Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
Speaker 1: obvious problem with General John Kelly going on the record
Speaker 1: and saying, yes, I heard Trump say quote I need
Speaker 1: the kind of generals that Hitler had is that a
Speaker 1: huge number of his supporters will applaud this. And the
Speaker 1: obvious problem with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoting those
Speaker 1: who were there and notes taken at the meeting as
Speaker 1: Trump was told the cost of the funeral he had
Speaker 1: offered to pay for for a murdered US soldier named
Speaker 1: Vanessa Gien, and Trump screamed, quote, it doesn't cost sixty
Speaker 1: thousand bucks to bury an e fing Mexican, don't pay
Speaker 1: it is that even more of Trump's supporters will applaud that,
Speaker 1: because the real disgusting, nauseating truth behind the revelations in
Speaker 1: the Goldberg Atlantic piece is that it touches the third
Speaker 1: and fourth rails of Donald Trump's America. Many of his
Speaker 1: people believe whoever is in charge should be supported by
Speaker 1: and in fact kept in power by the kind of
Speaker 1: generals Hitler had. The anti Semites and the Trump cult
Speaker 1: love it, obviously, and the ones who aren't anti Semites
Speaker 1: just authoritarians love it, obviously, even if they're queasy about
Speaker 1: the anti Semitism and the ones who aren't anti Semites
Speaker 1: and aren't authoritarians but have always just secretly believed the
Speaker 1: word democracy was merely another brand name or flavor of government.
Speaker 1: They love it because it posits a kind of America
Speaker 1: not just where might makes right, but where only might
Speaker 1: makes right, and where only whites have might. And if
Speaker 1: there is anybody missing from the Trump coalition of evil,
Speaker 1: anybody who isn't inspired by the kind of generals that
Speaker 1: Hitler had, they are certainly covered by It doesn't cost
Speaker 1: sixty thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican. Because if
Speaker 1: violence and militarism are the Trumpian third rail, racism and
Speaker 1: specifically anti Hispanic racism are the Trumpian fourth rail. The
Speaker 1: rest of us have danced around this reality because the
Speaker 1: alternative is to recognize just how much larger it is
Speaker 1: than we want to believe in our worst moments, just
Speaker 1: how much racism still seeps into the brains not just
Speaker 1: of the Trumpsts, but of some of the moderates we know,
Speaker 1: and even some of the liberals we know. But since
Speaker 1: Trump came down that escalator so excited by what he
Speaker 1: was about to say, denigrating immigrants and Mexicans, that he
Speaker 1: almost bothered to move and walk rather than just stand
Speaker 1: there in gelatinous pride and ride down the escalator. That's
Speaker 1: that moment. This has not been about undocumented immigration or
Speaker 1: even illegal aliens. It's been entirely about Hispanics. In exactly
Speaker 1: the same way the first two hundred years of our
Speaker 1: history was at route entirely about African Americans. And the
Speaker 1: reason we have never solved this Hispanic immigration crisis, the
Speaker 1: reason the Republicans have made sure for forty goddamned years
Speaker 1: that there always has been an immigration crisis and always
Speaker 1: will be an immigration crisis, was to give their people
Speaker 1: somebody to hate. Only Trump, after a life in which
Speaker 1: he inexplicably was not killed by some kid at NIMA,
Speaker 1: the New York Military Academy who snapped after being dangled
Speaker 1: out a window by Trump one time too many, or
Speaker 1: he wasn't killed by somebody else's husband, or he wasn't
Speaker 1: killed by drugs or disco or whatever in the seventies,
Speaker 1: a life in which he started by believing he was
Speaker 1: immortal and untouchable and that there were no consequences, but
Speaker 1: he got worse from there. Only Trump would have been
Speaker 1: stupid enough to tear up this exquisite stitching of the
Speaker 1: quilt of excuses for why the immigration crisis wasn't actually
Speaker 1: an immigration crisis, but just an excuse to let the
Speaker 1: pasty white folks hate the brown people and blame them
Speaker 1: and abuse them, and all the while make sure that
Speaker 1: there never really was any significant change to the importation
Speaker 1: of migrant labor from Mexico and Latin America. Hell, let's
Speaker 1: drop the euphemisms. There never really was any significant change
Speaker 1: to the importation of virtual slave labor from Mexico and
Speaker 1: Latin America and Puerto Rico for that matter, because they
Speaker 1: actually tried that once in the state of Georgia thirteen
Speaker 1: years ago. They promised roundups, they did some deportations, and
Speaker 1: guess what, all the the people in this country in Georgia,
Speaker 1: without documentation, got the hell out of Georgia before the
Speaker 1: deadline and went and worked the farms in other states,
Speaker 1: and something like three hundred million dollars worth of Georgia
Speaker 1: crops rotted in the fields because guess who would not
Speaker 1: harvest it? The fat, stupid white people in Georgia who
Speaker 1: had kicked out all the immigrants. The new problem, of course,
Speaker 1: the new twist in this, the new reason his supporters
Speaker 1: will cheer Trump insulting this poor woman, Private Vanessa Gien,
Speaker 1: murdered at her army base, and cheer his use of
Speaker 1: the phrase it doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury
Speaker 1: an effing Mexican and the follow up, don't pay it?
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? Effing people trying to rip me off?
Speaker 1: Is that Trump, of course, is insane. Somewhere along the
Speaker 1: line he forgot that the only way you can keep
Speaker 1: the machine going harvest the crops, keep the restaurant open,
Speaker 1: not pay the fry cook, and make sure they are
Speaker 1: all here so that the fat, stupid white people get
Speaker 1: away with hating them. Because what are these immigrants going
Speaker 1: to do? Complain? We've made sure they are here illegally,
Speaker 1: and if they complain they can and are deported daily.
Speaker 1: The only way you keep that machine going is to
Speaker 1: not let somebody insane like Trump tell the truth that
Speaker 1: what you see now is the way it has been
Speaker 1: carefully crafted, mostly by Republicans, for forty goddamned years, in
Speaker 1: a way that even Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell
Speaker 1: never foresaw, not the two minutes hate from the novel
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, but the endless hate, the perpetual hate.
Speaker 1: You can't have Trump tell the truth that this is
Speaker 1: built into the American economy and cannot be altered unless
Speaker 1: the Republicans stop hating, or unless, like he wants, they
Speaker 1: start hating more and actually try to round up all
Speaker 1: the Hispanics and put them in concentration camps and deport
Speaker 1: some and probably kill way more, which is what Trump
Speaker 1: is going to do, which over the course of his
Speaker 1: decade poisoning the United States of America, he has spread
Speaker 1: to his cult. So now they have no concept, no
Speaker 1: moment's thought that without the people he has told them
Speaker 1: it is okay to despise and blame for everything and
Speaker 1: probably kill America, particularly red state America, will fall apart.
Speaker 1: They don't understand this. They don't understand that because the
Speaker 1: quote effing Mexicans, Trump thinks it costs him too much
Speaker 1: to bury. They keep the nation running, and to think
Speaker 1: like Trump for a second, they help the productive parts
Speaker 1: of this country underwrite the money losing states and permit
Speaker 1: them the fat wi pasty white people to go to
Speaker 1: their beloved McDonald's, which is now just another symbol for
Speaker 1: more corporate hoaring and stunt staging for fascism. After that
Speaker 1: pathetic Trump immorality play over the weekend, and now these
Speaker 1: people can go to goddamned McDonald's and get a goddamn
Speaker 1: big mac made of crap that would cost them otherwise
Speaker 1: thirty seven dollars and ninety eight cents. Have a happy meal.
Speaker 1: Here's change. Back on your one hundred. But back to Hitler.
Speaker 1: If you have not read mister Goldberg's piece in The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: I urge you to do so. I won't further steal
Speaker 1: his thunder except to quote three long passages and to
Speaker 1: underscore one truly new and disturbing bit of information in
Speaker 1: the context of another news development unrelated to the story.
Speaker 1: Let me quote him about General Kelly. This week, I
Speaker 1: asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when
Speaker 1: Trump raised the subject of German generals, Kelly responded by asking,
Speaker 1: do you mean Bismarck's generals? He went on, I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was or about
Speaker 1: the Franco Prussian War. I said, do you mean the
Speaker 1: Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals, and he said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler's generals. I explained to him that Rommel had to
Speaker 1: commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.
Speaker 1: Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel. This
Speaker 1: wasn't the only time, Goldberg writes Kelly felt compelled to
Speaker 1: instruct Trump on military history. In twenty eighteen, Trump asked
Speaker 1: Kelly to explain who the good guys were in World
Speaker 1: War One. Kelly responded by explaining simple rule, presidents should,
Speaker 1: as a matter of politics and policy, remember that the
Speaker 1: good guys in any given conflict are the country's allied
Speaker 1: with the United States. There is a sketch by the
Speaker 1: group Kids in the Hall in which an actress played
Speaker 1: by the Great Dave Foley gets up to accept an
Speaker 1: award and thanks her manager and thanks the audience, and
Speaker 1: thanks her director, and thanks her agent adds oh, and
Speaker 1: thank Hitler and waits for the applause, and instead it's
Speaker 1: her manager played by the great Kevin MacDonald, dragging her
Speaker 1: off the stage while she complains that they did an
Speaker 1: applaud and he says, with terror in his voice, do
Speaker 1: you think Hitler? And she matter factly says, oh, I
Speaker 1: never did no, And half the time I read something
Speaker 1: about Trump and Hitler, I am waiting for Trump's Dave
Speaker 1: Foley moment when Trump gets up there and literally thanks Hitler.
Speaker 1: And now reading all of this, I realize it's already happened.
Speaker 1: It was just in private. Let me cutting out of
Speaker 1: Goldberger's conclusion because it circles back to my starting point here,
Speaker 1: and then I'll drop the new info he broke. One day,
Speaker 1: he writes, in the first year of Trump's presidency, I
Speaker 1: had lunch with Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, in
Speaker 1: his White House office. I turned the discussion as soon
Speaker 1: as I could, to the subject of his father in
Speaker 1: law's character. I mentioned one of Trump's recent outbursts and
Speaker 1: told Kushner that, in my opinion, the president's behavior was
Speaker 1: damaging to the country. I cited as I tend to
Speaker 1: do what is in my view, Trump's original sin, his
Speaker 1: mockery of John McCain's heroism. This is where our conversation
Speaker 1: got strange and noteworthy. Kushner answered in a way that
Speaker 1: made it seem as though he agreed with me. Quote,
Speaker 1: no one can go as low as the president. He said,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't even try. I found this baffling for a moment,
Speaker 1: he writes, But then I understood Kushner wasn't insulting his
Speaker 1: father in law. He was paying him a compliment. In
Speaker 1: Trump's mind, traditional values, values, including those embraced by the
Speaker 1: armed forces of the United States, having to do with honor,
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, and integrity, have no merit, no relevance, and
Speaker 1: no meaning. Unquote. See you and I are appalled by
Speaker 1: the Hitler's general's quote and the effing Mexican quote. And
Speaker 1: by next week Trump will be selling mrch or soliciting
Speaker 1: donations based on those quotes. In any event, here is
Speaker 1: the new stuff about Trump's other role models, not the
Speaker 1: old Nazis, but the current Chinese quoting him again on
Speaker 1: separate occasions. In twenty twenty, Trump held private conversations in
Speaker 1: the White House with National security officials about the George
Speaker 1: Floyd protests quote. The Chinese generals would know what to do,
Speaker 1: he said, according to former officials who described the conversations
Speaker 1: to me, referring to the leaders of the People's Liberation Army,
Speaker 1: which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Trump's desire to deploy US troops against American citizens is
Speaker 1: well documented. During the nerve racking period of social unrest
Speaker 1: following Floyd's death, Trump asked Milly and Esper, a West
Speaker 1: Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the army could
Speaker 1: shoot protesters. Trump seen unable to think straight and calmly,
Speaker 1: Esper wrote in his memoir, the protest and violence had
Speaker 1: him so enraged that he was willing to send in
Speaker 1: active duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet,
Speaker 1: he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense
Speaker 1: of history, of propriety and of his oath to the constitution.
Speaker 1: As pertold National Public Radio in twenty twenty two, we
Speaker 1: reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly
Speaker 1: at General Milly and said, can't you just shoot them?
Speaker 1: Just shoot them in the legs or something. When defense
Speaker 1: officials argued against Trump's desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses,
Speaker 1: you are all efing losers. Now Here's why that's a problem,
Speaker 1: Because Trump and his cults are not only ready for
Speaker 1: a fight like that, they are spoiling for one, and
Speaker 1: they are spoiling for one next month. Polling by the
Speaker 1: Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution suggests that
Speaker 1: if Trump loses two weeks from now, just slightly less
Speaker 1: than one in five Republicans thinks he should declare the
Speaker 1: results invalid and do whatever it takes to seize power.
Speaker 1: The actual number is nineteen percent, but among those who
Speaker 1: trust Fox News the most of all news outlets, it's
Speaker 1: thirty percent who think Trump should do this. For those
Speaker 1: who trust Fox and or the even more extreme propaganda channels,
Speaker 1: it's forty one percent. Also, thirty percent of Republicans quote
Speaker 1: believe that true American patriots may have to resort to
Speaker 1: violence to save the country. This poll being commissioned by
Speaker 1: a religious group. After all, they broke it down by religion.
Speaker 1: Twenty eight percent of Evangelical Protestant Republicans think violence may
Speaker 1: be needed, as do and this may surprise you twenty
Speaker 1: eight percent of Mormons, sorry, Mitt Low. The end of
Speaker 1: the religious pro violence scale is ten percent, and that
Speaker 1: would be Jewish Republicans. Happily, there does seem to be
Speaker 1: a growing consensus on this front. Forty nine percent of
Speaker 1: Americans in this survey, Americans of all political parties, faiths,
Speaker 1: and heritage agree there is a real danger Trump will
Speaker 1: use the presidency to become a dictator. Do I think
Speaker 1: the nation will erupt in organized, sustained violence after the election,
Speaker 1: I do not sporadic violence terrorism or terrorism adjacent violence. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I would prepare yourself for that. And I hate to
Speaker 1: sound anything like one of the people in that poll
Speaker 1: I just quoted by Nay. I am comforted at night
Speaker 1: by reminding myself that Trump and the Trump cult dreams
Speaker 1: of seeing tanks on the streets. And forgive me for this,
Speaker 1: but I'm comforted by the realization that if if it
Speaker 1: comes to that, if it comes to that next month,
Speaker 1: or in December or in January, it'll be grim, and
Speaker 1: it will be tragic, and it will be satisfying to
Speaker 1: see all the trumpe Ists suddenly realize that the tanks
Speaker 1: in the streets aren't theirs. The tanks in the streets
Speaker 1: are Americas. A couple of poll notes as breaking news yesterday,
Speaker 1: I told you the Emerson poll found that around twenty
Speaker 1: percent of voters had chosen Harris or Trump in the
Speaker 1: last month. So late deciders were breaking sixty to thirty
Speaker 1: seven for the vice president. And how much that could
Speaker 1: mean in net vote gain. It could give her twenty
Speaker 1: five twenty seven thousand net votes her votes minus his
Speaker 1: votes just in Pennsylvania, eb. Seven hundred thousand nationwide. Now,
Speaker 1: CNBC reports from its polling that young voters are also
Speaker 1: breaking late for Kamala Harris. In similar numbers, voters under
Speaker 1: thirty five are now sixty to forty for Harris over Trump,
Speaker 1: and that was not the way it was in July.
Speaker 1: It was Harris forty six, Trump thirty four, with twenty
Speaker 1: one percent favoring a third party candidate like the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Phone Sex. In other words, voters under thirty five
Speaker 1: grew up. So Harris leads Trump by twenty points in
Speaker 1: voters under thirty five, and in twenty twenty Joe Biden
Speaker 1: won by twenty points with voters under thirty five. If you,
Speaker 1: for some reason, like the less reliable metapolling, you gov
Speaker 1: for the Times of London and Reuter's ipsos have Harris
Speaker 1: by three. In new polls, Morning Consult has Harris by four.
Speaker 1: There's also a rash of junk polls showing Trump tied
Speaker 1: or head. One of them showing him ahead in New
Speaker 1: Mexico was literally made up by one of his crazier
Speaker 1: ex ambassadors. She has been ahead of him by seven
Speaker 1: and a half points or more in New Mexico with
Speaker 1: virtually no change, a solid series of straight lines across
Speaker 1: the bar graph for more than a month, and a
Speaker 1: reminder from weeks ago that this was planned because when
Speaker 1: he declares on election night that he won, or he
Speaker 1: declares afterwards that he must have been robbed, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: why would these polls I'm holding have said he was winning.
Speaker 1: These chunk poles, the ones that are coming out right now,
Speaker 1: will give him something to hold in his hand besides
Speaker 1: his Arnold Palmer. One more. ABC News reported last night
Speaker 1: that a quote proposed personnel roster circulating within Trump's can
Speaker 1: campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge
Speaker 1: who threw out Trump's classified documents case, Eileen Cannon as
Speaker 1: a possible candidate for Attorney General. No in this country.
Speaker 1: Two things, how could she possibly be worse than Merrick Garland?
Speaker 1: And how could she possibly wind up doing more for
Speaker 1: Trump than Merrick Garland? Secondly, Cannon the former yoga and
Speaker 1: flamenco correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, and I wish
Speaker 1: I were making that up. Is clearly more qualified to
Speaker 1: be Attorney general than she is a federal judge. LEBC
Speaker 1: says she is the second name on the list out
Speaker 1: of nearly a dozen ages led by j Clayton, former
Speaker 1: Chairman of the SEC. Trump's expert on how to make
Speaker 1: illegal legal, Mike Davis, is on the list, as is
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Can I p on my pants now Clark, who
Speaker 1: tried to freelance a coup during the transition and was
Speaker 1: then the victim of a putdown that will never die
Speaker 1: down from the Justice Department exec. Richard Donahue. You're an
Speaker 1: environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office
Speaker 1: and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what to make of this story because it
Speaker 1: is literally too bad to be true. I mean, what
Speaker 1: kind of leak could cut through the noise and actually
Speaker 1: look too corrupt, too quid pro quo even for Trump.
Speaker 1: What against the background of his utter corruption, his Dorian
Speaker 1: Gray's portrait life, what could look worse than that? It's
Speaker 1: possible the Democrats made this up or got this out
Speaker 1: and it's true. On the other hand, like I said,
Speaker 1: how could she ever be worse than Merrick Garland also
Speaker 1: of interest here well in news about my exes Olivia.
Speaker 1: Newsy had no events scheduled last night, so it'll be
Speaker 1: Katie Turr news instead, And I, of course, will continue
Speaker 1: to pretend to be weary of all this and broken
Speaker 1: inside and beyond the reach of its implications now, while
Speaker 1: in fact I'm enjoying the absolute emmer effing hell out
Speaker 1: of all of it. That's next, This is countdown. This
Speaker 1: is countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead on this initiative countdown.
Speaker 1: Maybe the idea and ending the Baseball playoffs on a
Speaker 1: Sunday but not starting the World Series until Friday is
Speaker 1: to force sportscasters and even ex sportscasters to continue to
Speaker 1: do more and more World Series previews. Well, you guys
Speaker 1: asked for it. Another World Series preview of a different nature.
Speaker 1: The New York Yankees host game one Friday night, and
Speaker 1: I'm as always rooting against them, which is rather amazing
Speaker 1: because from the age of seven through the start of
Speaker 1: my professional career, and again in my thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: when one friend of mine from my childhood was the
Speaker 1: PR director and another friend of mine from my early
Speaker 1: career was the team manager. I was as big a
Speaker 1: Yankee fan as there was. I worked for the Yankees
Speaker 1: once a year. George Steinbrenner wanted me to be the
Speaker 1: voice of the Yankees on TV. I used to announce
Speaker 1: their old timers game like my dad before me. I
Speaker 1: was a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium. Our combined
Speaker 1: run one was forty one years. And then, to quote
Speaker 1: the man who was manager of the team when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, Ralph Hauke. When I introduced myself to
Speaker 1: him in nineteen eighty three and told him he was
Speaker 1: my Yankee manager and always would be, he said, thank you.
Speaker 1: Nothing personal but piss on the Yankees. The World Series
Speaker 1: preview and the day the Yankees got me fired from
Speaker 1: a job at Baseball state run television MLB network that
Speaker 1: I hadn't even agreed to take yet, piss on the
Speaker 1: Yankees coming up in things I promised not to tell first.
Speaker 1: There are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
Speaker 1: effects specimens who don't work for the Yankees and who
Speaker 1: constitute todays worse persons in the Brons worse. Jeremy Peters
Speaker 1: of the New York Times, the Yankees of newspapers, working
Speaker 1: with that little fascist Midday on Clay at MSNBC as
Speaker 1: well does mister Peters. This was actually said on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: And I will save until the end the identity of
Speaker 1: the news model whose question provoked this amazing, condensed, compromised
Speaker 1: partisan stupidity on the part of this guy Peters question,
Speaker 1: do you think she that would be Vice President Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: Democratic nominee for president if you hadn't heard Do you
Speaker 1: think she's being clear enough? Peters answers. I think in
Speaker 1: some of these interviews you and I have both heard it.
Speaker 1: But clarity is not always her strong suit. When you
Speaker 1: contrast her with somebody with Donald Trump, who you pretty
Speaker 1: much know what he's saying every time he opens his mouth,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, she does have a messaging problem.
Speaker 1: This man Peters is employed by the New York Times,
Speaker 1: brought onto what is in theory a television news network,
Speaker 1: insisting that you pretty much know what Trump's saying every
Speaker 1: time he opens his mouth, But Kamala Harris isn't clear enough.
Speaker 1: Trump is this close to speaking in tongues. Well, I
Speaker 1: like the other Hey, when Trump was asked what is
Speaker 1: your plan to ban artificial foods? And he answered Bobby Kennedy. Right,
Speaker 1: everybody likes Bobby Kennedy and he's so big into the
Speaker 1: healthy food and women things, everything he wants to do things. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's clear. That's much more clear than Kamala Harris. Question,
Speaker 1: what is your plan to ban artificial foods? Answer? Bobby
Speaker 1: Kennedy is big into the healthy food and women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that. I mean, I know Kennedy will be
Speaker 1: boosting FaceTime usage, but any idea what that has to
Speaker 1: do with banning artificial food mister Kennedy, the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Phone Sex said today. It was mister Peters, who, after
Speaker 1: the debate, had argued that Kamala Harris had failed to
Speaker 1: give undecided voters what they really wanted, the fine print,
Speaker 1: specific policy details at length at a debate on TV,
Speaker 1: owned his promise, which MSNBC talking head hosted Peters that
Speaker 1: day and asked that question that let him lie about
Speaker 1: Trump being clear and Harris not being clear enough. Why
Speaker 1: it's Katie Turr who with Kirsten Cinema slowly disappearing from
Speaker 1: the Senate like the cheshire Cat and Olivia Newsy, now
Speaker 1: being fired at New York Magazine and unlikely to ever
Speaker 1: get any job requiring, you know, trust her honesty ever
Speaker 1: again while she sues the creepy guy at Politico, she
Speaker 1: was planning to marry and write a book with With
Speaker 1: them out of the picture, it is Katie who has
Speaker 1: vaulted back into the position of which of my exes
Speaker 1: I am currently the most ashamed of. You can depend
Speaker 1: on Keith about women. He always gets them wrong. The
Speaker 1: runner up worser Newsweek magazine. Years ago, my late friend
Speaker 1: Howard Feineman left his lead role at Newsweek to go
Speaker 1: work for the Huffington Post, which then and I guess
Speaker 1: now too, but then certainly sounded like a website for
Speaker 1: people who like to inhale paint. And it was the
Speaker 1: first time I realized that all the established news brands
Speaker 1: of my youth were in desperate, desperate trouble long term.
Speaker 1: I mean, Newsweek wasn't the first to succumb my first
Speaker 1: home UPI even by then two thousand and six seven
Speaker 1: eight was putting out other people's press releases, and like
Speaker 1: only one or two a week, Sports illustrated as a
Speaker 1: betting site. Others are just expiring URLs. But if there
Speaker 1: was any doubt, Newsweek is done. This was its post
Speaker 1: at midday Monday, a photo of Trump at a sports stadium,
Speaker 1: presumably one in Pittsburgh somewhere, with the caption Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has shared what is likely an AI generated image on
Speaker 1: his truth social account showing him as a player for
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait, what makes you think that? Just
Speaker 1: because the image showed Trump in football pads, wearing a Steelers' uniform,
Speaker 1: weighing maybe one hundred pounds less than he does, about
Speaker 1: forty years younger than he is, and not looking like
Speaker 1: he was about to succumb to a disease or something.
Speaker 1: Didn't Donald try to play quarterback for the Steelers in
Speaker 1: the late sixties? Oh no, no, I'm thinking the other
Speaker 1: guy reminds me always of Donald Trump's name. His name
Speaker 1: was Dick Shiner. I think I'm kidding. Dick Shiner Shi
Speaker 1: n e Er look him up. Also played for the
Speaker 1: New York Giants for a while. Giants Get Dick Shiner
Speaker 1: was the headline anyway. So, nine hours after posting this
Speaker 1: idea that maybe that image of Trump wearing the forty
Speaker 1: seven on a Steelers uniform maybe that was ai. Nine
Speaker 1: hours later, one of the three or four people at
Speaker 1: Newsweek finally saw the social media blowback to their incredibly
Speaker 1: stupid posts, and they changed the article. So as of
Speaker 1: Monday night, the headline on the story itself, but not
Speaker 1: the tweet, had been changed to quote Trump posts fake
Speaker 1: image of himself as a star NFL player. You think, oh,
Speaker 1: wait to go out on a limb there, Newsweek. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, if The New York Times and Jeremy
Speaker 1: Peters had done the story, it would have been Trump
Speaker 1: shows his athletic side in creative post, but our winner
Speaker 1: the worst, same topic, same football team, and the Trump campaign.
Speaker 1: It is a little over a week since the Trump
Speaker 1: candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, David McCormick, had his
Speaker 1: own problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He posted what red like.
Speaker 1: Whether or not he was really too dumb to tell
Speaker 1: the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Speaker 1: Whether or not he's really that stupid is unclear, but
Speaker 1: it reads like he's that stupid, quoting it pictures of
Speaker 1: him four different pictures of him in Eagles green with
Speaker 1: Eagles fans outside the Eagles stadium. Fun tailgate in Philly.
Speaker 1: Today football emoji excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders,
Speaker 1: Republican senate candidate in Pennsylvania. Why the Steelers should prove
Speaker 1: so troubling for Republicans or Newsweek or anybody else is
Speaker 1: hard to say. They have been in the National Football
Speaker 1: League since the Rooney family got a franchise in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three and named it the Pittsburgh Football Pirates. Then
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty they said enough of this confusion, and
Speaker 1: they paid tribute to the city steel industry by renaming
Speaker 1: the team the Steelers, named for Steel Steel with two
Speaker 1: e's and then an R and an S added at
Speaker 1: the end. There stee L E R S Stealers. They're
Speaker 1: the sixth oldest franchise in the NFL. They're a pretty
Speaker 1: big fing deal. The Trump campaign does not know how
Speaker 1: to spell the team name. It has sent out one
Speaker 1: of its forty four million daily fundraising emails focusing on
Speaker 1: Trump's most important campaign finish line statements, his stunt not
Speaker 1: actually working, serving French fries to people who weren't really
Speaker 1: customers and weren't really surprised to see him there at
Speaker 1: a fascist McDonald's that wasn't really open, and the other
Speaker 1: one was going to a Pittsburgh Steelers game. The fundraising
Speaker 1: email in full, Trump Vance twenty twenty four. The little
Speaker 1: button in the corner that says shop can't stop, won't
Speaker 1: stop working at McDonald's a town hall, a Stealers game.
Speaker 1: No one is working harder than President Trump to better
Speaker 1: I'm not paying a lot for this funeral a Steelers game.
Speaker 1: It reads s t e a l e r s.
Speaker 1: Why that has the word steal in it? S t
Speaker 1: e a l as in thief, as in Trump, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump of the Steelers, s t e a l e
Speaker 1: r s Steelers, Steelers. Sometimes the jokes just right themselves.
Speaker 1: Two days worst Fars sending and the annually at this
Speaker 1: time of year, somebody asks me, why aren't you at
Speaker 1: that All Baseball network? Seems like you'd be a natural,
Speaker 1: And I say you mean MLB Network and they say yeah,
Speaker 1: and I say sit down. You got to hear this story.
Speaker 1: The owners of at least five different Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: teams have tried to get me fired over the years,
Speaker 1: and one, the New York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On
Speaker 1: November twenty six, twenty twelve, why agent followed the instructions
Speaker 1: of Tony Petiti, then the president of the TV publicity
Speaker 1: channel owned by Major League Baseball MLB Network, and called
Speaker 1: Petiti to finalize a deal by which I would join
Speaker 1: the channel to do a daily show, probably at five
Speaker 1: thirty at night. It was going to be weird. MLB
Speaker 1: Network and its sister hockey channel, NHL Network originate in
Speaker 1: the same studios in Caucus, New Jersey, that MSNBC used
Speaker 1: every day from the day I started there in October
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven through the day in October two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City.
Speaker 1: I had been asked to do something for MLB Network
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: before it ever got on the air. The request came
Speaker 1: directly from the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceilig. He
Speaker 1: also asked me to write for Baseball's website MLB dot Com.
Speaker 1: We actually got that done, but the TV show was
Speaker 1: impossible because of my schedule until I was a free
Speaker 1: agent in the fall of twenty twelve. So I was
Speaker 1: invited in the fall of twenty twelve to do a
Speaker 1: couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they went well,
Speaker 1: except for this crazy deja vu kind of thing that
Speaker 1: hit me when I went into the building and found
Speaker 1: that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars to upgrade
Speaker 1: all the technical stuff in the studio designs, they had
Speaker 1: not touched anything else from the MSNBC era. The carpet
Speaker 1: tiles were the same, the ping pong table in the
Speaker 1: break croom was the same. The sign on the back
Speaker 1: of the bathroom door telling you who to call if
Speaker 1: the John overflows were the same. It was like having
Speaker 1: a dream where you're back in your childhood home and
Speaker 1: everything is exactly the way it was, including the creeks
Speaker 1: and the floorboards, except oh, by the way, there's a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor in the middle of your den, and you
Speaker 1: keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway, the guest
Speaker 1: appearances on MLB Network went well, and this guy Petit,
Speaker 1: the president, asked if I would fill in for two
Speaker 1: days on their new morning show the week of Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. I certainly knew how to get to the building.
Speaker 1: I did the shows with Brian Kenny and Ken Rosenthal
Speaker 1: and Bob Costas's son, Keith and Alana Rizzo, and we
Speaker 1: had a good time. And Tony Pettiti, the president of
Speaker 1: MLB Network, attended the meetings that we would have before
Speaker 1: and after each show. I mean full staff meetings, fifteen
Speaker 1: or so people standing around a bunch of cubicles, and
Speaker 1: in front of all of them, Tony Pettiti began asking
Speaker 1: me if I thought my new sh for MLB Network
Speaker 1: would do better at five or five thirty, and if
Speaker 1: I agreed with him that I should work only during
Speaker 1: the baseball season and spring training and playoffs and winter
Speaker 1: meetings and then stay fresh by taking the rest of
Speaker 1: the year off. He asked me if there were people
Speaker 1: on the staff of the morning show who I would
Speaker 1: like to work with. I mean, this is in front
Speaker 1: of all of the staff of the morning show. He
Speaker 1: warned me they couldn't pay me the kind of salary
Speaker 1: I was used to, and I said that happily, the
Speaker 1: kind of salary I was used to meant I did
Speaker 1: not need the kind of salary I was used to.
Speaker 1: He told me to remind my agent to call him
Speaker 1: the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished me a happy Turkey,
Speaker 1: and everybody left, and everybody heard his plans, and a
Speaker 1: couple of the producers asked me if I was recommending
Speaker 1: them to be on my new show on MLB network. So,
Speaker 1: how come I don't have a new show on MLB Networker,
Speaker 1: how come we're not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my
Speaker 1: new show on MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my
Speaker 1: agent calls me and says he's just gotten off the
Speaker 1: phone with Tony Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation
Speaker 1: he had had since he became an agent. No let
Speaker 1: me rephrase that, he said, because it wasn't a conversation,
Speaker 1: it was an attempted conversation. I kept asking him what
Speaker 1: he told me to call him about, and he would
Speaker 1: then say nothing. Initially I did not understand what you
Speaker 1: mean he said nothing, My agent said he meant literally that.
Speaker 1: I say, so, Tony, what's your offer to Keith? And
Speaker 1: then there was silence, and I thought the phone call
Speaker 1: had dropped out. So I said, Tony, are you there?
Speaker 1: And he say sure, I am so Again I asked him,
Speaker 1: you know, what's your offer to Keith? And again literally silence,
Speaker 1: only this time I can hear him breathing. I tried
Speaker 1: like ten different ways. Are we talking about Keith now silence?
Speaker 1: Is there a reason you're being silent about Keith? Tony silence?
Speaker 1: If I changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he
Speaker 1: was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he
Speaker 1: went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back.
Speaker 1: Petiti just did this again with me on the phone.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't speak, literally, wouldn't say any words in any
Speaker 1: language if I mentioned your name. Took me a long
Speaker 1: time to find out what had actually happened. The next
Speaker 1: baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN,
Speaker 1: I'm at a game. There's one of the MLB network
Speaker 1: officials whom I'd met on my two days before Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, and this person comes up to me and apologizes.
Speaker 1: We all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Petiti is
Speaker 1: such a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
Speaker 1: I never found out which one. There was some kind
Speaker 1: of conference call a Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the
Speaker 1: teams about your new show, and whoever was on the
Speaker 1: call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like,
Speaker 1: if you put him on MLB Network, we will disable
Speaker 1: your cameras. At Yankee Stadium and never let any of
Speaker 1: you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Speaker 1: Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father
Speaker 1: before me, ac He's and ticket holder for forty two
Speaker 1: years for Yankee games, and for ten of those years,
Speaker 1: I was also one of the two announcers who did
Speaker 1: a kind of play by play over the public address
Speaker 1: system at Yankee Stadium on Old Timer's Day. And then
Speaker 1: one day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of
Speaker 1: a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of
Speaker 1: hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
Speaker 1: The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last
Speaker 1: pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a
Speaker 1: supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself
Speaker 1: from on the field what the last pitch had been.
Speaker 1: I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees
Speaker 1: and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and
Speaker 1: a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees'
Speaker 1: management said they were not mad at me. And then
Speaker 1: three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked
Speaker 1: to the papers that I had been fired as Old
Speaker 1: Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted
Speaker 1: that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands,
Speaker 1: so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my
Speaker 1: season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate
Speaker 1: and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: and relax, I gave about seventy percent of them to
Speaker 1: make a wish. But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were
Speaker 1: furious that I would not give them four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year anyway, so they told MLB Network if
Speaker 1: MLB Network gave me a show, they would unplug MLB
Speaker 1: Networks cameras. Actually they did more than that. I asked
Speaker 1: my friend, the MLB network official, the real puzzler of
Speaker 1: the saga, why this MLB Network president Tony Petiti, literally
Speaker 1: would not speak, would not say anything, not even deals
Speaker 1: off to my agent. Oh. The official said, the Yankees
Speaker 1: were specific about that if you say anything to him
Speaker 1: or his people, we will get you fired. So Fetiti
Speaker 1: took it literally. He said, if you or your agent called,
Speaker 1: to just give you the silent treatment. These are adults,
Speaker 1: mind you, and they say that on air talent are
Speaker 1: the Prima Donnas. As I said, the Yankees are the
Speaker 1: closest of five different teams who tried to have actually
Speaker 1: gotten me fired sort of. When I was in local
Speaker 1: news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went
Speaker 1: from being Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife,
Speaker 1: tried to get me fired from my station in LA
Speaker 1: because I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She
Speaker 1: tried again a few years later after I got to ESPN.
Speaker 1: Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well, the Devil
Speaker 1: Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was
Speaker 1: convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
Speaker 1: making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He
Speaker 1: could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid,
Speaker 1: actually hated him so much that this person called me
Speaker 1: up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went
Speaker 1: on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's
Speaker 1: the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a
Speaker 1: mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB
Speaker 1: network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
Speaker 1: One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big
Speaker 1: fan of mine, But for forty four years the team
Speaker 1: has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Reinsdorf.
Speaker 1: And Jerry Reinsdorf was one of the key figures in
Speaker 1: the strike that killed the nineteen ninety four baseball season.
Speaker 1: During that terrible winter that followed, my sources in the
Speaker 1: Baseball Players Association showed me a copy of their offer
Speaker 1: to the owners. The owners were led by Rhinsdorf, and
Speaker 1: in the player's offer, they were willing to actually negotiate
Speaker 1: one of the players Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They
Speaker 1: were willing to cut it or maybe eliminate it outright.
Speaker 1: But after complaining about salary arbitration for twenty years, the
Speaker 1: owners committee, led by this Reinsdorf idiot, turned the players down.
Speaker 1: Apparently most of the owners did not know that Rhinsdorff
Speaker 1: had passed on a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a
Speaker 1: kind of automatic inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they
Speaker 1: came down on Hinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What
Speaker 1: do you mean you turned down the chance to stop
Speaker 1: salary arbitration. So naturally he blamed me, and he called
Speaker 1: up ESPN and he demanded they fire me, which, to
Speaker 1: their credit, they never did do. Revenge is a dish
Speaker 1: which people of taste prefer to eat cold, goes the
Speaker 1: old Italian proverb. Reinsdorf is today despised within baseball. He
Speaker 1: has once again ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa
Speaker 1: Bay Ray's owner, name Oli, sold the team unknowingly, obviously
Speaker 1: to a man named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to
Speaker 1: be married to a friend of mine from college. So
Speaker 1: whenever the Rays would come into New York, I would
Speaker 1: sit with Stu and his wife Lisa in their box.
Speaker 1: Their eldest son interned for me. MLB Network, which started
Speaker 1: out pretty good, is now just a propaganda machine in
Speaker 1: which every team is unbeaten and every player is the
Speaker 1: greatest ever. And they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal
Speaker 1: because he dared to write something critical of the idiot
Speaker 1: commissioner Robert Manfred. So go Dodgers. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: my late friend and hero, Vin Scully Dodgers. Dodgers. Dodgers
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
Speaker 1: posting nightly just after midnight Eastern nine Pacific. Follow me
Speaker 1: for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x,
Speaker 1: Instagram and instau. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown.
Speaker 1: Please send this podcast or tell somebody about it. Send
Speaker 1: it to them. Does not know they need to listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast, but should. It's called Countdown. We've discussed
Speaker 1: how my late hero and friend mister Scully told me
Speaker 1: he was offered the Yankees announcing job in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: offered the chance to go home again to the Metropot
Speaker 1: New York area, and again in nineteen sixty seven. He said, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'll stay here. Thank you very much. I mentioned that
Speaker 1: once on the air and Southern California erupted, Oh we
Speaker 1: almost lost been fifty years ago. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had little orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. Sports Music is the Overman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today is my friend John Deane, Dodgers fan.
Speaker 1: Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today,
Speaker 1: one weekend, six days until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the three and eighty seventh day since convicted felon dissociative
Speaker 1: fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the election, use the
Speaker 1: mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
Speaker 1: doing it again while we still have a chance. The
Speaker 1: next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires
Speaker 1: until the next one. I'm Keith Oulderman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.