Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
Speaker 1: attempt to stall his New York trial has failed. That's
Speaker 1: the trial for claiming hush money he paid to the
Speaker 1: porn star he cheated with on his wife three months
Speaker 1: after she gave birth was legal expenses. The New York
Speaker 1: trial will start thirty four counts as planned March twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: And obviously the implications are that Trump trial Air traffic
Speaker 1: Control will now be waiving the Stormy Daniels Trump case
Speaker 1: in for a landing first, and it just told the
Speaker 1: Trump election subversion case in DC to go round and
Speaker 1: try to set down later. The Trump Georgia eleven eighty
Speaker 1: votes trial is encountering some turbulence, even though the only
Speaker 1: witness claiming any evidence of anything improper between Fannie Willis
Speaker 1: and the extra prosecutor cannot remember how or when she
Speaker 1: found out about the affair. And remember, the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of this is the same purpose it always is, stalling.
Speaker 1: The Trump business fraud case has already landed and might
Speaker 1: have deplayed yesterday in the same court building as the
Speaker 1: Trump what did you do after your son was born?
Speaker 1: I did Stormy Daniels case, but it didn't. We may
Speaker 1: hear from Judge Arthur and gern with the final count
Speaker 1: and the amount in the second New York trial as
Speaker 1: early as today, and now the punchline to this brief
Speaker 1: resume of all the criminal trials and other trials that
Speaker 1: Trump is currently facing. None of that, None of that
Speaker 1: is the current Trump legal headline. You do not get
Speaker 1: to survive to become a seventy seven year old, deranged,
Speaker 1: malignant narcissist without being really good at controlling your own image.
Speaker 1: Trump's brain does not work right to him. Other people
Speaker 1: are just furniture that can move on its own. He
Speaker 1: has no courage, no conscience, and no conception that the
Speaker 1: world was not created solely for him. But he's good
Speaker 1: at controlling his own image, or at least he was
Speaker 1: until he made what could ultimately be a fatal mistake
Speaker 1: if the rest of us just jump on it, because
Speaker 1: as he yelled at cameras at Manhattan Criminal Court on
Speaker 1: Center Street in New York yesterday, he made a terrible
Speaker 1: logistical decision. Whenever Trump has talked to the media that
Speaker 1: has been separated from him, even by those cold, imposing
Speaker 1: silver police barricades, the one that looks like the bottom
Speaker 1: half of a jail cell. Trump has always managed, in
Speaker 1: that situation to position himself in a way in which
Speaker 1: it is clear that it is the media that is
Speaker 1: behind the half jail cell barricades and not him behind them.
Speaker 1: It's simple, really, You stand parallel to those barricades, and
Speaker 1: you make sure you are doing so in such a
Speaker 1: way that only barricades in front of you are visible.
Speaker 1: Even the taller barricades will only go up to the
Speaker 1: belt line of even an average size man as long
Speaker 1: as they are in front of him. Photographs of Trump
Speaker 1: will therefore be cropped often, and even if they are not,
Speaker 1: the barricades just look like ordinary railings. But something happened
Speaker 1: to Trump yesterday in court. Those police barricades were in
Speaker 1: front of him and also behind him in a kind
Speaker 1: of loose octagon shape. Suddenly there were these half jail
Speaker 1: cell bars in front of him as usual, but also
Speaker 1: half jail cell bars behind him in the distance, so
Speaker 1: that almost every photo of him and every video of
Speaker 1: him showed the ones in the back, and thanks to
Speaker 1: the laws of perspective, they were even with his shoulders
Speaker 1: or somewhat higher than his shoulders, and basically what looked
Speaker 1: like jail cells could not be cropped out of every
Speaker 1: photo of Trump. Just to make it worse, Trump, the
Speaker 1: incredibly good orchestrator of his own image, exacerbated the problem somehow.
Speaker 1: His lawyer stood behind the barricade that was placed perfectly
Speaker 1: parallel to the two men, and Trump stood to the
Speaker 1: lawyer's left, and perhaps without ever realizing it, he put
Speaker 1: himself in one of the corners where the front barricade
Speaker 1: angled backwards. So if you have not seen the picture,
Speaker 1: bars in front of Trump, a second set of bars
Speaker 1: to the side of Trump, stretching from where he stood
Speaker 1: to back behind him, and to the right of him,
Speaker 1: a third set of bars which sloped back from there
Speaker 1: in Trump's direction, and then the pista resistance, the fourth
Speaker 1: set of bars, unmistakable and unavoidable, at the height of
Speaker 1: Trump's shoulders. Trump behind bars several times. Trump even put
Speaker 1: his hands on the railing in front of him, and
Speaker 1: he might as well have been shouting, get me out
Speaker 1: of this prison, yall lousy screw. In fact, there is
Speaker 1: one set of images. The photographer was named Timothy Clary
Speaker 1: of Ajen's Franz Press, and he must have put his
Speaker 1: camera over his own head because in his shots those
Speaker 1: back bars are literally appearing as if they were above
Speaker 1: Trump's head. The show is so wide that you see
Speaker 1: perhaps two dozen people leaning against walls and standing staring
Speaker 1: at Trump, and then in the middle bars suggesting jail
Speaker 1: behind him, above his head, bars suggesting jail to his right,
Speaker 1: bars suggesting jail in front of him. Looking left to right,
Speaker 1: you see the cop outside the barricades, Trump inside the barricades,
Speaker 1: lawyer inside the barricades, second cop outside the barricades. Even
Speaker 1: if it is just on an unconscious level, the photograph
Speaker 1: screams Trump in prison, Trump behind bars, Trump guilty, Trump
Speaker 1: the criminal, Trump indicted, Trump so indicted. Wait, so indicted.
Speaker 2: Oh, Nancy, I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it.
Speaker 2: I'm about to go to jail in America likes it.
Speaker 2: I'm so indicted. My defense at they're tightened, and I
Speaker 2: know I know the unindicted co conspirators can bite it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nancy Faust. More than that, though, for once,
Speaker 1: it is Trump in that photograph, and most of those
Speaker 1: photographs it is Trump who is behind bars, and everybody
Speaker 1: else in the shot is free, the court staff, the cops,
Speaker 1: the media. I'll post the photo on Twitter x and
Speaker 1: wherever else I can think to. I've never been on trial.
Speaker 1: I've never actually been a witness or anything else in
Speaker 1: a courtroom, and only once have I ever been in
Speaker 1: a deposition. Of course, it was a two day deposition
Speaker 1: over an issue fifty million dollars. And one of the
Speaker 1: things my very good lawyers for that deposition hammered into
Speaker 1: me for use in the deposition and any other time
Speaker 1: I encountered other lawyers, it was a very simple warning,
Speaker 1: whatever you do, try not to look guilty. And in
Speaker 1: the picture, God does Trump look guilty. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Nicki Gley's campaign can license that image. It merely
Speaker 1: proves her last honest point of her campaign that a
Speaker 1: Trump candidacy will be nothing but him in court. It's
Speaker 1: like five hundred bucks to license the rights to use
Speaker 1: a photo like that off Getty Images, but for a
Speaker 1: campaign would probably be way higher. However, the Biden campaign
Speaker 1: ought to buy that photo and the rights and the
Speaker 1: camera and any piece of video shot from that damning angle,
Speaker 1: and hire the cameraman and plaster it everywhere. Trump on trial,
Speaker 1: you know he's guilty, your Republican nominee. Only with nominee
Speaker 1: crossed out and defendant written above it in read on
Speaker 1: this photographer Tim Clary led pipe cinch Pulitzer prize that
Speaker 1: sound effect. That's what the picture looks like. Meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: California grand jury has indicted James Comer's and Sean Hannity's
Speaker 1: and Grandpa Grassley's key FBI informant against the Bidens. He
Speaker 1: did make all that stuff up, the infamous FD one
Speaker 1: zero two three form that Grassley released and Comber tried
Speaker 1: to sell as real about Barisma and bribing the Bidens.
Speaker 1: And when they went back to the informant and they
Speaker 1: said that a Barisma official told him in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: according to his story, that he'd bribed the Bidens. Turned
Speaker 1: out this guy had not met with anybody at Brisma
Speaker 1: until two years after that, that the timeline didn't work.
Speaker 1: It was obvious he'd made it up. He just repeated
Speaker 1: his crap, which was or sounds awfully like Kremlin composed
Speaker 1: dis info and James Comer and Chuck Grassley and Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity served as to facto Russian agents in spreading it.
Speaker 1: And now Alexander Smirnoff faces twenty five years in prison
Speaker 1: for lying to the FBI in Russia. FBI sues you.
Speaker 1: If they were Democrats, James Comer would have been stripped
Speaker 1: of his chairmanship by right now, possibly forced out of
Speaker 1: the House already, and Chuck Grassley would have been in
Speaker 1: jail years ago. So now Joe Biden's legal problems have
Speaker 1: been reduced to just the one. Unfortunately, that one is
Speaker 1: having an idiot for his attorney general. How Merrick Garland
Speaker 1: has not resigned yet is beyond me. I assume it's
Speaker 1: just because, as we saw in the Trump prosecutions, he
Speaker 1: does nothing quickly or in normal time, or even slowly.
Speaker 1: I presume he cannot go to the bathroom without a
Speaker 1: six month long series of meetings and consultations. First. Well,
Speaker 1: now Garland's got to act fast and spit or get
Speaker 1: off the pot, and if he won't, Biden has to
Speaker 1: fire him again. This political prostitute, Robert Herr, the Trump
Speaker 1: appointee and now apparently de facto Trump campaign surrogate, the
Speaker 1: centerpiece in what Politico aptly named the Biden Age plot,
Speaker 1: her is revealing more and more of his plans to
Speaker 1: try to sink the president, violating all legal ethics both
Speaker 1: of them by including his neurological guesswork about Biden's memory
Speaker 1: inside a special Council investigation that oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: cleared Biden, that wasn't enough damage to do, That was
Speaker 1: a enough prostitution to perform on behalf of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: This bastard her, as I keep repeating here, is actively
Speaker 1: and not even secretly, arranging to testify to at least
Speaker 1: the House Judiciary Committee. It is now next month. CNN
Speaker 1: and The Times reported yesterday HER's congressional testimony is set
Speaker 1: for March twelfth, and somebody on HER's side of this
Speaker 1: equation has spun HER's tawdry, subhuman question about the president's
Speaker 1: late sun Bo as justified because it was Biden and
Speaker 1: not her, who first brought up Bo Biden. Axios also
Speaker 1: reports that her quote has been in discussions with Sarah Isker,
Speaker 1: the head of public affairs and a senior counselor to
Speaker 1: Trump's deputy attorney general during the Mueller investigation, to help
Speaker 1: him navigate a congressional hearing. Sarah Isker. Sarah Isker is
Speaker 1: the federalist phony who attacked Trump in twenty sixteen for
Speaker 1: having threatened to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and who bashed CNN
Speaker 1: as fake news, and first went to work for Trump
Speaker 1: as the spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, all the
Speaker 1: while pitching herself for a job with MSNBC and CNN,
Speaker 1: and finally being hired by CNN, which she had called
Speaker 1: fake news, as political editor. They blew her out quickly
Speaker 1: over there, and she was last seen at ABC News
Speaker 1: before she signed on as Robert Hur's assistant henchman in
Speaker 1: the aptly titled biden Age plot. And now besides this,
Speaker 1: there is a new twist to the biden Age plot.
Speaker 1: The New York Times reported that before it was released,
Speaker 1: the White House pushed back on that report, but did
Speaker 1: not take any of the actions it or the DOJ
Speaker 1: could have done to censor that report. Nobl not smart,
Speaker 1: but noble. The day before the report was released, the
Speaker 1: dojy's senior career official, a man named Bradley Weinsheimer, wrote
Speaker 1: back that HER's amateur doctoring and his other political opinions
Speaker 1: inserted into his report quote fall well within the department
Speaker 1: standards for public release. The Times does not tell you
Speaker 1: who this Bradley Weinsheimer is. They describe him as the
Speaker 1: department's senior career official or non political appointee. That's bullshit.
Speaker 1: He is hardly that. He was appointed by George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush to the Department of Justice, and he was elevated
Speaker 1: to his current non political position under Trump. There is
Speaker 1: nothing stopping Merrick Garland from stopping them all dead in
Speaker 1: their tracks, denying the House Judiciary Committee any material at
Speaker 1: hers testimony. There's nothing stopping him except Garland's own sluggish
Speaker 1: trees instead of the forest phony piety about the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice and Law with a capital L. Eric Garland
Speaker 1: already missed his chance to redact her as utterly uninformed
Speaker 1: and politically poisoned conspiracy theories. And now we have this
Speaker 1: Weinsheimer guy involved in this, and this Isker involved in this,
Speaker 1: and it is a little miniature right wing conspiracy. Your
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, mister Garland. It just produced a document
Speaker 1: in which some idiot from the Federalist Society was permitted
Speaker 1: to speculate on the President's acuity. James Comy and then
Speaker 1: Bill Barr had already turned DOJ and its branches into
Speaker 1: a political whorehouse, and this clown Robert Hurr just turned
Speaker 1: it into a free political whorehouse once again. Garland has
Speaker 1: to shut this down, or Biden has to fire him
Speaker 1: and take the fallout for doing so. Unless I don't know,
Speaker 1: Jack Smith has threatened to quit if Garland goes. Unless
Speaker 1: it's something like that, there is no reason to continue
Speaker 1: to trust Merrick Garland a foolish, naive man, not just
Speaker 1: to do the right thing, but to do anything. Remember
Speaker 1: when I said that actor their Sunday Shows deceptively edited
Speaker 1: quotes from the non brain parts of her report, edited
Speaker 1: them like you would edit the phrase not guilty into
Speaker 1: dot dot dot guilty. That they needed to fire their
Speaker 1: anchors and their anchors bosses. This is probably a coincidence,
Speaker 1: but ABC News is president. Kim Godwin just discovered, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's another ABC News president above her. Deborah O'Connell has
Speaker 1: been promoted to president News Group and Network's Disney Entertainment.
Speaker 1: She has more words in her job, so that means
Speaker 1: she's boss. This is not necessarily cause in effect. I
Speaker 1: would actually guess it's not cause and effect. Godwin was
Speaker 1: reportedly hated at ABC, and evinced no earthly clue that
Speaker 1: she knew what she was doing. But the news president
Speaker 1: positions the producers and management at the key shows they
Speaker 1: put those people there and keep them there, and it's
Speaker 1: usually their favorites. Not so much with the talent, but
Speaker 1: definitely the producers of shows like Meet the Press and
Speaker 1: This Week are the people that the Kim Goodwins of
Speaker 1: this world want there. So those producers, the ones particularly
Speaker 1: at This Week, all have to be scared right now
Speaker 1: because their boss is no longer the boss. And by
Speaker 1: the way, after how they screwed up her story Good
Speaker 1: two other TV stories. The Washington Post has made a
Speaker 1: million arteries run cold a nice little feature on biden
Speaker 1: game strategy for the election and why nearly three percent
Speaker 1: of the one hundred and thirty million dollars Swing States
Speaker 1: ad buy that they have arranged is going to go
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden's spots in Omaha, Nebraska three million, seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars worth of Biden commercials and Biden ad
Speaker 1: and Biden's streaming stuff in Nebraska. Well, in the second
Speaker 1: district of Nebraska that state splits its electoral votes. Four
Speaker 1: are awarded from the deeply read first district. One is
Speaker 1: awarded from the deeply Omaha second district. It's kind of
Speaker 1: blue there. It's a city. I'll just read the rest
Speaker 1: of the little post story. Under a scenario where Biden
Speaker 1: wins the three northern swing states and the other uncontested
Speaker 1: Blue states, a loss in Nebraska's second district, well, that
Speaker 1: could result in a two hundred and sixty nine two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine tie, kicking the selection of the
Speaker 1: president to the House, where Republicans currently have an advantage
Speaker 1: in the number of state delegations they control. And remember,
Speaker 1: if God help us, the House ever has to decide
Speaker 1: who's going to be president. Each state gets one vote,
Speaker 1: and right now the Republicans control twenty six state delegations.
Speaker 1: So you're going to spend three point seven mili in
Speaker 1: the Omaha market? Are we sure that's enough? And a
Speaker 1: year ago today, Tucker Carlson was already in negotiations with
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, remember Kevin McCarthy, to
Speaker 1: unleash the greatest blockbuster in the history of American television,
Speaker 1: the real January sixth tapes, which of course turned out
Speaker 1: to be several days worth a video of empty hallways,
Speaker 1: so didn't wind up being a full length Zuppruder film.
Speaker 1: But we didn't know that then. A year ago today,
Speaker 1: and Where's Tucker Carlson now filming inside a Moscow supermarket
Speaker 1: explaining that Russia is far better than the United States
Speaker 1: because the prices in the supermarket are so low, without
Speaker 1: ever noting that the prices are still two to three
Speaker 1: times higher than the average Russian can ever afford in
Speaker 1: his lifetime. Moreover, if you thought Carlson's flatulent lap sitting
Speaker 1: interview with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was useless, I
Speaker 1: hope if you saw how it was trashed by a
Speaker 1: critic named Vladimir Putin. Putin said, I honestly thought he
Speaker 1: would be aggressive and ask so called sharp questions, but
Speaker 1: he chose a different tactic unquote. What's he implying there?
Speaker 1: What's the opposite of sharp? Dull? Soft? Worst? Yet, Putin
Speaker 1: made Carlson release their interview unedited, and then when it
Speaker 1: appeared on the Russian government's official site, they had edited
Speaker 1: out the really dull parts, which turned out to be
Speaker 1: many of Tucker Carlson's questions. One day, you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Kremlin praising Putin to his face. The
Speaker 1: next day you're praising the prices in the Borsch department
Speaker 1: at the Moscow win Dixie. So I'd like to congratulate
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, the first broadcast to my knowledge, who has
Speaker 1: been fired by CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox News and now
Speaker 1: by the KGB. Also of interest here, how many different
Speaker 1: things does Marjorie Taylor Green not understand? I mean, I
Speaker 1: suppose the answer is infinite. I mean, she has spent
Speaker 1: several days congratulating herself now on being named one of
Speaker 1: the impeachment managers for the trial of Secretary Majorcis in
Speaker 1: the Senate. Blithely unaware or blithely too stupid to be
Speaker 1: aware that there is not going to be a trial
Speaker 1: of Secretary Majorcas in the Senate. The stunt is over.
Speaker 1: But yesterday Marge went back to one of her favorite
Speaker 1: gaps in her knowledge back things and she got called
Speaker 1: out for it. Crushed. Thank you, Congressman Robert Garcia of California.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Auberman.
Speaker 1: Aberman still ahead of us on countdown. It's Fridays with Thurber,
Speaker 1: and we'll get back to the beginning. To my mind,
Speaker 1: it is the quintessential Thurber story. It's the one I
Speaker 1: heard the actor William Windham recite on public television in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven in his One Man Thurber Show, And
Speaker 1: I thought, I wonder if I could ever have a
Speaker 1: job that would let me read Thurber stories out loud
Speaker 1: for an audience. The perfection of a box to hide
Speaker 1: in coming up first. Yes, it's the daily roundup of
Speaker 1: the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute
Speaker 1: two days worse Parsons in the world, the bronze worse
Speaker 1: Nike and Major League Baseball. Nike is the new supplier
Speaker 1: of baseball's uniforms, and thus they are the people who
Speaker 1: have brought everybody in the game into rare agreement. Everybody
Speaker 1: in the game loves to disagree. That's the point about baseball.
Speaker 1: It's about to end. Somebody says, oh no, it's never
Speaker 1: been better, says somebody else. Now we all agree. Young fans,
Speaker 1: uniform nerds, old reporters now in their seventh decade of
Speaker 1: going to games, and the players themselves, they are all
Speaker 1: saying the same thing this February, the new uniforms suck eggs.
Speaker 1: As spring training begins, everybody can see the obvious, the
Speaker 1: numbers and the player names have been shrunk to near illegibility.
Speaker 1: Outfielder Taylor Ward of the Angels says, they look like
Speaker 1: replica uniforms. Somebody else said, yeah, they look like replicas
Speaker 1: at TJ Max, but it's worse than that. The hefty
Speaker 1: and large Angels reliever Carlos Estevez pointed out to reporters
Speaker 1: that the white in his team's pants does not match
Speaker 1: the white in his team's shirts, and Estebez says he
Speaker 1: can't fit into his pants and they will not let
Speaker 1: him tailor his pants. I feel like I'm wearing someone
Speaker 1: else's pants. The blue in the Cubs uniforms, according to
Speaker 1: a Cubs player, does not appear to be the same
Speaker 1: blue the Cubs have worn since the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and they have screwed up the fabled script Dodgers uniforms
Speaker 1: of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The shirt used to open
Speaker 1: used to button between the OH and the middle D
Speaker 1: in the word Dodgers across the chest. Now it opens
Speaker 1: in the middle of the OH. So if an LA
Speaker 1: player has his top buttons on button, it really looks
Speaker 1: like his uniform reads Dudgers, Dodgers, Dudegers. The next complaint
Speaker 1: will come from the fans when they find out that
Speaker 1: the price of one of these replicated uniforms has risen
Speaker 1: to about four hundred dollars. The runner up worser Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Barney Rubble, please get your deviated septum fixed. Green,
Speaker 1: the first congress person dumber than Rosie the robot from
Speaker 1: the Jetsons.
Speaker 3: I'm not a doctor, but I have a PhD In
Speaker 3: recognizing bullshit when I hear it. It's time to be
Speaker 3: honest about the vaccine injured and we need to stop
Speaker 3: allowing these COVID nineteen vaccines to be given out to
Speaker 3: children in a lady's time has expired, and now recognize
Speaker 3: mister Garcia from California for five minutes of questions.
Speaker 1: Thank you so Chairman.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry you all had to go through that. That
Speaker 4: was a lot of conspiracy theories and wild accusations which
Speaker 4: we now have been debunked by medical science. And we
Speaker 4: should be clear that vaccines work and save lives, and
Speaker 4: they have millions of lives in this country.
Speaker 1: Good lord, I mean Marjorie Taylor Green can't spell PhD.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Congressman Garcia, but our winner the worst the
Speaker 1: Associated Press. You know for the most concentrated, most absurd
Speaker 1: both siding of the presidential election. The AP, which is
Speaker 1: usually just bland and shallow, may have won the award
Speaker 1: for all of journalism in the month of February. The
Speaker 1: headline of a story analyzing Congressman elect Tom Swase's victory
Speaker 1: in the special election in the New York Third quote,
Speaker 1: Democrats cheered New York win as good omen for November.
Speaker 1: Is it enough to calm anxiety over Biden? Ah the
Speaker 1: Associated Press. I swear to Jesus if Kamala Harris discovered
Speaker 1: a pill guaranteeing everybody eternal life, and she was handing
Speaker 1: them out to everybody on the street. Here take two,
Speaker 1: somebody would write, Democrats cheer public reaction to their immortality pill.
Speaker 1: But is it enough to calm anxiety over Biden? Today's
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. It's been a long week.
Speaker 1: And every time I find myself thinking it's been a
Speaker 1: long week, I like to turn to my book of
Speaker 1: James Thurber, and it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been
Speaker 1: a few Fridays since I've done any James Thurber. And
Speaker 1: so let's start at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times.
Speaker 1: I read this story first aloud in a class in
Speaker 1: college in nineteen seventy nine, and a friend of mine
Speaker 1: came up to me and said, you should forget that
Speaker 1: sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber for a living, and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, that'll ever happen. This is, for some
Speaker 1: reason salvation for me, Catharsis, and every other emotion that
Speaker 1: is appropriate after it has been a long week. A
Speaker 1: Box to Hide In by James Thurber. I waited till
Speaker 1: the large woman with the awful hat took up her
Speaker 1: sack of groceries and went out, peering at the tomatoes
Speaker 1: and the l us on her way. The clerk asked
Speaker 1: me what mine was. Have you got a box, I asked,
Speaker 1: A large box. I want a box to hide in.
Speaker 1: You want a box, he asked, I want a box
Speaker 1: to hide in. I said, what do you mean? He said,
Speaker 1: you mean a big box. I said, I meant a
Speaker 1: big box big enough to hold me. I haven't got
Speaker 1: any boxes, he said, only cottons that cans come in.
Speaker 1: I tried several other groceries and none of them had
Speaker 1: a box big enough for me to hide in. And
Speaker 1: there was nothing for it but to face life out.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel strong, and I'd had this overpowering desire
Speaker 1: to hide in a box for a long time. Well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you want to hide in this box,
Speaker 1: one grocer asked me. It's a form of escape. I
Speaker 1: told him, hiding in a box. It circumscribes your worries
Speaker 1: in the range of your anguish. You don't see people either.
Speaker 1: How the hell do you eat when you're in this box,
Speaker 1: asked the grocer. I don't the hell do you get
Speaker 1: anything to eat? I said, I had never been in
Speaker 1: a box and didn't know, but that that would take
Speaker 1: care of itself. Well, he said, finally, I haven't got
Speaker 1: any boxes, only some pasteboard curtains that cans come in.
Speaker 1: It was the same every place. I gave up when
Speaker 1: it got dark and the groceries closed, and hid in
Speaker 1: my room again. I turned out the light and lay
Speaker 1: on the bed. You feel better when it gets dark.
Speaker 1: I could have hit in a closet, I suppose, but
Speaker 1: people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in
Speaker 1: a closet. They would be startled, and you'd have to
Speaker 1: tell them why you're in the closet. Nobody pays attention
Speaker 1: to a big box lying on the floor. I'd stay
Speaker 1: in it for days, and nobody'd think to look in it,
Speaker 1: not even the cleaning woman. My cleaning woman came the
Speaker 1: next morning and woke me up, and I was still
Speaker 1: feeling bad. I asked her if she knew where I
Speaker 1: could get a large box. How big a box you want,
Speaker 1: she asked, I want a box big enough for me
Speaker 1: to get inside of, I said. She looked at me
Speaker 1: with big, dim eyes. There's something wrong with her glands.
Speaker 1: She's awful, but she has a big heart, which makes
Speaker 1: it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick, and her
Speaker 1: children are sick, and she is sick too. I got
Speaker 1: to thinking how pleasant it would be if I were
Speaker 1: in a box now and didn't have to see her.
Speaker 1: I'd be in a box right there in the room,
Speaker 1: and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if you had a
Speaker 1: desire to bark or laugh when someone who doesn't know
Speaker 1: walks by the box you were in, maybe she would
Speaker 1: have a spell with her heart. If I did that
Speaker 1: would die right there. The officers and the elevator man
Speaker 1: and mister Grammage would find us funny. Dog Gune. Thing
Speaker 1: happened at the building last night, the doorman would say
Speaker 1: to his wife, I led him this woman to clean
Speaker 1: up tenf and she never come out. See she's never
Speaker 1: in there more in an hour, but she never come out. See.
Speaker 1: So when it got time for me to go off duty, why,
Speaker 1: I says to Krenik, who was on the elevator, I says,
Speaker 1: what the hell you suppose this happened to that woman
Speaker 1: cleans tenf. He says he didn't know. He says he
Speaker 1: never seen her after he took her up. So I
Speaker 1: spoke to mister Grammage about it. I'm sorry to bother you,
Speaker 1: mister Grammage, I says, but there's something funny about that
Speaker 1: woman cleans TENF. So I told him. So he said
Speaker 1: we better have a look, and we all three goes
Speaker 1: up and knots on the door and rings the bells
Speaker 1: sea and nobody answers. So he said we'd have to
Speaker 1: walk in. So Credic opened the door and we walked
Speaker 1: in and here was this woman cleans the apartment, dead
Speaker 1: as a herring on the floor, and the gentleman that
Speaker 1: lives there was in a box. The cleaning woman kept
Speaker 1: looking at me. It was hard to realize she wasn't dead.
Speaker 1: It's a form of escape. I murmured, wat say. She asked, Dully,
Speaker 1: you don't know of any large packing boxes, do you?
Speaker 1: I asked, now, I don't. She said, I haven't found
Speaker 1: one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to
Speaker 1: hide in a box. Maybe it will go away, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say a box to hide in. By James Thurber,
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do. Here. Here
Speaker 1: are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced
Speaker 1: and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who
Speaker 1: are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
Speaker 1: John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
Speaker 1: music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it
Speaker 1: was written by Mitch Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: Musical comments from Nancy Faust the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Speaker 1: Our announcer was John Dean, and everything else is pretty
Speaker 1: much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
Speaker 1: coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm
Speaker 1: Keith Oldriman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.