Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: don't want to undersell Trump's television return from seclusion and
Speaker 1: his latest basket full of insanities. And maybe I'm a
Speaker 1: little close to this other story, and by close, I
Speaker 1: mean it happened five blocks from my house. But you
Speaker 1: do realize that the murder of the head of United
Speaker 1: Healthcare may have been the first political assassination of the
Speaker 1: second Trump presidency. It may also signal a new echelon
Speaker 1: for political violence in the United States. I don't mean
Speaker 1: Brian Thompson was shot because he was a Republican or
Speaker 1: a Democrat, or a MAGA or a liberal. I mean
Speaker 1: I think we have reached a point where many people
Speaker 1: in this country think that voting and government and the
Speaker 1: law are meaningless and they have no other means of
Speaker 1: influencing the culture without violence. I also don't want to
Speaker 1: leave the impression that I am somehow in favor of
Speaker 1: people shooting visitors here in fun City and then escaping
Speaker 1: along one of the routes on which I walk my dogs.
Speaker 1: I am just saying that something that started now more correctly,
Speaker 1: something that resumed no later than two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: something that was not satiated by Trump's fake populism, nor
Speaker 1: anti woke, nor any of that crap. Something is now
Speaker 1: boiling over, as it has so many times in our
Speaker 1: American past. Caveat. We still don't know who shot him,
Speaker 1: never mind why this could be somebody else's husband for
Speaker 1: all we know. If so, then my point here is
Speaker 1: a little less relevant that I'm suggesting. But if you
Speaker 1: had to guess, you would say he was murdered by
Speaker 1: somebody who was not happy with something to do within
Speaker 1: show currants. And of course you have to guess, because
Speaker 1: New York's eleven billion dollar paramilitarized police force needed two
Speaker 1: days to find the shooter's backpack where he stashed it
Speaker 1: a fourteen minute walk from the shooting, full of Monopoly money,
Speaker 1: and it took them three days to announce the manhunt
Speaker 1: was being extended to New Jersey and Connecticut, even though
Speaker 1: the guy went all the way uptown and was on
Speaker 1: a bus for New Jersey before they finished cleaning up
Speaker 1: the crime scene. And by now he could have closed
Speaker 1: on his own house in Uruguay. Monopoly money. Somebody heard
Speaker 1: that and said, he's just playing with the cops now,
Speaker 1: And I answered, no, these are New York cops. The
Speaker 1: cops are playing with themselves three days to extend the search,
Speaker 1: possibly because it took NYPD at least a day to
Speaker 1: figure out where in New York this Central Park place was.
Speaker 1: But back to my point, A historian named John Grinspan
Speaker 1: noted that in the half century starting with Lincoln's assassination,
Speaker 1: we had three presidents killed by guns. We had another
Speaker 1: ex president running to regain the office also shot. We
Speaker 1: had one impeachment, and two elections won by the loser
Speaker 1: of the popular vote. Anarchism, often violent terrorism, exploded, and
Speaker 1: after that half century ended. On September sixteenth, nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: a horse drawn wagon parked across the street from the
Speaker 1: headquarters of JP Morgan on Wall Street. It blew up.
Speaker 1: It sent shards of shrapnel into the crowds. Thirty killed immediately,
Speaker 1: ten later, hundreds of injuries never solved, probably anarchists. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, President Kennedy was assassinated by a
Speaker 1: man whose bio, if you read it one way, paints
Speaker 1: him as a pro Russian leftist, and if you read
Speaker 1: it the other way, paints him as a virtual John Bircher.
Speaker 1: When I was eleven, the radical Weather Underground staged a
Speaker 1: series of bombings. In the worst of them, they managed
Speaker 1: to blow up their own bomb making house on West
Speaker 1: eleventh Street, and they killed three of their own members.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, an American assassinated Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: and four years later another tried to assassinate the racist
Speaker 1: George Wallace after the shooter had given up trying to
Speaker 1: shoot Nixon. Lord knows if we will ever figure out
Speaker 1: why a Trump supporter shot at Trump last summer, but
Speaker 1: he did. But the point is, throughout our history this country,
Speaker 1: we have sunk into stages in which political violence has
Speaker 1: had almost nothing directly to do with political parties or alignments,
Speaker 1: just a sense that political action by anybody in any
Speaker 1: direction no longer sufficed. You got a grievance, you throw
Speaker 1: a bomb. The most startling thing is that anybody is
Speaker 1: startled by the general reaction to the killing of the
Speaker 1: insurance guy. I don't think anybody has done any polling
Speaker 1: on this, and I'm almost afraid to suggest it because
Speaker 1: I have a sinking feeling the number of those who
Speaker 1: approved of it, or didn't care or had no opinion
Speaker 1: that that number would exceed those who condemned the killing.
Speaker 1: We have long since reached that point, I'm sure. Just
Speaker 1: to ratchet this up a little bit, all my embittered
Speaker 1: New Yorker sarcasm aside, it is now evident that one
Speaker 1: of the drawbacks to having fifty million conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: how to shoot videos and assassination fantasies active online and
Speaker 1: in every entertainment venue, from video games to YouTube to musicals,
Speaker 1: the disadvantage to that is that the mayhem makers are
Speaker 1: getting better at it and the authorities are getting worse.
Speaker 1: They could spend fifty billion a year on cops here
Speaker 1: every year, and you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: protect every corporate fat cat that somebody hates. And as
Speaker 1: to the Secret Service, after the late eight years of
Speaker 1: near disasters with Trump and Biden alike, I think we
Speaker 1: all know what the secret is. The secret is the
Speaker 1: Secret Service is not very good at this. Fasten your
Speaker 1: seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night. And
Speaker 1: as if on Q after the phrase it's going to
Speaker 1: be a bumpy night, here's Trump on NBC back from
Speaker 1: I don't know where where he goes to get stupider
Speaker 1: and crazier.
Speaker 2: And Cheney was behind it. So was Benny Thompson and
Speaker 2: everybody on that committee. We're gonna for what they did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: honestly they should go to jail.
Speaker 3: So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail for
Speaker 3: what everyone on the committee us? I think anybody that
Speaker 3: voted in, are you going to director FBI, director in
Speaker 3: your attorney general to send them to jail?
Speaker 1: Not all?
Speaker 2: I think that they'll have to look at that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you heard that right, nothing new. But he wants
Speaker 1: Cheney and Benny Thompson and everybody else in the January
Speaker 1: sixth hous committee in jail, he said that, But he's
Speaker 1: not going to make it happen. His attorney general, whose
Speaker 1: price is apparently twenty five k, that would all be
Speaker 1: her call. There were You heard it right, You heard
Speaker 1: him say that. This is how the now fully compromised
Speaker 1: New York Times first reported that threat by Trump that
Speaker 1: standard Trump Candy asked, I'm not jailing them, but they
Speaker 1: should be jailed threat by proxy. This is how the
Speaker 1: New York Times lied about what Trump said on NBC
Speaker 1: Where Things Stand. President elect Donald J. Trump said an
Speaker 1: interview with NBC's Meet the Press that aired on Sunday
Speaker 1: that he would not direct his administration to seek retribution
Speaker 1: against his political enemies, though he made clear he would
Speaker 1: like to see them punished. There continued to be a
Speaker 1: few scattered reporters alive and well and doing great work
Speaker 1: within the New York Times. But as an institution, I
Speaker 1: now have to double check everything I read in the
Speaker 1: New York Times. It is sliding inexorably down towards being
Speaker 1: on a par with the Epoch Times, or worse still,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times. In the same interview, Kristen Welker
Speaker 1: actually pushed back on some She asked Trump if he'd
Speaker 1: now try to unify the country by admitting he lost
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty and he said, why would I do that?
Speaker 1: And she said, because you lost, And he said, that's
Speaker 1: your opinion. So you know where this world is headed,
Speaker 1: and where it's headed is towards President. Nathan Thrm Nathan Therm,
Speaker 1: Marty Short's priceless old SNL character who answered questions with
Speaker 1: deflections like I'm not being defensive. You should be defensive
Speaker 1: with that hairdoo, and is it him or is it me?
Speaker 1: It's him right now, eventually doing nothing but equivocating and
Speaker 1: waffling and plausibly denying, you know, saying nothing but stuff
Speaker 1: you can deny later or insist you got it right,
Speaker 1: depending on how it actually turns out. Keep doing that
Speaker 1: and eventually you will trip yourself up. And Trump did it.
Speaker 1: He again insisted he can overrule birthright citizenship by executive order,
Speaker 1: and again said he will deport undocumented immigrants. And then,
Speaker 1: and almost nobody noticed this, he undercut all of that
Speaker 1: by actually suggesting Canada and Mexico should become states. No,
Speaker 1: in our country, the United States of America co starring
Speaker 1: Mexico and Canada.
Speaker 2: We're subsidizing Canada to the tune of over one hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars a year. We're subsidizing Mexico for almost three
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars. We shouldn't be subsidized. Why are we
Speaker 2: subsidizing these countries. If we're going to subsidize them, let
Speaker 2: him become a state.
Speaker 1: The fifty first and fifty second states, and maybe fifty
Speaker 1: third and fifty five. I don't know Mexico as a state,
Speaker 1: mister numb nuts psycho president. If Mexico is a state
Speaker 1: in the United States, you know where you are right now.
Speaker 1: The people living there in Mexico become citizens of the
Speaker 1: United States. So not only can't you deport people from
Speaker 1: the US state of Mexico, but you then can't put
Speaker 1: up a wall between Texas and the state of Mexico.
Speaker 1: In fact, you cannot inhibit movement between Mexico and any
Speaker 1: other state of the Union. I hope somebody has told
Speaker 1: MAGA about Trump's new Mexico solution. Make it a state.
Speaker 1: That would mean there'd be two senators from Mexico. And
Speaker 1: let's calculate this together. New York twenty million people, twenty
Speaker 1: six congressmen and women, Mexico one hundred and thirty million people,
Speaker 1: and the rate is thirteen congressman per ten million residents.
Speaker 1: That it'd be Mexico gets one one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: nine congressional seats. Headline, Trump proposes giving Mexico one one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine seats in the US House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even talked about those fifty three Canadian congressman. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, Trump continued to screwed up his own transition,
Speaker 1: and thank you for that, Pal. They still think they'll
Speaker 1: get Pete Hegseth confirmed, and that's debatable. The team trying
Speaker 1: to push his drunk ass over the finish line, says
Speaker 1: they have not found three no votes among all those
Speaker 1: Republican senators. But the money quote about this is from
Speaker 1: Jony Ernst of Iowa, who was asked if even after
Speaker 1: a frank and thorough conversation with Heggy, she's not ready
Speaker 1: to vote yes because of the little alcoholism and sexual
Speaker 1: misconduct allegation stuff, and Senator Ernst replied, I think you
Speaker 1: are right, and then she gave the money quote. The
Speaker 1: vetting will continue, I am certain through the next month
Speaker 1: or so until we approach that hearing date. Sounds like
Speaker 1: they've given up on the idea of the recess appointment
Speaker 1: and they're going to go for a hearing. But oh
Speaker 1: my god, another month of this, Another month of how
Speaker 1: drunk is Pete Hegseth today? Another month of Pete Hegseth
Speaker 1: saying well, if I'm named Secretary of Defense, I'll stop drinking.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, another month of this. Thank you. This
Speaker 1: isn't Brett Kavanaugh. With Trump in charge of the FBI
Speaker 1: and able to stop further revelations before they happen, heg
Speaker 1: Seth is a tire fire, and Trump keeps buying him
Speaker 1: new white walls. Oh a nice typo President Moron Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep,
Speaker 1: much more so than the fake news. What have you believe?
Speaker 1: He was a great student military state of mind. He
Speaker 1: will be a fantastic, high energy Secretary of Defense Defense,
Speaker 1: one who leads to the Secretary of Defense Defense. Cheez, Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, you do not have to actually translate your
Speaker 1: brain freezes into the written word. Just proofread these things once. Still,
Speaker 1: they might actually get him confirmed. Politico interviewed trumpest haacked
Speaker 1: Mike Davis, and I have to admire Mike Davis's willingness
Speaker 1: to explain how their side blackmails people before they actually
Speaker 1: do the blackmailing in this case. Quote. In an interview
Speaker 1: with Playbook, Davis went further, threatening to hire private investigators
Speaker 1: to sift through the backgrounds of any potential senate GOP holdouts.
Speaker 1: The Article three project is very excited about this new
Speaker 1: standard that drinking and womanizing is disqualifying for public office.
Speaker 1: Davis tells Playbook, I'm very happy to hire investigators for
Speaker 1: senators and use that standard. Sure, because that works so
Speaker 1: well with Matt Gates. Wait, no, it didn't work at all.
Speaker 1: Didn't work at all anyway, Please blackmail away, mister Davis.
Speaker 1: The more Republican damage against other Republicans the better. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: big to do the other night. Rachel Campos Duffy, co
Speaker 1: host with the Secretary of Defense Designate, writes, so much
Speaker 1: fun at the Patriot Awards where at Donald Trump won
Speaker 1: the Patriot of the Year and topped off the night
Speaker 1: dancing YMCA to the crowd's delight. And there's a picture
Speaker 1: of Judge Janine Pirot upright the punchline. Punchline is the
Speaker 1: producer of the Fox Nation Patriot Awards, where Trump surprisingly
Speaker 1: won Patriot of the Year. The producer of that is
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseeth's wife. Breaking news for both Trump and Tulsy Gabbard.
Speaker 1: Assad overthrown in Syria after an uprising that lasted well,
Speaker 1: lasted just a little longer than New York City bike insurance.
Speaker 1: Assassin was at large now granted asylum in Moscow by Putin.
Speaker 1: So if you want to plan ahead, Trump and Gabbard
Speaker 1: remember Gabbard on this topic August eleventh, twenty sixteen, when
Speaker 1: it was still Twitter. It's time to end the illegal,
Speaker 1: counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad vote
Speaker 1: Tulsey eight eleven sixteen. Meanwhile, back on the Hill, off
Speaker 1: the record quote from the insider website The Hill about
Speaker 1: Tulsy Gabbard from what The Hill identifies as a Senate
Speaker 1: Republican aid. The quote from the Senate Republican aid in
Speaker 1: the Hill quote behind closed doors, people think she might
Speaker 1: be compromised. Like it's not hyperbole. There are members of
Speaker 1: our conference who think she's a Russian asset. Unquote The
Speaker 1: Hill anonymous quote about Tulsy Gabbard. I mean about one
Speaker 1: hundred former senior US diplomats and intel and n set
Speaker 1: folk have urged the Senate that if Gabbard lasts to
Speaker 1: a Senate hearing on her nomination to be DNI, that
Speaker 1: the hearings be closed door. Their plea includes the assertion
Speaker 1: that her past actions quote call into question her ability
Speaker 1: to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and
Speaker 1: to the entire National security apparatus. Before a sad fell
Speaker 1: John Bolton said, if he did, Syrian government files on
Speaker 1: some Americans in the hands of the rebels could prove interesting,
Speaker 1: you bet. And lastly, there is what must be described
Speaker 1: as nothing less than right wing panic about Biden preemptive pardons.
Speaker 1: Biden preemptive pardons. It is as if to them there
Speaker 1: was no previous understanding that anybody besides Trump could do
Speaker 1: what Trump has done. The idea that Mark Millie and
Speaker 1: Christopher ray Fauci everybody else might get whatever you did
Speaker 1: or didn't do pardons is astonishing to them. The main
Speaker 1: questions on the right seem to be, well, we can
Speaker 1: just overrule it, right, and that can't be legal, But
Speaker 1: it's an admission of guilt. While they cheer on Trump's
Speaker 1: plan to pardon the January sixth domestic terrorists and don't
Speaker 1: worry about that admission of guilt. And I repeat what
Speaker 1: I have said before, I want ten million pardons. Ford
Speaker 1: and Nixon started this, Trump escalated it, Republicans built it.
Speaker 1: This is the America you fascists wanted. This is the
Speaker 1: America you get. Hell, I'm going to increase my demands.
Speaker 1: Not only should President Biden preemptively pardon every elected Democrat
Speaker 1: of the last twenty years and every Trump critic and
Speaker 1: every media person, even Chris Salizza, but I think the
Speaker 1: president should now preemptively pardon every immigrant living in this
Speaker 1: country documented or not. No matter what, you don't like
Speaker 1: that idea, mega you broke it, you bought it. Also
Speaker 1: of interest here in an all new edition of Countdown,
Speaker 1: and forgive me if I stumbled over a few words
Speaker 1: here and again the eye is still bob me. Well
Speaker 1: still come. Everybody gets a pardon, except Joe Scarborough and
Speaker 1: Mika Brzynski, who are back on the worst Person's list
Speaker 1: because they're worms. And I've even got a brand new
Speaker 1: things I promised not to tell. We're getting to meet
Speaker 1: one of my favorite reporters turns into not meeting one
Speaker 1: of the greatest film directors of all time who was
Speaker 1: sitting behind me, and the reporter didn't tell me until
Speaker 1: after the director had left. Jesus H. Christ. Seriously, that's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown. This is Countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead.
Speaker 1: We will end on a lighter note. How my lunch
Speaker 1: with one of the best legal reporters in the country
Speaker 1: ended with him asking me if I'd noticed that the
Speaker 1: guy sitting behind me was America's greatest filmmaker who I
Speaker 1: always wanted to meet but still have not because I
Speaker 1: did not notice this, And the related story of how
Speaker 1: one of his rivals for that title, wound up paying
Speaker 1: somebody I knew something like a million dollars for the
Speaker 1: football TV play by play playing in the background in
Speaker 1: just one scene from Godfather Part two, a rather intricate
Speaker 1: return in an all new episode of Countdown of a
Speaker 1: brand new things I promised not to tell first, believe
Speaker 1: it or not. Never mind the high and lighter notes,
Speaker 1: there's still new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
Speaker 1: of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimen
Speaker 1: who constitute today's other worst persons in the world Lebrons
Speaker 1: worst Governor Jared Polis of Colorado Democrat. First he sucked
Speaker 1: up to Robert F. I'm not wearing pants Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 1: Then Polus went after President Biden for pardoning his own son. Now,
Speaker 1: having not given us enough reason to kick his term
Speaker 1: limited ass out of the Democratic Party, Polus is back
Speaker 1: to sucking up to RFK Junior. I truly believe that
Speaker 1: RFK is not beholden to big Pharma. I think he's
Speaker 1: an independent voice, and I think he's somebody who means
Speaker 1: what he says when he cares about reducing chronic disease
Speaker 1: through better nutrition I might add Governor Polis that there'll
Speaker 1: be less chronic disease if more people die in childhood,
Speaker 1: because what Kennedy is doing will kill kids, and you're helping.
Speaker 1: By the way, Governor Polis is a libertarian. Libertarian means
Speaker 1: you are free, free from intelligence. The runner up worser,
Speaker 1: one time Trump favorite and Florida Magas Starr and would
Speaker 1: be congressperson Laura No, my face has always looked like this.
Speaker 1: I haven't had any work done recently. What do you mean,
Speaker 1: I went to the college where they trained them, Loomer,
Speaker 1: She's how do I put this? She's not smart breaking,
Speaker 1: she posted on Twitter X for those of you who
Speaker 1: don't go there anymore, anti Trump. Democrat Congressman Representative Adam Schiff.
Speaker 1: Adam Schiff, who is the top client of Judge Mershawn's daughter,
Speaker 1: just resigned from Congress so we can get an early
Speaker 1: start on running for the US Senate in California. Here's
Speaker 1: his resignation letter, effective December eighth. He's going to try
Speaker 1: to help the Democrats reclaim the Senate so they can
Speaker 1: impeach President Trump and help the Senate Dems obstruck President
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, blahlah blah BLA. Laura Lumer, who believes
Speaker 1: she is a force in politics, does not know B
Speaker 1: that the Senate does not impeach. The House which she
Speaker 1: ran for impeaches. But more importantly, A, she has no
Speaker 1: idea that Adam Schiff resigned from Congress so he can
Speaker 1: assume his seat in the Senate because he was already
Speaker 1: elected senator from California in November. It was in all
Speaker 1: the papers, Laura, This, of course, presumes you can read.
Speaker 1: I'd like to introduce Laura Lumer to Governor Polis. I
Speaker 1: have a sense they'd have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1: But our winners, speaking of which, Jeff Bezos and Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough and Mika Brzhinsky, Scarborough doubling down on collaborating with
Speaker 1: the incoming fascist regime. At a New York Times breakfast
Speaker 1: for Billionaire or whatever it was, or short billionaires, whatever
Speaker 1: it was, Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed Bezos, as it was
Speaker 1: put in Oliver Darcy's newsletter. Asked by Sorkin about Trump's
Speaker 1: menacing rhetoric towards the news media, Bezos only replied that
Speaker 1: he would quote try to talk him out of that
Speaker 1: idea that the press is the enemy. Earlier, Bezos said
Speaker 1: he was very proud of the decision that The Washington
Speaker 1: Post declined to make an endorsement in the High Stakes
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four race. Yes, I'm very proud that the
Speaker 1: paper I own and everybody there is my employee, and
Speaker 1: I would have fired them if they didn't do what
Speaker 1: I told them to do. Did what I told them
Speaker 1: to do. What a little weasel, this Amazon bastard turns
Speaker 1: out to be. Going back to Oliver Darcy, Bezos rejected
Speaker 1: the notion that his decision to block his editorial boards
Speaker 1: planned endorsement of Kamala Harris created more distrust, saying he
Speaker 1: doesn't follow that logic. He claimed it was far from
Speaker 1: cowardly because we knew there would be the blowback in
Speaker 1: the form of a quarter million subscription cancelations. Let's dry
Speaker 1: that at Amazon Prime. As to Scarborough and missus Scarborough,
Speaker 1: whose great contribution to that program is to go. This
Speaker 1: is also, I believe from the Darcy column. Fresh off
Speaker 1: their visit to Marri Lago, the host of Morning Joe
Speaker 1: last Wednesday rebuked guest David Frumm, who is still nominally
Speaker 1: a Republican, for a remark he made about Pete Hegseth's
Speaker 1: alleged drinking issues at Fox. There was an NBC report
Speaker 1: you will recall that Hegsith would show up to work
Speaker 1: with alcohol on his breath work at Fox. Frum said
Speaker 1: on MSNBC on Morning Day, if you're too drunk for
Speaker 1: Fox News, you're very, very drunk. Indeed, in the same program,
Speaker 1: Missus Joe said Frum's remark was inappropriate, quoting the comment
Speaker 1: was a little too flip for this moment that we're in.
Speaker 1: She's referring, of course, to the moment in which she
Speaker 1: betrayed her audience and America by trying to sidling up
Speaker 1: to Trump again for the second time in eight years,
Speaker 1: after trying to decidle in between and trying to make
Speaker 1: money off pretending to be anti Trump. We just want
Speaker 1: to make that comment as well. We want to make
Speaker 1: that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News,
Speaker 1: and that's a good debate that we should have often.
Speaker 1: But right now, I just want to say there's a
Speaker 1: lot of good people that work at Fox News who
Speaker 1: care about Pete Hegseth, and we want to leave it
Speaker 1: at that. You heard them bashing their own guests their
Speaker 1: own regular guests, a Republican on his own network, bashing
Speaker 1: his own network for a joke about HEG Sith that
Speaker 1: actually understates the reality of the Hegseth situation. And moreover,
Speaker 1: the comments about Fox News, a sympathetic statement about Fixox News.
Speaker 1: Rashinsky and Scarborough are also collaborating with Fox News. This
Speaker 1: gives rise to the thought that has been sometimes right
Speaker 1: front of mind at MSNBC and elsewhere, dating back to
Speaker 1: at least two thousand and two, that Joey scars was
Speaker 1: really just auditioning for a job at Fox I mean
Speaker 1: track his career. Sudden resignations still unexplained from Congress right
Speaker 1: after he was re elected, hired on by MSNBC's Phil
Speaker 1: Griffin as a sop to his own bosses, who threatened
Speaker 1: to fire Phil if he didn't find a fascist to
Speaker 1: put on the air. They put Joe Scarborough on a
Speaker 1: nighttime show called Scarborough Country, in which all Joe did
Speaker 1: was threatened Democrats and liberals and try to undermine everybody
Speaker 1: else who worked at his own network. As things evolved
Speaker 1: and the network became successful by doing fewer shows like Scarborough,
Speaker 1: he was kept on as a counterbalance to me. On
Speaker 1: at least one occasion, he went in and told his
Speaker 1: bosses that, having violated a rule against criticizing other MSNBC
Speaker 1: he hosts in non MSNBC venues, if you did that,
Speaker 1: you were to be suspended. He told Griffin and Me
Speaker 1: that if they suspended him for criticizing me, he would
Speaker 1: go public with it and say he had been suspended
Speaker 1: because he was a conservative and I was a liberal,
Speaker 1: and I and not Phil Griffin ran the network. This
Speaker 1: is quoting Phil Griffin quoting Joe Scarborough. So in any event,
Speaker 1: after I left, they kept him on as a sort
Speaker 1: of middle of the road coffee clotch host. Then he
Speaker 1: became in twenty fifteen and sixteen an unofficial advisor to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and a frequent host of Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: a sane washer before the term existed of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Then when Trump did not pick him to be vice
Speaker 1: president or offer him a job in his cabinet, he
Speaker 1: became anti Trump and called him hitler. I think he
Speaker 1: was probably still in the top one hundred people in
Speaker 1: media to call him hitler, lower them than me, but
Speaker 1: he still did it. And then, of course he has
Speaker 1: now become a turncoat who actually traveled secretly to Mary
Speaker 1: Lago to beg for Trump's forgiveness and an interview. He
Speaker 1: then doubled down by having his useless wife apologized to
Speaker 1: Fox and criticizing the host favorite guest, David From the
Speaker 1: network's favorite sort of Republican guest, David From, for making
Speaker 1: a really good joke about how if you're too drunk
Speaker 1: for Fox, you're really really drunk. It was a good
Speaker 1: joke and I applaud David From for it, And right
Speaker 1: now Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzhinsky are the symbols of
Speaker 1: a new network msnvsh Bezos, Scarborough, Virshinski, Marshall Tatan would
Speaker 1: be proud. Two days other worst War said he finally
Speaker 1: on the theory that we should close with something optimistic,
Speaker 1: because God knows, there isn't very much optimistic going on
Speaker 1: at the moment, despite the holiday season. In things I
Speaker 1: promised not to tell, which is a total misnomer because
Speaker 1: I didn't promise anybody I wouldn't tell this, I had
Speaker 1: the pleasure on Thursday of having lunch with Ellie miss Stal,
Speaker 1: who I have mentioned before quoted many times about his
Speaker 1: extraordinarily good coverage of the Supreme Court, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a secret since he posted about it in
Speaker 1: social media and I posted about it. And I left
Speaker 1: this lunch thinking, why does this man not have his
Speaker 1: own TV news show. I don't know if that's a
Speaker 1: compliment or a curse. In any event, we talked about
Speaker 1: the news and the dire situations we all face right now,
Speaker 1: but we also talked about our lives and histories, and
Speaker 1: I got talking about Lost Angelus and having worked there
Speaker 1: and having known somebody who worked for Coppola on the
Speaker 1: Godfather films. And then at the end of this lunch,
Speaker 1: he says to me, did you notice who was sitting
Speaker 1: behind you in the adjoining booth? And I said no,
Speaker 1: I was talking to you, and he said, Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 1: And I said, you could have mentioned that. He said, well,
Speaker 1: how am I supposed to say to you Martin Scorsese's
Speaker 1: sitting behind you. When Martin Scorsese is sitting behind you,
Speaker 1: I said, text me, write me a note. I would
Speaker 1: love to have met him. I've never met him. I
Speaker 1: never met Coppola. I met lots of people, and I
Speaker 1: don't have any complaints about the number of people I
Speaker 1: have met. Those Eh, those are probably it. I guess
Speaker 1: I would like to meet Robert de Niro, who was
Speaker 1: a great fan of the old TV show, And there
Speaker 1: are a couple of other people here and there, But
Speaker 1: you know, as I like to say, I met Jim
Speaker 1: Thorpe's Olympic roommate from nineteen twelve, and I was apparently
Speaker 1: a regular thing to watch on TV for the great
Speaker 1: actor Joseph Cotton from Citizen Kane. And my friend Norman Lloyd,
Speaker 1: who lived to be one hundred and six, had worked
Speaker 1: with Wells and basically everybody between Wells and Amy Schumer
Speaker 1: in the industry, in the film industry, so I don't
Speaker 1: have any complaints about that, but it all brought me
Speaker 1: back to this story of talking about how I happened,
Speaker 1: by one remove to have known Coppola, or at least
Speaker 1: somebody I knew knew Coppla. And I've been meaning to
Speaker 1: tell this story for a while. Ellie and I talked
Speaker 1: about my tenure in Los Angeles as a sportscaster, the
Speaker 1: first one I had two nineteen eighty five to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, and one of my two or three jobs
Speaker 1: there was at KNX Radio, the all news station then
Speaker 1: in a heated rivalry with the other all news station
Speaker 1: which later went out of business, KFWB. But I worked
Speaker 1: at KNX, and it was an extraordinary place, perhaps journalistically
Speaker 1: as as good as anywhere else I've ever worked, probably
Speaker 1: a little bit better. And the history there literally was
Speaker 1: on the walls. KNX had been in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: been in that studio on Sunset Boulevard, Columbia's Square. They
Speaker 1: called it so long that the television studio in which
Speaker 1: I eventually worked used to be Jack Benny's live studio
Speaker 1: for his network radio show in the nineteen forties. And
Speaker 1: our makeup artist, Billy, once explained to me he had
Speaker 1: been working in the building since the early forties. And
Speaker 1: I said, Billy, they didn't have television in this building.
Speaker 1: CBS didn't have a television station in Los Angeles till
Speaker 1: something like nineteen fifty one. He said, yeah, I used
Speaker 1: to work makeup in radio, And I said, how in
Speaker 1: the hell did that work? He goes, you don't know,
Speaker 1: you're too young. Something I don't hear much anymore. He said,
Speaker 1: you're too young. Everybody used to The performers used to
Speaker 1: not only dress up in formal attire, often in tuxedos,
Speaker 1: at least in suits, but there was a live audience.
Speaker 1: The orientation for a radio show in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: even as television began to come in, was not, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the easier version of television. We don't even
Speaker 1: have to wear any clothes, let alone a tucks. We
Speaker 1: can just get away with whatever we're wearing on the street.
Speaker 1: In those days, they dressed up and they had a
Speaker 1: studio audience. The theory was essentially it was Broadway, only
Speaker 1: it was recorded it. It was even tenser than Broadway.
Speaker 1: People would hear this again. You had to give an
Speaker 1: even better presentation of yourself than you would if you
Speaker 1: were live somewhere in the theater. Your only advantage was,
Speaker 1: of course, if you screwed it up, they could do
Speaker 1: it over again, because there were transcriptions and recording, even
Speaker 1: before there was audio tape. So Jack Benny, my friend Billy,
Speaker 1: used to make Jack Benny up so that the audience
Speaker 1: would see only the youngish looking Jack Benny, who of
Speaker 1: course always claimed to be thirty nine years old. The
Speaker 1: story I wanted to tell came from not that floor
Speaker 1: of the Columbia Square building, the television floor, as it were,
Speaker 1: but the radio floor CANX Radio in LA. And it
Speaker 1: sort of circumnavigates back to Martin Scorsese and how I
Speaker 1: did not meet him on Thursday when I met Ellie
Speaker 1: Mestap because Ellie didn't say, that's Martin Scorsese sitting behind you,
Speaker 1: like you know. Okay, Here's how I knew Coppola by
Speaker 1: one remove. When they called me, and I'm referring today
Speaker 1: as the people at KNX Radio, which was an excellent
Speaker 1: all news radio station and still is. They suggested that
Speaker 1: I could come over there if I had time in
Speaker 1: the afternoons. Since my job consisted at that point at
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles of only doing the sports
Speaker 1: on the ten o'clock news at night, I had a
Speaker 1: lot of time to prepare. Usually get into the TV
Speaker 1: station around three in the afternoon, and they said, would
Speaker 1: you like to split our afternoon radio sports updates here
Speaker 1: on KNX. We already have somebody doing them, but he
Speaker 1: wants to cut back a little and we like to
Speaker 1: cut him back a little bit. And I went Tom
Speaker 1: Kelly and he said, this was roger Na Delby, assistant
Speaker 1: news director of the station, telling me this. He said, yes,
Speaker 1: you know him. I said, well, yeah, he's kind of
Speaker 1: well known even outside LA. So a few months after
Speaker 1: I got to Los Angeles and started on Channel five here,
Speaker 1: I was in the afternoons splitting the shift with Tom Kelly,
Speaker 1: who was legendary, and I would say there were many
Speaker 1: reasons he was legendaries, an excellent play by play man.
Speaker 1: He had been a local sportscaster and had a similar
Speaker 1: arrangement that they were making for me on Channel eleven.
Speaker 1: He did the weeknight sports news on Channel eleven in LA.
Speaker 1: Just as I got there, they demoted him from that
Speaker 1: and he didn't do much television thereafter. But he was
Speaker 1: also in the afternoon drives slot at KNX, and he
Speaker 1: did play by play of USC football and basketball. Chick Hearn,
Speaker 1: the legendary voice of the Los Angeles Lakers, actually was
Speaker 1: in LA before the Lakers moved to LA and did
Speaker 1: all the USC games, basketball and I think for years football,
Speaker 1: and he later did other sports. He did soccer play
Speaker 1: by play on television if you can imagine such a thing,
Speaker 1: and he did a bowling for dollars kind of show.
Speaker 1: He did lots of things before the Lakers, even though
Speaker 1: he's remembered only for the Lakers. When the Lakers came
Speaker 1: to town, they wanted their guy, and it was Chick
Speaker 1: Hern and they hired him away essentially from USC and
Speaker 1: Tom Kelly got the job and became synonymous with USC
Speaker 1: sports on KNX on television for probably twenty years, to
Speaker 1: the point where he told me, and my impression of
Speaker 1: Tom Kelly, I can't really give it the full value.
Speaker 1: There are some who are who are born loud, some
Speaker 1: who achieve loudness, some have loudness thrust upon them. I'm
Speaker 1: way louder as a broadcaster than I was the day
Speaker 1: I started in nineteen seventy five. And then there are
Speaker 1: those who are all three. Tom Kelly had a voice
Speaker 1: on him like you weren't actually hearing him over your radio.
Speaker 1: He was simply seeping through your walls. This was a
Speaker 1: problem in a newsroom where as we were ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve there at can X, we had already adopted computers,
Speaker 1: and they'd had them before I got there, but they
Speaker 1: were in full use by nineteen eighty five. I don't
Speaker 1: think there was a typewriter left in the place downstairs.
Speaker 1: The television station used typewriters well into nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: In any event, so you'd be sitting there was a
Speaker 1: fairly quiet environment, and the phone would ring and you'd
Speaker 1: hear this Kelly speaking, and Tom would conduct a conversation
Speaker 1: like that, only not as forced sounded, but with that
Speaker 1: kind of volume. And I did move my mouth away
Speaker 1: from the mic, so you didn't hear that in full flower.
Speaker 1: But Tom Kelly was really loud, like this, like a
Speaker 1: PA system at a local Metropolitan Railroad station near you,
Speaker 1: only louder. So we used to joke about, how you know, Tom,
Speaker 1: it probably save you a little strain on your voice
Speaker 1: if you use a microphone instead. In any event, I
Speaker 1: like Tom. Tom was, I guess grudgingly okay with me
Speaker 1: taking some money out of his pocket. But he explained
Speaker 1: that he had and would have until he died, a
Speaker 1: steady scream stream of income, noticed the Freudian slipped there
Speaker 1: about him screaming absolutely apt. Tom said he'd have this
Speaker 1: steady stream of income until the day he died. Because
Speaker 1: one day after the success of Godfather, the movie produced
Speaker 1: by Francis Ford Coppola, he got a call directly from
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Coppola saying that he was a big usc
Speaker 1: fan and he used to listen to K and X
Speaker 1: in the afternoons, and the people used to listen to
Speaker 1: K and X. It's how I met Vin Scully. He
Speaker 1: was a regular listener of mine before I had the
Speaker 1: courage to screw up the whatever it was that required
Speaker 1: I required before I introduced myself to Vin Scully and
Speaker 1: he said, I listened to you every afternoon. I thought
Speaker 1: I'd done something to offend you. We had extraordinary audiences.
Speaker 1: And of course, as I said, the station had been
Speaker 1: on the air in various guyses as a talk station,
Speaker 1: as a comedy station, as a rock and roll station
Speaker 1: since the thirties, and as the home for Jack Benny,
Speaker 1: so it had a cachet in Los Angeles that was
Speaker 1: just tremendous. Los Angeles was an underrated broadcasting town with
Speaker 1: people who had been on the air in television. As
Speaker 1: I always tell the story of my late friend Stan Chambers,
Speaker 1: that he was there the day KTLA Channel five signed
Speaker 1: on in nineteen forty seven, went through every job in
Speaker 1: the place, including news director, and eventually before he retired,
Speaker 1: he was working alongside his own grandson, who is still
Speaker 1: a reporter and an excellent one in this business. Based
Speaker 1: in San Diego, Jamie Stan was there at KTLA for
Speaker 1: like one hundred and forty four years, and he was
Speaker 1: going out on stories at ten o'clock at night every
Speaker 1: night the week he retired. So there were long lived,
Speaker 1: longevity kind of guys, and they became very familiar to
Speaker 1: the audience. So the phone ringing in the kN X
Speaker 1: newsroom sometimes in I guess the early eighties, maybe the
Speaker 1: late seventies. I forget my timing on the making of
Speaker 1: the second Godfather film, I guess still late seventies. But
Speaker 1: the phone rings and Kelly answers it sports like that,
Speaker 1: and then he says, nice to talk to you, mister Coppola.
Speaker 1: What can I do for you? And what mister Copplo
Speaker 1: wanted was he wanted Tom Kelly to research, produce, and
Speaker 1: record and hand him a tape of the play by
Speaker 1: play of the USC Notre Dame football game from I
Speaker 1: guess nineteen sixty one two. I looked this up once,
Speaker 1: and of course, advancing in my own age and not
Speaker 1: really being able to see anything at the moment, as
Speaker 1: alluded to earlier, I don't remember what I found. I
Speaker 1: think it was nineteen sixty two. What he wanted was
Speaker 1: like half an hour's worth of play by play, actual
Speaker 1: literal play by play of that football game, so that
Speaker 1: the actor Lee Strasberg playing Hyman Roth could be watching
Speaker 1: it in his home outside Miami when Michael Corleone comes
Speaker 1: and visits him. And I might add that the actor
Speaker 1: who played Michael Corleoni, who was not Robert de Niro,
Speaker 1: who was the other one, used to live in the
Speaker 1: same building I did, and I used to see him
Speaker 1: all the time, and he was about three feet tall,
Speaker 1: and he had a dog who was about six feet tall.
Speaker 1: So I already met him, and I never met Robert DeNiro.
Speaker 1: So he wanted Corleone to have this meeting with Hyman Roth.
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Coppola, did I have too many hymns in
Speaker 1: this statement? He wanted him to have the game on
Speaker 1: in the background. But one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: and few people recognize this, my father did, and he
Speaker 1: was the first one to point it out to me.
Speaker 1: And I find, to my great surprise to this day,
Speaker 1: fifty years later, nearly after the success of the Godfather films,
Speaker 1: that many people don't recognize this as one of the great, great,
Speaker 1: understated but important components to the spectacular nature and the genuineness,
Speaker 1: the resilience, the very similitude of the Godfather films. Coppola
Speaker 1: thought that the more background details that he got that
Speaker 1: were historically accurate to the day he was pretending to
Speaker 1: take you to, whether you knew anything about the historical
Speaker 1: record of that date or not, the more that he
Speaker 1: got exactly right, the better the film would be. My
Speaker 1: father pointed this out to me not long after he
Speaker 1: bought the first VCR I had ever seen. This is
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. It costs two thousand dollars apiece,
Speaker 1: and the blank tapes were twenty dollars. Bootleg versions of
Speaker 1: popular films were one hundred dollars. Real versions of videos
Speaker 1: of films were two hundred dollars. The Godfather was two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Porn was two hundred dollars. Bad movies were
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. Needless to say, they didn't sell a
Speaker 1: lot of movies. But my dad got a bootleg version
Speaker 1: of The Godfather Part two and he called me in
Speaker 1: one day as he was watching it out in our
Speaker 1: living room. I guess I was home from Cornell. It
Speaker 1: was the winter break. I remember it being very cold,
Speaker 1: and my dad had frozen. It had paused the video
Speaker 1: of Godfather Part two, in which de Niro is standing
Speaker 1: there on the street in New York in nineteen oh four,
Speaker 1: whenever it is nineteen oh six, just before he kills
Speaker 1: the mafia leader and makes begins his assent to running
Speaker 1: the families of New York. And my dad says, you
Speaker 1: got to see this. I spent time in the public
Speaker 1: library here in Hastings the other day to check this out.
Speaker 1: I had a feeling this was true, and it's true.
Speaker 1: Do you see the window of the grocery store behind
Speaker 1: him in this tight shot? What do you see in
Speaker 1: the window? I said, it looks like a poster for
Speaker 1: a fight, an advertisement for a boxing match at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden. Not an uncommon sight in nineteen oh four,
Speaker 1: or in my own youth or in years thereafter here
Speaker 1: in New York. And there it was somebody, kid, somebody
Speaker 1: versus somebody junior. All the boxers of the days were
Speaker 1: either John L. Sullivan Junior or kid John L. Sullivan.
Speaker 1: That was the joke. It was, you know, kid Sullivan
Speaker 1: versus Sullivan Junior for the championship of the Sullivan Division.
Speaker 1: Referee John M. Sullivan in any event. My dad said,
Speaker 1: I went and looked this up. That fight actually happened
Speaker 1: on that date at Madison Square Garden. That is the
Speaker 1: kind of detail this man brings to these films. That's
Speaker 1: why they're so good. Because you may never notice that
Speaker 1: you are actually seeing sort of time to time travel here,
Speaker 1: but the story seems legit because the background to it
Speaker 1: is legit. He said, I don't know if that helps
Speaker 1: you in what you're doing in your career, but maybe
Speaker 1: you should think about that, and I said I will,
Speaker 1: and I still am. So this was why Francis Ford
Speaker 1: Koppola called my colleague Tom Kelly one day at KNX
Speaker 1: and said, would you do this for me? I want
Speaker 1: you to research it. I know there's no videotape of
Speaker 1: the game. I know there's no copy unless you have
Speaker 1: one audio tape of the game, but I will give
Speaker 1: you fifty thousand dollars to go and research. However. You
Speaker 1: can research it in the newspapers at the USC Sports
Speaker 1: Information Office, however you could research it. I want you
Speaker 1: to go and research it and produce for me a
Speaker 1: real to reel tape with half an hour of this
Speaker 1: game as you would have called it. And Kelly goes,
Speaker 1: I can do that, not a problem. Excuse me. I
Speaker 1: can do that, not a problem, he said. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need the cash. Is there any way you
Speaker 1: could give me one millionth of a point of the
Speaker 1: film or something joking like that, And Coppola says, frankly,
Speaker 1: this job is worth more like one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but I don't have it, not for something like this.
Speaker 1: They won't let me spend the money. If you can
Speaker 1: clear this where I wind up paying you five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in cash and it shows on the books that
Speaker 1: I paid you five hundred dollars in cash, I will
Speaker 1: give you zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero one percent of the profits of this film, a
Speaker 1: microscopic number estimated to be worth maybe maybe long term,
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars Godfather Part two. And Kelly, who
Speaker 1: had been in Los Angeles long enough and had done
Speaker 1: enough part time gigs in television and full time gigs
Speaker 1: in television and cameos in movies and TV series to
Speaker 1: know exactly how much zero point zero zero zero zero
Speaker 1: one percent of the profits of a film or TV
Speaker 1: series might be and what it would be at minimum said, Okay,
Speaker 1: when do you need it? Kelly said, he took a
Speaker 1: couple of days off, went into the library of the
Speaker 1: Sports Information Office and the Athletic department at usc where
Speaker 1: he obviously had entree as the play by play man
Speaker 1: for both football and basketball, and he wrote down every
Speaker 1: detail he could and went into a studio and recorded it.
Speaker 1: He may have even recorded it at KNX, and everybody
Speaker 1: just said, what is Kelly doing in there? Well, listen carefully.
Speaker 1: We can hear him coming through the soundproof windows as
Speaker 1: you can hear him at home doing this whatever he's doing.
Speaker 1: And he said he went to Koppola's office and handed
Speaker 1: him that tape, and Coppola listened to a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes and said, this is exactly what I need. Here's
Speaker 1: your five hundred dollars sign here. You now have zero
Speaker 1: points zero zero, zero one percent or whatever it was
Speaker 1: of the profits of Godfather too for doing this for
Speaker 1: me and keeping it off the books and helping me
Speaker 1: with my idea. It partners and producers in the studio
Speaker 1: and everybody else who would never understand why I need
Speaker 1: that play by play of that game in the background
Speaker 1: that nobody will notice. It will only be full volume
Speaker 1: for maybe five seconds in the whole film, but it's
Speaker 1: got to be there, so Strasbourg and Pacino can can
Speaker 1: be in that space and it helps the actors too.
Speaker 1: And Kelly goes well to himself and he told me
Speaker 1: this later, I don't care if this guy's nuts. I
Speaker 1: just got zero point zero zero zero zero one percent
Speaker 1: of the profits of the sequel to The Godfather. And
Speaker 1: so what Tom Kelly was explaining to me where he
Speaker 1: didn't really care how much he worked, that it was
Speaker 1: nice to work. He liked to work. It was his
Speaker 1: job and it was his calling, and he enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: and he liked the hours, and he didn't mind not
Speaker 1: being on television and the radio. Work would take care
Speaker 1: of nearly all of his expenses, but his main income
Speaker 1: was that zero point zero zero zero one percent of
Speaker 1: all profits from The Godfather. Because he even now, and
Speaker 1: it would have been five ten years later after Godfather
Speaker 1: Part two came out, he said that he had never
Speaker 1: had a year so far that with the advent of
Speaker 1: VHS tapes being available and of course the rebroadcasts on
Speaker 1: television and cable and things like that, that weren't really
Speaker 1: definable in nineteen seventy eight, or whenever he signed this
Speaker 1: deal and made this tape of this football game. Between
Speaker 1: all of those sources of income, to say nothing of
Speaker 1: the theatrical re releases of the film, and the time
Speaker 1: that Koppla cut it all together again to make it
Speaker 1: chronologically sequential and issued it again and made more hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. Tom Kelly said that having agreed
Speaker 1: to take five hundred dollars in cash and the rest
Speaker 1: and a promise, he had never made less than one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year from thirty minutes of recording
Speaker 1: and two days worth of work on a subject. He
Speaker 1: was already an expert. For one hundred thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm remembering at It may have been more,
Speaker 1: it may have been a little less, but I remember
Speaker 1: it was in six figures. Good God. That was his
Speaker 1: source of income. He said, it's my retirement fund, and
Speaker 1: I don't even have to retire. So I always wanted
Speaker 1: to tell that story, and I was reminded of it
Speaker 1: because not Coppola, who I haven't met, but Scorsese, who
Speaker 1: I haven't met, was sitting next to me, and no,
Speaker 1: he was not sitting next to de Niro, and that
Speaker 1: somehow is my story of my lunch with Ellie Mestaal
Speaker 1: just wanted to cheer things up a little bit, given
Speaker 1: the fact that it's my neighborhood in which the guy
Speaker 1: got shot, signaling the start of a new era of
Speaker 1: the key word in American politics being duck. Anyway, I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Let me see if I can read this.
Speaker 1: I'm now reminded of a Genesis video Land of Illusion
Speaker 1: maybe which they have puppets, British puppets, and there's a
Speaker 1: British puppet of Bob Hope and he's reading his catchphrase
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you off Q cards only. His vision
Speaker 1: is so bad that every Q card has one word
Speaker 1: on it, and one word only. I feel like I
Speaker 1: need that for these scripts. I'm reading off a piece
Speaker 1: of paper that's got like two hundred and sixty four
Speaker 1: point type. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, I know
Speaker 1: by heart that they're the musical directors. Have Countdown. They arranged,
Speaker 1: produced and performed most of our music, and mister Shanelle
Speaker 1: was on orchestration and keyboards mister Ray was on the guitars,
Speaker 1: the bass, and the drums. The producer is credited as
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers, which was something Brian suggested once. That's him
Speaker 1: and Shaneil and me. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
Speaker 1: are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis and courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music was arranged and performed by the group Noah
Speaker 1: Horns Allowed and continuing the musical theme. My announcer was
Speaker 1: my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything else was as ever
Speaker 1: my fault. My excuse is I can't really read. Still,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Full checkup of the eyes later in the week.
Speaker 1: The dogs are fine. In fact, three of them have
Speaker 1: joined me in producing this show. Kit is sitting here
Speaker 1: in front of me, Stevie is here, Ted is here.
Speaker 1: Rose is outside because she's a contrarian. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think she's watching Godfather Part two at the moment. This
Speaker 1: part about the football game is really good. One hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year forever, it's probably more now anyway.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, just one thousand. This I have
Speaker 1: to read five hundred and four days until the scheduled
Speaker 1: end of the lame duck presidency of the very lame Trump.
Speaker 1: Probably the next scheduled countdown will be Thursday. As always,
Speaker 1: bulletins as the news warrants, and my eyeballs permit, till
Speaker 1: next time, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. I did want to add something here
Speaker 1: if you're still listening. The moment, this is how well
Speaker 1: trained and knowledgeable and smart my dogs are. The moment
Speaker 1: I said good luck, just there, Stevie, who had been
Speaker 1: reclining gracefully in front of me, stood up like, oh
Speaker 1: good are we going to eat now? Because good luck
Speaker 1: he's finished. These are smart dogs. Countdown with Keith Olreman
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.