suspicious that I was being pranked.
Speaker 1: Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang again. Hi, I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of yours and I watch every night. Here
Speaker 1: we go again. I was just having lunch with a
Speaker 1: friend of mine out here at the golf course in
Speaker 1: bel Air, and like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall
Speaker 1: shows up in the dining room and asks for everybody's attention,
Speaker 1: and he says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky,
Speaker 1: and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I
Speaker 1: was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel
Speaker 1: five in Los Angeles, and for months there had been
Speaker 1: rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel
Speaker 1: two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly
Speaker 1: because I was moving down the street to Channel two.
Speaker 1: The deal had been done months earlier. We were going
Speaker 1: to announce it that week. In fact, as these two
Speaker 1: guys called in, I had actually been busily packing up
Speaker 1: my Channel five office. My thought now was that the
Speaker 1: sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit
Speaker 1: of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a
Speaker 1: real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as
Speaker 1: popular as he was, was setting me up. I had
Speaker 1: once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about
Speaker 1: to break a story about a big LA football trade.
Speaker 1: There was no breaking story because there was no trade,
Speaker 1: and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having
Speaker 1: clearly stolen it from me because I was the one
Speaker 1: who had made it up. And oh was he furious
Speaker 1: at me for all I knew he wanted to embarrass me.
Speaker 1: Three weeks before I moved into direct competition with him
Speaker 1: at five, six, and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight was in fact my first day back after I
Speaker 1: had burned all my Channel five vacation time, and for
Speaker 1: all I knew, this guy at NBC had been having
Speaker 1: his staffers call me for a week with made up
Speaker 1: sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly, I
Speaker 1: never believed was going to happen. I mean not to
Speaker 1: get two side tracked here. But one day my phone
Speaker 1: rang and it was a kid who said, Hi, mister Oelberman.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I'm a final as to be an
Speaker 1: intern here Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan
Speaker 1: says I can have the spot, but only if I
Speaker 1: call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If
Speaker 1: I call you up and I tell you to go
Speaker 1: f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit,
Speaker 1: he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became
Speaker 1: a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then
Speaker 1: a correspondent for ABC and now CNN, and I have
Speaker 1: not let a year go by since without reminding him
Speaker 1: of his f yourself internship phone call. He said, life
Speaker 1: paid him back by making him work with the guy
Speaker 1: for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky night. Two supposed
Speaker 1: listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner
Speaker 1: of the La Kings, is apparently trapesing through golf locker
Speaker 1: rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them
Speaker 1: he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey,
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me.
Speaker 1: I'm suspicious. And now the phone rings again. This guy
Speaker 1: was playing golf at the La country Club. Same story. McNall,
Speaker 1: buy your Kams tickets. Now, I just got Kretzky. The
Speaker 1: next caller had been it yet a fourth club, I
Speaker 1: think Wilshire or something. If this was a prankett was
Speaker 1: a big one, and bluntly I had begun to admire it.
Speaker 1: Finally came a fifth call. You don't know me, but
Speaker 1: I watch you every night. I stumbled onto a story.
Speaker 1: I think you want to run tonight. I said, which
Speaker 1: golf course were you at? And he said, excuse me.
Speaker 1: I was in my office all day and so was
Speaker 1: my missus. She's on the phone with me. She works
Speaker 1: for Bruce McNall. The Kings. This time, I grabbed a pencil, Honey,
Speaker 1: why don't you take it from here? And she did.
Speaker 1: She worked in the finance office and she had, literally,
Speaker 1: she said, just made out a check for fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington.
Speaker 1: She said, and the note memo where you write what
Speaker 1: it's for, I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky.
Speaker 1: She also had seen the trade contract identified the players
Speaker 1: the Kings were going to give up with the fifteen
Speaker 1: million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martin Zellnah.
Speaker 1: There were also draft choices, but she didn't know or
Speaker 1: didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless, I
Speaker 1: asked her if I could call her back through the
Speaker 1: switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's
Speaker 1: offices were, just to confirm she was who she said
Speaker 1: she was. She said, I could, I did, she was.
Speaker 1: I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the
Speaker 1: only person on the McNall financial team that did not
Speaker 1: get charged with something. So now I went in to
Speaker 1: talk to my news director and to the producer of
Speaker 1: our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It
Speaker 1: was now about seven. They were very excited, and they
Speaker 1: said that given that I had exact details from a
Speaker 1: King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of
Speaker 1: the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf
Speaker 1: course he could reach that we should run it, and
Speaker 1: that we should run it as the lead news story
Speaker 1: right at the start of the newscast that night, which
Speaker 1: we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but
Speaker 1: as soon as I got off the air with my
Speaker 1: sports cast the second time I reported this story, a
Speaker 1: reporter from the Associated Press was on the phone asking
Speaker 1: me to read him my script, which he then quoted
Speaker 1: word for word and put out on their sports wire.
Speaker 1: It was on the back page of the New York Post.
Speaker 1: The next day. My friends called me from New York
Speaker 1: to say, hey, your sports cast is on the back
Speaker 1: page of the New York Post along with this big
Speaker 1: picture of Wayne Gretzky. The leak caused the Kings to
Speaker 1: move up the announcement of the deal from their original plan,
Speaker 1: which was Thursday the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday
Speaker 1: the ninth, A King's vice president told me at the
Speaker 1: press conference that the Oilers were enraged because they had
Speaker 1: wanted to hold off until the eleventh, because the deadline
Speaker 1: for their season ticket holders to get their deposits back
Speaker 1: were Wednesday the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to
Speaker 1: let me of all the TV guys interview Gretzky first Live,
Speaker 1: and I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually
Speaker 1: congratulated me on the scoop, and I said I didn't
Speaker 1: do anything but answer the phone, and he thought about
Speaker 1: it for a second and said pretty much the same
Speaker 1: for me, and we've been friendly ever since. But the
Speaker 1: laziest scoop of all time did eventually come back with
Speaker 1: a sting for me and some payback. A year later,
Speaker 1: we all submitted our best stories for consideration for the
Speaker 1: local Emmy for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar
Speaker 1: year nineteen eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop.
Speaker 1: The Emmys were always judged by a committee of television
Speaker 1: types from a different city, so he didn't have that
Speaker 1: home La Bias and the guy from NBC, who I
Speaker 1: had first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story,
Speaker 1: had somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio.
Speaker 1: In Columbus, Ohio, I think, so he managed to get
Speaker 1: an interview with Morgana the Kissing Bandit, who was this
Speaker 1: scantily clad, buxome woman you may remember, who in the
Speaker 1: old days of innocence, used to bribe her way onto
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball fields, then bounce out onto the plate
Speaker 1: or the mound, and she'd go and kiss stars like
Speaker 1: George Brent and Nolan Ryan during games. Morgana MORGANA. Roberts
Speaker 1: lived near Columbus, Ohio, so sure enough, at the Emmys
Speaker 1: the next year, my exclusive report of the trade of
Speaker 1: Hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky was one of the finalists
Speaker 1: for the Los Angeles Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But
Speaker 1: in the ceremony, and it was at some old Landmark
Speaker 1: hotel in Pasadena, they showed clips of all the pieces
Speaker 1: that were finalists and then announced that the winner was
Speaker 1: Fred Rogan KNBC. For being chased by Morgana the Kissing Bandit,
Speaker 1: my agent stood up and bowed my girlfriend, punched me
Speaker 1: in the arm and said let's get out of here
Speaker 1: and go drinking. We left every time I've seen Wayne
Speaker 1: Gretzky since that day, and they let me do the
Speaker 1: first TV interview with him live on LA Television, and
Speaker 1: then they all laughed about how the oilers got stuck
Speaker 1: with all those returned season ticket deposits because I broke
Speaker 1: the story prematurely. Every time I've seen Wayne since then,
Speaker 1: he's given me kind of a dead fish look, like
Speaker 1: I screwed up some plans. But interestingly, missus Wayne the
Speaker 1: Great Janet Jones just looked at me and went smiled
Speaker 1: prettily and went thanks like that. It was really sweet.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, musical
Speaker 1: directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music.
Speaker 1: Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration in keyboards, Mister Ray was
Speaker 1: on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers, and they can correctly and truthfully say they
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with my singing. Our satirical and
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments, however, are by the best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: or agaist ever, Nancy Faust, who has stepped into the
Speaker 1: world of composition for the first time. She was the
Speaker 1: one who suggested that song. So thank you, Nancy and Dress.
Speaker 1: Address all of your letters of complaint to Nancy care
Speaker 1: of care of me. I guess the sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis,
Speaker 1: courtesy of ESPN Inc. We haven't played the sports music
Speaker 1: in so long. Hold on a second. You know what
Speaker 1: I should do right now? I have control here. I
Speaker 1: should just play the sports music so that you remember
Speaker 1: what on earth the sports music sounds like. See if
Speaker 1: I could still find it here on the control panel.
Speaker 1: It's got to be here, somewhere, oh here. It is
Speaker 1: pretty good.
Speaker 7: Huh Yeah.
Speaker 1: I suggested they use that on ESPN two all those
Speaker 1: years ago. It was produced by ESPN two and appears
Speaker 1: courtesy of ESPN Inc. And it was written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis, a lovely man I've never met, but he
Speaker 1: ray he did that song. That's based on a bongo
Speaker 1: drum song that played in Ken Burns's last addition to
Speaker 1: the documentary about Baseball. I know you're not listening anymore,
Speaker 1: so I can just keep talking about this. How about
Speaker 1: we restrike the music for the uh for the outo
Speaker 1: we call it the the outro music there it is,
Speaker 1: as it was saying, other music arranged and performed by
Speaker 1: the group No horns allowed. They have been so pleased
Speaker 1: by their association with this pro that they broke up
Speaker 1: as a crew. My announcer today was my friend Larry
Speaker 1: David doing his impression Bob Sheppard, the late announcer at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium. Everything else was pretty much my fault. This
Speaker 1: is my actual Bob Sheppard impression from fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: when an outfielder named Bernie Carbo played for the Boston
Speaker 1: Red Sox and Bob Shepard did two seasons announcing at
Speaker 1: Shay Stadium, the home of the Mets, the temporary home
Speaker 1: of the New York Yankees, and leading off for the
Speaker 1: Red Sox number one Bernie Cobble number one. My announcer
Speaker 1: today was my friend Larry David, and everything else is
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the ninety
Speaker 1: second day until the twenty twenty four presidential election. They
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventh day since convicted felon Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
Speaker 1: United States use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the
Speaker 1: mental health system. You've got it. President Biden used presidential
Speaker 1: immunity to stop him from doing it again. While we
Speaker 1: still can, well you still can. And also anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: anti immigration, nut job Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news
Speaker 1: requires till then. I'm Keith Overman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. One last air it out.
Speaker 4: When you get caught between a bear and New York Sea,
Speaker 4: sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes it eats you. Do
Speaker 4: if you stab a bear and claim it got hit
Speaker 4: by a bike in New York City, the best that
Speaker 4: you can do is unsimp your fly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Nancy.
Speaker 4: Fast Run Like the Wind.
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.